The abandoned mill Anya had camped in with the wanderers stood stark and black against the night. Janie and Ella led her across the empty, shadowed street and under the mill’s eaves, flitting through the gloom like a pair of ghosts themselves. They gave a nearly inaudible signal, and the door swung open, revealing the wanderers and the low light of their small, carefully made fires. It looked for all the world as if Anya had just left.
Unconsciously, she began scanning the faces of the wanderers, searching for one in particular.
“You ought to have moved the camp,” she fussed. “It’s dangerous to stay here, when both the Elect and Nevis know it’s where you were last.”
“Unfortunately, we’re stuck for the moment,” Ella said. “Something’s anchoring us to this spot. Look at her—she can show you what the trouble is.”
Ella gestured to Midge, who was trotting purposefully across the mill floor, weaving her way between the wanderers’ cookfires. The dog stopped beside the door to the storeroom where Anya had parted ways with Tieran and glanced back as if to say, Well, come along.
Anya followed Midge, drawn across the mill like a lodestone, but Janie caught her halfway.
“Wait,” Janie said, one hand on Anya’s arm. “Look, since you left, we’ve been told some things about you. About your sister, mostly. And maybe I never met your Ilva, but I know what I’d have done if Ella and I were still in Weatherell, and not wanderers. I’d have gone to the god in a heartbeat to keep her safe. Even if it had killed me. I wouldn’t have had to think twice about it.
“Tieran said it’s haunting you, that she went when you stayed. But that’s not fair to her, Anya. That makes her smaller, and less, to wish what she chose was undone. You being guilty and eaten up by what happened takes the point out of what Ilva did. Don’t do that to her. I think I can promise you, that’s not what she would have wanted.”
A memory washed over Anya of Tieran’s meeting with Ilva, and what her sister had said to him. That she wanted to get home. That she had someone who always looked after her and fixed everything she’d ever broken. For the first time, the heat growing within Anya felt less like vengeance and more like bravery. Like the courage she sought. As if, perhaps, she’d always been brave in her own way, just by looking at the world and owning to herself that it was broken and ought not to be so.
“I think you’re right,” Anya said to Janie. “I think I was lucky to have Ilva, and Ella’s lucky to have you. And I think whatever comes, we’re all lucky to have known one another.”
Neither of them hesitated. Janie wrapped her arms around Anya and Anya hugged her back, and it knit something inside her together again.
“Don’t take forever with what comes next,” Janie said with a lift of her chin as they separated. “And don’t forget what I said—we’ll be waiting.”
She turned back to Ella and moved toward her with outstretched hands.
The storeroom door before Anya stood slightly ajar, and through it she caught a glimpse of something so familiar, it felt like home. A small, smokeless fire, burning very low. A moth-eaten bedroll, spread out beside it. A bone charm, hanging from one of the rafters.
A thief, seated by the fire, staring into its embers with emptiness behind his eyes.
Overcome by an impossible tangle of emotions, Anya shifted, and one of her clumsy, bandaged arms brushed against the door.
“Leave me be, Matthias,” Tieran said hoarsely. “Already told you, I’ll sit here forever if she doesn’t turn up. See if I don’t.”
The hinges whined softly as Anya pushed her way in and shut the door behind her. Tieran glanced up, sharp and fierce, but at the sight of Anya, pale and mud-stained in the ruins of her fine gown, his eyes went wide. The thief scrambled to his feet and backed away until there was only wall behind him, shaking his head as he went.
“Can’t do this,” he murmured desperately. “Not again. Not another ghost. Already had one and that was bad enough. Not looking. Can’t see you.”
“I’m not a ghost,” Anya said, though she was sure she looked the part.
Tieran only grew more distraught. He was fighting harder to hold his shape than Anya had ever seen him do before—it wasn’t just his hands shifting, but his face, his outline, his entire form.
“Makes it worse,” he managed to get out. “If it’s you in the flesh.”
With an agonized sound, Tieran sank to the floor and curled inward, hiding as much of himself as he could. Deep shudders wracked him, and Anya could not bear it. However faithless he was, however disloyal when backed into a corner, it had never been in her to see him suffer. From the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, that had been the one thing she could not tolerate.
Crossing the storeroom in a heartbeat, Anya dropped down at Tieran’s side. She reached out tentatively, fingers brushing the thief’s hunched shoulders, and when he did not flinch or pull away, she put both arms around him, gathering him to herself.
