The passages smell reminded me of speeches that didn't make sense to me, the breaking of bones belonging to people we knew very little about and conflicting emotions ruining my sleep.

  I'd walked these corridors before, back when I still wore the white and carried the Church's authority like a shield. The Inquisition had built them centuries ago, a network of hidden paths that let us move through the palace unseen. We'd used them for interrogations, for surveillance, for the quiet work that kept the empire's faith intact.

  I'd thought I'd left all of that behind when I walked away from the Order. Some things you can't walk away from. Some things follow you through every door you close, wait for you in every room you enter, breathe down your neck until you turn around and face them. Some things have been following you since before you learned to walk. Since before you learned your own name. Since the first time someone held you in the dark and whispered that everything would be okay, and you believed them, because you didn't know yet that people lie.

  Yozi moved ahead of me, the Tear clutched against his chest, its dark pulse visible even in the dim light. He was focused on the gem, on the whispers I could tell it was feeding him, on whatever calculations were running through his head.

  He didn't notice that I'd slowed my pace.

  Or that my hand had tightened on my sword until the leather of the grip creaked.

  He didn't notice that I already knew what was waiting for us.

  I'd known since the moment we entered the passage. Known since before that, really. Since Damian mentioned her name in his chambers and my hand found my sword without permission. Since I saw her standing by the eastern wall of the throne room, positioned wrong, watching everything, waiting for us to make our move.

  She'd always known me better than anyone. She'd know which passage I would take. She'd know I would come to her.

  Sisters always find each other.

  That's what she used to say, when we were girls in the Church dormitory and I would wake from nightmares I couldn't remember. She would already be there, sitting on the edge of my bed, her hand finding mine in the dark. She always knew. Before I cried out, before I woke, before the fear even fully formed in my chest. She knew.

  Sisters always find each other, Nys. No matter what. I'll always find you.

  I believed her then.

  I believed everything then.

  The corridor opened into a wider chamber, a junction where four passages met beneath a vaulted ceiling. Torches burned in iron sconces, casting shadows that jumped and flickered against the walls. And there, standing in the center of the chamber with her blade already drawn, was the woman I'd been running from since the moment I left the Church. The woman I'd been running toward my whole life.

  My big sister.

  Not by blood. The Church didn't care about blood. But by everything else. By the years we spent learning to walk together, to talk together, to hold a sword and say our prayers and believe that the light would protect us from the dark. By the nights she climbed into my bed when the thunder came, even though she was supposed to be the brave one. By the time she took the blame for the window I broke, and the extra bread she snuck me when rations were short, and the way she held my hand at our parents' funeral even though her own heart was breaking.

  By the promise she made me in the ash and the fire, when the world ended and began again in the same breath.

  Always, Nys. I promise. Always.

  "Nyssara."

  Her voice was calm. Almost gentle. The same voice that had sung me to sleep when the nightmares came. The same voice that had talked me through my first kill, steady and patient, telling me where to cut and how deep and that it was okay, it was necessary, the Church required it of us. She looked the same as she always had. Tall and straight-backed, her dark hair cropped short in the military style she'd adopted after our parents died. Her armor polished to a mirror shine. Her posture perfect, weight balanced, ready to move in any direction.

  And her freckled face.

  The same freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, the ones she used to hate, the ones I used to count when we shared a bed in the Church dormitory and she fell asleep before me. Seventeen freckles. I'd counted them a thousand times. Traced constellations between them with my finger while she dreamed, giving them names, making up stories about the stars on my sister's skin.

  "This one is the warrior," I would whisper, touching the freckle above her left eyebrow. "And this one is the healer. And this one, the little one by her nose, that's the sister who never leaves."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Ash and freckles. That's what I remembered most from the night I lost my parents. The ash falling from the sky like grey snow, settling on everything, and Selyse's freckles standing out against her pale skin as she held my hand and promised me we would always have each other.

  The freckle by her nose. Barely visible, but to me it was what made her face look what it looked like. The sister who never leaves.

  She left anyway, or maybe it was me. Maybe we both did, walking in opposite directions while pretending we were standing still, until one day we looked up and couldn't see each other anymore.

  Until now.

  The sword in her hand was blessed steel, the same as mine, forged in the same holy fires by the same Church smiths. We'd received them together, the day we completed our training. Twin blades for twin sisters. The priest had smiled when he presented them, had said something about how fitting it was, how the Church had been blessed with two daughters of such faith and devotion.

