His fingers grazed my forehead, cool as river water.

“Then the fire happened, and everything fell apart,” he said. “Millie tried her best to protect me, but, well…” He shrugged. “I was a burden.”

“She never felt that way.”

“She did. And it’s okay; I always understood her feelings. Didn’t blame her.”

I tilted my chin up to look at him. He smiled, fond and sad, not hiding anything.

“So everyone else disappeared,” he said. “But not you.”

I looked down again. “Finn—”

“A few months after the fire, you sneaked out in the middle of the night to see me. Do you remember that?”

Of course I did. I had crossed three districts to reach him, and my mother had been incandescently furious when she found out—angry in a way that I later understood was fear. If Sefin Vidar had discovered me climbing through his grandson’s window at midnight, he might have killed me. But I had been very young and very stupid, and I had missed my friend.

“You talking to me that night?” Finn’s voice was soft. “It was the first time that I felt normal again. That I felt safe. And you told me—”

“That I wouldn’t run.”

Finn lowered his hand from my hair.

“You do remember,” he said.

I had obsessed over what to say to him: promises of justice and retribution, apologies, pleading insistences that I wasn’t like the Order, I was different, I was still the same. In my mind, Finn already hated me. I would be inducted as an Oblate in a year, and then he would never speak to me again.

“I told you I was going to become a Sister,” I said heavily, “and that I would either fix the Order or burn it to the ground.”

Of course I remembered. And here we were.

Finn’s lips brushed my hair. He drew back from me.

“You should try to get some more sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on Lariel.”

“Don’t go.”

“El…”

My forehead was cool where he had touched me. “There are things I should tell you.”

“They can’t wait?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. Do you want to sit down?”

It took a while, but we had time. Finn listened while I told him about being a Renewer: about why Celane was hunting me, the murders, my work for Rhyanon, what had happened with Verje. He didn’t say anything, and I was grateful; false assurances or shock would only have made it harder. And he knew that, he knew me—although when I described what Verje had done, his carefully controlled expression slipped.

When I finished, he sighed.

“You aren’t as surprised as I was expecting,” I said. “About the whole Renewer thing, I mean.”

He rubbed his jaw, studying the floor. “I already knew you were different from other Sisters.”

“My sparkling personality?”

He snorted, but said nothing else. I turned back to the window. The rain gushed down in silvery curtains.