“Oh, baby,” Mom murmurs, brushing my hair back from my forehead as I spit strings of black and red into the water. “It’s all right. It won’t take long.”

Theo helps me upright, and Reverend Brother Ward reaches out a hand for me to follow him deeper into the river.

He’s traded his Bible for a knife.

“Sister Woodside,” he says, “come forward.”

I don’t have to pretend I want this. I wade farther into the water until it hits my shins, my knees, my thighs. It’s cold. The current pulls at me, and I brace a foot in the smooth rocks to keep my balance. My dress hovers around my legs, pulled by the water as if trying to sweep me away from here.

“This is not baptism,” Reverend Brother Ward says. “For you have already been baptized, and the heretical world beyond our walls cannot change that.” The water has a dark tinge, brown and blue and gray and green and red. There shouldn’t be blood yet, but there it is, appearing for just a moment every time the water whispers the right way. “This is absolution. You have left your original sin in the watery grave, but now these new sins must follow.”

I am a man, and I fought for it, and nobody can take that from me. If these sons of bitches want to get their hands on me, I will make them suffer for it. And I will be good, I will be good, I will be good.

Seraph is a monster of fangs, feathers, and flesh. I have believed liars and brought suffering upon my people. I will absolve what I have done wrong in this river, I will wash away my past as an Angel and the future they planned for me, and then I will bring this cult down with all the fury of a wrathful God.

I won’t be okay, but I will be better.

Reverend Brother Ward holds up the knife. “These sins must be purged from you.”

Mom nods, hair twisting in the wind. Theo sees me watching him and smiles. Sister Kipling stares out across the riverbank, silent, her hands clasped as if trying to tear out her own fingers. Behind them all, Kincaid Chapel stands sentry, and New Nazareth spreads out like a feast.

Is Nick watching me now, the way I’m watching them? My heart, what’s left of it, thrums pitifully in my chest. My knees threaten to give out. Please let him be. I can’t spend any longer here.

That’s when I see it.

Above the wall, a bit of light winking from a roof. And again. The glimmer of a scope.

Nick is there. The Watch. Oh God.

“Are you ready to be purged, Sister Woodside?”

I say, “Yes.”