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The altar to God is sequestered beneath its mass. I hate how much sitting before it looks like worship. How much it feels like it. But this is a church—there are crosses. There is a priest. No devil can lurk here, can it? I squeeze my eyes shut and beg for God. Then I open my eyes and I’m at prayer before this beast of Satan. There is nothing peaceful here. God is no where to be found.
“He jumped. He would have been a suicide, in hell. But I shot him. I made him instead the victim of a murder. Does this liberate him? Make him worthy of heaven? Was my gun an extension of God’s hand and will, Father?”
“Keep scripture out of your filthy cock-sucking mouth.” “Why? There’s plenty of room for both.”
The University, as I’ve said before, is maze-like. But I am not sure this does it justice. It is disorienting, and if I believed more wholly in magic, I would assume it was a spell of haziness that falls over me whenever I walk its halls. I think neither God nor Satan has a hand in this, but some bastard novice architect; none of its design makes any sense.
For the first time since the horror of today, I can see myself here. I imagine finding a nook, hunkering down to study. Perhaps with Leo. Perhaps even with the others. I fancy that I can see myself as part of this world.
“That you think this a matter of benevolence or malevolence says much about your people,” the automaton says. “I am Meléti, built to house knowledge. You are trespassers on University property. You are not initiated. You will leave.”
I see in him more of what I sometimes catch a spark of; the unsettled, angry part of him.
“You are something out of myth. Something made by the hands of Daedalus. A legend. And like out of some nightmare, you and your kin come into our world and wreak havoc. You are sitting on information. Sitting on it.”
darling,
the first darling drop in this book i fell to my knees clutching my chest
Now I see Leo truly; every tightly wound part of him, everything he carefully packed away. Leo Shaw is furious and angry and wild. He has been raised amongst monsters and he will do whatever is necessary to win. I should be scared; I’m not. I think I want him more than ever, if just for the impersonality of it—the roughness, the near-violence. He is angry at the world, and I am angry at myself, and when there’s no room for softness, it means I won’t lose myself to emotion.
It was times like these that Cass liked to pretend he wasn’t scared of death. But the truth was he felt it: a yearning in him, a need to stay alive that felt more vital than breathing. He didn’t want to die to his father’s anger. He didn’t want to die to a teras. He didn’t want to die in a rundown town outside of Hull without a taste of the world beyond. He didn’t want to die at all.
Hands are on me—I flinch away, screaming—there’s a danger in the softness with which they caress me. It could be anyone; Bellamy, Victoria, or someone closer to a stranger, and I might debase myself by crawling into their lap and weeping. Just for a moment of peace. A moment of affection.
Something about the horridness of the world means I crave to lose myself completely in another. I get so wrapped up in the sin of it, the layered transgressions I make against God—I cannot marry my lover, my lover is a man—that I briefly forget none of it really matters, in the end. What use is there in getting worked up about my so-called sins when living to thirty is a luxury? Hell is here. Hell is on earth, clawing at London’s walls. And if I can live a little happier for taking someone to bed, why shouldn’t I do it? So this time when Leo says goodnight, I say wait.
I tack my room on the end, as if it isn’t the most important part in all this. The private, liminal space of my room. The door that we can close. The illicit things we might do to one another. Leo glances between the door and me, and the look in his eye darkens. There’s an open yearning in them, a hunger. I wonder if he has the same qualms as I do about sin and men, before I realise God’s kingdom beyond the wards is broken. It is much easier to overlook so-called misdeeds when death is a near certainty.
God, is it such a sin to want to be loved?
and I whisper my own prayer up to him, to Leo, the closest thing to divinity I have ever touched. Please, please, please. I want the oblivion.
He looks at me, for a long while, eyes heavy. And we don’t speak. There’s nothing to say, really, nothing that can be said. It is a perfect and protected moment. Why sully it with words and hopes and fears?
“Times are changing, you see. The University’s role may shift with it. Artificers may need to work harder and quicker, on the field, to get our Hunters back in action in a timely manner. Scholars may need to consult onsite. We cannot have these disciplines vulnerable. Understand? Good,” he claps his hands before any of us can reply. Leo leans close to me and whispers, “You were right. This will be a war college soon.”
“Alright, Mr Jones?” Leo whispers. It’s a kindness, to get me to move before the others realise how distracted I am. “Of course, Mr Shaw,” I whisper back.
He is holding his organs. Intestines spill out of his arms onto the dirty floor. I am hit with a freezing shock—Thaddeus, Thaddeus, my brother, my brother holding his guts, an armful of his organs, God, he’s dead—and I turn away violently. I will myself not to throw up. Pray. Pray again. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
His eyes are fixed on the harpy and its meal, as if he has a duty to watch the girl be consumed; as if by living, it is now his burden to bear the dead.
Shock, some part of my brain informs me soberly. You’re going into shock. And on the back of those words, I feel pain for the first time; sharp, stinging fire. With shaking hands, I pull my vest away from my body. It’s torn to shreds and bloody. My shirt beneath it is the same. My belly, too. A gouge divides my navel. Other desperate scratches line me. “God,” I whisper, and then I am on the ground.
I think of Corinthians, and Paul, and the second coming of Jesus, and the transformation of this mortal flesh into a glorified body. When I might taunt death. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? But then the sharp, hissing pain flares along my stomach and I think: the sting is right fucking here. Death is a moment and a state, a finality. It is the state of dying—the long drawn-out act of it—that is definitively worse.
