Chapter Sixteen
“FROM THE PROVIDENCE OF THE HERALDS WILL COME ALL THAT WE NEED. IN RETURN, THE PEOPLE OF TRINITY WILL GIVE BACK A PORTION OF THEIR EARNINGS AND POSSESSIONS TO SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE CHAPELS AND THE PREACHERS. AND THOSE WHO GIVE THE MOST WILL SEE AN ABUNDANCE OF BLESSINGS.”
—THE SACRED LAW OF THE HERALDS
I try to rest like Liren told me to. I even lie on the bed for a while with my eyes shut, counting my breaths in and out slowly.
But I can’t sleep. Orion comes in at one point, cleaned up and steam showered, and flops down on one side of the bed, slipping almost immediately into sleep.
I wait until his breath deepens and evens out before I stretch out beside him, careful not to let our bodies touch.
Not that we’ve never slept next to each other before.
We did as kids, all the time, when he would crash at our lodgings, and for a little while again after Mama was taken, too.
I used to prefer those nights because they were the only times I felt looked after.
Comforted instead of constantly trying to be comforting.
Not completely safe, exactly, but safer, less exhausted, because for a little while, I wasn’t the only one in charge.
I want to be comforted like that again. To curl into his side and hear someone else’s heartbeat, feel it thumping against the shell of my ear, keeping time with Trinity’s song in perfect lullaby.
No. I don’t deserve an indulgence like that. Not until Halle and Kelda are safe.
Every minute that passes ticks against my skin, anxiety twisting my insides as my brain, restless as a storm, turns the same questions over and over and over again.
Where do the Gold Towners have Halle and Kelda? Are they okay? Are they hurt? Are they wondering if I’m coming? How soon until I can get to them?
And what will they think when they see what I can do …
I’m not naive. There’s no way I can pull off this rescue without them seeing the Butcher—the saint—in action. And honestly, it should be the least of my worries.
But it sits there all the same. To get back to them, I’m going to have to tear apart a barrier that’s kept them protected from the worst parts of me.
I’m going to have to unveil a secret I’ve kept so tight that I don’t really know how to peel it off my skin.
I hadn’t thought about this stuff before I ran into the Old Clock Tower, but now that I have to just lie here, waiting, it’s all I can think about.
I can already imagine the shock and horror and betrayal on both of their faces.
I picture it so vividly that I squeeze my eyes shut, like that will somehow dismiss it from my brain.
They’ll never look at you the same way again.
They won’t understand.
Kelda will be afraid of you.
Halle will hate you.
You’ll be more alone than ever before.
I scramble to sit up, one hand pressed flat against my chest. Everything between my ribs tightens like a fist. Air, muscle, bone.
All of it squeezing together, too small, too choked.
I can’t get a full breath with these thoughts stepping on my throat.
Bending over my knees, I bury my face in my hands, trying to go somewhere small and dark and quiet in my brain where I can catch my breath.
“What happened?” The bed shifts underneath me as Orion wakes, and I feel him slide off the edge of the mattress to kneel next to me. “Val? What’s going on?”
I’m terrified. I’ve been on the edge of losing absolutely everything for days now, and I’m slipping.
Those aren’t words I know how to say out loud, though.
They’re the kinds of words that crack your ribs open and expose your insides.
Words that show someone right where to stab you to make it hurt the most, twist the most, and I can’t afford that kind of softness, I can’t. I wear armor for a reason.
“Nothing.” I wipe my hands down my face, pulling my shoulders upright. My breathing stays calm and steady. It’s a miracle. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He cups his hands around mine, still kneeling in front of me. “But you’re not alone in this, Val. We’re going to find Halle and Kelda, I promise.”
He can’t promise that; I know he can’t promise that.
But his touch is very warm and light on my skin, and his face is tilted so close to mine.
It’s so similar to the face I used to know and still so very different.
