I rise in the next moment, blood dripping down my forehead, the light from the heart of Trinity still singing inside me. I use it, letting it pour down my limbs, making me lightning-quick as I dance around Horace, leveraging his rage against him. He shoots so fast and wildly with his pulse pistol that it overheats, searing his hand badly enough that he drops it. He swings at me againand again, crashing his knuckles against the walls, the floor, hard enough to leave dents, but I’m always a beat ahead of him.
Until I’m not.
Until that one moment when I’m just a half second too slow, and he gets ahold of me, smashing his fist across my nose, my throat, my sternum. I hear the snap of bone, feel it break as I fall to the ground. There’s a pressure sitting on my chest. I gasp, sucking at the air to try and drag it into my lungs, but they don’t feel big enough to breathe anymore.
“This is not how it ends.” Horace stands over me, a gaping slash in his arm revealing veins of pure naphtha. “You think you are the hero in this story, but you are the enemy. Your actions here put the lives of a hundred million people at risk.” Bending down, he scoops up his pulse pistol and cranks the charge on it to heat it back up.
I look down at my hands, splayed against the alloy floor. My arms are shaking, but I can hear all those hundreds of saints singing for me. Each one unique, but also the same, and Trinity has never sounded as heartbreakingly beautiful as right now.
I sit back on my heels and tip my chin up until I’m staring straight down the barrel of his pistol. I breathe deep—deeper than I ought to be able to—and now there is no pain. My legs feel steady. My head is crystal clear.
He aims at my head and pulls the trigger.
I split myself apart, arcing around the blast from the pistol. I almost become the air, but I remember just enough to pull myself together again in pieces. It’s not quick, it’s not instantaneous, but it’s fast enough. Fast enough for me to drive an elbow down into Horace’s arm, knocking the gun loose from his grip. Fastenough for me to snatch it in midair and kick his feet out from under him.
Fast enough to stand over him and put a hand to his throat.
He goes very still, his unnaturally blue eyes shining with earnestness, his palms turned up like an offering. There is nothing but peace on his face.
“You can’t kill me,” he says softly. “I have guided over Trinity for millennia. I am the only one who knows how to lead it.”
“Maybe that was true once,” I tell him. “But not anymore. I’m going to fix this world, Horace Cooper. Me—and every saint who comes after me. We’re going to dismantle every single thing you’ve created. You turned yourself into a god. Now I’m going to turn you into nothing.”
I pull at those last remnants of Trinity’s song humming inside me, and lightning ripples down my arm and into his body. It wraps around him, thread upon thread upon thread, until I can’t even see him anymore. And then it bursts into an explosion of light, bright as a nova.
When it finally dims, the only thing left of the Last Herald of Trinity is a pile of golden dust on the floor.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“I HAVE HEARD OF SECTS THAT HAVE FALLEN TO IDOLATRY, PAYING WORSHIP TO THE SAINTS. THAT IS HERESY, AND IT WILL BE CUT OUT BY THE MINISTRY AND CHAPELS LIKE ROT FROM THE BODY. FOR THE SAINTS, WHILE GIFTED, ARE MORTAL FLESH, AND TO WORSHIP THOSE BORN OF MORTAL FLESH IS TO SET OURSELVES BEFORE THE HERALDS.”
—TREATISE NO. 18BY MOST HOLY PREACHER HAL LOURDE, ORIGINAL CHAPEL FOUNDER
The empty gun drops from my hands, clattering onto the floor, and my legs wobble underneath me. Blood has dried sticky on my face and chest and hands. Tremors rumble through the room, vibrating across my skin. Trinity’s song shifts, growing wild and sharp, calling me back into it. It tugs at every cell in my body, making it hard to hold myself together in solid form.
Wait, I tell it.I’m coming. I just have to say goodbye first.
Closing my eyes, I dissipate, arcing through and out of the Gate, across the miles of garden and metal plains, back to the outskirts of Opportunity. In the space of a moment, I’m wholeagain, my feet solid on the alloy, and when I open my eyes, they’re all there, together.
Little Gabriel, curled on the ground, his face relaxed in a true sleep.
Atlas and Liren, shock stretching their faces as they help Dani and a heavily limping Orion to their feet.
And my sisters.
Kelda is already in Halle’s arms, laughing, tears pouring down her face as Halle rocks her back and forth, squeezing her so tight while little furry Ember weaves figure eights around their feet.
They’re here. They’re alive and breathing and finally, truly safe. I know this as sure as I know my own heartbeat, as sure as I know their faces.
Kelda spots me first and cries out, and then she and Halle are running, crashing against me, hard enough that all three of us collapse in a heap of arms and legs and hugs and tears. My body flares with pain, but I bite down on it and grip them tighter, my throat aching, tears dripping from my eyes. I take in every bit of them: their warm, solid bodies; the strong, steady heartbeats pounding in their chests; the tears dampening their faces; the scent of their hair and skin that overpowers even the aura of blood and ash that surrounds me.
I want to stay in this moment. Live in this moment.
I pull back a little, looking at them through teardrops that cling to my lashes and break their faces into facets. I keep one hand clutched on Halle’s arm and another on Kelda’s cheek, trying to memorize them exactly as they are now. To burn their images into my chest where they can never be lost or wiped away.
No matter what I become after this.
Orion and Dani make their way toward us, him leaning heavily on her shoulder, her arm tight around his waist for support. There’s pain pinching the corners of his eyes, but as soon as they make it to us, he drops onto the ground beside me and wraps his long arms around my chest, pulling me into him.
