And so will I go in unto the king…

and if I perish, I perish.

—Esther 4:16

Before I left for Reformation Faith Evangelical Church, Nick told me that 99 percent of lying is just figuring out what the other person wants to hear. He said it’s what the Angels have always done, and I laughed because otherwise it would have hurt too much to acknowledge. The other 1 percent is keeping your story straight, and if you read the Bible cover to cover, it’s clear the Angels don’t care about that, so feed them a steady diet of their own bullshit until they choke on it.

If Theo wants to hear I’ve been driven from my friends, then that’s what I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him I want to go back to New Nazareth. I’ll tell him anything.

But I can’t call this home anymore.

It’s been a month since I last saw New Nazareth, and it is the mouth of Hell. Death-squad soldiers stand at attention by the gate, their Graces wheezing and coughing. Snipers lurk behind curls of barbed wire at the top of the wall, some keeping an eye on the road from the shade of the stairs. Bodies of nonbelievers hang in various stages of rot. Between them, giant letters scream GOD LOVES YOU, REPENT SINNERS, THE TIME HAS COME. TRUST IN THE LORD AND YOU WILL BE SAVED. Flies buzz in an incessant cloud, and when the wind hits right, I smell it.

I hear it too; the crowd on the other side of the gate. Word must have gotten out that their savior is coming home. Through the narrow slats in the gate, an ocean of bodies presses forward, desperate for a look, a touch, a whisper, anything. A reverend on the other side preaches: “All our troubles have a part. Our groaning, our burden, they are His plan.” Arms raise, fists beat on chests. “They shape us so we may see His truth. So that we may work, we may fight—and we have worked and we have fought, and today, today, our suffering will bear fruit.”

My flesh is a single, perfect, God-given fig meant to feed all the hungry. I am their savior in Angel whites and skin peeling off the bone.

“Are you ready?” Theo asks.

I can’t answer.

Sister Kipling looks over at us and says nothing. She’s gilded like a saint, and I want to tear her apart. I want to ruin her, I want to make her hurt the same way she hurt me. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

A gate guard bellows, “Clear!” and it’s met with the roar of motors and the rattle of chains.

The gates creak apart. Graces shake themselves and stamp their feet. I reach out to each, whispering that it’s okay, to find solace because I’m going to buzz out of my skin with the strength of their emotions. The preaching turns to a cry: “We have sown seeds with our suffering, and now it is time to reap what we are due!”

I can do this. I trust the ALC to do this too.

CLANG.

The gates come to rest, and the mouth of Hell is open.

There are so many people waiting. A sea of white robes and white faces, painted with grass stains, dirt, and the gold and gray of the clergy; soldiers, children, and everyone I’ve ever known. The preaching stops, and the silence is a physical thing, crushing down on all of us, a vacuum left in the aftermath of hundreds of people sucking in a breath. There’s no oxygen left. Or maybe that’s just my lungs liquefying between my ribs, choking the air out of my chest.

This is all for me. Because I have come back. Because I have saved them.

The death squad escorting us starts toward the crowd, and they crush forward to meet us. A tide, a thousand prayers rising from the earth. The soldiers tighten around us, their bodies a wall, but hands still stick out between them. Someone snags my jacket. A nail hooks Sister Kipling’s robes.

“Seraph!” a woman cries, cradling a baby to her chest. “Bless you! Bless you!”

Every face is one I left behind. Sister Faring, a young mother who helps teach Sunday school and smiles when Sister Mackenzie describes what it’s like to burn in Hell. Brother Gailey, an old man who spends his days in the chapel atrium and critiques the apprentice reverends with a raspy growl. Sister Clare, who is my age, barely, clutching her mother’s sleeve. We weren’t friends, but sometimes we shared snacks, and that was good enough for us both.

There’s a deep whining in my throat, animalistic and terrified, like the nest in Reformation. Theo pulls me closer, his body warm and solid against mine. A Grace tugs away from their handler, overwhelmed by the noise, and people surge back to avoid them. I whisper them back, begging them to be quiet, to not make things worse. I’m scared, I’m scared too, I know.

We reach the edge of the swarm of believers, a squadron of soldiers breaking away from the mob to follow while others bellow for them to disperse. We’re in the middle of the final road to New Nazareth, the desiccated corpse of Pennsylvania Christian University, surrounded by parking lots turned to farmland and squinting against the sun glaring off Kincaid Chapel. The river, the same river I tried to cross to Acresfield County, loops around campus, trapping Acheson between water and this awful colony.

“Where to, sister?” the head soldier asks me.

“The dorms.” I can’t be out here any longer. “The dorms, please.”

But before we can flee, a monster emerges from the crowd like the sun emerging from the clouds. She is wrapped in white and gold, a cross burned into her bare neck, a wedding ring glinting on her finger as if she didn’t order a death squad to shoot her husband between the eyes. Tattoos crawl up her arms and jaw, demons and angels and Genesis and Armageddon, and every other beautiful and terrible thing.

I shrink back against Theo even as I hate myself for it, the way I always did when we were still together. He holds me close like nothing has changed at all.

The head soldier lowers his head in greeting. “Reverend Mother Woodside.”

Mom is stunning. She is disgusting.

“Welcome home, Brother Millward,” she says. “All of you.”

Her eyes find mine—and she smiles, so soft and gentle.

A mother shouldn’t be gentle when seeing her missing child for the first time in weeks. She should cry with relief and hold their cheeks tight to make sure it’s them, that they’re all right, that everything is okay now.

Isaiah 49:15—Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? If she had compassion for me once, I can’t remember it. Mom doesn’t hold me. She doesn’t touch me. She just smiles. Like she knew I’d come crawling back to her eventually. Like everything had been set in stone long before I ever arrived on this earth, and she has just been waiting for it all to come to pass.

“And welcome home,” she says, “Esther.”

No.

The Graces shriek. It’s a chorus of screams loud enough to drown out the ringing in my ears. A flock of ducks erupts from the Kincaid Chapel pond, their wings clapping in a rush of feathers. A string of saliva falls from the corner of my shredded mouth.

ESTHER.

I hadn’t realized how much I hated that word until I’d spent so long free of it. As soon as I told Dad I was a boy, he’d never let it pass his lips. Nick and Erin saw the word on the document, but to them my name was Benjamin and would always be. The Watch and the ALC never knew me as anything else. Not Esther. Not Seraph. Nobody and nothing but Benji.

Something else is screaming too, and I realize it’s me.

I should kill her. I should tear through the delicate arteries in her neck, and the taste of it would be sweet, ruining her white robes and the blinding paleness of her skin. This is Seraph burning me alive, the fury, the anger, this is what I am. This is what I need to do. It is an inferno, and I am meant to raze the Angels to the ground, and I am more than happy to start with this one person.

But I can’t. Because if I kill her now, New Nazareth will fall into chaos, and I can’t let that happen.

Not yet.

I need time for Nick to organize and get the ALC into position tomorrow. I need to buy the Angels’ trust. I need New Nazareth to let its guard down. There are guns pointed at me again—at my legs, at my knees, right where it will be easiest to incapacitate me. They could still put a bullet in me to keep me down. Theo clings to my shoulders, whispering against my neck, begging me to stay calm the same way I begged the Graces.

I wrestle back the monster, even as I see feathers flitting in my vision, even though I can taste her blood. Not now. Not yet.

Mom says, “You made it just in time for Wednesday service, dear. Why don’t we get you cleaned up?”