Chapter 12 #2
“I know that.” I turn to face him, and the pride makes me lift my chin, square my shoulders. Makes me meet his gold eyes without flinching. “I’ve been doing this for years. I don’t need instructions from someone who’s never purged a sin in his life.”
His expression doesn’t change, but something flickers in those molten eyes. “You’re holding pride. Seraph’s sin. It’s making you—”
“Making me what? Confident? Strong?” I laugh, and it sounds strange even to my own ears. Too bright. Too sharp. “I am those things. I’ve always been those things. Maybe you’re just seeing it now.”
“You’re losing yourself.” He takes a step closer, and I back away on instinct. “The pride is talking, not you. You need to purge it before—“
“Before what? Before I realize I don’t actually need you?
” The words pour out, vicious and cutting, and part of me, some small, rational part buried under the weight of borrowed arrogance, knows I’m going to regret this.
But I can’t stop. The pride won’t let me stop.
“You think I’m here because I’m weak? Because I need your protection?
I’m here because I made a choice. Because I’m smart enough to keep my sister safe and strong enough to survive whatever you throw at me.
Don’t mistake servitude for inadequacy.”
“I never said you were inadequate.”
“You didn’t have to. Every time you look at me, I can see you thinking it.
‘Poor little sin eater, so desperate, so broken.’” I’m circling him now, and the pride makes me feel powerful, untouchable.
“But I’m not broken. I’ve never been broken.
I’ve survived things that would have destroyed you if you weren’t immortal.
I’ve eaten sins that would shatter your precious angelic mind.
I am exceptional at what I do, and you.. .”
“Are you going to keep posturing?” Croesus interrupts, his voice gone cold and sharp as a blade. “Or are you going to prove it?”
I stop. “What?”
“All these claims of competence. Of strength. Of being the best sin eater alive.” He gestures toward the altar, toward the ritual circle. “Prove it. Show me how exceptional you are. Purge the pride. Right now. Or admit you need help.”
The pride snarls at the challenge. At the implication that I might fail. That I might be anything less than perfect.
“Fine.” I turn toward the altar, my hands steady despite the roar in my head. “Watch and learn, angel. This is what real power looks like.”
He moves to one of the bowls, and I think he’s going to conjure fire for me, like I’m some helpless apprentice who needs assistance with basic tasks, but he just leans against the wall and watches.
Good. I don’t need his help, anyway.
I light the candles myself, hands perfectly steady. Seven white for purification. Seven black for protection. Seven red for blood. Each flame springs to life at my touch, and the pride purrs at how easy it is, how natural. See? I’m the best at this. I’ve always been the best at this.
I step into the circle, and the wards snap into place around me. The pride surges, hates being contained, being limited, but I’m stronger than it. I’m stronger than everything.
I take up the athame, and that’s when my hands finally shake.
No. No. I’m not weak. I’m not afraid. I’m-I’m perfect. Flawless. Beyond reproach.
The knife trembles in my grip.
“Having trouble?” Croesus’s voice cuts through the roar in my head, smooth and mocking. “How unexpected. From someone so exceptional.”
Fuck him. I press the blade to my forearm, need to cut deep, need blood for the ritual, but my hand won’t cooperate.
The silk of the dress he made me wear brushes against my wrist, whisper-soft and expensive, and I hate it all over again.
Hate that I let him dress me up like some doll, some pretty thing to parade through Barnes’s office.
The fabric is too fine, too delicate, too his.
The pride won’t let me hurt myself because I’m too valuable, too important, too perfect to mar with something as mundane as a purging ritual.
I’m better than this. Better than blood and pain and desperate measures. I should just will the sin away. Command it to leave through sheer force of superiority.
Except that’s not how it works. That’s the pride talking. But I can’t-I can’t seem to remember why that matters. Can’t remember why I need to cut myself, why I need to bleed, why I need to do any of this when I’m clearly fine.
“You’re going to die,” Croesus says, and his voice has gone flat.
Clinical. “The pride will consume you. You’ll lose yourself completely, become nothing but arrogance wearing Raven Vesper’s skin.
Is that what you want? To prove you’re exceptional by becoming exactly what you’ve spent eighteen years fighting against? ”
“I’m not…“ The words stick in my throat. “I can handle this.”
