CHAPTER 2 — THE THREAD HAS RETURNED

ANGEL’S POV

The ash from my burned book is still warm when Dad closes the trunk of the car, and he doesn't say a single word the whole walk to the driver's seat.

The silence scares me more than the fire ever could. My father has an answer for everything—scripture for grief, proverbs for anger, discipline for fear—but right now he just stares at the road ahead as if it might swallow him if he blinks.

"Dad." I lean forward from the back seat, close enough that I could smell the smoke still clinging to his shirt. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He doesn't look at me. His knuckles are pale against the steering wheel, gripping it the way a man grips a ledge.

Mom keeps twisting around from the front seat to check on me, over and over, like she's counting to make sure I'm still there. Every time our eyes meet, she smiles too quickly and turns back around. I've seen my mother worried before. I've seen her scared for me during flu season. During the year I fell off the church roof trying to save a cat. This is different. This is the kind of fear that doesn't blink.

My chest feels tight. “Why are you two so quiet?”

Dad’s jaw shifts. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About you leaving.”

I nod, then press my forehead against the cool window and watch Ashbrook fold into the green hills behind us. The sky is already bright and warm, and the first morning sunlight spills softly over the fields.

Maybe that was all it was. He was afraid of losing his daughter.

Except something inside me refused to believe it: A father who is only sad about missing his daughter doesn’t burn her things. He doesn’t go pale at the sight of a symbol drawn in fire.

What if he isn’t afraid I’m leaving?

What if he’s afraid of what happens when I leave Ashbrook?

I pull my diary from my bag. My fingers shake as I sketch the circle with the eight lines from memory. 

I'd seen the symbol before—in a manuscript I found three years ago behind a false shelf in the church archive. The writing had been nothing like the prayers we were taught, and I’d copied half a page before Sister Agnes caught me and made me scrub the cold chapel floor for a week as punishment.

It was the same symbol. There was no mistaking it.

I take out my phone and type it into the search bar: ancient symbol circle eight lines meaning.

I scroll through page after page, but find nothing. Zodiac charts. Compass roses. Old maps. Nothing that matches. The white light from my screen makes my hands look pale. Then the screen goes black and reflects my face back at me. I look even paler.

Somehow, finding the symbol in an old manuscript had been less frightening than discovering there was no trace of it anywhere online.

"We're stopping at the church first," Dad says suddenly, turning off the main road.

"The church? Dad, I'll miss my train—"

"You have time." His voice leaves no room to argue.

Outside the window is our church. White stone. Tall cross. But today, the gates are wide open, and the church grounds are packed far beyond a normal Sunday crowd. Candles glow along every windowsill, their small flames dancing in the warm air. Flowers are tied across the altar rail, bright against the white walls. Children I used to teach in Sunday school hold up hand-painted signs that say OUR SAINT.

No doubt about it. The whole town of Ashbrook is here.

“Surprise, baby,” Mom whispers, squeezing my hand. Her eyes are shining, even though they were red with worry just an hour ago.

My stomach drops. “What is this?”

“A promise,” Dad says. “Before God.”

I press a palm to my chest. The happiness hurts. I wave and smile shyly as I walk past the chanting crowd. They move aside, making a path for me straight into the church.

And wow, it’s even more crowded inside.

Every face in the room turns toward the door the second I step through, with my parents behind me. For one dizzy second, with the candlelight flickering across all those familiar faces, I forgot to be afraid of anything.

Women cry. Men clap me on the shoulder.

“Angel, we’re so proud.”

“Come back to us.”

“Make us proud in the city.”

Bishop Marcus meets me at the altar with both hands out, and I place mine in his without thinking, the way I've done since I was six years old.

"Angel Hart." His voice carries through the whole cathedral. "Before you leave us, the Lord asks a question through me, and I ask that you answer with your whole heart."

"Yes, Bishop." I smile automatically. This is the kind of moment I've been taught to be grateful for.

"If the Lord demanded everything of you… would you surrender everything?"

"Yes." I don't hesitate.

"If he asked for your future?"

"Yes."

"Your family?"

The word catches for half a breath, because I can feel Mom's hand tighten in mine somewhere behind me, but I answer anyway. "Yes."

“Your life?”

“Yes.” My voice doesn’t shake. I mean it.

“Your heart?”

And there it is. One second. One small pause. My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Not my devotion. Not my obedience. My heart?

My gaze drifts behind the altar. The old iron cabinet stands open, ancient books hanging from chains inside. Beside it, Sister Inez kneels with her head bowed, rough rope binding her wrists. Her crime? Copying a prayer the Church forbade.

This was what the Church Academy had taught us to fear: forbidden knowledge, forbidden prayers, anything beyond the rules God had sealed away.