“Oh, don’t,” she pleaded in a whisper, because he was sobbing, each breath dredged out of a broken place within him. “Please, Tieran, my heart.”
She sat and held the thief until he’d grown a little calmer, and could bring himself to speak.
“Done a lot of bad things,” he said, the words coming out muffled. “Some worse than you can imagine. You—you think I’m a thief, but that’s not even the start. Nothing ever felt worse than leaving you, though. I didn’t want to do it.”
“Then why did you?” Anya asked, but gently.
For the first time Tieran looked up, tearstained and wretched, and Anya knew she was lost. That she loved him with her whole being, and would do anything for him—anything besides turn away from her appointed task.
“Can’t say,” Tieran told her with a shake of his head. “There are things I’ve never breathed a word of to nobody, Anya. Not even Matthias. I’m too afraid.”
Leaning forward, Anya kissed him, slow and soft and sweet.
“You don’t ever have to be afraid on my account,” she said. “Not afraid of me or afraid for me—whichever it is. I know the truth comes hard for you, but I want to hear it, if you can bring yourself to tell it. I’ll start with mine, if you like—my name is Anya Astraea and I have never been a Weatherell girl. It has always been my intent to kill a god. First for my sister’s sake, now for my own and everyone else’s.”
“Think I didn’t know that?” Tieran grumbled halfheartedly, sounding a little more like himself. “Think you’re smart? First time I saw you, I thought to myself, There goes death in a red collar.”
He shifted his weight, until they were both sitting with their backs to the wall, Tieran’s arm around Anya’s shoulders and his other hand caught in both of hers. There was a long silence, and for a moment, Anya was afraid he didn’t have it in him. That whatever hidden things lay at the center of his being would stay locked away there forever, unknown to her.
But then:
“You remember what I told you about my mother? That she died in a fire?” Tieran said, quiet and hesitant, as if the words might come out razor-edged and cut at him as they went. “Well, that was the truth. Or some of it, anyhow.”
My mother was a Vestal—a sacrifice, raised by the Elect. They grow up cloistered, hidden away from the world until they’re old enough to be given a choice. Leave behind everything you’ve ever known, and make your way with nothing and no one, or stay with us and become a sacrifice. Think you know a bit about choices like that.
Only their sacrifice isn’t your sort of sacrifice, Anya Astraea. Vestals are for something else. Grayrobes call them the little brides, and most of them don’t live. A few make it back down the mountain, but not enough that they expect to. The ones that make it mostly die later, burned up from the inside out, all because the Elect aren’t happy with their god. Not that they’d ever say it to an outsider, or let someone like you know, but you seen it—he’s difficult. Doesn’t do their bidding, and it costs to keep him quiet, or to show his wrath. They want a god they can order about.
So they been trying to make one.
Sometimes they got close. Sometimes a little bride lived for months after coming down from the mountain, and the Elect started hoping, but they all died too early. All except my mother. She lived and lived, even though she was burning. She lived so long that she started begging to die, and when she finally got what she wished for and left this life in agony, she’d hung on so long that the Elect got what they wanted, too.
They cut the bastard offspring of a Vestal and that horror on the mountain out of my mother as the breath left her body, and were pleased with themselves.
First thing I remember is her ghost. Was in one of those rooms they kept me in—all white, so they could see the scorch marks if I lost my temper—and they’d just done something I was a bit low about. They were always doing things to push me. Giving me some comfort I’d take a liking to—a blanket, or a soft toy—then taking it away. Not bothering to send in any food for a day or two. That was in the early days, before it got worse, but I was barely walking and it all seemed hard enough.
So I was sitting in a corner, feeling sore over everything, and she just… appeared. Didn’t look right—looked like a girl what got burned to death from the inside out, which she had been, but I didn’t know none of that yet. And I didn’t get much company. No one ever stayed with me long, so I started talking to her. The more I talked, the longer she’d keep visible, just standing there and listening, with a bit of a smile.
Wasn’t long after that, things started to get worse. Back then I didn’t look like this. Didn’t know how to take a shape and hold it. I was always just burning, like my mother had been, like my—like the god what sired me still is. Only difference was, I never died of it. And I’d never touched nobody. Never got close enough, the Elect made sure. Because once the god on the mountain touches someone, they’ve got to do his bidding if they hear him speak. They weren’t ready to test me on that yet. They wanted to go slow, be cautious.