“Can you?” He pushes off the wall, moves to the edge of the circle, but doesn’t cross it. He can’t cross it; the wards would keep him out even if he tried. “Then do it. Cut yourself. Bleed. Start the ritual. Or is the great sin eater too proud to save her own life?”
The words hit like a slap. Like cold water. Like...
Like exactly what I need.
Because he’s right. The pride is telling me I’m too good for this, too important, too perfect to damage myself with something as crude as a blade.
And if I listen to it, if I let it win, I’ll be trapped.
Lost. Everything I’ve fought to become—strong, capable, myself—will be buried under someone else’s sin.
I’ll become the thing I’ve always hated most: a victim of an angel’s contract.
“You manipulative bastard,” I whisper.
“Yes.” He doesn’t sound apologetic. “Now prove me wrong about you needing help.”
I press the athame to my forearm and cut.
The pain is instant and shocking and exactly what’s needed. The pride shrieks at the violation, at the damage to my perfect self, and that moment of outrage is enough. Just enough for me to remember who I actually am.
Not perfect. Not exceptional. Just stubborn. Just surviving.
Just me.
I drag the blade down my forearm, wrist to elbow, and blood flows freely.
It soaks into the silk of the dress immediately, spreading like spilled wine across the expensive fabric.
At least it’s black. The dress is ruined.
Good. I hope it cost him a fortune. The pain slices through the pride, giving me space to think, to breathe, to remember the words I need.
“Ex carne mea, te expello.” From my flesh, I cast you out.
The pride fights me for every syllable, trying to choke the words in my throat. Trying to convince me I don’t need this, I’m above this, I’m too strong to need ritual and blood and desperate measures.
But I keep going.
“Ex anima mea, te solvo.” From my soul, I release you.
Blood drips onto the floor, charging the circle, and I’m dimly aware of Croesus watching from the outside.
His gold eyes are fixed on me with an intensity that would normally make me uncomfortable, but I can’t think about that now.
Can’t think about anything except the words I need to speak before the pride drowns me completely.
The blood is warm against my skin, soaking through silk, dripping onto the inlaid gold of the purification circle.
“Non sum superbia.” I am not pride.
The sin writhes inside me, furious at being named, at being rejected.
“Non sum inanis gloria.” I am not vain glory.
My grandmother’s voice echoes in my memory: You have to mean it, Raven. You can’t just say the words. You have to believe them.
And I do. Gods help me, I do. Because I’ve seen what pride does to people.
Seen it hollow them, turn them into brittle shells of certainty and arrogance.
Saw the results of what it did to Barnes with his sunken cheeks and empty hollow eyes, the way he looked like he was dying from the inside out.
I won’t let it do that to me. I won’t become another casualty of angelic cruelty.
I’m not perfect. I’m not exceptional. I’m just a woman with angel blood who eats sins to keep people safe, and that’s enough.
It has to be enough.
“Redi ad originem tuam.” Return to your origin.
“Redi ad dominum tuum.” Return to your master.
I pour the blood onto the floor until I feel the pop of it under my skin.
There’s no golden fire, no dramatic conjuring, but my blood knows what to do.
It always has. It hits the edges of the purification circle and ignites, white flames springing up around me, fed by my angel blood and my will and my desperate need to be free.
The pride screams.
The sin pours out of me all at once, not gentle, not gradual, but like vomiting razor blades.
I can feel it tearing its way up my throat, leaving destruction in its wake, and I’m on my knees now, hunched over the stone floor.
The silk dress pools around me, blood-soaked and ruined, sticking to my skin where the fabric has absorbed too much.
My hands are braced against the obsidian floor, blood still dripping from my arm, and I’m coughing up golden smoke and the lingering taste of someone else’s arrogance.
It hurts. God, it hurts. Like every nerve is being stripped bare, every cell scoured clean. Like dying and being reborn in the same agonizing instant.
And then it’s gone.
I’m myself again. Just Raven. Tired, hurting, hollow. Ordinary. Enough.
I slump forward against the altar, my forehead pressed to the cool marble, trying to remember how to breathe without the weight of borrowed pride crushing my lungs.
Blood is still dripping from my arm, pooling on the golden circle beneath me, but it’s slowing.
My body is already healing, faster than normal humans, one gift of the angel blood running thin through my veins.
“Impressive.”