“That would take too long!” Lake said. “You said Marian was the first fire Effigy, right?”
Belle had told me once during training that I would have to go through each Effigy. But I couldn’t even get past Natalya, not when she was still plotting to take me over. I held my head in my hands.
“Belle, let’s get the special volume,” Chae Rin said.
“No.”
“Damn it!” In one quick movement, Chae Rin pushed Naomi out of the way with her elbow and with her great strength broke the sword’s blade. It dissipated—cold frost into the air. She’d pushed Naomi so hard, the woman had tripped and fallen to the floor, her hand grasping the window ledge as she tried to reorient herself, but Belle was already stalking toward her.
“I said stop.” With her bloody hand, Chae Rin grabbed Belle’s collar and pushed her against the window, but Belle’s fingers were already curled around her shirt. The tension was palpable, as chilling as the air around us. My feet wouldn’t move. I was too scared to even tell them to.
“Oh, come on!” Lake gripped the straps of her knapsack, her voice trembling with fear.
“You know what, Belle? I’m getting real tired of your crap,” Chae Rin spat. “You want to kill a woman because she blames herself for someone’s death. Clearly she didn’t murder anyone, but you still want to cut her open. What the hell is wrong with you? It’s not like you—”
“To be this cold?” Belle’s lips curved into a small smile. Not a nice one. “Surely you of all people know better than that.”
“Yeah, you’re a bitch,” Chae Rin said. “And that’s usually fine. But you’re not a murderer. You’ve been acting freaking bizarre since we got back from France—no, since Natalya’s death. Like what you did in that desert hideout? And that wasn’t the only mission where you jumped the gun. You’ve been good at hiding it so far, but you’re slipping, Belle. I know it. They know it too.”
She flicked her head toward us. It was true. Belle had been off since Natalya’s death—especially once she found out her mentor’s suicide was a murder.
I thought back to that night in France by the river. Belle had taught me to scry, but it wasn’t to reach Marian. The way she’d shaken me, pleaded with me. The desperation.
She was still desperate.
“So what are you going to do?” Chae Rin tightened her grip. “You’re going to kill a director’s wife? And then we all get stuck in a jail cell while the Sect continues to fall apart when we have less than seven days to stop whatever Saul is planning?”
“Why not?”
“I want to go home.” The word sounded as if it’d been somehow mangled coming up Chae Rin’s throat. She was shaking. “I want to see my family. My mother.”
“Me too,” Lake whispered. “I’m an only child. I’m all my parents have, and they’ve been so patient this whole time.” She sounded close to tears.
“We can’t do that until we get Saul once and for all,” Chae Rin continued. “And your selfish shit is going to get in the way of that.”
“But you all have families,” Belle whispered. “That woman took mine. She admitted it.”
Naomi held in her sobs. She couldn’t speak. So I did.
“Belle . . .” I swallowed hard, glancing at Naomi, who shook her head ever so slightly. She was begging me. I balled my hands into fists. “I know what it’s like to lose people. My family died, remember?”
But even I had Uncle Nathan. Most of my grandparents were still alive. I wasn’t completely alone. But Belle was. She didn’t even know where she’d come from.
“Getting revenge isn’t going to change anything. Please. I hate this.” Tears trickled down my cheeks. “We’re supposed to stick together. You guys are the only friends I have. My sister’s gone. . . .”
I felt Lake’s comforting hand on my shoulder. The thought of June made me suddenly feel faint and weak. It was that phantom pain again, like I just found out I was missing an arm. “Don’t fight. We have to stay together. I . . .” I inhaled. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
That was enough. It felt like the tension was finally starting to dissolve. Belle’s body relaxed, and Chae Rin let her go. We stood awkwardly in silence, pairs of eyes avoiding each other. I walked over to Naomi and helped her stand.
“Belle,” Naomi started.
“Quiet,” Belle hissed, brushing herself off and stalking away from the window.
“No, I need to say this.” Naomi kept her hand firmly around my wrist. “As a member of the Council, I watched Natalya, I’ve watched you—all of you—swear allegiance to the Sect. And then I’d sit in my ivory tower and let you all fight and die for the cause we gave to you.”
It was hard to forget the vast emptiness I felt as I knelt before Blackwell and the seven members of the Council in Ely Cathedral. Naomi’s had been the only soothing voice among the cacophony of judgments. Maybe this was how she’d felt that day, when she alone had tried to give me something to hold on to.
“I never understood just how heavy that burden was until I learned of the death of one Effigy, Jemma Moretti. One of the Effigies of wind before you, Victoria. Suicide.” Naomi gripped my wrist tighter. “Perhaps it was the funeral. I can still hear her mother’s wailing. And since then I’ve wanted to do right by you. By all of you. When Natalya first became an Effigy, she used her power to kill a mobster who’d held her family in debt.”
“What? I didn’t know that,” I said. And by the way Belle frowned, it didn’t look like she did either.
“I covered it up. I thought doing little things like this would help ease my guilt . . . help me feel useful again. Maybe that’s why, when Baldric suggested that there could be corruption in the Sect, the very organization that marched little girls to their deaths, I wanted to do what I could. But in the end, nothing’s changed. I sent Natalya to her death like all the others. And now I could be sending you straight into danger.”
Finally, she let go of my wrist and moved toward the other set of windows, her black hair glimmering under the moonlight streaming through the blinds.
“I may never be able to atone for anything I’ve done,” Naomi said. “But there’s nothing I can do on my own other than this. I have to lean on you again, Effigies. I’m sorry, but please . . . please find the volume. There’s a secret passageway beyond the museum that only Baldric knows, but he told Natalya, which means he’s told you, Maia.” Naomi looked at me meaningfully. “Get it before the Sect does. If what Baldric said is true, it could be the key to stopping all of this. I have to believe that. I just—”
She was looking at Belle, the pain of too many lives lost sinking into the wells of her eyes. “My only wish is that we could find a way to stop this painful cycle. Girls being trained and sent to the slaughter. Fighting and dying. Pain and revenge. If only it would end.”