So they gave me a dog.
It was a little mongrel off the streets, scared and mean. I loved it, meanness and all. Thought it was the best thing that had ever happened. Gave it scraps, talked to it, left my own blanket in a corner so it’d be comfortable. It got braver and braver, coming nearer to me a bit at a time. Things were going so well, but I wanted more and I didn’t know better. So one day, when it was lapping water out of a bowl, I reached out and put a hand on its back.
Could see right away that what I was doing was hurting it, but I couldn’t stop. It felt good and right and perfect, having a living thing in my power. So I kept my hand where it was, until the dog’s fur had burned away and its skin began to char where I’d touched it, leaving an awful burn. Guilt set in then and I took my hand away, but the damage was done. I hadn’t just hurt the dog, I’d changed it somehow. It wasn’t scared or mean anymore, just small and broken and sad, though it didn’t seem to remember a bit of what I’d done. And from then on, the dog would do anything I asked it to, the moment the words were out of my mouth.
For a few days, I managed to keep myself away from it. But on the third I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat down and called that dog over to me. I took it onto my lap and held it close, and I’d never felt anything worse or better, even as it stopped moving and I knew I’d killed it.
Got awfully low after that. Didn’t want to eat or drink or do nothing. Would’ve stopped breathing if I could. But she talked me through it—my mother. It’d only ever been me talking to her until then, but after she saw what I did she started speaking. Told me over and over again that I didn’t have to be whatever the Elect was trying to turn me into. That I could do better. The Elect sent people in often enough to tell me things to the contrary that I didn’t much believe her. But it meant a lot to hear her say it. To know someone thought there might be even a bit of good in me.
She was wrong, though.
Awhile after the dog, I woke up and found a basket in my room. There was… a baby inside it. This tiny, perfect thing. I begged the Elect to take her away, and they wouldn’t. Told me I’d look after her, or she’d starve. So I did my best. I gave her the milk they brought and kept her swaddled in blankets, so I wouldn’t touch her by mistake. I wanted to touch her soft hair more than anything, but I didn’t and I didn’t, and it kept getting a little easier not to until one day when I was changing her, being as a careful as always, she reached out and took hold of my finger.
I was still trying to pry her hand off me when she died. I’d tried so hard not to hurt her, but I had in the end, and there was still that piece of me what was happy about it. What thought, Yeah, this is how things should be. There should be death in our presence, because we’re different and stronger and we deserve it.
My mother didn’t say much after that. Didn’t bother telling me it was an accident or that I could have done better. She just sat in a corner, smelling of smoke and heartbreak, and singing. Old folk songs mostly, or sometimes music without words. She never did hymns, even though I expect that’s what she knew best from growing up with the Elect.
I was grateful for that.
Sometimes it all stopped. Like the Elect just forgot about me. I know they didn’t—know there’s always a reason for what they do—but it felt like being forgotten. Everything would get dark and quiet. No visits from sharp-tongued or worshipful grayrobes. No living things left in my care. No food. No water. Just days of emptiness. Sometimes it would go for so long I got afraid they’d all left. That I’d die locked in that room, on account of having been less than they wanted. That was the only thing that seemed worse than killing, because even the bad part of me wasn’t happy about it. So when they’d come back, I’d try and do whatever they wanted. By then they’d started sending in their own, ready for a sacrifice.
I knew what the Elect were looking for from me, and I didn’t want to die on my own, locked in that white room I’d never seen the outside of. So when they sent a sacrifice in, I’d… be cruel to them a bit. Not kill them outright at first. Just hurt them, and order them about. Make them pray or beg or do some sort of pointless ritual. Sometimes I’d make them hurt themselves, because none of it seemed to matter anymore. Went on like that for a while, getting worse and worse. And then one day when I woke up, it wasn’t a grayrobe waiting for me, or some helpless creature.
It was a boy. A ragged one fresh off the street, maybe ten years old, same as me. There was fear in his eyes like I’d never seen when I got near him. And I couldn’t do it. Even halfway to the monster they wanted me to become, I couldn’t hurt him. But I couldn’t talk to him either, to tell him who I was or why he’d been brought in or that I didn’t want any harm to come to him. I only had Divinitas, and he only had Brythonic.
