The path was narrow and overrun with deep green crawlers, thorns that pricked my soles. Music—was it music?—echoed through the chamber, high and wordless and strange. Light fell in silver wheels through the circular windows set high in walls; trees grew through the floor and strained their boughs toward the daylight.
“Save me.”
“Let me die.”
“Save me.”
“Let me die.”
I didn’t know where the voices came from; their argument continued in toneless whispers as I moved through the chamber. I was unafraid. This place felt as familiar as my own body; I remembered the days before it was abandoned and overgrown, the days when I was whole.
I was…?
—whole. And here they had walked, my children, my beloved ones, and they laid wreaths of flowers at my feet, and I made them whole.
Where was I?
The stairs leading to the altar were set with jewels, an intricate mosaic. Spirals of topaz and ruby, onyx and clear quartz.
“Save me.”
“Let me die.”
The body upon the altar wore her—my?—face. Her eyes were closed, and she looked to be asleep. As I watched, her skin began to glow diffusely, light bled from her veins. The sight repulsed me, for she was not one of mine, she was an outsider. A defiler. A thief.
I did not know where I began and ended, my thoughts stretched obscenely. The voices grew louder. I looked down and saw that my feet had vanished beneath a river of blood.
I sat up in bed, gasping.
Fat drops of rain skittered over the window pane. The sky outside was dark grey; the shadows of the trees swayed in the wind. I rubbed my eyes. The walls of the guest chamber were covered in burn marks, occasionally coalescing into words: save me, let me die, save me. And, written large over them all, TAKE THE PATH OF GRACE.
I worked to control my breathing. After a while, I slid out of bed and walked to the window. My feet sank into the pile of the carpet, muffling the sound. It was sometime before dawn, and although the wind had calmed somewhat, the rain showed no sign of stopping.
Ever since I had seen the words on the wall in the warehouse basement—taken everything from me, in my own handwriting—I had been turning over an idea in my mind. Thinking back to the graffiti that had appeared, for months, in the alleyway outside the dormitories.
Let Aytrium fall.
All along, had that been me?
There was a soft knock on the door.
“El?” Finn said softly.
“You can come in.”
He opened the door.
“Are you all right? You were talking in your sleep.” He stopped and took in the burn marks on the wall. “Uh, that’s … bad.”
I smiled to cover my unease. “One way of putting it. It’s a vision thing.”
He touched the marks. “‘Let me die?’”
“Don’t worry. That’s not…” I paused. “It’s not me. Just a dream voice. Is Millie still asleep?”
“Yeah. Lariel’s awake, though. I think she’s trying to find a way to break out of her room. Not very successfully, at this stage.”
“I’m sorry I asked you to carry her.”
“She only tried to have me executed. No big deal.” He sat on the edge of my bed. “Besides, you were right. She’s Millie’s best chance of survival.”
I returned my gaze to the rain. The outpost cottage hunkered in the woods to the west of the main Moon House complex, concealed by a wall of dense foliage. Reverend Cyde had left us here and promised to return as soon as she could—she needed to send word back to Ceyrun. I wanted to trust her. If she had coveted the Renewer’s power, she could easily have taken it by now; my lace had run dry in my effort to break the Pillar. She could have cut me apart right there in the clearing. After what I had done, that might even have been justified.
“Did I make the right choice?” I asked, without looking around.
Silence. My breath left a cloud of condensation on the glass pane. I could, if I concentrated, sense the island descending. The other Pillars strained to stop Aytrium’s fall, but they weren’t enough. Five hundred years of history, and I had torn it all down in an instant.
“It was brave,” Finn said quietly. “And kind of noble, I think. I just don’t know what will happen now.”
“Aytrium falls.” I traced circles on the misted glass. “Although if they martyr me, they could still fix it. Raise us back up. Maybe that would be better.”
I started as Finn’s arms closed around my shoulders. He hadn’t made a sound crossing the room. He hugged me from behind.
“No,” he whispered. “It wouldn’t be.”
I swallowed hard. “You say that now.”
