“You’re all right.” His voice is only a whisper, and I’m not sure if the words are for me or for himself, but he keeps saying them over and over again.You’re all right you’re all right you’re all right…
Dani stands nearby, her mouth pressed into a flat line. “We should take this reunion on the road. Get as far away from the Gate as possible. There is no way that whatever is up there is going to let us go without a fight after everything we’ve seen.”
“Nothing is left up there to fight.” The words slip from my mouth just as a quick, bright flash cuts across the corner of my eye, there and gone in an instant, but I don’t turn to it. I’m not ready yet. I need just a little more time.
“Good,” Dani says sharply. “Still no reason to stick around. Let’s get back in the carriage.” She reaches a hand toward Kelda, beckoning her over, but Kelda’s got her fingers latched into my shirt, gripping hard. Next to me, Halle clutches my hand so tight that it hurts, and I can tell by the way she’s staring at me that at least part of her knows what’s coming.
She was up there. She saw and heard more than the rest of them.
Orion studies the expression on Halle’s face, the fear and panic and sorrow already written in her eyes, and then he looks over at me.
“V?” His voice is heavy. Like he doesn’t really want to ask.
“You know,” I tell him quietly. “You already know.”
Dani frowns at us, confused. “Know what? What does he know?”
“I’m staying,” I tell her.
Her mouth drops open. “I’m sorry—What?”
I look down at my hands, remembering the voices and the song and all that burning pain. “The Heralds were a lie. They stripped this world for themselves, robbed us of what it was meant to be. The saints were supposed to fix it, but the Heralds stole that, too. Maybe if they hadn’t, things would be different. But they’re all gone. It’s just me left.”
Trinity is singing, and I’d always thought its song had been for the Butcher, a melody of phase-shifts and blood work and death.
But it isn’t. It’s for Valene. It’s always been for Valene.
I take off my weighted gloves one finger at a time, dropping them onto the ground. “I have to stay.”
“No!” Halle shakes her head, strands of dark hair sticking to the tear tracks on her cheeks. “Val, you can’t…”
I put my hands on either side of her face, my voice calm even though my heart is pounding and my chest is so full and tight that I almost can’t get the words out. “Trinity has been calling me my entire life, Halle. I just never understood why. This world needs to heal, and to do that, I need to go back in.”
Halle’s expression is hard as metal under her tears. “It’s not a fair trade.”
“I know. I get it.” I take her hands, squeezing them. “You’vealways wanted to be a part of something bigger, and I never really understood that. Until this moment.”
Halle’s lips tremble, the hard edges of her expression softening. “You couldn’t just become a rogue preacher or something?”
A teary smile blurs my vision, and I pull her to me, hugging her tight. “This is your time, Halle Bruinn,” I say quietly, just for her ears. “You’ve always wanted to create change, so do it. Make this whole universe see how much it needs people like you.”
For a long moment, Halle doesn’t respond. She does nothing but cry, arms tight around my bruised body. When she finally nods, I squeeze her as a thank you, as a goodbye, as a half-assed way of trying to tell her everything that fifteen years of family builds up inside. Then I turn to Kelda, who’s kneeling next to us with her gangly arms wrapped around Ember’s fuzzy red body and sobs hiccuping from her throat.
She drops her forehead onto my chest, her narrow shoulders shaking. “You promised. You promised you weren’t gonna leave me behind.”
“I know, smalls. But I won’t really be gone. Trinity is all around you, which means I am, too, right?” I take her by the arms, straightening her up so I can look her in the eye. “You listen to me, okay? You be good for Halle. Do what she says.” A tear falls, and I wipe it off her cheek. “Be brave, Kel. Be so much braver than me.”
Kelda nods and leans fully into me. Careful not to crush Ember, I hold her as my own body shakes from the sobs that I tamp down, push deep inside. Halle puts her arms around both of us, and the three of us huddle like that for a long while.
And then Trinity calls. Another flare ripples behind me, and Trinity’s song swells, wild and sharp, tugging at me like a lure. I look up through swollen, red-rimmed eyes and take a deep breath. I’m almost out of time.
Orion appears next to me as I stand, stepping from my sisters’ arms, and when I look at him, there are tears slipping down his face. He reaches for me, hesitant, and I instantly move into his embrace, pressing my cheek against his warm chest. I think part of me has wanted to do this—to hug him like I used to, this hard and this close—since I saw him on that prison train, and I’m sorry now that it took me so long to listen to it.
“Thank you,” I murmur into his shirt, into the warmth and smell of him. “For sticking with me.”
His voice rumbles low against my ear. “I was always with you, V.”
I angle my head up so I can see his face. His cheeks and eyelashes are wet, and I brush the backs of my knuckles softly across the tears. He catches my hand gently in his, holding it like it’s something precious, and I let him. I let him treat me as precious.
