Hell Followed with Us(82)
“Of course,” she says. “Of course.”
Please let Nick know what it means. Please let the Watch come back for me. Please don’t leave me alone. Because I don’t know if I can stop this myself.
* * *
Days pass. I don’t know how long it’s been since my spine snapped in the river, but I do know that the days are getting longer, peaking hotter. It’s the middle of the night, and I sit on the roof of the health center, wings spread out to soak up the moonlight. Graces walk the perimeter with their handlers. The river glimmers. Lanterns dot the landscape like fireflies. I squint as if I can see past the walls, into the city, to my friends.
I can’t stand the waiting. I can’t take it. I press my head to the gravel roof and pray, for the first time in a long time, for this to work.
The what-ifs come again. What if the Grace is killed before they can deliver their message? What if Nick doesn’t understand it? What if they make it too late? What if they never make it at all? Even in the warmth of a February—is it still February? Maybe it’s March—evening, I’m shivering. I just want this to be over with. I want to see Nick again. I’m so damn tired.
The door to the health center swings open below me. Sister Kipling steps out into the night, a heavy bag weighing down her shoulders. A guard at the door dips his head in reverence as she heads past the pond, through the field, to the road leading through campus. I pick myself up a bit, tucking my wings against my sides, and peer out over the edge. She keeps walking until she becomes nothing more than a little dot in the distance.
She’s heading for the gates. She’s keeping her promise. She is a heretic.
It must be tomorrow.
I can’t breathe until I hear the distant hum of the gate. Tomorrow. It’s tomorrow. Please, Nick, please.
I know Theo is expecting me—I’ve spent the past several nights in a renovated meeting room, where Theo sleeps on a mattress on the floor beside me—but I can’t bring myself to move. I feel every single spark in the world. Every single Grace. I am there with every one of them.
When I was born, Mom named me after a woman in the Old Testament. She was a Jewish queen and one of the most beautiful women her kingdom had ever known. When her cousin offended the king’s adviser, the adviser gained permission from the king to slaughter her people—but Esther foiled the plan and instead allowed her people to slaughter their enemies in turn. Mom thought she could name me Esther and not even consider the woman who saved those she loved? Or is the Angels’ persecution complex so deep-rooted they think they are the ones who need saving?
Who am I kidding? I know damn well it is.
If Mom wanted to name me Esther, then fine. I’ll live up to the name and lay it in an honored resting place at their graves. I won’t be “blessed Seraph,” I will not be theirs, and there is nothing they can do about it. I’ve taken what they’ve given me and turned it into a mockery of them. I will turn it into what destroys them.
If they want me to be a monster one step closer to God, that’s fine.
In what world was their God ever a benevolent one?
“Consecration” is the act of making or declaring something to be sacred; through the Flood, we consecrate the flesh as well as the spirit. Sanctify the blood, and make holy the bones.
—Reverend Mother Woodside’s notes
Theo is taking a hell of a long time getting ready the next morning. Mom sits at the studying tables on the ground floor of the health center, legs crossed primly; Squad Devotion stands around, waiting for orders; and I’m eyeing the front door to figure out how I’m supposed to hold my wings to get through.
Sister Kipling, huddled across the hall, hasn’t looked at me since she met my eyes this morning and mouthed, It’s done. That’s fine. That’s all I need from her. The Grace is out in Acheson, the bead lizard between their teeth. My tail thumps excitedly against the floor. Anxiety thrums through my new body the way my heartbeat used to, replacing it as the thing keeping me upright and moving.
Mom says, “Sweetie?”
She never calls me that. I pick up my head to look at her.
“No matter what,” she murmurs, “I cannot express how happy I am you’re home.” Her eyes are so, so full of love. I don’t recognize it. She’s never looked at me like this, especially not since she found out I was a boy. “We really are lucky to have you. I am so, so proud.”
This is what it took for her to be proud of me?
The back door crashes open with an urgency that makes my wings fluff up like a startled cat. The soldiers have been using the back door to get in and out without drawing attention, but I thought they were all here. All of them, except—
Theo and the general.
The general stands aside, sneer lines permanently etched into his face, but Theo sprints across the lobby of the health center, grabs me by the neck, swings himself around, and laughs.
“Good morning!” he says. I wiggle out from his arms, rising up a bit on my hind legs so his grip loosens. I’m too stressed to play the good boyfriend. I don’t want him to touch me. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? God bless.”
His head is shaved. His robe has all the room for armor underneath and a sash around his waist holds space for a knife and a pistol.