Familiar and foreign in equal measure. I’d forgotten about the faint flecks of dark green in his eyes and the tiny little dimple there at the corner of his mouth that I always fought the urge to brush my thumb across.
The last time I looked at him this long and this closely, I was fourteen and we’d gone up to the roof of his boardinghouse during an extremely hot day during high season, hoping to catch a breeze.
The energy between us had shifted recently, every interaction sparking with something extra just beneath the surface.
Something like anticipation, although I couldn’t even say what I was anticipating.
He’d fallen asleep up there, with the air like a heavy blanket over us, and I had studied his face, itching to trace the lines of his full lips, his broad nose, his softly arched brows, as I tried to figure out what had changed about him—what had changed about us.
It hadn’t mattered in the end. A few months later, he’d found out what I had started doing as the Butcher.
We’d come apart so slowly after that, vicious rifts followed by crests of reconciliation, ripping apart only to drift back together over and over.
Right up until the night when I’d cut him out, walked away, and never spoken to him again. Not until that day on the prison train.
“That’s a lot of thinking you’re doing there, Valene Bruinn.”
I shake my head. “I was just thinking about how we were. Before the Butcher. Before the fights.”
“I think about that a lot, too.” I feel his eyes on my face, as intimate as a touch. “How it felt like we were … I don’t know, on the verge of something. Something new.”
Something new. There’s a hopefulness in that phrase, an openness, universes unfurling in front of it in a terrifying expanse.
It’s not a controlled free fall, like I do when I phase.
It’s a leap into the Depths, nothing below you but the unknown, waiting to swallow you up.
But maybe that isn’t so bad. Maybe something new isn’t so much dark, scary emptiness.
Maybe instead it’s a miracle—like rain.
He’s looking at me just as intently as I am at him, and he swallows hard as his gaze drops to my mouth.
He’s still holding my hands in the cradle of his own.
My heart squeezes in a strange and painful way.
I know enough about romantic love to recognize that I don’t feel it in quite the same way others seem to.
I never got crushes like other kids my age or like Halle did when she got older.
I never cared whether someone thought I was attractive or desired me in that particular, heated way.
Except sometimes—just sometimes—I feel something different toward Orion. Not an all-consuming burn or a fiery passion. Just a tug, right behind my heart, like a very strong thread connects us and every now and then it’s pulled taut.
I feel that tug now, stretched tight across the inches of space between us. So tight it might crash us together or snap us apart.
I’m not even sure which one I want.
But I don’t get the chance to find out.
A sharp knock on the door slices right through the tension, and Liren swings it open half a second later.
Orion and I spring apart, my face flushing, but Liren just shoots us a shrewd look and doesn’t say anything.
Instead they wrestle a couple of rucksacks into the room, plopping one down on the floor and tossing the other onto the covers.
“Not to interrupt or anything,” they say. “I thought you might like your stuff back, Booker’s friend.”
“I do have a name.” It takes me a second to realize the rucksack on the bed is mine—my Butcher kit.
That hair of the dog must’ve really messed me up that I lost track of it.
I immediately tug it open and start searching through the contents, checking the lining for my hidden cash, my water packets, making sure—
“Everything’s there,” Liren says as they crouch down next to the rucksack on the floor. “We’re not thieves.”
Orion holds up a hand. “Well, technically I am.”
“That’s true. Technically, he is, but the rest of us aren’t.”
I shoot both of them a look, but Liren just grins at me and Orion keeps his eyes pinned on the floor, scratching at the back of his neck in that way he does when he feels awkward.
Which makes me feel suddenly awkward again, too, so I put all my focus on laying my kit out on the quilt, checking my blades, my sheaths, my goggles, and my clothes.
Letting each familiar piece, each familiar movement calm my heartbeat and help me feel more solid.
More real. It’s all there, and it all looks like it’s in significantly better shape than it was before I passed out.
The cloth and leather actually look dark and unblemished, instead of smudged and spattered with blood and grime and ash.
I look up at Liren, eyebrows raised. “You cleaned my stuff?”