  I'd believed him then. I'd believed everything then as long as Selyse did.

  Yozi stopped beside me. I felt him take in the situation. Selyse's position. The weapon. The way she'd placed herself between us and the only exit that led to the surface. His hand moved toward the shadows at his hip, toward the blades that lived beneath his skin.

  "Don't," I said.

  He looked at me. I could feel his confusion without seeing it. His thoughts shifting, clearly confused, trying to factor in whatever he saw in my face.

  "She's mine."

  I stepped past him. Put myself between them. Drew my sword.

  The blade caught the torchlight and began to glow, pale and cold, responding to the faith I'd never quite managed to abandon. The faith that lived in my bones even when my mind rejected it. The faith that Selyse had planted there when we were children, watering it with prayers and practice until it took root so deep I couldn't tear it out without tearing out parts of myself.

  Selyse watched me approach with something like sadness in her eyes.

  "I hoped you wouldn't come this way," she said. "I told the others you'd use the western passage. That you'd be smart enough to avoid me."

  "You never really understood me. "

  "No." She shook her head, slow and certain. "I always believed in you. Even when you left. Even when you turned your back on everything we built together. I believed you'd come home eventually. That you'd see the truth."

  "You never really understood that word."

  Truth. The word tasted like ash. Like the ash that had fallen the night our families burned, the night Selyse had held my hand and lied to me about always.

  "You mean the Grey Hand's truth. The one where opening a portal to another realm somehow saves us all."

  "It does save us." Her grip tightened on her sword, but she didn't raise it. Not yet. She was still talking to her sister. Still hoping. "You've seen what lives in the shadows, Nyssara. The demons, the corruption, the things that crawl through the cracks between worlds. The portal doesn't invite more of them in. It brings the cleansers. The ones who burn the darkness away."

  "Cleansers?"

  I laughed. The sound bounced off the stone walls and came back to me twisted, ugly, nothing like the laughter we'd shared as children.

  "Is that what they told you? Is that what the Grey Hand promised when they recruited you?"

  "I've seen them." Her voice rose, passionate now, fervent in the way only true believers can be. "In visions, in prophecy, in the words of the Overlord said herself. They come from a realm of pure light, Nyssara. A realm where shadow cannot exist. When the portal opens fully, they'll pour through and scour this world clean of every demon, every corruption, every trace of the darkness that has infected us for centuries."

  "And what happens to everyone else?"

  She didn't answer.

  "The people who aren't pure enough, according to the fucking Inquisition, Selyse? The ones who've been touched by shadow, even a little?" I thought of Yozi standing behind me, the corruption threading through his veins, fighting every day to stay human. "The people in the Sump who've never had the luxury of purity because they were too busy trying not to starve?"

  Selyse was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. Sadder. The voice of someone who had already made their peace with something terrible.

  "Some sacrifices are necessary. For the greater good."

  "Some sacrifices."

  I stared at her across the chamber. My sister. My twin in everything but blood. The girl who had taught me how to hold a sword, who had bandaged my wounds after training and snuck me extra bread when the Church rations weren't enough. Who had held my hand through the ash and the fire and promised me we would always have each other.

  Maybe she'd always been this. Maybe the seeds had been planted that night in the ash, when she decided that some people burned and some people didn't, and the only thing that mattered was making sure you were standing on the right side of the fire.

  "You're talking about genocide," I said.

  "I'm talking about salvation."

  We stared at each other. The torches flickered. The shadows danced. Somewhere behind me, Yozi was doing his calculations, running his numbers, trying to find the optimal solution to a problem that didn't have one.

  "I can't let you leave with the Tear," Selyse said finally. "You know that."

  "I know."

  "And you won't surrender it."

  "No."

  She nodded, as if she'd expected nothing else. As if this was how it was always going to end, two sisters in a stone chamber, one of them about to die.

  Then she raised her sword, and the blade erupted with light.

  Not the pale glow of mine. Something brighter. Fiercer. A radiance that burned my eyes and left afterimages dancing in my vision, white spots that wouldn't fade no matter how hard I blinked.

  The Holy Path in its purest form. The techniques that the Church reserved for its most devoted servants, the ones who had given themselves so completely to the faith that the light lived inside them, burned inside them, poured out of them like water from a broken vessel.

  I'd learned the foundations before I left. The basic forms. The simple prayers that called the light and shaped it into something useful.

  Selyse had mastered all of it.