She looked back at the Fallen’s leader. “You’re a sin-eater.”
Gabriel’s head fell. Maria moved to the table and ran her hand over the worn wood. And she saw them. She saw the vials lined up, name tags on each. Michael, Selaphiel, Barachiel, Jegudiel, Raphael, Uriel . . . Maria . . .
Maria gasped at seeing her name. At seeing her vial of blood depleted and used. He had eaten her sins. Gabriel had taken the old-fashioned ritual that had died out years ago and tried to cleanse her soul of any sin by taking it on himself.
“I can’t see them die with so much evil in their veins. I love them. They’re my brothers.” Gabriel’s voice cracked. “They’re all I have. If there is any way to save them, I’ll do it.”
Maria’s heart broke for the man who held such a burden in his soul. “And me?” she asked.
Gabriel sighed but, meeting her gaze head-on, said, “Raphael will kill you, Maria. It’s who he is. That will never change.” Her pulse thundered in her chest at his frank words. He walked to where she stood and placed his hands on her shoulders. “When Raphe brought you home I had to protect us. I couldn’t send you back to our torturers only for you to tell them where we lived. I had to protect my brothers . . . I couldn’t save your life, but I wanted to save your soul.”
Maria nodded, a lump building in her throat at the words he was saying. That he was trying to save her when all was lost . . . and that Raphael, no matter how hard she wished otherwise, would eventually stop her heart.
She covered Gabriel’s hand with her own. If he felt her shaking, he was kind enough not to say so. “You’re a good man, Gabriel.” Maria smiled, though it was strained. “You would have made a good priest. Better than the ones who mistreated you.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, genuinely seeming to mean it. He stepped back. Maria watched him open the closet doors and pull out the bloodied scourge. She watched him de-robe and drop to his knees on the stone floor. Maria turned before she could see the scourge ripping into him, but she heard the horrific sounds of the rope hitting flesh.
In a daze, Maria shut the door, her mind racing with too many thoughts to count. The Brethren’s existence, what had been done to Gabriel and his brothers . . . and Raphael. The pain he must have suffered as a child. The torture . . . the rape.
And despite it all, all that they had shared, he would kill her.
It was simply who he was.
Maria followed her feet back to Raphael’s suite. He still slept soundly. Maria shed her clothes, putting them back where she found them. Then she climbed back into bed. Raphael’s eyes cracked open, his arm threading around her waist and pulling her near. His eyebrows pulled together in tired confusion. “I needed to use the bathroom,” she lied. “Sleep.” Raphael, still half asleep, awarded Maria with the brightest, most beautiful smile she had ever witnessed. It left her completely enamored.
This man . . . despite it all, he owned her heart.
Raphael closed his eyes, his fingers finding Maria’s hair and sleepily wrapping it around his hand. Maria watched him as his chest evened out with slumber. She ran her finger down his cheek, admiring his beauty. Her eyes dropped to the emblem on his chest. The emblem that the Fallen wore to cover the upturned cross Father Quinn had forced on their skin as children. Maria closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had been hurt, tortured, and broken. But she hadn’t been taken against her will sexually, not by Bridge, and not by Raphael either. She knew it must have been because he was robbed of that right, had had his dignity ripped away by abusive men. She hadn’t been told over and over, each day for years and years, that she was evil and going to hell. Tears tumbled down Maria’s cheeks. She had been loved. For as long as she had had them in her life, her mother, father, and brother had loved her fiercely.
Raphael pulled her closer, as if he sensed her emotional distress. What did Raphael know of love? How old was he when he was orphaned? Had anyone ever loved him? How did his parents die?
As Maria studied the face of her soon-to-be killer, she couldn’t seem to find it in herself to judge him, to cast him aside as a sinner, a murderer of the flesh. All she saw was a little boy lost. Maria’s Mother Superior had told her that sin was simply due to the absence of love from one’s heart. Raphael needed to kill, was consumed by racking pain, haunting dreams, and the need to inflict pain. Maria’s vow to God had been to love Him and others regardless of their transgressions. She thought of the martyrs she was named after. Two women who died because their faith was so strong they paid the ultimate sacrifice with no regrets. Maria Goretti, a young girl, stabbed fourteen times for refusing a boy’s sexual advances. And Saint Agnes of Rome. A Christian in Rome when being a follower of Christ was forbidden. As an early teen, as punishment for being a Christian, she was dragged naked through the streets to a brothel where men were ordered to rape her simply for having a faith. Stories said her hair instantly grew so long it covered her body, shielding her modesty from the hungry eyes of her attackers.