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?”
NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE FAITHFUL TO COME TOGETHER. BRING ONLY WHAT YOU CAN CARRY. BRING ONLY WHO YOU WISH TO SAVE.
—The Cloister Order
“I can tell her you’ll only wear robes,” Theo says. I barely hear him over the rushing of blood in my ears, the static threatening to swallow me whole. He hovers by the door to what used to be, and is now again, my room—as if I’ll break if he comes too close. “Get you out of that.”
“Please stop talking.”
“It isn’t right. You shouldn’t have to.”
“Stop.”
My voice shatters. That must be what finally gets the point across. Theo stares at the rough dormitory carpet so he doesn’t have to look at me. I wish I didn’t have to look at me, either. I wish I didn’t have to look at anything. There is a mirror on my desk, and I’m going to shatter it if I spend one more second here.