This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1)(17)

She yearned to run, to hide, to become so small no one would ever find her. But she couldn’t run, and the only place to hide was the tiny chapel off the hall, set aside for the Finestra’s daily prayer. Inside, she locked the door and sank to the floor, laying her hot cheek on cold stone. With her eyes squeezed shut, she didn’t have to look at the murals of her predecessors in all their victorious glory.



* * *



No one came for her.

Alessa opened gritty eyes to glare at a life-sized mosaic of an idealized Finestra. Angelic. Perfect. Serene. Aggravating on the best of days.

It was too dim to read the ornate script haloing the Finestra’s blessed head, but Alessa knew the words by heart.

Benedetti siano coloro per cui la finestra sul divino è uno specchio.

Blessed are those for whom the window to the divine is a mirror.

If she had a mirror, she’d smash it and use the jagged shards to carve out every opalescent tooth.

Blessed. Oh, yes, she was the luckiest girl in the world, fending off murderers on a daily basis for the right to live long enough to fight a swarm of demons slavering to chew on her bones.

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the tiny chapel were adorned with glass tiles and precious stones, but in the gloom, they might as well have been slate. Ages ago some poor artist had spent years crafting the mosaics that told the story of Saverio, a massive effort for an audience of one, and it was too dark for her to see more than outlines.

Saverio’s power system had grown unreliable over the centuries as the wires from the water mill to the city were gnawed on by vermin, and Saverians couldn’t produce the same materials the ancients once had, so she hadn’t bothered to tell anyone when the light bulbs around the perimeter of the room failed, blinking out one by one. It seemed only fitting for the lights to die during her reign.

The ruby eyes of onyx scarabeo leered at her from the upper corners of the chapel, along with silhouettes of monstrous ghiotte lurking amidst skeletal trees. The artist responsible either had some bizarre ideas about the sort of art that motivated a person or a sadistic sense of humor.

She dragged herself to a sitting position, and her elbow crunched the dried leaves of a bouquet on the altar. That tribute hadn’t done her any good.

“If you prefer a different flower, there are easier ways to drop a hint.” Plucking a shriveled blossom from its wrinkled stem, she shredded the petals between her fingers. It didn’t deserve the punishment, but when had deserving ever protected anyone?

If she had died, another Finestra might be rising to take her place. Either that, or Saverians would’ve woken to find themselves completely defenseless. Her family would have lost their daughter and their last hope of survival in one moment.

Below her bare feet were depictions of the three remaining sanctuary islands.

The fourth wasn’t shown. The lost island had been wiped from the maps, forsaken to fade into obscurity after it fell during the first Divorando.

It was up to Alessa whether Saverio would survive the next.

She pushed to her feet, grimacing against the pain, and crept around the statue to the pane of glass set into the wall. She needed to face her enemies head on, and of the entrants on her rapidly growing list of foes, at least this one was dead.

The husk of a scarabeo, shriveled and dusty from centuries in its airless tomb, peered back at her with unseeing eyes. Like some enormous, warped nightmare of an Atlas beetle, it had three curved horns and a glossy carapace that appeared midnight black at first glance but was actually mottled with all the colors of the rainbow, like a spill of grease on dark water. The desiccated specimen, a souvenir from the first Divorando meant to be a testament to Saverio’s survival, taunted her.

The girl and the monster, face to face. The girl, a killer. The monster, dead. Or perhaps, the girl a monster, soon to be dead.

She curled her fingers against the glass, nails scraping against the surface.

Thousands of these … things … were coming. For her. For Saverio.

And now she had to deal with knives flying at her head and hands itching to wring her neck.

Frightened people crave certainty.

She was frightened, but even worse, beneath the fear and grief and anger was a whiff of relief. For years, she’d clung to her parents’ faith. Then she’d become the blessed Finestra, and it had been easy enough to have faith at first. But now, with everyone else’s certainty stripped away, it turned out she had none of her own.

If Ivini was right, she’d wasted the final years of her life. She couldn’t bear that.

If he was wrong, her death would doom them all. She couldn’t risk that.

Papa always told her not to trust fear, but fear was all she had.

Fear. Stubbornness. And the simmering anger she’d been tamping down since that knife drew her blood.

Every swallow brought tears to her eyes, but the burn in her throat threatened to ignite a fire in her chest that would spread, take over, scorch her from within until she was nothing but a pile of ash.

And she was going to let it.

If she failed again, she’d have her answer, the sign she’d been waiting for. If her hands killed once more, she’d sacrifice herself for the greater good.

But first, one last try.

Back in her room, Alessa stood before the mirror on trembling legs. The dark shadows below her eyes echoed the bruises around her neck, but her eyes sparked with determination.