The first time this happened to me, I was eleven. I had been swept away from my home, from everything I had ever known, and dragged through the New Nazareth gate. Mom had been given absolution by the Angels long before we arrived, so I was forced to watch as a reverend did it to Dad. I don’t know how he stayed quiet, but I do know that when Mom tried to bring me into the river after him, I started to scream.

I submit willingly now.

I undo the dress’s button at my neck, and it comes apart in my hands, white cloth fluttering down to my waist. The early morning air is crisp against my bare spine. I hold the dress up at my chest to keep from being exposed.

I will be good, I will be good, I will be good, and I will feel far worse things than this.

The first cuts are on my back. The blade is sharp enough that it doesn’t hurt when it slices through my skin, not at first. The pain waits for me to take a breath. That’s when the wounds split further and hot blood rushes down my sides, right where my wings would go if I were a soldier. It pools in the fabric of my dress, wet and hot and dragging me down. Ward is talking. I barely hear it.

The next are at my hairline, the blade digging into the tender flesh of my forehead and scalp. I squeeze my eyes shut as it drips over my brows and down the bridge of my nose. I’m breathing hard, biting down on my tongue to keep from making noise because I have felt worse, and I will feel worse. The point is not the pain; it is the blood. Symbolic flagellation, symbolic crown of thorns, and now all I need is to wash the blood in the river, and it will all be over.

Reverend Brother Ward looks to Mom, as if asking her a question. What kind of answer does he need? He’s done hundreds of these. Please, just get it over with. Let this be over with. I can’t breathe. I’m shaking. Let this end.

Mom says, “Seraph will heal her. Do it.”

Theo says, “Wait, what’s happening?” and Ward grabs me by the left wrist and plunges the blade through my palm.

It doesn’t hit all at once. At first, it’s a crushing weight slamming down on my hand, like the world has been dropped onto it, then something wedging all the little bones apart, and then the pain of it finally snaps, and I scream.