“Oh God,” Theo whispers.
“Brother Clairborne,” Mom chides. “Don’t take His name in vain.” Her voice isn’t as sharp as it could be. It wavers, unsteady and small.
Good. Let her see what she’s made of me.
“I’m not,” Theo says. “God, look at you.” He starts into the room, and Mom tries to follow, but Sister Kipling appears in the narrow space between them, murmuring that she should give us some space. Mom jerks back—”That’s my child,” she says—but Theo takes the opportunity and shuts the door behind him.
He smiles. “Hey.”
He’s carrying a pail of water and a towel over his shoulder, and there are two things about him that are different. One: His left hand is bandaged. Creeping out from under the gauze are cracks like mine, the edges of lumps and broken bones.
And two: There is a little spark inside him. Something that calls to me, one of my neurons wormed inside his brain. Milling around like ants, firefly sparks, feathers.
“Sorry,” Theo says. “I know I’m staring. I just—wow. Look at you.” He takes the towel off his shoulder and kneels beside me. “How are you feeling?”
I take my first words slowly, try to make my mouth and throat do what I’ve always done, just form the words and put them out there. Instead, I choke. My body worked when Kipling was here, so why won’t it now? It doesn’t come naturally anymore. I have to force it, the way you have to blink manually when you’re reminded of your eyelids. And when I do make a single word, it sounds like something else, an animal putting together sounds in a rough mockery of human speech.
“Better,” I say, and it is awful.
Theo dunks the towel in the water, picking up my head so he can clean the black sludge off my neck and chin. His fingers trace my jaw. “Good. Sister Kipling says it’s all over. I swear, it looked like one of Dad’s old zombie movies. Did you know he used to be a horror buff before all this? I think it’s why he likes the Graces so much.” He squeezes the towel, and gross water splatters onto the floor. “I think I’m starting to see the appeal.”
He stretches out one of my wings. He has to step back a few paces to get its full length, huffing a little under its weight. Once it’s laid along the floor, he starts working through the feathers: smoothing them out, picking at pieces of skin trapped between them, preening. The wings are white like everything else in the room, but the color doesn’t make up for how ugly they are, like the rest of the white things I’ve ever known. There is nothing smooth or beautiful about them, the way angel’s wings are in paintings. They’re fleshy and twisted, the kind of wings a human body would make if forced to build them out of materials it wasn’t meant to have. Six of them, giant and sickly and useless, only good for being tucked up against my sides.
And for being a symbol. From Mom’s letter to the faithful: For when Seraph spreads its six wings and screams, it strikes the fear of God into the hearts of all who witness.
“You look tired,” he says. I am. “But if it means anything, I’m proud of you.”
He leans down to my face. He’s so small now. I used to be a few inches shorter than him but even down here, curled up on the floor, I am menacingly large.
He kisses my forehead anyway.
“And your mom is too,” he says. “Even if she’s not good at showing it.”
I rasp, having to force every word. “I don’t want to hear it from her.”
Theo sighs. “I know. I’m sorry.”
I reach for his bandaged hand, my claws enveloping his entirely. He undoes the strips of gauze for me, letting them dangle to the floor.
It’s still recognizable as a hand. Five fingers, a palm, a wrist. But it looks like it was run through a wood chipper and sewn back together. Pieces of bones jut out—some breaking the skin, some just pressing up against it like they’re straining to escape—with muscle and discolored flesh holding it together.