Tim. Another of Rain’s uncles. Tim who was Seir, who wore the preserved head of a horse but was the furthest thing from the lithe, athletic form of the horse, and the furthest thing from the attractive form of Seir the demon, as was described in the book some of the preachers liked to recite from. Tim was forty, fat, ugly, and he had standing sufficient that he would run the settlement if the top two people in charge were somehow unable to.

A run-in with Tim. Rain had his suspicions about what had happened. That it had happened to Erin?

“I’d beat the shit out of him if I thought I could,” Rain said.

“You look like you had the shit beat out of you,” Erin said. She blinked a few times, wiped away the tears. “Are you okay?”

He wasn’t, and he couldn’t tell her he wasn’t. Not when she was this upset.

“I’m always a little bruised and scratched.”

“That’s more than bruises and scratches.”

“I’m okay,” Rain lied. “And you’re not. Can I do anything?”

As if that had brought everything back, Erin’s expression briefly crumpled up. She fixed it with apparent effort, and wiped away at more tears that had been squeezed loose.

She shrugged, and it was very, very apparent to Rain that she was trying to seem cavalier about something that wasn’t cavalier.

He had such a sick feeling in his chest, seeing this.

“Every time I cross paths with him, he makes comments,” she said.

“Yeah. That’s—that’s Tim.”

She shrugged. “He told me I should go to church. Mrs. May is lecturing, I think?”

“She finished.”

“And he said Mrs. May could teach me what I needed to know to please a husband.”

Rain nodded. If she was marrying Tim…

“I told him to go fuck himself.”

“No,” Rain said. He saw her expression and looked away.

“I know it was stupid.”

“You can’t—he has a lot of power. It’s not that he’s right, but sometimes you have to keep your head down. Some of these people will kill you if you say the wrong thing. Or worse. Surviving is—it’s the most important thing.”

“I know,” she said. She averted her eyes. “I felt like I could, in the moment. There were people nearby. I—he pushed me up against a wall, he threatened me with some pretty vulgar stuff, with the crowd watching.”

“You need to get out of here,” Rain said. “You’re—you’re not Fallen. You’re decent. You’re kind. You think. You don’t believe this stuff. You don’t deserve this.”

“I can’t go,” she said.

“Because of Bryce? Your parents?”

“Of course because of them! You don’t understand!”

“I really don’t.”