And yet, after asking for my innocence, the Lord would ask for my heart?

The Bishop is old, his hands shaking as he holds them before me waiting. The Chaplain stands beside him with a silver tray of candles, waiting for my answer. The small flames tremble in the quiet church.

Dad leans towards me and whispers, “Angel, what are you doing? Answer.”

Now all eyes were fixed on me.

I keep my eyes down. Obedience is goodness. That’s what I was taught.

I hesitate.

One second.

The image of a cold hand flashes through my mind. Water. I push it away.

“Yes, I will,” I say.

The church exhales with me.

My dad smiles widely.

The bishop makes the sign of the cross. “Hallelujah. After graduation, our saint will return here and take her vows. You will become a First-Class Nun. The highest rank in the Ashbrook order.”

My throat is dry.

It means authority over other nuns. No marriage. No children. No choice.

The congregation claps. They think I’m strong. They think I’m good. I should feel honored.

Instead, I feel trapped.

“Let us pray for our Saint,” the Chaplain says.  

We kneel.  

The congregation begins to pray, low and warm, a hundred voices rolling together like a tide, and I close my eyes and let it carry me the way it always has. Then, underneath it, threaded so quiet I almost mistake it for my own thought, someone whispers:

"The threads have begun moving again."

My eyes fly open. Nobody around me has stopped praying. Nobody's lips even moved wrong. I search the crowd for whoever said it and find only bowed heads, folded hands, candlelight — nothing. I must have imagined it. I close my eyes again, and the world goes black for three full seconds.

A cold hand closes around my wrist. Crimson eyes glowing beneath dark water. A voice, low and certain, right against my ear:

“Don't die, little thread. I found you.”

I gasp back into my body so hard that Bishop Marcus stops mid-prayer to steady my shoulder.

“Child? Are you well?”

“Just dizzy,” I lie, and my own voice sounds far away to me. “I’ll pray harder.”  

I press my rosary between my palms and pray harder, like I can drown the voice out with my own, and that's when the chaplet snaps clean off my neck. The silver beads scatter across the marble floor in every direction, except they don't scatter randomly at all. Every bead rolls back toward me—uphill, against the slope of the marble—as if gravity has forgotten whose side it's on. Until one bead stops, perfectly still, right against the toe of my shoe.

The cold hits next. A wall of cold, like someone opened a door onto winter in the middle of a room full of candles. I can still see everyone, but the light has gone strange and grey, and every person in the cathedral is kneeling in prayer except one.

Someone is standing at the back of the church.

There is no face I can see. Only a silhouette standing perfectly still at the back of the cathedral, while a hundred bowed heads stay bowed around it. I blink, and the figure is gone. My heart is slamming so hard I can feel it in my throat.

"Angel." The voice again, closer now, right at my shoulder. "The wall is open."

Then the light snaps back to normal, warm and gold, and everyone is exactly where they were, praying as if nothing happened at all. Nobody looks at me strangely. Nobody else noticed. Only my hands are shaking.

Finally, the prayer ends, and a few elders escort me to the station. Outside, the town presses rosaries into my hands until I can barely hold them. Children cling to my sleeves, elders bless me with trembling hands, and everyone says the same thing in different words—that I'll come home a First-Class Nun, that Ashbrook has never had a saint like me, that I was born for this.

At the station, Mom hugs me until I can hardly breathe. She cries into my shoulder until my collar is damp, telling me to eat, to sleep, to write to her every week. I hold onto her because some part of me already knows I'll miss her more than I'm letting myself feel right now. Dad doesn't cry. He just grips my shoulders hard, and looks at me like he's trying to memorize my face.

“Three things,” he says. “Pray at every sunrise. Never remove your cross. And stop filling your head with myths that were never meant for you.”

“Yes, Dad.” It's easier to agree than to explain that the myths might be filling in the gaps he refuses to.

The train pulls away, and I keep waving until Ashbrook disappears completely behind the pale morning haze. Only then does something in my chest finally loosen for the first time all day.

***

I spend the journey with Dad's three rules circling my head, and one voice beneath them whispering about threads.

Until Bucharest.

Nothing about the city resembles Ashbrook. Car horns, street music, voices, and exhaust rush at me from every direction. People wear clothes that would have made Sister Agnes faint. I'm still staring up at the towering buildings, mouth hanging open like a tourist, when a girl with a rolling suitcase and hazel eyes stops beside me in the taxi line.

“You look like you've seen a ghost,” she says, grinning. “You’re going to Kingsbridge? First year too? I'm Juliet.”

“Angel,” I manage a laugh. “Sorry. I've never seen a city this big.”

