I wanted to bite back, but words deserted me. Finn glared at me, daring me to argue, and it wasn’t fair of him and I should have said, No, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t know the first thing about being a Sister. I wanted to say that, but it wouldn’t come out.

Did he think I should feel ashamed?

I looked away.

“What did you want me to do, then?” I asked dully.

He was quiet for a while. I carried on toward the trellis of hanging plants, fine-leafed fingers of ivy that dangled from wooden beams. Through the gaps between the slats overhead, the moonlight cut squares of yellow on the bricks.

“I want you to fight.” Finn’s eyebrows had drawn together, and he stared at the ground as if it might hold the answers he was looking for. “I don’t want you to … to lie down and accept your fate like it doesn’t matter. If you’re so angry, then fight.”

“I try. But it’s not that simple.”

“Then let me help you. If what I’m doing isn’t enough, then tell me what is.”

Osan’s warning about involving my friends lingered in my mind, and I hesitated. There was also Reverend Cyde’s offer of a place at the Moon House; I could leave, but it was too much to ask for him to come with me.

“Please,” he said.

He looked so broken and exposed, so desperate for an answer from me. I don’t know, I wanted to tell him. There was a pressure in my chest that threatened to crush me entirely, a terrible, helpless aching.

I kissed him.

His lips parted in surprise, and he breathed in sharply. I drew away, an apology half formed on my tongue, but then he kissed me back, hard; he drew me close, and his hands found my waist, trailed up my back, tangled in my hair. Desire burned through my blood.

I broke away from him, my heart racing. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Finn touched his mouth. The moon reflected yellow in his eyes. “You kissed me.”

“I … That was—” I wrapped my arms around my chest. “Oh no.”

“El—”

“This can’t happen. I’m a Sister, I can’t—”

“It’s okay. There’s no one else here.” He spoke in a low voice.

What had I done? A roaring filled my ears.

“El, look at me.”

The single most important rule for any Sister: men were off-limits. We were poison. I was poison. The toxic mass of my lace curled inside my chest, malevolent and slick. I would infect him, I would turn him into—

Finn brushed a strand of hair out of my face. His fingers felt cold against my cheek.

“I’m fine,” he said gently. “Nothing has changed.”

“Stop it.”

He drew back his hand as if burned.

Millie had warned me. My mother had warned me. And yet here I stood, with no more room for weakness. I had always known my duty; I should have put an end to this years ago. Instead, I had allowed myself to pretend that things could be different.