Chapter Forty-Four
“FOR THE STORM IS THE SYMBOL OF THE HERALDS, AND WHEN IT APPEARS, KNOW THAT THEIR POWER IS NIGH AND ONLY THOSE BLESSED WITH HUMILITY AND PROSPERITY WILL BE TOUCHED BY THEM.”
—THE SACRED LAW OF THE HERALDS
Trinity sends me back, the current of its song carrying me up and up, out of its heart, the pieces of my body re-forming around me.
I fold into myself bit by bit, slowly coming back to my lungs, my bones, my heart.
Everything around me shines brighter and sharper.
I flex my muscles, feeling the strength and stretch of them.
All the pain and exhaustion in my body is gone, not even a dull ache left behind.
It felt like I was inside its heart for lifetimes, but no time at all has passed. Horace, his face stretched with horror, is still looking at the spot where I’d been lying just before I went into the pool.
I sing to the light, and it comes, filling my chest like a brilliant star. I feel it streaming from my eyes and fingers and the pores of my skin.
And then I phase.
The freedom, the lightness of it—spreading like air. I come back together with my heart hammering in my ears, energy arcing from me in crackling lines.
Every saint was born from a magnastorm.
But I am the magnastorm now.
Someone is yelling and angry. I think it’s the false Herald, but he’s such an afterthought in my mind. Barely registering.
I drop into the space between the Herald-angels, hovering in midair. They surround me, advance on me, and I hold my hands out to welcome them, beckoning them forward. Lightning crawls down my arms, leaping across the empty space and grabbing each one by its chest cavity, trapping them in place.
I inhale, tasting metal and ozone, and close my eyes.
My body doesn’t phase—but my mind does. My awareness shatters into a billion tiny pieces, and I’m suddenly everywhere, seeing and feeling everything that moves and breathes all over the Gate of Heaven.
I am inside Horace Cooper, the Last Herald of Trinity, awash in his surety, his conviction in what he’s doing. Deep passion and ambition, twisted and gone sour. Bitten by greed’s poison teeth.
I am with Halle, feeling her terror and panic trapped inside the antechamber, pounding on the doors and yelling my name. Lost and unsure in the darkness, again.
I am with Dani and Orion, down in the garden below, staring at the stained glass sphere above them and waiting for my return. Hands clasped tight together, hearts beating in rhythm, love and hope and fear knitting them into one.
I am with Kelda, standing between Atlas and Liren on the edge of a town that was once called Opportunity, staring north over the Copper Plains. Quaking inside as she stands on a precipice, waiting to know if she is the only Bruinn left.
I am with the child, Gabriel, asleep but trapped, suspended in never-ending nightmares behind a wall of beautiful glass. Carried away from his family, screaming, in a ceaseless loop.
I am with all the saints who came before me, born to be part of Trinity, stolen by a man terrified of their power and used up until there was nothing left of them but empty shells.
I hear you, I whisper to them. I’m coming.
I open my eyes and slowly breathe out.
And then I clench my hands into fists, and the angels shatter into tiny pieces.
Not just the Herald-angels in this room, but all the Archangels outside it, too.
In one blinding flash, I dissolve their automaton cages, and they crumble, reduced to nothing but dark glitter and ash.
I feel the wave of relief from each and every one of the saints and Heralds trapped inside as they are released, finally free.
I fling my fingers out wide, like an explosion, and the towering stained glass window behind the gilded desk shatters into fragments. I beckon to the sleeping Gabriel, and his body floats out of the liquid light containing him, coming softly to rest in a clear spot on the floor.
Then I close my eyes and phase.
I bring all of them with me—Halle and Gabriel, Dani and Orion—away from the Gate, carrying them over miles and miles of alloy in an instant, all the way back to Opportunity.
I set them down there, on the edge of the abandoned outpost town, just a few feet from Kelda and Atlas and Liren, the light from Trinity framing me in the shape of two enormous, outspread wings.
And then I’m gone again, back into the Gate of Heaven.
Safe. They’re all safe.
My awareness shrinks and folds until it fits inside my physical body once more.
The angel dust settles, the light blazing inside me dims, and I feel the floor, solid under my feet.
My head spins, and I waver a little. I’ve used up quite a bit of what Trinity gave me, but Trinity’s song still beats in my blood, making me feel fast and vicious and strong.
Which is good. Because I have a Herald to deal with.
I spin toward Horace Cooper just as he whips a pulse pistol out from underneath his vest. His face is twisted with rage and frustration.
He squeezes the trigger, but I disappear before the shot can hit its mark and reappear behind him, my arm blade drawn, swinging it in an arc toward his head.
He spins, blocks my blow, and raises his pistol, pulling the trigger.
I’m already gone, though, and the shot hits the wall behind me, bursting into a waterfall of sparks and tiny tongues of flame.
I reappear in a crouch just on Horace’s periphery and sweep his legs out from under him, bringing him to the ground. I go for his pistol, but his hand shoots up, grabbing me by the throat and throwing me off him. I fly halfway across the room, slamming into the wall and landing in a heap.
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 again and 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.
Fast enough 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.