Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(99)

She was still desperate.

“So what are you going to do?” Chae Rin tightened her grip. “You’re going to kill a director’s wife? And then we all get stuck in a jail cell while the Sect continues to fall apart when we have less than seven days to stop whatever Saul is planning?”

“Why not?”

“I want to go home.” The word sounded as if it’d been somehow mangled coming up Chae Rin’s throat. She was shaking. “I want to see my family. My mother.”

“Me too,” Lake whispered. “I’m an only child. I’m all my parents have, and they’ve been so patient this whole time.” She sounded close to tears.

“We can’t do that until we get Saul once and for all,” Chae Rin continued. “And your selfish shit is going to get in the way of that.”

“But you all have families,” Belle whispered. “That woman took mine. She admitted it.”

Naomi held in her sobs. She couldn’t speak. So I did.

“Belle . . .” I swallowed hard, glancing at Naomi, who shook her head ever so slightly. She was begging me. I balled my hands into fists. “I know what it’s like to lose people. My family died, remember?”

But even I had Uncle Nathan. Most of my grandparents were still alive. I wasn’t completely alone. But Belle was. She didn’t even know where she’d come from.

“Getting revenge isn’t going to change anything. Please. I hate this.” Tears trickled down my cheeks. “We’re supposed to stick together. You guys are the only friends I have. My sister’s gone. . . .”

I felt Lake’s comforting hand on my shoulder. The thought of June made me suddenly feel faint and weak. It was that phantom pain again, like I just found out I was missing an arm. “Don’t fight. We have to stay together. I . . .” I inhaled. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

That was enough. It felt like the tension was finally starting to dissolve. Belle’s body relaxed, and Chae Rin let her go. We stood awkwardly in silence, pairs of eyes avoiding each other. I walked over to Naomi and helped her stand.

“Belle,” Naomi started.

“Quiet,” Belle hissed, brushing herself off and stalking away from the window.

“No, I need to say this.” Naomi kept her hand firmly around my wrist. “As a member of the Council, I watched Natalya, I’ve watched you—all of you—swear allegiance to the Sect. And then I’d sit in my ivory tower and let you all fight and die for the cause we gave to you.”

It was hard to forget the vast emptiness I felt as I knelt before Blackwell and the seven members of the Council in Ely Cathedral. Naomi’s had been the only soothing voice among the cacophony of judgments. Maybe this was how she’d felt that day, when she alone had tried to give me something to hold on to.

“I never understood just how heavy that burden was until I learned of the death of one Effigy, Jemma Moretti. One of the Effigies of wind before you, Victoria. Suicide.” Naomi gripped my wrist tighter. “Perhaps it was the funeral. I can still hear her mother’s wailing. And since then I’ve wanted to do right by you. By all of you. When Natalya first became an Effigy, she used her power to kill a mobster who’d held her family in debt.”

“What? I didn’t know that,” I said. And by the way Belle frowned, it didn’t look like she did either.

“I covered it up. I thought doing little things like this would help ease my guilt . . . help me feel useful again. Maybe that’s why, when Baldric suggested that there could be corruption in the Sect, the very organization that marched little girls to their deaths, I wanted to do what I could. But in the end, nothing’s changed. I sent Natalya to her death like all the others. And now I could be sending you straight into danger.”

Finally, she let go of my wrist and moved toward the other set of windows, her black hair glimmering under the moonlight streaming through the blinds.

“I may never be able to atone for anything I’ve done,” Naomi said. “But there’s nothing I can do on my own other than this. I have to lean on you again, Effigies. I’m sorry, but please . . . please find the volume. There’s a secret passageway beyond the museum that only Baldric knows, but he told Natalya, which means he’s told you, Maia.” Naomi looked at me meaningfully. “Get it before the Sect does. If what Baldric said is true, it could be the key to stopping all of this. I have to believe that. I just—”

She was looking at Belle, the pain of too many lives lost sinking into the wells of her eyes. “My only wish is that we could find a way to stop this painful cycle. Girls being trained and sent to the slaughter. Fighting and dying. Pain and revenge. If only it would end.”

“End . . . ,” Belle said as if the word were foreign to her.

Naomi closed her eyes. “It needs to change,” she said. “All of it. Baldric said so himself before he disappeared. The Sect. Humanity.” Her lips trembled. “Our world needs a revival. If only . . . if only we were . . . free.”

A deafening round of shots exploded through the window, but only three pierced Naomi’s body. None of us moved. None of us could figure out what was happening. Not until Naomi hit the ground.





24



I WAS ALREADY ON THE floor, the blinds falling, glass shattering around my head. Lake was shrieking something. Naomi. I had to get to Naomi. Heart racing, I pulled myself up to my knees swiftly, keeping myself low to avoid the next barrage of bullets. Carefully, painfully, I crawled on my knees atop the broken glass until I reached Naomi’s twitching body. One in the shoulder. Two in the chest. Her eyes were fluttering, rolling to the back of her head.