And my heart will be swollen and black, and that’s the thing that kills me in the end. Not the decaying of the rest of my body, but the size of my heart—so large it can never be held by anyone.
He stares at me as if I’m unreal, an assessing glare trying to sort me out. I don’t know why that rankles me. “What I am now, I wasn’t always,” I say. “I never said I was born here, Mr Shaw. You made the mistake of that assumption all on your own.”
The effect is immediate, in both the faces of his roommates, and the air around me. There is at once the bare-bones horror of having a gun to your face: of realising all that strength and brute force means nothing with a tiny bullet hurtling toward your skull. And around me, in me, I feel my own body shift with the power the little gun affords me.
I’m horrified that I sound so sure of it, but I’m right, aren’t I? The trial behind all these sadistic little games is this: navigating an institution run by neurotic academics, seeking information from lost tomes and fragments, never knowing if your information is correct or valid, never being able to verify it. That is academia; that is the study of the ancients. Only, in our world, a lack of sources can easily mean our deaths.
Leo walks forward without a single care for his own wellbeing. The flesh of him ripples and shifts. Shadow on him looks like ink in water, undulating in patterns over his skin. He gasps and shudders to a halt, and when I try to prompt him he doesn’t answer me, just looks back; expression buried in the dark.
The urge to say yes nearly overwhelms me, until I acknowledge what kind of company I desire from Leo Shaw. I can’t bring that desire into a house of God. “Are you a godly man?” He leans himself against one of the courtyard pillars. A little breeze moves through his hair. “For you, I could be,” he whispers.
When tears threaten to spill, some image of Thaddeus comes to me unbidden, and that does it. That’s enough for grief to burst through the bulwark. I sob. I have to press my lips together hard to stop making a sound, but God. God. What kind of place is this? And what have I gotten myself into? If I’m wrong about the trial tomorrow, have I damned us all? Have I damned Leo?
If only to feel the touch of God, His forgiveness, I stand and shove myself into a confessional.
A smile quivers at his lip. Barely more than a whisper he says, “Do you want to know what true sin feels like?” God. God fucking save me.
And I don’t think I can admit it’s a sin. Certainly not when the act is tender, but also not when it is rough, debasing. It’s all love. It’s all love for my body. Perhaps I don’t feel guilt for what I do. Perhaps I feel guilty because it is expected.
“Cassius. . .” He looks at me strangely, then. Teeth glint, lips widen. I brace myself to hear him say: “Why? I am only trying to fuck you.” He doesn’t need to respect me, if that’s all it is. What else would it be? I settle my jaw and wait, but Leo raises his hands to my shoulder. “I won’t. . . tempt you like that again,” he says. “At least, not when you’re on holy ground.”
The body crumples to the floor in a pool of its own blood. I can’t tear my eyes from it. I think back to Watford, I think about sitting in all the gore and those bodies, and Thaddeus’ guts in his hands, and the boy whose brains I blew out with my gun, and God, am I still a good man?
The animal instinct in me is terrified, shaking; how can I be a Hunter when I am so clearly prey?
Leo flinches closer towards me. He grabs my hand. In one fluid motion, he’s brought my fingers to his lips to kiss them. And over my hand Leo just nods, like he’ll follow me anywhere. My body relaxes, the adrenaline flooding my heart eases off, and the result is a dizzying wave of nausea. God, I don’t want him to die.
He’s taking such an interest in me that I’m scared. Like the Greeks say, μηδὲν ἄγαν, “nothing too much”, everything in moderation—nothing good ever comes from gods paying attention. And in this domain, I’d be a fool to think of Drearton as anything less.
“I want to kill him,” I whisper. Leo looks at me then, a gleam in his eye. “There you are.” He leans forward and kisses me, teeth grazing my lip. “I know. I dream of it. But then what? He’s not the University, Cass, he’s just a man.”
My bone glimmers golden. I am compelled to stare at it; a teras’ blood is a part of me.
Part of me wants to sleep, but that part of me is a fool. There’s no time. No time. The final trial is nearly upon me. And so is God’s judgement.
Perhaps the loss of my arm is punishment for what Leo and I did in there. (Maybe it was worth it.)
Then he leans in, breath hot against my neck as he whispers, “Neither of us are under any illusion that this place is good. I’ve already told you I plan to be ruthless. I plan to survive. And I think you’re better than me in some regards, Cass—yes, even after Bellamy. Because you were right. I thought you should leave them both. Save yourself.” He pauses. “I think you would do well to be more selfish.”
And if he dies, a part of me dies too. “Leo, Leo, just breathe, you have to—” Leo’s eyes widen. “Cass, darling,” he says, and he grins with blood-stained teeth. “Move, would you?"
There are no congratulations. No ceremony. No feast. There is nothing but the howling wind and a misted rain that starts up quickly. I stay under it and pray it drowns me. I have seen London’s future. I have looked it in the eye. And it wants vengeance.
“I wish we’d never met you.” I know, I know, I know. I can’t blame Fred for anything. I can’t blame God, who has abandoned me, or from whom I have strayed. There is only Cassius Jones to blame.
I am not doing this for anyone else but myself. Not for Leo Shaw. Not for the soft heat of his lips against mine. But for Cassius Jones. Because, by God, I want to live.
