The Church (The Cloister Trilogy 3)

I’ve already lost so much of myself to this place, to my father, that a few toes should seem inconsequential. But they don’t. I know he left me there to die. He didn’t get his wish, but the fact that I’ve lost parts of my body tells me that I was right in my line of thinking—I have to take him out along with all his Protectors. He’ll stop at nothing, and neither will I.

I rest my foot on the worn carpet. “Abigail from the Cloister? How did she even get in here?”

Jez smirks. “Oh, we have our ways.” She points at my left foot. “You probably still have some of the numbing stuff working for you, but once that wears off, I imagine you’ll be in a world of hurt.”

Holding up my bandaged hands, I say, “I’m already there.”

“Fair enough.”

Even though I believe her when she says my toes are gone, I can still feel them, as if they’re pressing up against the thick white gauze. Will I still be able to walk? I hobbled over to the chair fine—though, admittedly, I had help. But I’ll need to be as close to one-hundred percent as I can get when the fight starts. And I have zero doubts that a fight is coming, and soon. “Is Emily okay?”

“This again? She’s fine. Back at the Cloister.” She glances through the stained glass behind me, as if she can see the Cloister from here. “Good news and bad news on that front.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “It’s good that she didn’t have to go to the senator yet. Bad news that she got a new Protector.”

I tense. “Who?”

“Noah.”

My shoulders relax. Noah isn’t a threat. She’ll be safe. Jealousy, though, that roars through me like a freight train. If he touches her. If he … does anything to her. My hands start to curl into fists, but the wretched burning pain has me stretching them out again. Noah wouldn’t touch her. Right? I shake the thought away. He wouldn’t. Especially now that he knows I’m still kicking. Word has to be all over the compound and even farther. The Prophet will stop at nothing to get me back up on that cross.

“I figured you’d react like that.” Jez gives me a lopsided grin, her green eyes sparkling.

“So, I’m here.” I look around. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” She crosses her bare legs at the knee, her tiny black shorts barely covering the goods.

“You brought me here. I have to assume that was for a reason. What are we doing? Who’s with you besides Abigail? What’s the plan?” What I want to know is whether she’s with my mother. But I don’t want to play that card just yet. I’d rather have her tell me than reveal the extent of what I know.

“All you need to do is recover.”

“That’s not good enough.”

She sighs, blowing out a big breath that lifts the stray strands of dark hair along her cheek. “Do me a favor and take a look at yourself. Your hands are fucked, your foot is fucked, you look like you just went twelve rounds with a meat grinder. Even if I have a plan, your part comes in later. A lot later.”

I’ve known Jez for years, all the way back to when she was one of the first Maidens. She’s always been stubborn and rough, and not even her time in the Cloister changed her. That’s why she wound up here in the Chapel, an unwilling Madam to even more unwilling girls. When she tried to escape with Chastity, I was one of the men who found them. They didn’t make it out of the compound. I had to sit through her punishment—the scars down her spine inflicted by my father one by one. She didn’t shed a tear. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s taken the lead on whatever rebellion is brewing. All the same, she’s going to need me to make it work. She just doesn’t know it yet.

I lean my head back on the cushion. “Tell me what you’ve got cooking, and I’ll tell you if you’ll die fast at the start or slowly on the cross.”

Her back stiffens. “I don’t need the son of the Prophet mansplaining shit to me, got it?”

“You need someone who knows the ins and outs of the Prophet, what it’s like at the highest level, the best way to get to him, and the way to bring it all down without collateral damage.”

“Collateral damage?” She leans forward, her elbows on her thighs. “What would you consider that to be?”

I cock my head at her. “The Heavenly idiots. The sheep who believe the Prophet.”

“Why would I save them?” Her eyes are granite now, her mouth a hard line. “What have they ever done for me, for the girls here, for the ones in the Cloister?”