Chapter Twenty-Two
“HOW BLESSED ARE THOSE UNIONS THAT PRODUCE A SAINT! WHAT GREATER SACRIFICE TO MAKE TO THE HERALDS THAN ONE’S OWN CHILD. THOSE WHO DO ARE EXALTED AND BLESSED WITH PROSPERITY BEYOND MEASURE. AND THOSE WHO DO NOT, RISK DAMNATION AND EXCOMMUNICATION.”
The instant my sisters’ eyes shut, I’m vapor, pouring across the gleaming metal roof. I phase so fast and so fluidly it almost feels like I manage to be everywhere at once, striking hard with Toothpick, aiming for the base of the Gold Towners’ skulls.
Each time, I strike true.
The thirteen of them collapse like puppets, their strings cut, and all goes still.
In the corners of my eyes, I see the bright sizzle of flashlight powder, capturing me, capturing everything that just happened. There are lights on in the windows of boardinghouses around the hall and the dark outlines of faces pressed against the glass, watching.
Seeing me. Seeing what I can do. How long until they take it to the chapels? Until the bells start ringing?
It doesn’t matter anymore. I made my choice the minute I stepped onto this rooftop.
Retracting my arm blade, I retrieve my knives, stepping over the bodies of the Gold Towners to crouch down in front of my sisters and cut away their gags and bonds.
Halle’s eyes flutter open at the feeling of my fingers on her wrists, and so many emotions flood her face as she takes in the sight of me …
and the carnage behind me. Shock, surprise, horror, maybe relief.
She rubs at the sores on her wrists absentmindedly as I shift over a bit and gently take Kelda’s arms. She starts to open her eyes as well, but I put my hand over her face.
“Not yet, smalls. Keep them closed just a little bit longer, okay?”
“We heard the explosion,” Halle says, her voice hoarse and dull. “We thought you were…”
“I got out just before.” I slice Kelda’s gag free and toss it away. “I’m so sorry it took me this long to get you. I was hurt, I had to get help, and then people were after me and—”
Kelda throws herself onto me, eyes still dutifully closed as she squeezes her arms tight around my neck.
All the tension in my body drops away. I can’t remember the last time she’s hugged me like this or let me hold her.
Years, maybe. I rest my cheek against her soft hair.
I hate that it smells of sweat and dirt and blood instead of peppermint soap.
But it doesn’t matter. She’s real and warm and safe and here. They both are.
“Thank you for coming for us,” Kelda whispers into the leather of my top, and the words hit like pulse rifle shots in my chest. Because I can hear the unspoken implication under her words.
That the Val they knew, the Val I’ve been to them for months and months now—that’s not someone they trusted to rescue them.
That Val was cold and distant and rough, always gone on “jobs,” focused on cash at the expense of anything else.
In their eyes, I can see how they’d think that Val might’ve just cut their losses and skipped town.
I hate that they thought that. Even for a moment.
“I’ll always come for you,” I whisper into her hair.
I look over at Halle, who is sitting nearby but also carefully apart from us, curled in on herself. Every bit of her, from her expression to the lines of her body, is wary. Tense. Her eyes glance down at my right arm, where my arm blade is hidden away.
“Val … I…” She drags her gaze back up to meet mine. Her whole expression is wide, exposed, filled with hurt. “What … what is this? What are you?”
All the air squeezes out of my lungs. Her words hit hard enough to leave bruises. What are you. Not who—what. Like I’m more thing than human. Like I’m a monster that’s finally crept out of the dark.
I suck in a shaky breath, and Kelda goes still in my arms, listening. But my courage fails me.
“Not now. We need to get out of here.”
I help Kelda to her feet and reach out a hand for Halle, but she just stares and shakes her head. “No, not later. Now. Val, you moved so fast. It’s like you—” She sucks in a sharp breath. “Like you’re storm-touched.”
Kelda tilts her head toward me, her curls brushing against my chin as she finally opens her eyes. “That makes you a saint, right?”
I reach over to brush a stray hair off her forehead.
“Mama made me promise to keep it a secret, so the Archangels couldn’t come take me away.
But then she was gone, and Papa was gone, too, and I had to use it for …
for the job I was doing. I had to.” I catch Halle’s eyes, deep brown and spilling over with tears.
I wonder if she can see inside me, if she realizes that I didn’t just have to.
I wanted to. I was good at it and proud of how good I was at it.
“They called you the Butcher.” Halle tightens her fists at her side. “As in, the Butcher? That’s you?”
Silence drops over us, thick as smoke. I thought I’d made my peace with my alter ego, with what I did and what I’ve done. But right now, I can’t even find my voice to answer her. It’s choked off somewhere in the base of my throat. So I just nod.
In the distance, chapel bells start to peal, ringing out a very particular song. One I haven’t heard in about six years.
Calling the Archangels.
“We can’t stay here. We have to go.” I tug Kelda forward, trying to cover her eyes as I lead her past the bodies and toward the staircase down to the main hall.
I don’t look back at Halle, but I hear her footsteps padding softly behind me.
She doesn’t say anything more until the rooftop door closes behind us.
“You didn’t say anything.” Halle’s voice is clearer and stronger now, angrier, ringing against the walls of the stairwell.
“You didn’t say anything this whole time.
