Chapter 31

O sacred head now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down, now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown!

—Angel hymn

The pain eases eventually, like most pain does, and God has nothing to do with it. It’s less the ebbing of a tide and more watching a tsunami wash back out to sea, taking everything with it except bones and exhaustion. It’s the kind of exhaustion where even breathing is a struggle. Where you’re almost asleep, but you barely have the presence of mind to close your eyes.

The door opens again. I pick my head up the best I can, expecting to see Sister Kipling, but standing in the threshold instead are Theo and Mom. Their eyes are wide like they’ve never seen a Grace before. Like they’ve never seen a monster or blood.

“Oh God,” Theo whispers.

“Brother Clairborne,” Mom chides. “Don’t take His name in vain.” Her voice isn’t as sharp as it could be. It wavers, unsteady and small.

Good. Let her see what she’s made of me.

“I’m not,” Theo says. “God, look at you.” He starts into the room, and Mom tries to follow, but Sister Kipling appears in the narrow space between them, murmuring that she should give us some space. Mom jerks back—”That’s my child,” she says—but Theo takes the opportunity and shuts the door behind him.

He smiles. “Hey.”

He’s carrying a pail of water and a towel over his shoulder, and there are two things about him that are different. One: His left hand is bandaged. Creeping out from under the gauze are cracks like mine, the edges of lumps and broken bones.

And two: There is a little spark inside him. Something that calls to me, one of my neurons wormed inside his brain. Milling around like ants, firefly sparks, feathers.

“Sorry,” Theo says. “I know I’m staring. I just—wow. Look at you.” He takes the towel off his shoulder and kneels beside me. “How are you feeling?”

I take my first words slowly, try to make my mouth and throat do what I’ve always done, just form the words and put them out there. Instead, I choke. My body worked when Kipling was here, so why won’t it now? It doesn’t come naturally anymore. I have to force it, the way you have to blink manually when you’re reminded of your eyelids. And when I do make a single word, it sounds like something else, an animal putting together sounds in a rough mockery of human speech.

“Better,” I say, and it is awful.