The Fatal Judgement

My best friend Seraphine had not one drop of blood left in her body when they found her.

Her skin was translucent. There were two dried trails of blood from the corners of her mouth, like she had wept herself empty long before the end.

She left one note.

One sentence: "Vera saw his face."

From that day forward, I became the Covenant's greatest sinner.

Because I knew who did it.

But I said nothing.

For ten years, I said nothing.

Then Lucian came back.

He was the one who had turned us, raised us, given us the only home we had ever known.

He set the Soul Prism in front of me.

"Tonight," he said, "you give me the killer."

His eyes hadn't changed. That was the worst part. After ten years of exile, of stones and fire and nights that never got warmer, I looked at him and he was still exactly who he had always been to me.

"Or you disappear from this world along with him."

He didn't know.

The reason I had chosen exile and starvation and a Blood Oath that had been eating my soul core alive for a decade — was him.

All of it, always, had been for him.

Seraphine and I were both human orphans when Lucian found us. We had nothing except each other and the particular stubbornness of people who have learned not to expect rescue.

Then he turned us, and for the first time in our lives we had somewhere to belong.

Then someone killed her.

The process takes three hours.

Three hours. She was conscious the entire time. When they found her in the abandoned chapel outside the city wall, her skin was translucent, her eyes were open, and there were two dried trails from the corners of her mouth where she had wept herself empty long before the end.

She left one note: "Vera knows everything."

From that day on, I became the greatest sinner in the Covenant.

Because I knew who did it. But I said nothing. For ten years, I said nothing for ten years.

"Vera." The voice outside my cell was raw in the way that only grief sustained over years can make a voice raw. "Just tell me his name."

Cael. Seraphine's only child. He knelt outside the door every time they allowed him near. I could hear his heartbeat through the stone — rapid, too rapid, the heart of a child who had never once learned to rest easy.

"Please. Avenge my mother. You know who killed her. Why won't you say it?"

His sobs came back at me from every direction, the stone throwing his voice around until it was everywhere at once.

I pressed my palm flat against the door.

I kept it there for a long time.

Then I turned away and walked to the back of the cell, and his crying followed me into the dark.

"Traitor." The voices outside had been building for hours by the