My whole body felt tight with power; it seeped through my skin and burned iron-sharp on my tongue. While Asan had warned me that gorging was unlike consuming an ordinary sacrament, nothing could have prepared me for how profound the difference felt. Suffused with lace, I was left with the sense of being slightly off-balance, like I was standing somewhere high up and the wind was blowing. Millie kept shooting concerned glances my way. She knew what I had done. Of course she did—I wished I could have obscured the truth, but emerging from my mother’s alcove covered in Verje’s blood had made that rather difficult.

At least she didn’t seem afraid. That would have wrecked me.

“Millie.” I gathered my courage. No sense in putting this off any longer. “About Finn…”

She quickly looked away. We were halfway down the stairs. The wind had picked up and grown cold, and the clouds blotted out the stars and moon.

I forced myself to continue. “I’m probably the one who infected him. But it wasn’t … it wasn’t like you’re thinking. There was no sex. I just thought you should know.” Her silence flustered me, so I carried on. “That doesn’t make anything better, and it’s still my fault, but I wanted you to know anyway.”

“El, I already know that.”

“Oh.”

She looked at me and made an effort to smile. “Finn can be irresponsible sometimes, but you aren’t, not where he’s concerned. I’ve always known he’s safe with you.”

“Except clearly he wasn’t.”

Her shoulders hunched. “Yeah. What a cruel joke. Some kind of airborne infection?”

“Unless he was seeing another Sister.”

She snorted. “Not a chance.”

We came to the base of the hill. Pearl Boulevard was mercifully empty—although I had managed to wash the worst of the blood off my clothes in the Martyrium, my arm was still bleeding through the shroud cloth, and we could not afford to draw too much attention.

“Something has been bothering me for a while,” I said as we hurried down the first side street into Minor West. “And I thought it might have been in my head, but Verje mentioned the name again. Who is Lariel Sacor?”

Millie stiffened. “What?”

“Sacor. Verje said that Sacor had tipped them off. You used the same name as an alias at Celane’s party, and I thought that the Reverends reacted strangely to it then too.”

The blood drained from her face.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

“Millie?”

“Tipped them off?”

“Yeah, that Finn would—” I changed my mind, lied, “That Finn was concealing something. Verje wasn’t too clear. Why did you choose that name as your alias?”

She scowled. “Because if things went wrong, I hoped it might somehow land Lariel in shit. No good reason. Stupid vindictiveness, nothing more.”

“Who is she?”

“An old associate of mine.” She was definitely anxious, almost defensive. “But I don’t see how Verje would have ever met her in the first place, never mind anything else.”

“Why not?”