“I’ll say it every day, for as long as it takes for you to believe me. Don’t speak that way, El.”
I leaned back against him and shut my eyes.
“You’re cold,” I murmured.
“You know, that’s been mentioned a few times.”
“Hm.”
He smoothed my hair. “Do you remember when we were kids, and you swore you were going to run away from home? Because if you stayed, they would turn you into a Sister?”
I shook my head. I didn’t remember.
“I think you must have been about eleven. It was late in the afternoon, and we were sitting on the stairs outside my parents’ house.” He continued gently combing back my hair. “For months afterwards, I was terrified that my best friend was going to disappear. You had sounded so sure of yourself.”
I remembered wanting to run away, fantasising about escaping to somewhere remote and secure, a place where no one would know I was a Sister. I just couldn’t remember ever telling Finn about it.
His fingers grazed my forehead, cool as river water.
“Then the fire happened, and everything fell apart,” he said. “Millie tried her best to protect me, but, well…” He shrugged. “I was a burden.”
“She never felt that way.”
“She did. And it’s okay; I always understood her feelings. Didn’t blame her.”
I tilted my chin up to look at him. He smiled, fond and sad, not hiding anything.
“So everyone else disappeared,” he said. “But not you.”
I looked down again. “Finn—”
“A few months after the fire, you sneaked out in the middle of the night to see me. Do you remember that?”
Of course I did. I had crossed three districts to reach him, and my mother had been incandescently furious when she found out—angry in a way that I later understood was fear. If Sefin Vidar had discovered me climbing through his grandson’s window at midnight, he might have killed me. But I had been very young and very stupid, and I had missed my friend.
“You talking to me that night?” Finn’s voice was soft. “It was the first time that I felt normal again. That I felt safe. And you told me—”
“That I wouldn’t run.”
Finn lowered his hand from my hair.
“You do remember,” he said.
I had obsessed over what to say to him: promises of justice and retribution, apologies, pleading insistences that I wasn’t like the Order, I was different, I was still the same. In my mind, Finn already hated me. I would be inducted as an Oblate in a year, and then he would never speak to me again.
“I told you I was going to become a Sister,” I said heavily, “and that I would either fix the Order or burn it to the ground.”
Of course I remembered. And here we were.
Finn’s lips brushed my hair. He drew back from me.
“You should try to get some more sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on Lariel.”
“Don’t go.”
“El…”
My forehead was cool where he had touched me. “There are things I should tell you.”
“They can’t wait?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. Do you want to sit down?”
It took a while, but we had time. Finn listened while I told him about being a Renewer: about why Celane was hunting me, the murders, my work for Rhyanon, what had happened with Verje. He didn’t say anything, and I was grateful; false assurances or shock would only have made it harder. And he knew that, he knew me—although when I described what Verje had done, his carefully controlled expression slipped.
When I finished, he sighed.
“You aren’t as surprised as I was expecting,” I said. “About the whole Renewer thing, I mean.”
He rubbed his jaw, studying the floor. “I already knew you were different from other Sisters.”
“My sparkling personality?”
He snorted, but said nothing else. I turned back to the window. The rain gushed down in silvery curtains.
“Finn, how did you find me on the night I was attacked by Lariel?”
Nothing.
“Either you were following me, or you had a way of knowing where I’d be. And if you were following me, you’d have intervened sooner.”
“I could smell your blood,” he said reluctantly.
I nodded slowly, glad that he couldn’t see my face. After the reactions of the men in the Renewal Wards, I had already suspected as much. Still disturbing to have it confirmed, though. “So I smell different to other Sisters?”
“This is a weird conversation, El.” Finn shifted on the bed, uncomfortable. “Yes? I mean, everyone smells different, but you have a much stronger scent, floral, kind of sweet. It gets more potent when you’re scared.”
I turned. “Then I smell … nice?”
He made a face. “Don’t say anything. I know exactly how bad all of this sounds.”
“I’m glad you showed up when you did.”
“Yeah, well…” He waved away the issue. “That’s how I found you.”
I smiled, amused by his obvious embarrassment. Finn glanced at me, then sighed and looked away again.
