Page 50 of Borrowed

“H-Hail Mary?—”

Her voice cracked.

“Full of grace…”

Her hands trembled in mine.

“Keep going,” I said.

She looked up at me like I was her savior.Nothing would save her.She would burn like me.

Toby laughed inside.

Then I leaned forward, our foreheads touching, my voice a whisper.“He’s not listening.”

She looked so small.

So human.

And I had never felt more like God.

The rosary lay in pieces behind us.

She didn’t notice.

Her eyes stayed on mine even as I tugged her up by the wrists.

“Come on,” I whispered.“You always said we should be closer to God.”

She stumbled after me.Her heels clicked like guilt across the stone floor, her mouth mumbling some cracked prayer under her breath—familiar and useless.

The altar loomed.

White cloth.

Golden chalice.

Bloodless.

Toby hated that.

I pulled her forward, the edge of the cloth brushing my thighs.My skin was still wet, hair clinging to my cheeks, blood long since dried at my nostril.I must’ve looked like something reborn.

She stood trembling.

“I don’t know what you want from me, T?—”

“Your confession,” I said.“Kneel.”

Toby coiled in my spine, humming.

She hesitated.She looked at me—and for a moment, I saw it.

Recognition.

Not of what I’d done but of what I was.

Still, she obeyed.