Chapter Twenty-Nine
“THOSE WHOSE SPIRITS HAVE MOVED ON TO THE GATE OF HEAVEN TO BE WITH THE HERALDS IN ETERNITY, THEIR BODIES ARE TO BE CLEANED, ANOINTED, AND WRAPPED IN WHITE. AND ONCE THEIR PHYSICAL SHELL HAS RECEIVED FINAL RITES, IT WILL BE DELIVERED UNTO THE DEPTHS. FOR AS THE HERALDS GAVE SO MUCH FOR US, OUR BODIES ARE THEIRS AND WILL BE RETURNED TO THEM.”
—THE SACRED LAW OF THE HERALDS
The wreckage of the Archangel lies in the middle of the living room, looking even worse under the harsh glow of unfiltered naphtha lamps. The wings have been entirely removed, but the main cavity, its arms and legs, are all still raggedly intact.
Including the body of the saint inside.
I stand in the entryway, arms crossed, unwilling to take another step closer to that metal monster.
Liren and Orion are crouched near it, murmuring to each other as they study the pieces, the person inside.
Dani sits in an armchair in the far corner, next to Garian and Mira, and when she tries to put her boots up on the little table in front of her, Mira swats her arm and gives her such a look that Dani immediately swings her feet to the floor and sits up a little straighter.
I scowl at the ugly, broken construct. The sight of it makes my skin crawl with disgust. Or maybe some kind of deep, primal fear. “Why the fuck did you bring it here?”
Liren looks up, wiping their hands on a clean cloth. “Were we supposed to just leave it out there on the open alloy as a dead giveaway for the other angels? Like, ‘Hey, we’re here and we destroyed your friend’? We’re running out of time before we have to get a move on as it is.”
I don’t respond or give them the satisfaction of admitting they make a good point—I don’t want that thing anywhere near me, period.
“Look,” Liren says with a heavy sigh. “We needed to cover our tracks a bit, and I also wanted to take a closer look, preferably with some amount of privacy. Discovering that there’s a human inside these—”
“Sorcha.” The name slips from my mouth before I can stop it.
Liren raises their eyebrows, surprised. “Sorry?”
I want to bite my tongue for betraying me. Why did I feel the need to correct them? What does it matter what it’s called? This thing took Halle from us. It’s not like it’s a person. It’s not like it matters.
Dani’s sharp, amber gaze pins me even from across the room, not letting me off the hook, damn her. “You said Sorcha.”
“Sorcha Tannith,” I finally admit. “That was her name. She was a saint.”
Orion makes a little oh of recognition as he straightens, staring down at the figure inside. “That’s why her face is familiar…”
Atlas draws a little closer, frowning. “She’s not…”
“Alive?” Liren finishes for him. “No, not exactly.”
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” Dani snaps, her eyes narrowing. “She’s alive or she isn’t.”
Liren shakes their head. “It’s difficult to explain. Most typical signs of life are nonexistent. But then…” They look over, motioning me forward. “Val, would you step a little closer?”
I don’t want to. I hate that Archangel. Loathe it, even. I’m also terrified of it. Of what it might mean and what it might make me feel. But I step into the room, arms still clutched tight around me as I move up next to it.
For the second time, I look down at what remains of Sorcha Tannith, and here in this brightly lit room, without the heat of battle and grief burning sun-bright through me, it’s even more jarring.
Her body is withered, caged and pinned by dark-gray metal along every inch.
There are slices and stab marks visible from where Toothpick hit, but there are no signs of bleeding.
A human face—or, at least, a face that was human once but barely resembles it now.
Bleached skin stretched tight over too-sharp cheekbones and sinking into every hollow of her skull.
That thinned-out halo of bright-red hair.
Eyes fully black from corner to corner, ringed with white lashes, and staring out at nothing.
Metal bars protrude from the sides of her neck and the top of her skull, connecting her to the automaton skeleton surrounding her, and embedded in her chest is the naphtha heart, a dodecahedron of golden glass and black iron.
The scarred metal frame jerks. The less-damaged arm twitches, articulated fingers curling and uncurling, reaching for something.
Reaching for me.
“See?” Liren says. “There’s something still awake inside.”
I inch back just a little, but I can’t tear my gaze from Sorcha’s black eyes and hollowed-out face.
She looks older than when she was taken—not a small child, but a person in their late teens or twenties, even.
She grew and changed at some point before she was fused with this monstrosity.
What happened between that moment when the Archangels whisked her away from her skyliner home and now?
What happened to you?
But also: Why didn’t your parents protect you? Why didn’t anyone protect you?
Somewhere underneath my shock and disgust and hatred and fear is a sickly thread of guilt, churning away at my insides. Because I had Orion. I had Mama. And even later, Dani. People who knew my secret and chose me over the chapels. Over the beliefs the Heralds tried to grind into us.
Sorcha. Gabriel. They had no one.
“If you take her out, what happens to her?” I ask.
