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By the time my wounds had scabbed and turned into scars, and I emerged from the recovery room to start working the corners again, Baylen Sallow was gone.

My friend’s meager possessions had been cleared out. His cot was taken by a new Housemate fresh off the streets.

Indignant, I barged into Father Cullard’s writing room, shouting, “Where is he, Father?!”

Cullard put down his quill, lifting his head on stooped shoulders. He stared down his nose at me with a sad smile. “Sadly, the boy is lost to the Truehearts. His formative years have been a failure. Brother Baylen shirked our teachings. There was nothing more we could do for him.”

I fought back tears. “So you exiled him? On the first transgression?”

Cullard stood, his tall frame dwarfing my small-but-growing stature. “First transgression, child? Perhaps the first we caught. Boys like Baylen Sallow do not sprout out of nothing. The thieving is just the start. Where will it end? Who knows what headaches he could cause this House in the future?”

The fact he was exiled for future, possible transgressions somehow made it even worse. I swore to myself that I’d never forgive Father Cullard, Mother Eola, or the vowagers.

With my eyes dewy and blurry, I asked, “Who will he turn to, Father? You’ve damned him to a worse fate by discarding him like gutter-filth!”

Cullard’s amenable face flared with righteous anger. “Do not speak to me of damnation , Sister Sephania! There was nothing to be done. Your former Brother’s fate is in his own hands, since he discarded our teachings. He will have to make his own way. Now leave me.”

I matched his flared nostrils, biting back a retort.

That evening, I wept in my bed. I lay on my side in a fetal position, careful not to aggravate the puffy, aching wounds on my back. I had half a mind to leave the House of the Broken in the middle of the night, to go find Baylen.

Where would I go? Who would take me in? Half the city saw me as a nuisance, the other half saw me as a religious fanatic thanks to the people who had raised me.

“You were right about them all, Bay,” I whispered to myself as my tired eyes grew droopy. “. . . Sorry sacks. The lot of them.”

I was a coward. I stayed with the House of the Broken for another three years, scared to stake off on my own in a world of untold dangers.

It was awful knowing dangers resided in my own House, yet they didn’t equal those that preyed on people outside these walls.

I gained a new friend. It took months of alms-collecting at her side to warm up to her. Her name was Sister Cyprilis. She had been born in the same room as me and Baylen.

Cyprilis was one of the few kind souls left in a House full of horrors. She took her teachings too seriously, admittedly, and carried around a copy of the Book of Truths with her wherever she went.

She didn’t subvert the status quo. It was a blessing, in my mind, after the turmoil I’d been through with Baylen and his schemes.

Cyprilis was a quaint girl stunted from malnourishment. It pained me to see her so frail. She never complained about it. She was stronger than I was, in that sense, even though I towered over her by our twelfth year.

One day, we took to the bazaar for our rounds.

It was the same as it ever was, with the dust thick and stuffy.

After a meager day of collecting, wherein I spotted the brown-skinned melon-cart and felt a pang of longing for Baylen and his ploys—and our feasts—I asked the girl, “Can I show you something, Cy?”

Cyprilis smiled wide and nodded diligently like a puppy. “Of course, Sister Sephania.”

She always regarded me by my full name.

I brought Cyprilis to a familiar alley and a familiar trash barrel, helping her gingerly climb atop it. “Don’t be fearful, Sister,” I said at her apprehensive gaze when she understood my instructions.

With much hand-holding and gentle prodding, I managed to get Cyprilis up to the roof. We sat in silence as the sun in the distance began to set behind the Olhavian Peaks. The sky was dashed with orange and pink streaks behind puffy clouds.

“Oh, this is lovely,” Cyprilis said, scooting close to me. “Thank you for bringing me here, Sister Sephania.”

I smiled at her. “The Book never said watching a sunset is sinful, my friend.”

“True enough, Trueheart.”

She giggled at her wordplay then did the strangest thing and tilted her head to settle it on my shoulder.

I thought nothing of it, other than being aware of her closeness like I had been all those times with Baylen in similar positions.

I gestured vaguely at the distant mountains and the city atop it, rising high up from Nuhav, sweeping my hand across the sky. “The more I come here, the more I’m convinced that is where freedom lies, Cy.”

She hummed to herself. “With the bloodies, Sister Sephania?” Her voice vibrated on my shoulder. “That is where Father Cullard says the most treacherous beings imaginable live. Sinful monsters we could never fathom, keeping us stuffed down here like so many fish in a barrel.”

I wondered if they could be anymore sinful than the people inhabiting Nuhav. I didn’t see how that was possible. I let my thoughts lie and we said nothing for nearly an hour, until it was fully dark and a chill swept across the rooftop.

“Guess we should be getting back now,” I started.

Cyprilis let out a contented sigh. She lifted her head from my shoulder, sitting upright. I was pleased to discover she had not fallen asleep like I thought she had.

“Thank you again,” she said to me.

I turned to Cyprilis and my eyes searched her quaint face. It was round like an apple, with rosy cheeks. Our gazes locked for an uncomfortable length of time—

And before I could react, Sister Cyprilis swiftly puckered her lips, pushed her face forward, and kissed me on the lips.

