kindred

Brande has another one in his retinue—his cadre of demons. My attention has been elsewhere for long, too long, and I can't say what's happened to his Persephone, or that Phin girl. Dear Bobbi's schoolgirl schoolmate, with that damned lovely uniform, and I remember the strip of it in the alchemist's pocket, and I wonder how Bobbi's skirt would shred under my clutching grasp, if I unmasked Cerebé and drank in her scent, her warmth, her faith, her fear, her love—drank it and gnashed it between a beast's ragged, ivory dagger teeth.

I'm shuddering shuddering shuddering in the dark—I'm shaking with it. I want. I want. I want.

Corbin has left my rooms exactly as I left them, and Ophélie's little half-century-old camera stares at me with its single eye from the shelf, its lens catching the light that spills through the open balcony door. I leave the lights off. It's more comfortable like this, listening to the soft distant rush of traffic from an Italian leather armchair in the grand style, and reminding myself that the world's still here. Almost how I left it.

Except Eurydice. And Brande himself is harder, somehow, shut off. The power's shifted and a new balance has been negotiated, to account for—yes, for Thirteen. I can't ignore the connection. I may be an autonomous factor, but I've become part of their equation. They've become part of mine. Calling Brande a brother (my dear, dear brother) and the child little sister, little sister somehow was unavoidable, inevitable, the cosmic machinery aligned just so.

The girl. Why these girlchildren? My O, Bobbi, Phineas, Eurydice—if she can properly be called a child, this nothing-doll, this manufactured soul that's lovely, sickeningly lovely, because Brande cannot create something that doesn't indulge him.

I want.

Remarkable, how our tastes coincide.

I wonder if I would have wanted his Mercedes, too. But she, like my O, is a relic. Like the bones of saints, like the splinters of the True Cross, except that the religions to which they belong are ours: churches we tear from Father's hands, faith we draw into our mouths (greedily) despite His tyrant greed, steeples we plunge upward like knives into his creation and rework it, reform it, raze it down to raise it up. There's resonance, harmony when I hear him, feel him speak of Mercedes, of Mercies. If we meet, if I call, if she comes, if my legions coax her back from the other side of the Pale, though only for a moment—how could I not, how could I not simply kneel at her feet and bow my head (as I would for O) wretched black dog that I am?

But the fact remains that I want. That I need.

Faith.

Worship.

Sacrifice.

out of order

i am in a million fragments
i am ravenfeathers curling in the fire, scattered ash
i am a black crane
i am alive

I am at the beginning of the world. My shell is blasted and broken, and tiny eternities have passed since I could draw myself together into a shape I recognize. A face that belongs to me. Hands. Limbs. Flesh and bone, sweat and blood, sinew and skin. My still-seared self burns—but let me burn, let me burn, because I'm still here.

And so is the world. And somewhere, a distant note of white music, I can hear the resonance of my dear priestess, her essence still connected with mine. I can't open my eyes—I can't scatter them and find her, look at her darling girlchild face, but she's still here. Arielle—Holden—even Gabriel, I can't be certain.

But the alchemist exists, surely. We've unfinished business.

At the beginning of the world, the landscape is as blasted and ancient as I. Sterile. Empty. I need blood. Faith. Fear. Love. Hate. Anything. A vassal to take in my hands and drain dry.

First, to rise. From ashes.