I can feel Liren’s eyes on my face, studying me carefully before they respond in a gentle, careful voice. “I can’t say for absolute certainty. My best guess? Whatever’s left of her will slip away, and she’ll truly be gone.”
Orion is pacing a short circle in the limited amount of floor space left in the living room, his hands clasped behind his neck. “So does this mean all the Archangels, every one we see flying around and picking up new saints and all that—they have a saint inside them?”
“Holy fucking shit.” Dani looks disturbed enough to throw up, which is saying something considering the work she’s seen the Butcher do lately.
“Someone—or something—is doing this to them,” I say. “They’re taking those children and turning them into this.” They would’ve turned me into this.
“There’s been hundreds of saints over the years. Why would anyone do this?” Orion stops, swinging his gaze from me to Atlas to Liren with a pleading look in his eye. Like one of us must have some kind of reasonable answer. “What’s the purpose?”
“The purpose of what?”
I spin around to see Kelda, standing in the entryway.
Her hazel eyes are still red and puffy from old tears and there are imprinted lines on her cheek from the quilt she’d been curled around.
Her short black hair sticks up every which way, and she looks small and young. Younger than even her eleven years.
I step in front of her, putting my hands on her shoulders. “You’re supposed to be sleeping, smalls.”
She tilts her head to look past me at the Archangel wreckage. “I want to see it.”
My first instinct is to tell her no. To take her back upstairs to the bedroom so she won’t have to be exposed to all this and have to wrestle with the same confusing rush of feelings that are swamping me right now.
But who am I kidding? It’s far too late for that.
So I take her hand and lead her into the middle of the room. I watch her face as she takes in the body trapped inside, waiting to see hate, horror, revulsion, rage. Her eyes widen a little, new tears glistening in the corners, and a little furrow of concern wrinkles her forehead.
Kelda reaches inside to touch one of Sorcha’s exposed fingers. “Who was she?”
“Her name was Sorcha. She was a saint like me once.”
“She looks so young.” It’s almost funny to hear Kelda say that, when she looks even younger. Kel wraps her hand around that one bony finger and looks up at me. “Are we gonna take her to the Depths and put her to rest?”
“Put her to rest?” Kelda flinches at my harsh tone, and I take a breath, dropping to a knee in front of her. “Halle is gone. I’m not gonna mourn the monster responsible.”
“She didn’t choose this,” Kelda says softly.
“She was just a kid who was born storm-touched.” Like you.
She doesn’t say those words, but I hear the echo of them anyway.
She squares her shoulders to me and juts out her chin.
“She deserves to rest just as much as anyone else, and we’re the only ones left to do it. ”
The determination is so strong in her that I get the feeling she’ll try to make this happen whether I agree or not.
“Okay, then,” I sigh. “Let’s do it.”
It takes close to an hour to get everything ready.
Liren and Orion work together to extricate Sorcha’s body as much as possible from the Archangel’s frame.
She looks even smaller and frailer outside of it, and I have to leave the room as Kelda helps Atlas wash and wrap the body in thin, light-colored cloth from Garian and Mira’s linens.
Every time I stare into her fathomless, unseeing eyes, my heart squeezes with sympathy, with sadness for her, and I don’t want to feel either of those things.
I don’t want to keep carrying around the thought: That was supposed to be me.
In the deep darkness of the early-morning hours, Orion and Atlas lift Sorcha’s body onto their shoulders and carry her through the quiet, empty streets of Concord. Liren, Dani, Kelda, and I walk along behind them, Kelda’s hand tight around mine all the way to the outskirts of town.
On the edge of the Depths, the Bookers set the wrapped body on the ground, and we stand in a half circle around it as Atlas kneels down. One hand over Sorcha, one hand clutching his preacher medallion, Atlas prays:
“In the space beyond death, there is no more pain. There is no more suffering. There is no more loss. May all the ugliness in this life follow you no more. May you know peace and grace. And may we find you there, in the light, at the end of all things.”
Liren steps forward and kneels next to Atlas, and together, they push Sorcha gently over the edge into the Elysian Depths. Her body vanishes, that darkness below eating her up.
Just like it did to Halle.
“Val…”
I glance up as Orion steps close to me. His voice is soft with understanding, gentle in that particular way he often has, and I know he can see that something inside me is shattering.
I look away, my throat aching with the grief back-building like a firestorm. “Everything hurts.”
He takes my hand and cradles it in both of his like it is a delicate thing instead of a deadly weapon. “I know.”
I don’t know why that makes the tears finally come, pouring from the corners of my eyes, down my cheeks, dripping off my jaw. Maybe because he didn’t say he was sorry or that it would be okay or any other bullshit sentiment. Just simply: I know.
Kelda wraps her arms tight around me, her head on my chest, her ear pressed right over the spot where my heart beats.
Where it still beats even though it shouldn’t anymore. How could something so broken still work?
“It’s okay,” she whispers to me. “I got you.”