He was filthy, hair matted and greasy. But it was his eyes that obliterated her heart completely. They were wide, and brimming with so much pain and hurt that Noa could physically feel it in her chest. But they were also eyes that promised pain and savagery if she even took a step toward him. It was as if he hadn’t any remaining humanity in his soul.
He began to pace on all fours, on his callused palms and soles. Back and forth, again and again, along the tiny patch of floor the short chain allowed him. He growled at Noa as if he didn’t even know how to speak. Cold settled into the marrow of her bones.
He had been raised like this, she realized. Raised without a glimmer of positive attention, raised as a nothing more than an animal, a beast. A monster ripped straight from children’s nightmares.
Noa choked on a sudden and crippling wave of sadness. She held out her hands and took a small step forward, trying her best to be non-threatening. But the boy just paced faster, growled at her again, his pupils dilated, his body poised to strike, to attack, to kill.
Just before she reached him, Noa caught a flash of black out of the corner of her eye. She turned, and the priest froze, instantly captured in Noa’s snare. Anger swept through her like a tidal wave, eliminating anything in its path. And she charged. With a guttural roar, Noa knocked the priest to the floor. She punched and pummeled him with all her strength, over and over again, for what he had done to the children on the lower floors.
Noa absently heard the boy in chains going berserk behind her, noises of distress echoing in the back of her brain, alarm bells trying to break through her fog of hatred, but nothing could. Noa was lost to bloodlust. Years and years of rage for what had been done to her, her sisters, the children, so many fucking children, poured out of her and sought revenge through her blades. So, she stabbed the priest. She stabbed and stabbed and didn’t stop until he was nothing but fragments of bone and flesh underneath her.
Still, it wasn’t enough. She shook, needing to kill again, needing to push all of her pent-up rage into one of the Brethren. She needed to fucking wipe them out so that people who were different would no longer be punished in their fucked-up, sadistic world.
“Noa!” Noa could hear her name being called, but she couldn’t stop stabbing. The darkness controlled her, became the entirety of who she was. “Noa!” The sound of her name off familiar lips tried to penetrate through her blood-spattered shield. But she deflected it. She ignored it until someone wrapped their arms around her and physically yanked her off the priest.
She was pinned to the floor, wrists fixed over her head by firm fingers. Noa jerked her body, trying to throw whoever it was off her, but they held firm. “Noa. Stop!” the voice said, and Noa’s heart began to slow; the rage in her veins began to lessen. She was breathless, sweating, and she could smell the metallic scent of blood all around her—in her hair, on her skin, on her lips.
“Calm down, sister,” Noa heard, and she blinked, clearing her tunnel vision until she saw Dinah above her. Noa focused on her sister’s deep brown gaze and allowed Dinah’s steady breaths to be her guide. Dinah nodded, silently telling Noa she was coming back into herself.
Then Noa turned her head, and she froze. With her next breath, she bucked Dinah from her and scrambled across the attic floor to the boy in the collar and chain.
He wasn’t moving.
“No,” Noa whispered, devastation sweeping though her, gutting her where she sat. She wrapped her arms around the boy’s still, frail body and brought him to her chest. She pulled her scarf from her face and yanked back her hood—she needed air; she needed to see him unguarded. “Please,” she whispered, holding his pale cheeks in her bloody hands. She turned his face toward hers … and his eyes were wide open, lifelessly staring back at her.
“No,” Noa whispered again. She lowered her mouth to his, trying to breathe air into his lungs. She laid him on the floor, pumping at his heart with her hands. “Please!” she cried louder, but his chest didn’t rise on its own; no breath was taken. “Please!” Her voice cracked. She tried and