You just let us believe you were out there doing normal Gold Town work, coming home late, disappearing into your room with a bottle of moonshine every night—”
I have to claw my voice back out of my chest, and even then it comes out ragged. “I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to know. Either of you. I didn’t want you to look at me differently. Like I was…”
“… a killer,” Kelda finishes for me, murmuring the words.
I pause on the steps and look over at Kelda, staring into her red-rimmed hazel eyes and the tear tracks carving through the dirt on her face.
She’s so strong now, her cheeks round and flushed.
Halle practically shimmers with good health, even after all the events of the past few days.
But somewhere in the backs of my eyes, I always see the shadows of those months when their faces were sunken and hollow, their lips cracked and parched, and I didn’t dare close my eyes or sleep because I thought I’d wake up and they’d be gone.
I don’t know how to tell her all that. How to make her understand. Words haven’t ever really been my strong suit—if they were, maybe I wouldn’t have had to fall back on my blades.
Outside there are more chapel bells now, closer, joining in the song, ringing against the dark of night. A new saint has been found.
I start moving again, my arm still around Kelda as we make it down one floor and then the next.
“I couldn’t keep a job,” I finally say, the words sounding flimsy even as they come out of my mouth. “You and Kelda were starving, and I was desperate. It got to the point where there was nothing I wouldn’t do—nothing—if it meant you both were safe and fed.”
Halle stops short on the second-floor landing, forcing me to pause and turn back to her.
“It was supposed to be the three of us, together, no matter what,” she says, eyes burning, voice dripping acid.
“But you lied to us, Val. And worse than that, you left us. You pulled away when we needed you the most.” I’ve seen Halle angry plenty of times, but this is different.
It’s spilling out of her like incandescence. “How many people have you killed?”
“Halle!” Kelda cries out, shocked, upset.
“You’ve been doing this for years, so I have to think it’s a lot.”
Kelda shakes her head, tears welling up again. “Halle, please don’t—”
“I don’t feel like I know you at all!”
Her voice rings against the polished walls of the stairwell, and I wait until the echoes have died away before I finally straighten my shoulders and look right into her eyes.
“You can hate me,” I tell her, my voice soft and low.
“You can be afraid of me. You can judge me for the decisions I made, but for the past four years, you and Kel never wanted for food or water or a soft place to sleep at night. I can’t regret that.
I can’t. If I had to, I’d make the same choices again. Every time.”
“But we didn’t have you. Not really.” Halle stares at me for a long, quiet moment, letting those cold, clear words land like lead in my stomach before she turns away, burying her face in her hands.
She’s right. They didn’t have me, not all of me.
The Butcher, the work I did, the power I wielded and how good I was at it—that was just for me.
A part of myself outside of being the eldest sibling, the provider, the responsible one tasked with keeping everyone else safe and sheltered.
I wish I could say I hated being the Butcher, but there was too much freedom in it for me to hate.
And I don’t know how to lay that all out on the table without losing my sisters completely.
They were already struggling to love Val, with all their flaws. How could they love the half of me that spits blood and metal and death?
If we run far and fast enough, if we can find a new home on Trinity, could I set all that aside and just be Val for them? Do I even want to? Or remember how?
There’s no room for questions like that right now. The chapel bells are ringing across Covenant, calling the Archangels to us. We have to get out of the Shipyards.
I push them forward once more, all the way down to the bottom of the stairs where I herd them away from the billiards hall and into the cavernous space at the back of the building.
This was the way Dani and Orion had planned for us to get out in the original scheme, but I don’t wait for them.
My time is up, and they’re probably still counting their haul from that vault room anyway, so screw them.
The warehouse is a maze of stacked crates and bulky items wrapped in rough cloth, but there’s no sign of any Gold Towners or wardens back here.
When we get to the doors at the back, I leave Halle and Kelda huddled in the shadow of the closest crate and creep up to the window to get an eye on what’s happening out in the street.
From this angle, everything looks empty, the only sound the echoing gongs of the chapel bells.
No sign of any additional wardens or Gold Towners playing lookout on nearby rooftops or lurking in corners, waiting for us to emerge.
Just the usual twisting alleys and ragged lanes of the Shipyards—and the edge of the Crater yawning in front of us, maybe fifty feet away.
I lean against the window frame, trying to map out in my head the best route to get me and my sisters out of this place as quickly and quietly as possible, but even as my brain churns, my eyes keep straying to the fathomlessly dark opening of the Crater.
Something about it makes shivers prickle across my skin.
Trinity sings restlessly, its melody wilder and faster than usual, spiked with jarring chords of disharmony.
I tap my fingers against the sides of my thighs to the rhythm of it.
The air suddenly turns thick and still, the sounds from the street dropping away like I’ve put plugs in my ears. I freeze at the crawling sense of anticipation that creeps up my spine. It’s familiar. But, this time, it’s closer. Like it’s right on top of me.
No, that’s not it. Like it’s right underneath me … I can feel it building, back-building, surging.
I know what’s coming next.
“Val?” Kelda’s voice might as well come from a million miles away. “What’s wrong?”
Trinity’s song rises to a roar in my ears. It pulls me in and I want to give in, but I look at my sisters. And I make myself stay put.
“Get down,” I tell them just a heartbeat before a blinding blue-white flare pours out of the Depths of the Crater and engulfs us.