But I don’t tell her why he left me. I don’t mention the night he made me feel so beautiful and so ugly at once. Because I feel like to voice those words is to make them belong to someone other than me. Is to let them go into the world and never have the chance to get them back again.

My sister’s eyes glisten as I talk, and sometimes she can’t hold back the tears. And when I’m done she’s silent and finally she says, “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been so scared when we went on the path …” And then her face crumples and I pull her to me.

“We were children,” I tell her. “We were barely even five.” But I’m not trying to give her absolution, I’m trying to give it to myself. Because I’m the one who left her behind to almost die.

She shakes her head, pushing closer to me. “It’s my fault, Annah,” she says. “I forgot about all of it. I wandered for so long that I was almost dead and I forgot about it. I grew up never remembering—never knowing. Even when something did spark a memory my mother—Mary—she’d tell me it must have been a dream. I didn’t even know about you until I met Elias. All this time and I never knew.”

“It’s all right,” I tell her, testing the words in my mouth to feel if they’re true. I pull back and place my palms on her cheeks, staring at her face. At what mine would look like if I weren’t so scarred. I can’t help but wonder what it was like for Elias to see her for the first time.

To wonder if he saw me. And I wonder if that’s why he didn’t come home to me. Because he found something better.

Chapter XVII

The Unconsecrated moans and reaches for us, stumbling around and around in his little caged wheel. I stare at his legs that will never stop so long as he senses human flesh.

“Are you okay?” I ask my sister, dreading the answer. “I saw them take you on the bridge. I was afraid they’d hurt you.”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. They just threw me in a room to …” She doesn’t add that she was the bait for Catcher, and I don’t press her.

“So, you and Elias, huh?” I try not to let the strain I’m feeling fill my voice.

The smile that stretches over her face is brighter than the lights lining the darkness. “I’m in love with him, Annah,” she says.