We end up sharing a cab, and Juliet talks the entire ride — about her boyfriend, the best coffee near campus — until she spots my diary poking out of my bag and gasps like she's found treasure.

“Whoa. Are you into creepy stuff too? I love ghost stories. I’m obsessed with myths.”  

My heart jumps. “Really?”  

“Yeah. Most people think it’s weird.” She grins, but then she finally notices my veil properly. Her head tilts, and her smile slowly fades. “Wait… you’re, like, becoming a nun?”

"I'm training to be one, yes."

“Huh. I always thought that'd be kind of nice, honestly. Simple. No boyfriend drama.” She laughs at herself. “But I love Marco too much for that. I'd rather have a messy, complicated life with him than a peaceful one without him.”

“But what about your vows?” I ask, genuinely confused. “Don't you want something to give your whole life to?”

“I don't have vows, Angel.” She shrugs, easily, like the idea doesn't weigh anything at all. “Why does it have to be your whole life, though? Can't it just be a really big part of it?”

I don't have an answer. Nobody has ever asked me that question before, and it settles into my chest and stays there long after we've stopped talking.

At last, Kingsbridge University spreads out in front of me like something out of one of my forbidden books — dorm towers taller than the church spire back home, students laughing on the grass, a bookstore glowing warm through its front window.

Freedom.  

A couple walks past holding hands without a shred of shame on their faces, and I catch myself staring, thinking: they're not afraid?

Nobody here knows me—I realize, and the thought feels so light it almost lifts me off my feet. Nobody knows I’m the Saint of Ashbrook. I could be anyone. I could be everything Dad said I could never be.

The joy has barely settled in my chest when a beggar drops to his knees in front of Juliet and me. He crawls across the cold pavement, crying and laughing at the same time, then presses his lips to the ground beside my shoe as if I’m someone meant to be worshiped.

“Please get up,” I whisper, stepping back. 

He looks up. Tears cut tracks through the dirt on his face. “You don’t remember.”  

“Remember what?”  

He laughs again. Before I can stop him, he cuts his palm with a shard of broken glass and traces the exact symbol from my burned book in blood.

I can't look away.

The beggar smiles.

I can't breathe.

Security moves in. But before they can touch the beggar, a loud engine roars through the air. The sound is deep and powerful, the kind that makes people turn their heads. I look across the road just as a flashy black car pulls to a stop.

A guy who looks a few years older than me steps out.

His red-streaked hair falls over a sharp jaw, silver earrings catching the light in one ear. His coat fits too perfectly. His watch catches the sunlight when he reaches for the door. But it isn't the money that catches me. It's his presence. Heavy, like the air around him changes the moment he arrives.

Every girl on the sidewalk stops talking. Even Juliet beside me makes a small, helpless sound, like she has forgotten how to breathe.

He walks straight through the crowd as it parts for him, like the sidewalk belongs to him. He stops in front of me for one long second. His eyes meet mine. Then he turns to the security guards without even blinking.

“Get rid of that,” he says, nodding towards the symbol. Then he points at the beggar. “And make sure I never see him around the school again.”

The guards move at once, like his word is law here.

“Yes, sir.”

They scrub the symbol from the pavement as fast as they can. Just like that, everyone relaxes. People start laughing it off, calling it a street performance, some strange welcome-week prank. Everyone except me.

My whole body is cold in a way that has nothing to do with the weather.

The stranger turns back toward me. He doesn't even glance at Juliet, who is still staring at him with her mouth wide open. He walks straight toward me, his gaze heavy and hungry.

"Hi, Angel," he purrs, his voice deep, smooth enough to sound almost intimate. "Call me Vincent."

“How do you know my name?” I ask before I can stop myself.

He smiles. Just a little. Like even that small smile costs him something.

“Your friend just said it.”

I look at Juliet. She only shrugs, confused. She’s sure she never said my name.

I stare at him, unimpressed and unmoved—the only girl on the street who seems to be. He holds out his hand, but I don’t take it. I turn back to the beggar instead, ignoring him completely.

I don’t trust this guy. Who is he? And why is he trying to control what happens here?

But even from the corner of my eye, I catch something flickering behind his dark eyes. Surprise. Almost disbelief. Like he had never seen someone look at him with that kind of indifference before.

I refuse to look at him again.

Instead, I watch the security guards drag the beggar towards the gate. He kicks and laughs as they pull him along, his bleeding hand still raised towards me like an offering. Then, just as they drag him past me, he twists around one last time.

His eyes find mine.

There is no madness in his face now. No confusion. No fear. Only a strange, terrible certainty.

He smiles as his voice breaks into a cold whisper.

“The Thread has returned—”