Page 66 of Dark Night of the Soul

We couldn’t stay here. We had to get out. Silas or no. I had to find a way out of this safe house and move us to the next. Walker Manor wasn’t an option, either.

I realized then my shirt was damp with blood. She’d nicked me with the knife. I picked it up from the floor, tossed it on the coffee table like it was full of poison. Blood smeared across the blade. Mine. By her hand.

But not her fault.

As I cleaned the wound and dressed it—hands steady through practice, not calm—I sensed the presence.

Angelic.

Cashiel.

The Seraphim angel who was once Edward Walker.

His wings spread out behind him. Snowy white threaded with gold. Shimmering in the pale light of the room.

Kneeling beside her. Looking her over. Not touching her. Then his bright blue eyes lifted to mine. We looked at each other a long moment in the silence.

He took a deep breath, expelled it. Eyed the bandage on my arm. Then understanding flickered in his gaze.

“I tried to help,” he said, his voice low. Quiet. “I’m not sure I succeeded.”

My brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“I was there. In the room with her. When they started.”

Heated fury coiled low and hot in my gut. “You were there. Why didn’t you—”

“I could not. You know that as well as I.”

I clenched my jaw. Tight.

“I gave her something, though,” he continued. “An anchor.”

I looked from him to her. Watched the slow rise and fall of her chest. “What sort of anchor?”

“She chose it,” he said.

I glanced down at my palms still riddled with crescent imprints from her nails. “My hands.”

“Yes.”

She chose me.

Anchored herself to me in the worst moment of her life. Because she knew what they were going to do to her. She knew they were going to turn her against me.

“Her nervous system is fighting itself,” Cashiel said. “The programming trying to complete what her will is refusing. That’s the pain, the conflict. The pain will come when she resists the programming. Every time her will fights their wiring, it will hurt.”

My gaze flickered up to his. Calm. Unshaken. Like he was stating a law of gravity.

“How did they do it?” I asked. “They didn’t crack her head open.”

Because she’d told me when she found the Knights in Antarctica, they’d drilled into the victims’ heads. Lobotomized some of them.

Cashiel shook his head. “They didn’t need to.”

“Then what?”

His eyes dropped briefly to her. To the way she lay too still on the floor, breath shallow but steady.