“Noa!” Noa turned to see Diel’s bright blue eyes looking right back at her. He had broken from the ranks too. He had come after her. “Release him,” she said, hearing the cracking of her urgent, rasped voice.
Diel didn’t even hesitate. He reached up and yanked the chain to the boy’s collar off the plinth. The boy collapsed into Noa’s arms. She wrapped her arms around him, just as a line of priests came toward them. She couldn’t take her eyes off the boy. He was fighting to breathe, the red scar around his neck a milder version of Diel’s.
“He’s alive.” Diel crouched before her in a fighting stance, bracing for the priests that were about to attack. And they came. One after the other they came. Noa knew she should fight too, but she couldn’t let go of the boy. She pushed his dark hair from his face, choking on a sob when she saw color returning to his cheeks, his eyes fluttering open and closed.
But then she heard screams, screams from voices she knew. Noa straightened, still holding the boy close to her chest. Diel was surrounded. He fought off priest after priest, but they were a swarm of unrelenting evil. Noa looked for her sisters and saw that the phalanx had dissolved. Each of them was fighting on their own, exposed and vulnerable.
Guilt hit her with the force of a freight train. She had done that. She had broken from the ranks. Dinah had drilled into their heads that they must never break from the phalanx, not ever.
And Diel had followed her, leaving her sisters and his brothers open to attack. The scream came again, and Noa saw Naomi take a slash to the arm, one knee buckling to the ground as she tried to cover the deep, gushing wound. A violent cloud of flame suddenly erupted above her. Bara rushed forward with his flame thrower to ward off any priest in her path. Priests screamed in agony as fire engulfed them, eating at their flesh. But they didn’t back away; the Brethren’s cause was more important to them than saving their own lives.
And still more priests came.
Noa shot forward when Diel staggered under the onslaught, taking a slash to each of his thighs. She pulled out her knife, keeping the boy tucked into her chest, but even as she fought one-handedly, even as she stood by Diel and took on his opponents alongside him, they were swarmed. Like a cancerous spread, priests closed in on Noa and Diel, her sisters, the Fallen. Even Bara’s flame thrower was extinguished as he was wrestled to the ground.
Noa hit the ground too, the boy still in her arms. He was staring at her, blinking slowly as he tried to take in what had just happened. He was awake. She had saved him. But all she felt at that moment was hatred. Hatred and guilt and dread at what would await her family now, await the man she loved at Auguste’s wicked hands.
Diel shifted beside her, and even with his body being crushed by too many priests, he reached out and took her hand. Panic swelled in Noa’s veins as his fingers clasped around hers, tightening so hard she believed he would never let go, not even with death.
Their surprise attack had gone wrong. Everything had gone so fucking wrong.
“Enough!” Shivers raced down Noa’s spine at the sound of that familiar voice, the voice she’d first heard as a terrified child, the voice of the man who had exorcised her for hours and hours as her teenage body broke under his devilish inquisition techniques.
Heretic, heretic, witch … His taunts, his accusations were a drill being pushed slowly into her head.
Heavy footsteps echoed on the wooden floor. “Get them up.”
Noa heard scurried movements, then she was wrenched to her feet. Diel kept tight hold of her hand even as he fought to get free. Four largely built priests kept him in place.
Noa cradled the boy to her chest. Her heart shattered when his hands clung to her clothes, as if Noa was his savior. Hot tears streaked down her face as Auguste appeared directly before her. Behind him, her sisters and the Fallen were being restrained too. She met Dinah’s eyes, and she could see the sorrow in her sister’s gaze, for Noa, and for the boy in Noa’s arms.
Auguste flicked his hand. “Take the offering from this witch.”
“No!” Noa shouted.
Two priests approached Noa. Diel growled and dived forward as they tried to take the boy from her arms. “NO!” she shouted louder, and fought to hold on to the boy. She had to save him. He couldn’t die too …
Noa scrambled to stay with him, but the priests wrenched him out of her grasp. At the same moment, Diel broke free from the men who held him. He charged at the priests taking the boy, but something crackled behind him, and Diel dropped to the ground, his body jerking as though he still wore the collar Noa had taken from his neck.