“Couldn’t really let it sit around smelling like sweat and blood.
We try to run a clean place here, Valene Bruinn.
” They grin at me again, adding a wink on top of it this time.
“See? I know your name.” They swing their gaze over to Orion and jerk their chin over their shoulder.
“Place is starting to fill up down there. You might want to go keep an eye out for any favorite friends.”
Orion’s face brightens, and he quickly checks the inner pocket of his vest—the one where he stashed that telegram and the crystal from the prison train—before wrapping a long arm around Liren in a quick hug. “On it. I owe you one, Liren.”
“You owe me lots at this point, Baby Booker.” They reach up and tweak the end of Orion’s nose playfully. “Good thing I’m not really one to keep count.”
Orion tells me he’ll be right back and then ducks out the door, letting it snick softly shut behind him.
“Favorite friends?” I ask Liren.
They run their hand along the shaved hair of their head, scrubbing at the bristles. “Informant might be a better word for it. Orion asked me to get word out to them that he wanted to talk.” They raise their eyebrows at me. “He didn’t tell me about what.”
I side-eye them. “I figured Atlas would’ve already filled you in on everything.”
Liren shrugs and pulls an armful of clothes from the rucksack, dumping them onto the quilt. It looks like mostly discards and hand-me-downs in different sizes, nondescript clothes for the blending-in sorts of people.
“He told me some,” Liren admits. “I guess I’d just like to hear your side of the story. Even the notorious Butcher has a point of view, right?”
I pull on one of my gloves, feeling the stretch of the fabric and the comforting heft of the weighted plates inside. “The less you know, the better. I don’t want to bring you trouble.”
“Trouble?” Liren’s laugh is low and dark, layered with as much bittersweet as joy.
“I was in trouble the moment I crossed paths with Atlas Booker. I was doubly in trouble when he told me he was a rogue preacher and his idiot baby brother was the Skywayman.” They spread their arms wide.
“And yet here I stand. Trouble doesn’t scare me. ”
I sigh, sifting through the extra clothes so I don’t have to look into their sympathetic eyes. “The truth is, the Butcher has a family. Two sisters. But I fucked up and lost them. And now I have to get them back.”
“Shit…” Liren rubs their hands over their face, looking stressed. I can see all the affection and worry swirling underneath their expression, and guilt seeps into my chest again. I set my teeth against it, bristling.
“Look, I just got the whole lecture from Atlas, okay? And I already decided that as soon as Orion gets me a new lead I can work with, I’ll head out without him. He can stay here—”
Liren cuts me off with a loud laugh. “Oh, he’s never going to let you leave him here. Orion loves an impossible project, and you turned up and presented him with another chance at his ultimate conquest: rescuing you.”
“Rescuing me.” The words taste dry and bitter in my mouth, like a morning after too much moonshine. “From what?”
They shrug helplessly. “From whatever took you away from him, I guess. You’re his greatest failure and his greatest hope.
” Liren gets back to their feet with another deep sigh, half-heartedly gathering the clothes on the bed into a single pile.
“Sometimes I think he believes that if he can bring you back, it’ll be his sign. ”
“His sign?” Even as the question falls out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back.
“That he can fix Trinity.”
Anger sparks down my spine and in my belly, tightening my jaw and my fists. Why is everyone trying to make me more than what I am? A saint, a symbol, a project. I never asked for it, and I don’t want it. I want Halle and Kelda and enough paper to get us out of town. That’s it.
“I’m not a puzzle to solve,” I say finally, the words ground out between clenched teeth.
Liren studies me for a moment, head cocked to the side. “Hey, I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad or anything like that. I just think you need to be aware of where he’s at. Because he will break himself trying to save you, Valene Bruinn.”
Their words slam into me like a dust storm, and I don’t know what to say or how to react. But I don’t have to. Because the door slams open, and Orion stands there, beaming.
“Get your game face on, V. It’s time for us to go downstairs and have a chat.”