Page 20 of Terror at the Gates

I told Coco everything, about meeting Ephraim, getting the knife, and my visit to Raphael’s Relics. An image of Abram lying on the ground with bleeding eyes flashed in my mind. Had he taken something before I’d entered his shop? Had the blade been laced with some kind of poison and he’d gotten too close? If that were the case, why had Ephraim lived? Why hadIlived?

“Now I understand why Zahariev decided to let you dance,” Coco said when I was finished.

I lowered my brows. “Why?”

“To keep you out of trouble,” she said.

“I wasn’ttryingto get into trouble,” I said.

Coco raised a challenging brow. I already knew what she was thinking before she said anything.

“You steal for a living, Lilith,” she said.

“Not anymore,” I said, so long as Zahariev kept his word. “But I will remind you that all this could have been avoided if Zahariev had just let me dance in the first place.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like the idea of other men looking at you,” said Coco.

My laugh sounded more like a scoff; that was ludicrous. “If that were true, Zahariev wouldn’t have let me parade around his clubs and use my magic to prey on male lust for the last two years,” I said. “He’s worried about what the commission will say when they find out a daughter of House Leviathan is dancing in a club on Sinners’ Row.”

Not to mention the war he would start with my dad.

“He doesn’t seem like the type to care about authority,” said Coco, moving into the kitchen, which was open to the living room. There was a set of alphabet magnets on the yellowed fridge that I’d used to spell the wordslut. Coco used thesto hang Paul’s receipt.

“You only think that because you see one side of him,” I said.

He might be the king of sin, but he still quoted the fucking commission every chance he got, just like he’d done last night after Isiah had brought me into the holding room.

They are wrong about you, he’d said, but really, they were right. I was everything they said. I was silly and rash. I was an embarrassment. I had no intention of behaving the way they wished, and every time Zahariev reminded me they were watching, I was reminded of his loyalty.

“What’s the other side?” Coco asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t know how to explain it, butwatching him was an experience. There was an entire world of opulence beyond the borders of Nineveh, and Zahariev could transition into it effortlessly. He knew how to act among the religious and the rich despite building his throne on a bed of heresy.

Sometimes I thought he was a sheep, and sometimes I thought he was the wolf.

Most of the time, though, I felt like I didn’t know him at all.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I had gotten what I wanted, and now I just had to make sure I kept it.

I sat up, shifting onto my knees. I let my hands rest on the arm of the couch.

“Are you ready to help me choose an outfit?” I asked.

Coco smiled. “I already have something in mind.”

***

It felt really fucking weird to go to lunch with my dad, knowing I was going to dance half-naked in front of Zahariev in less than two hours, but whatever. It wasn’t like he would ever find out, and I would not miss a chance to see my dad.

Since I’d left home, he made it a point to clear his schedule for me every other Saturday so we could have lunch. Despite my desire to be independent and my hatred of the church’s rules, I loved my dad. When I left, it had hurt him deeply. Every time I thought about it, my chest tightened. But every time I thought about the alternative—being married off and used as a siphon—I knew I’d made the right decision.

I took a taxi to the border of Nineveh, which was marked by a statue of Zerachiel, the archangel of judgment. He towered over all, his eyes cast down, disapproving of everyonewho entered our district. He was supposed to be a deterrent—a reminder that the church was watching, except he was easy to ignore in the dark when the crits made their way into our part of town.

There were six other statues across Eden: Raziel, Uriel, Menadel, Arakiel, Sariel, and Metatron.A watcher for each Gate, said theBook of Splendor, which never made sense to me. Once, during service, I’d asked how it was possible for statues to protect anything, which apparently meant I was questioning not only my faith but the power of the archangels. As punishment, I’d had to meet with Archbishop Lisk alone.

I was nine.

There was no one I hated more than Archbishop Lisk. He was the figurehead of the church but led worship at First Temple in Hiram. It was a prestigious role, granted to him by the commission. Even at a young age, he had frightened me, though there was nothing unusual about him. He was an average older man with a hooked nose, wild eyebrows, and horn-rimmed glasses.