7 Then
Then
The aftermath of the fire has always been a blur.
It comes in flickers of half-formed images, the edges murky, like the way your vision narrows in the moments before unconsciousness.
I remember how it felt though. How panic crowded the back of my throat like something trying to claw its way out.
How I swallowed the ash in my mouth to keep it down. How I ran.
I’m still not sure how the Regiment knew to come. Whether someone raised the alarm or if they saw the smoke from high above the trees. I don’t know how long it took them to respond. I could have been standing there, at the edge of the destruction, for mere minutes. It could have been hours.
It felt like eons. Comprehension seemed to seep in slowly, diffusing through my veins like the relentless spread of the Bloodrot.
The first agent to find me was featureless, his words indecipherable.
The lilt of his voice suggested he was asking me questions that I didn’t, couldn’t, answer.
He guided me away from the clearing as a slew of other agents bore down on what remained of the temple.
I knew without needing to be told that they would find no survivors.
I was coaxed into a Regiment vehicle. Driven a short distance away while staring sightlessly out into the dusk. After that, the first thing I remember with any clarity is him.
He came to me, not the other way around. I was sitting in a nondescript room on a nondescript sofa. I often wonder what I looked like from his perspective. An equally nondescript girl, I expect, in my soot-stained shift dress.
He settled himself in the chair facing me. And when he smiled, tight and grim though it was, I thought it might be the closest thing I’d seen to the sun in seven years.
“My name is Gabriel Markovich,” he told me. “You might know me as the Prophet.”
Three years isn’t a long time, but he looked exactly the same on that night as he does today. Expensive suit, clean lines, identical haircut. A too-handsome face both entirely uncreased and unquestionably mature.
It was his mention of the Prophet that yanked me out from beneath the crushing inertia.
Because of course I knew the Prophet—Vicar Johannes had kept us apprised of his every move, every triumph, since the day he eradicated the last diabolist. I didn’t know how much of it was true.
I was loath to believe any of it, in fact.
I had always been skeptical about the existence of diabolists, so I put little stock in tales of the man who managed to defeat one.
It is, after all, remarkably easy to defeat a creature that doesn’t exist.
But seeing Gabriel in the flesh made me hesitate. Diabolist or not, if someone in Sundbourg was capable of such a thing, I couldn’t imagine it was anyone other than the man before me.
“You’ve been through a very traumatizing ordeal,” he murmured. His gaze was soft, understanding. “And yet you’re glad to be free, aren’t you?”
I was stunned that he’d read me so quickly and without me having to say a word. I didn’t know how to react. I wasn’t accustomed to telling the truth in any way that mattered.
“You can talk to me,” he went on. “I think you’ll find that I understand.”
I had never been the type of person to confide in others.
Rarely did I even want to. Once I might have confessed my thoughts to Ilse, but those times were long past. She’d made it very clear that she could no longer be trusted.
That she didn’t understand. Why should I trust a man I’d just met to do what my own sister could not?
Gabriel, sensing my inner conflict, angled himself closer to me. His expression was patient, devoid of judgment. “It’s not easy for you to open up, is it?”
“No.” My voice was hoarse from disuse. It was the first word I’d said in hours.
“Will you at least tell me your name?”
I did. It wasn’t as though it meant anything. “Talin Keller.”
“Let me help you, Miss Keller. I know what you’ve lost, and that you have nothing and nobody to return to.” He didn’t say it as a threat, but rather a somber statement of fact, his gaze dipping to where my fingers were entwined in my lap. “I can see that you’re a sinner.”
I shoved my hands into my armpits.
“The Savior still loves sinners. Did you know that? I’m aware that the Apostles take a rather…radical stance when it comes to sin, but make no mistake—your life is not worthless.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“No life is without purpose. Not even if one has been barred from paradise.”
I had nothing to say to that; I had no interest in paradise. No desire to die only to find myself trapped in eternity. Mostly, I hoped that death would feel like nothing at all.
“Let me give you purpose, Miss Keller,” Gabriel continued when it became clear I wasn’t going to respond. “I can give you safety. A place to stay. A life where you need not be concerned about basic necessities. First, however, we need to get to know each other.”
Part of me wanted to recoil from his proposal. Another part of me, though, latched on. In that moment, in that new and terrible version of my world, there was only Gabriel.
And—perhaps more strangely—I wanted him to know me.
I took a breath and started at the beginning.