I held off for days, until the Elect stopped coming. Stopped feeding us. Stopped bringing water. I knew what they wanted from me, and a lot of me wanted it too, but I dug in my heels. Wasn’t gonna do their bidding no more. Wasn’t gonna be what they set out for me to be. Not even if it meant dying to get clear of them.
Trouble was, that boy off the street was already skin and bone when they brought him in, and he started his dying first. I was jealous. Didn’t have room left in me for anything better or softer by then. I sat there and I watched him die. It took ages and it hurt him and I could have made it quick, but I wouldn’t give the Elect the satisfaction.
Only when he’d gone, I realized what they’d done. That I was a monster now, whatever I chose. Even without being the one who’d done the killing. Didn’t have an ounce of mercy left in me, and I hated it. I hated them. Hated everything, even that fool of a boy who’d been too soft to avoid getting caught. Hated the ghost of my mother, who’d watched it all happen and never gave me any help besides what she was doing right at that moment—whispering that I could do better, that I could be different, when I knew that was a lie. Knew I couldn’t change, no matter how hard I tried.
I wanted to change. Wanted to change more than anything else. It’s what I was thinking of, when I reached out and touched that boy’s face, knowing I couldn’t hurt him no more on account of he was already gone. It pained me, touching him. Not just in the soul, in the body. But I didn’t take my hand away and I kept wishing for a change with everything in me. Didn’t matter what sort of change, really. Anything would be fine, because the way things were was intolerable.
When I stood up, I was still hurting, but I deserved the pain so I bore down on it and let it be. Let it get bigger inside me, till I thought maybe it’d be what killed me, which would be all right. Only it didn’t. It got smaller again and I was going to lie down when I saw another ghost.
The boy this time, looking whole and well enough, like he had when they first brought him in.
I went toward him and he came toward me. I raised a hand and he raised a hand. Was then I realized, I wasn’t seeing a ghost at all. It was my reflection, in a mirror the Elect kept in my room so I’d have to see what a monster I was. Only now I wasn’t—I’d changed, just like I wished to. That boy had died on account of me, and then I’d stolen his face.
The shock of it threw me back into my own shape, but I went and knelt by him and did it again, and then again, and once more just to be sure. My mother watched the whole thing, and after that last time, she came and took me by the shoulders. Couldn’t recall her ever doing that before, and her hands were the coldest thing I’d ever felt.
Wear your face and wait, she said, and I did as I was told.
Took another two days for the Elect to come back. Think they were punishing me, for not doing what they wanted and killing the boy. When they finally sent someone in, I realized they’d got awful careless. A pair of grayrobes came in, talking with each other and mostly ignoring me, and they weren’t even worried. Didn’t pay attention. Left the door ajar behind them. They really thought I’d never try to bolt, because I hadn’t done it yet. Because I knew what they said was right—no one who looked the way I did would get far in the world, or be able to hide from them.
But now I could.
And so I ran. I left my mother’s ghost behind in that white room and ran like I’d never been able to do before. The Elect didn’t know which way was up—hadn’t ever dreamed I’d do something like that, or prepared for it at all. I gave them the slip and the moment I was on the streets, I changed my shape and disappeared. Stole what I needed to get by and ended up in Londin eventually. Learned Brythonic, just by listening to what I heard on the streets. Got mean, and flighty, but better than I was before. Found that if things were really bad—if I wanted more than anything to shed my shape and be the one I was born to, the one where I could lay my hands on someone and have them in my power—I could do other things. Could lie and steal and it’d take the edge off. Not saying those things are right, mind. Not saying I don’t try to find other ways of keeping myself tamer, but sometimes being what I am gets around me. Sometimes I do the smaller wrongs to keep worse things from coming about. Not defending it, but it’s who I am.
That’s who and how I been since Matthias found me and took me in. Since you met me and we fell in together. Not a soul knows any of that, Anya Astraea. I never breathed a word. But I’m scared every day—that the Elect’ll find me, and put me back in that room and finish turning me into the monster they wanted. Or that maybe they did finish the job, and I never noticed. Maybe one of these days, the smaller wrongs won’t be enough, and I’ll do something really unforgivable.
Even if none of that happens, though, I don’t know how to not be afraid. Because everyone I get close to writes me off in the end. Oh, that’s just Tieran. You can’t trust him. Can’t depend on him. Can’t turn your back on him. And they’re not wrong. Trying not to be a monster doesn’t mean I been good. Don’t know if I ever can be.
And that’s me. That’s the start and the end, and I don’t know what else to say.