Mia watched the boy march forward, Naev beside him. She wondered what awaited him. Tried to put the memory of their last parting aside. The guilt that she’d hurt him, the anger in his eyes … If death lay beyond that door, she wanted to make it right between them. But he was already gone, crossing the threshold without a backward glance, the doors closing soundlessly behind him. Mia could feel Mister Kindly in her shadow, gravitating toward the growing fear around her. She glanced at Hush. Ashlinn. Wondered if the girl’s father had told her what to expect beyond.
The trio waited silently in the statue’s shadow. Minutes passed. Long as years. That perpetual, ghostly choir the only sound. Finally, the doors swung open and Tric emerged. Jaw clenched. Slightly pale. Apparently unharmed. He found Mia’s eyes, and she saw a haunted look cross his face. For a moment, she thought he might speak. But without a word to the others, Tric was escorted up the spiral stairwell and out of sight.
Ash was looking straight ahead. Speaking in a whisper, her lips almost motionless.
“Be sure, Corvere.”
“Acolyte Mia.”
The Hand at the double doors was looking at her expectantly. Mister Kindly purred in her shadow. Mia stepped forward, hands in fists.
“Aye.”
“Walk with me.”
Mia stepped off the dais. Naev was beside again, escorting her as she’d done with Tric. As they reached the threshold, the woman touched her hand. Nodded.
“Hold it close, Mia Corvere. Hold it tight.”
Mia met the woman’s eyes, but there was no chance to ask what she meant. The girl turned, followed the Hand through a long passage of dark stone. The only sound was their soft footsteps, the choir muted as the double doors closed behind them. A large domed room waited beyond, set on all sides by vast arched windows of beautiful stained glass. Abstract patterns were wrought in the panes, blood-red spirals, twisting and turning, twelve fingers of light overlapping on the floor.
Standing in the light’s center, Mia saw the Revered Mother Drusilla. Her hands were folded in her robe, and she wore that patient, motherly smile. The obsidian key around her neck glittered with the slow rise and fall of her breast. Mia approached cautiously, searching the shadows, glad for the not-eyes in the back of her head.
She couldn’t help but notice the floor in front of Drusilla was wet.
Freshly scrubbed.
“Greetings, Acolyte.”
Mia swallowed. “Revered Mother.”
“This is your final trial before initiation. Are you prepared?”
“I suppose that depends what it is.”
“A simple thing. A moment and it is done. We have honed you to an edge so fine you could cut the sunslight in six. But before we induct you into the deeper mysteries, first we must see what beats at the heart of you.”
Mia thought back to that torture cell in Godsgrave. The “confessors” who’d beaten her, burned her, near drowned her in Lord Cassius’s test of loyalty. She’d not shattered then. She’d not shatter now.
“Iron or glass,” Mia said.
“Precisely.”
“Haven’t we already answered that question?”
“You have proven your loyalty, true. But you will face death in all her colors if you serve as the Mother’s Blade. Your own death is only one. This is another.”
Mia heard scuffing footsteps in the shadows. She saw two Hands swathed in black, dragging a struggling figure between them. A boy. Barely in his teens. Wide eyes. Cheeks stained with tears. Bound and gagged. The Hands dragged him to the center of the light, forced him to his knees in front of Mia.
The girl looked at the Revered Mother. That sweet matronly smile. Those old, gentle eyes, creased at the edges.
“Kill this boy,” the old woman said.
Three words. One ton apiece.
All the world fell still. The dark pressing in around her. The weight settling on her shoulders and pushing her down. Hard to breathe. Hard to see.
“What?” she managed.
“The time may come when you are asked to end an innocent in service to this congregation,” Drusilla said. “A child. A wife. A man who has lived both good and well. Not for you to question why. Or who. Or what. Yours is only to serve.”
Mia looked into the boy’s eyes. Wide with terror.
“Each death we bring is a prayer,” Drusilla said. “Each kill, an offering to She Who Is All and Nothing. Our Lady of Blessed Murder. Mother, Maid, and Matriarch. She has placed Her mark on you, Mia Corvere. You are Her servant. Her disciple. Perhaps, even, Her chosen.”
The old woman held out a dagger in her open palm. Searched Mia’s eyes.
“And if you cut this boy’s throat, you will be her Blade.”
It lasted forever. It lasted a moment. The girl stood there in that stained, blood-red light. Mind racing. Heart pounding. Questions swirling in her mind, never spoken.
She already knew the answers.
“Who is he?”
“No one.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Why should I kill him?”
“Because we tell you to.”
“But—”
“Iron or glass, Mia Corvere?”
She took the dagger from Drusilla’s hand. Tested the edge. Thinking perhaps it might be spring-loaded, that this was just another deception, that all she need do was show the will, and all would be well. But the dagger was sharp enough to draw blood on her fingertip. The blade solid as any she’d held.
If she put it in this boy’s chest, sure and certain, she was putting him in his grave.
“The wolf does not pity the lamb,” Drusilla said. “The storm begs no forgiveness of the drowned.”
The girl looked to the wet stone at her feet. Knowing exactly what had been washed away in the moments before she entered the room. Knowing Tric hadn’t quavered. Hadn’t shattered.
“We are killers one,” Mia whispered. “Killers all.”
This was it. All the years. All the miles. All the sleepless nevernights and endless turns. This was the path she’d set her feet on. They’d hung her father. Tore her from her mother’s arms, killed her baby brother. Her house, her familia, her world destroyed.
But was it reason enough? To murder this nameless boy?
In ending him, she ensured her place here. She’d become the Blade to pierce Duomo’s heart, slip into Remus’s guts, slit Scaeva’s throat ear to ear. They deserved to die, Daughters knew. Die a thousand times over. Screaming. Begging. Weeping.
But the boy was weeping too. Ropes of snot streaking his lip. Mia looked down at him and he moaned behind the gag. Shaking his head. She could see the words in his eyes.
Please.
Please, no.
She glanced at Mother Drusilla. Gentle smile. Soft eyes. Wet stone at her feet. And she searched herself for a reason to kill this boy. Someone’s brother. Someone’s son. Barely older than she. Digging deep, through the muck and the blood. The tatters of the morality she’d cast aside when she set her feet upon this road, paved with the best of intentions. Diamo’s screams as he died, echoing inside her head. The countless men and women she’d slaughtered inside the Philosopher’s Stone. The Luminatii she’d butchered on the steps of the Basilica Grande.
I am steel, she told herself.
All this had taken a second. A moment beneath the Revered Mother’s cool gaze. And in the next moment, Mia was kneeling before the boy. Placing the blade at his throat. Heart drumming against her ribs. Speaking the words a believer might.
I am steel.
“Hear me, Niah,” she whispered. “Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This life, this end, my gift to you. Hold him close.”
The old woman smiled.
The boy whimpered.
Mia took a deep, shuddering breath. Naev’s warning echoing in her head. And to her horror, she finally understood. Finally heard it. Just as she’d heard it above the forum on the battlements where her father hung.
Music.