Page 1 of Wicked Salvation

I

LUCIAN

The weight of death never gets easier to bear.

I’ve been to funerals before.

I know what they smell like—wax, incense, aged pages.

I know the way they sound—prayers, grieving relatives, whispers sweeping through the congregation whenever some things are said from the pulpit.

I also know the way they feel—a piece of your world doesn’t exist anymore, leaving a gaping hole that people desperately try to fill with empty promises during the funeral.

But this funeral? It’s surreal.

Vivienne wasn’t supposed to die this young.

She was the closest thing I had to a best friend; apart from my brothers. Vivienne, the girl who never judged, the one who welcomed me with open arms when everyone figured I was a sinner they needed to avoid.

I can’t tell what hurts worse—the fact that I justknowthat Vivienne didn’t jump from the window, or that this funeral is so obviously a coverup.

She deserves better than this.

It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours since she died, yet here we are—packed into a stuffy church listening to the preacher drone on about his heaven and howdeath atones for all sins. Even when you’re just a person in love, apparently.

There was no investigation.

It was a suicide, they concluded.

The leaked photo was doctored, they decided.

A tragedy for her of course, but nothing out of the ordinary.

A sad inevitability. A girl too weak to carry the weight of the world.

The school needed this funeral to happen, to erase Vivienne as cleanly as they would scrub spilled wine from the altar. Another life turned into a lesson about sin and consequence.

I clench my fists, swallowing thickly.

My suit feels too tight, tension building at my temples from pulling my hair back so neatly. If Vivienne could see me, she’d probably laugh. But she’d be appreciative all the same. My suit, my shirt, my tie, my shoes—they’re all the color of a midnight sky.

Incense swirls in the air.

The priest drones on, his words meaningless.

At the front of the church is a dark wood coffin adorned with white roses.

Vivienne would have hated them. She prefers dark red dahlias—another example of how little the school cared about her, how hastily this thing was put together. Those flowers look like they were plucked out of the rose garden this morning. Marita couldn’t even be involved in planning the funeral of the woman she loved.

I’m sitting in the back of the church, a pew to myself.

During the priest’s break from his verbal diarrhea, the nuns start to sing, their voices rising like mist—delicate and hollow. The school’s faculty stand in solemn rows. The students sit stiff-backed in their pews, wearing their “grief” like another school uniform. They’ll forget her within the hour, while those of us who cared about her will have to carry our sadness for the rest of our lives.

In the front, where the honored mourners sit, is Eden.

With the families of everyone “closest” to her—Marita, Cedric, Alistair.

Withhisfamily.