“Out of everyone, it really had to be you, didn’t it?” he said.
“I would have preferred otherwise.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “But you’ve managed until now.”
“Not very well. And my visions are getting worse; I can’t even sleep without this kind of thing happening.” I gestured at the writing scrawled across the walls. “As soon as I’m alone—”
“Then I won’t leave you alone,” he interrupted.
“You’re not listening.”
“You deny I’m a Haunt, and I’ll deny you’re haunted. Seems fair.” He saw my face and raised his hands defensively. “El, come on. You’re tired and you’re scared. Give yourself a break.”
“Haunted?” I said in exasperation.
He stretched—too tall, he seemed to grow by the hour—and stood.
“If you’re having a nightmare, I’ll wake you,” he said. “But try to sleep, all right? I think it will help.”
The room felt larger and emptier without him. I gazed around helplessly. Everything was slipping out of control; I wanted to scrub the burn marks from the walls, erase the evidence. Let me die. Save me. Let me die. Eater only knew what Reverend Cyde was going to think when she saw this.
“Haunted,” I muttered to myself.
I lay down, and I must have drifted off, because when I opened my eyes again, the sky had grown lighter. Rain continued to pelt the roof of the cottage, and dripped darkly from the branches of the trees. I looked around the room blearily. All the marks on the walls had vanished.
I guess I got what I wanted, after all, I thought. Small mercies.
I rose and returned to the window. In the east, the sun stained the storm clouds a deep red. Water streamed over the ground between the trees, running off the hard-baked soil. The weather should cover our tracks, buy us more time to get away from here. It wouldn’t be long before the Order arrived, if they hadn’t reached the Moon House already.
I felt a stab of guilt. Cyde was going to take the fall for the broken Pillar; it had been her responsibility to protect it. And yet she had let me destroy it. If anything, she had seemed eager for me to tear it down, which made no sense at all.
A loud thump issued from downstairs. I started and cast around for my bag. I still had Verje’s sacraments, lace if I needed it. I snatched my backpack from the chair beside the door and hurried onto the landing. Millie’s muffled voice drifted up from below. She sounded angry.
“… my brother, and you dare ask for favours?”
I slowed. An argument, not a crisis. I walked down the stairs and found Finn standing in the corridor outside Lariel’s room. He looked strained.
“She’s provoking Millie,” he said.
“It seems to be working.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t want to interfere, but it’s getting out of hand.”
I pushed open the door. The room beyond was tiny, and held reed wash baskets, old crates of papers, and a couple of moth-eaten pillows. There were no windows. Lariel stood leaning against the far wall, and Millie faced her, fists balled.
“Ah, the corpse eater’s back,” said Lariel lazily. “Along with her Haunt lover.”
“Don’t you say a word to either of them,” Millie snarled. “We should have let the Resistance kill you.”
“Right, yes.” Lariel nodded. “I forgot that I’m supposed to be grateful. In your infinite kindness, you’re handing me over to the Order instead. The Sisterhood: known for their gentle and forgiving care of prisoners.”
“You’ll be treated fairly,” I said.
“Sure I will, corpse eater.”
“If you cooperate?” I shrugged. “I’m not saying there won’t be repercussions. But if the Councilwomen pressured you, it might mean prison instead of execution.”
She laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Pressured me?” She sneered. “What a joke. I killed those women because I wanted to.”
Millie stepped forward, raised her fist, and punched Lariel in the face.
Finn got over his shock fastest; he lunged past me and grabbed his sister by the forearms, lifting her clean off the floor as he pulled her away from Lariel. I hastily stepped out of the way. Lariel clutched her nose and staggered, bracing herself against the wall. Her shoulders shook. Then she started laughing again, the sound wheezing and high and out of control.
“Do whatever you want, Kamillian!” she gasped. Blood trickled over her fingers. “But don’t act like I owe you anything. You’re the one who sold out first.”
Millie was breathing hard. She shook off her brother and stormed out of the room. Finn grimaced and followed her, which meant I was the only one who noticed that Lariel had started to cry.