Page 14 of Saint, Sorrow, Sinner
“Sad, isn’t it?” Lincoln pointed lazily at the power line. “Society domesticated pigeons ten thousand years ago, taught them how to carry mail, raised them as pets, and then rejected them once they weren’t useful anymore. Now they’re vermin. Rats with wings. Can barely make their own nests and still migrate to populated placesbecause they’re instinctually drawn to us.” He yawned, stretching his maw, showing vicious, pointed teeth. “You ever think about that?”
“Pigeons?”
“People becoming gods. Training little creatures how to please us and then abandoning them once we’ve had enough.”
Sophia thought of prayer, sacrifice, torture. Somewhere deep, buried where the Breath of Judas had chewed a hole through her spirit, something wicked and cold suckled at her inclination toward vengeance. Her heart clenched.
“I wanted Daniel dead,” she admitted, so abruptly her vision went white. Panic brightened, immediate and blinding.
“Yeah?” Lincoln chuckled, impressed.
Her voice refused to surface. The confession, right there, burning on the tip of her tongue, wouldn’t budge.He held me down.She swallowed. Restless spirits clamored toward the fissure inside her, pawing at her pestilence, prying at shadowy memories.I’d never known violence until I found God.
Lincoln Stone hummed deep in his throat. “Ah, yeah. Well, Tehlor pulled his whole rib cage out, sweetheart. I’m sure it hurt like a bitch.”
Becoming the vessel will purify you,Amy had said, spitting the words at Sophia’s feet.Rose is sure of it.
“I wanted him to suffer. There’s something wrong with that, Lincoln. It’s not ...”Holy. Godly. Graceful.“It’s ugly.”
Lincoln snorted. “Deserved worse if you ask me.”
“Who’re you to judge—”
“He raped you, didn’t he?” Lincoln spoke simply, easily, as if the violence had come and gone. Like it hadn’t putrefied. Like she wasn’t septic.
What’s it like to be you,she wanted to ask.What’s it like to be feared?When she tried to respond, her voice refused to surface, so she closed her mouth and waited.
“Deserveda lotworse,” he said, and heaved a sigh.
“I became a monster,” she whispered.
“Sometimes we have to.”
“I didn’t have to.”
Lincoln shrugged. “Sometimes we want to.”
Sophia swallowed around the truth.Yeah, sometimes.
“At least we’re not them,” he said, nodding toward the pigeons. “Abandoned and still hoping. That’d be brutal, wouldn’t it? Stickin’ around for love that’ll never come back.”
The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. Even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but one fear.Sophia recited the quote to herself, reminiscing on soft paws, and turned soil, and the way her sister’s palm had cracked across her cheek.
Somewhere close, Amy’s ghost whispered about love, regret, sisterhood, and betrayal.
Sophia wanted her back. Wanted to kill her a second time, a third time. Wanted to apologize.
“Yeah, it would be,” she said.
Sophia De’voreaux had never experienced a place as uncanny and charming as the Belle House.
After she’d followed Lincoln inside, the group agreed to get some rest before returning to the issue at hand—the Breath of Judas, Haven, her body becoming a tunnel between two worlds. Juniper had shown her to a room on the second floor with windows that looked out over the greenhouse and a Juliet balcony paired with elegant French doors, and Sophia had taken a shower in the bathroom across the hall, stocked with plum-scented soap and lemongrass lotion.
Hours later, she stood in borrowed nightclothes, listening to Bishop and Colin argue through the adjoining wall.
The couple talked about exorcisms, evildoing, and godhood. They both sighed like mules and spoke of consequences and judgment, religion and livelihood.It’ll kill her, Bishop.Sophia pressed her ear to the wallpaper and squeezed her eyes shut.You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Sophia isn’t long for this world. She’ll die if we don’t find a way to close whatever rift the Breath of Judas opened inside her.The priest was a good, desperate man. His footsteps sent shock waves through the floor.Tehlor said Sophia used magic at the revival. Necromancy or something like it.Bishop’s tone was sharp and brittle, verging on anger.How do we know she won’t harness that power again?Sophia’s throat went dry.
It’s not power,she almost shouted, but kept her lips sealed.It’s not power, it’s not power, it’s not—