I gasped at the softness of her lips, her closed eyes. My head reeled back, startled. “S-Sister Cy!” I yelped. My heart was in my throat.

Sheer shame and horror overtook her features. “Oh Faithful, I’m so sorry!” she squealed, putting her palm to her lips to hide her embarrassment. “Was that wrong, Sister? I only thought you’d like it.”

I blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of it. Here was this charming, sweet girl who never told a lie and lived by the Book. Where had she learned to do such a thing? What had incited her to kiss me?

My mind spun. Before her cheeks could get any redder, I shook my hand and flapped a palm nonchalantly at her. “Erm, n-no, Cy, it wasn’t wrong . It’s not that I didn’t like it, it’s just, um, well . . .”

I had no idea what I was saying, my tongue tied like a knot. Her eyes implored me, begging for an answer I didn’t have. Then she looked away, down to the emptying bazaar with her shoulders sagging.

A sense of urgency took me. I felt a crazed sensation that Sister Cyprilis was about to push herself off the edge of the rooftop.

I put a hand on her thigh, if only to stop her.

Her eyes fell on my hand. I imagined she had a different understanding of why I was doing that—why I put my hand on her after just rebuffing her innocent advances.

When she looked up at me sadly, she murmured, “I’m very sorry, Sister Sephania. Father Cullard says it’s natural to want to make others feel loved, is all. I-I didn’t know what I was doing. Please forgive me?”

My stomach sank to my ragged boots. I blinked at her, trying to hide my shock. Cullard had never said anything like that to me. It certainly wasn’t in the Book of Truths.

“. . . Cyprilis,” I drawled, my tone tinged in anger I couldn’t hold back. “What do you mean when you say Father Cullard says it’s natural ?”

It took a week of late-night spying to confirm my suspicions. While stalking the narrow halls of the House of the Broken like a wraith, I prayed I was mistaken.

The evening was late, with a particularly bright moon shining through various windows of the compound.

After a week of stalking, I knew the halls well, and the routes of the Night-Brothers who watched the place for signs of trouble. The Night-Brothers were fifteen-year-old seniors on the cusp of getting their coins and leaving the House.

Trouble like this had either escaped them or they were told to simply ignore it.

Father Cullard’s chamber had a single window at the back, high on the wall. It let in soft morning light and late-night moonshine. Even with my growing height, I wasn’t tall enough to see into it.

I improvised by setting up small boxes at the foot of the window, once per night over the past week. I only stacked one box at a time to make sure it remained the following day, and that my ploy was not uncovered.

To get to the back of Cullard’s chamber, I had to venture through the courtyard, past the whipping tree, and into the gardens, which were tended by the Sisters of the House.

The tall rushes and snaking vineyards on a nearby fence did well to hide the boxes I had placed—three in all, sitting where I’d left them.

I took a deep breath, climbed onto the boxes, and tested my weight. When I knew it would hold, I put both feet on and lifted myself up. On my tiptoes, I could see into the Father’s chamber—

And there she was. Just as suspected. Her back turned to me. I could identify her because I knew Cyprilis’ stature well by this point—the bony shoulder blades, the narrow waist, the bright hair.

The Sister’s robe was a heap on the ground around her ankles. She stood naked and bony, pale buttocks bright from the the moonlight streaming into the room.

Father Cullard was on his knees in front of the girl, head bent while he peppered the severe dip of her shoulder to neck with kisses. His hand was trapped somewhere between her legs where I couldn’t see. His other hand was lost inside his robes.

The anger that rose up inside me was swift and vengeful. Bile came to my throat. I had to force it down. Cyprilis, sweet Cyprilis, stood rigid and confused in the moonlight.

My young rage could not be quelled—the betrayal, the deceit. I may have been young, but I knew wrongness when I saw it. Father Cullard, I thought grimly. Another name to add to my list along with Jeffrith the ruffian.

I had no idea what my list meant at that moment. Only that I had one.

Cullard’s eyes abruptly snapped past Cyprilis’ shoulders, the whites of his orbs tilting his gaze to the window because my head had blocked out a section of moonlight.

Gasping, I ducked before he could see me.

I staggered off the boxes, but not before I heard Cullard’s low voice on the other side of the wall.

“That is good, Sister Cyprilis. You are dismissed. Go rouse Brother Kaspus and send him in, yes?”

My knees were weak and wobbly as I stumbled through the garden. A heady daze washed over me, giving me tunnel vision. I began to realize my entire young life had been a lie. The House was a lie. It did not nurture the “Broken” . . . it created them.

This was not a place to lift the homeless out of despair. It only added to the despair I’d seen in the world, masking its sin with a varnish of good faith and honorable deeds for the needy and less fortunate.

Baylen, Cyprilis, myself. All the children who bullied others without recourse because that was “the way of the world” in Olhav.

We all had been victims of this nightmarish home, without having any means to get out of it.

Baylen was the lucky one, I realized. Getting exiled. Escaping this.

That night, I fled the House of the Broken for the first and final time. And I always wondered . . .

Maybe everything that transpired afterward would not have happened if I’d never left.