Saint, Sorrow, Sinner (The Gideon Testaments Book 3), page 1
Saint, Sorrow, Sinner
The Gideon Testaments Book Three
Freydís Moon
Copyright © 2024 by Freydís Moon
All rights reserved. ISBN: 9798872941170
Cover Artwork and Interior Illustration by M.E. Morgan
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Also by Freydís ☽
Exodus 20:3
Three Kings
With A Vengeance
The Gideon Testaments
Heart, Haunt, Havoc
Wolf, Willow, Witch
Saint, Sorrow, Sinner
Praise For ☽
Olivia Waite named Heart, Haunt, Havoc a New York Times Best Romance Book of 2023
"An enchanting conclusion to The Gideon Testaments, Saint, Sorrow, Sinner’s religious horror and sapphic romance deftly weave together into a story that’s bloody, rich, and tender."
—Morgan Dante author of Providence Girls
"Eerie as a haunting, biting as the midwinter night, and as tender as the ache of new love, Heart, Haunt, Havoc lingers long past the last page."
—K. M. Enright author of Mistress of Lies
"This capstone to the Gideon Testaments trilogy draws together its entire cast in a vivid, fast-paced haunting, where queer bodies are the brutal, beautiful flashpoint between predator and prey.”
—Rien Gray author of Double Exposure
Content Note
Saint, Sorrow, Sinner contains sensitive material, including but not limited to: sexual content, body horror, animal death, horror, depiction of mania, discussion of sexual abuse, familial abuse, and religious abuse, bloody gore, drowning, depiction of panic, suicide ideation
Chapter one
Sophia gripped the edge of the vanity, staring at her distorted reflection in the steamy bathroom mirror, and listened to the house on Staghorn Way erupt. Someone huffed, exhaling through a frustrated groan. Another person rambled, out of breath and strained— wait, wait, Bishop, put that down. Hold on, so . . .
The witch spoke like a seedy politician. “Look, I don’t expect you to be thrilled, but it’s done, okay? I did what I did and—”
“Lincoln integrated with a demon, Tehlor! ¿Qué chingado?”
“And he’s my problem now,” she snapped. “Put on your big brujo pants, because we’ve got wolves sniffing at our door and they’re a lot meaner than that one.”
“Don’t point at me.” Sophia recognized his voice: the wolf-man who conjured fire. She tipped her head toward the open doorway, listening. “If you kill me, you kill her,” Lincoln said. A chair scraped the floor. Footsteps beat, slow and steady. “Your call, Bishop.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Stranger. Sophia narrowed her eyes and held her breath, straightening in place. “Can we—”
“You crossed the line,” Bishop interrupted.
Tehlor barked out a laugh. A single hah. “Oh, please. Get off your high horse, sweetheart—”
“Enough.” Palms connected. The sound cracked like thunder.
The celestial gong rattled Sophia’s skull, panging in her chest, dizzying her. She flattened one hand on the countertop and caught herself on the doorframe with the other, enduring a harsh ripple of nausea. Blazing, hellish heat scorched her throat and sizzled the base of her spine. She shifted her focus to the blurry outline of her upper half. That noise, whatever it’d been, shot through her body like an arrow, reverberating from her forehead to her ankles. She inhaled deeply, staring at her button nose, heart-shaped face, cutting cheekbones, slender throat. Shared things. Points of recognition she’d once found in lost places. The longer she looked, the more she uncovered—Amy De’voreaux’s bright eyes, straight teeth, perfectly plucked brows—and the more she saw, the harder it was to tear her gaze away.
The strange church bell faded, and the pain did, too, leaving whispers behind. Ghostly voices chittered between Sophia’s ears. They surfaced when she slept, coasted through her mind on quiet mornings, and refused to let her rest. Right then, she caught the tail end of a tortured howl and the featherlight tickle of her sister’s laughter on the edge of her jaw. She swallowed bile and hot saliva.
Downstairs, one of the newcomers said, “Now, tell us what happened.” He paused to sigh. “In great detail.”
The steam cleared and the muggy bathroom cooled. Sophia watched her fair beige skin appear, freckled and wholly plain, and tried to ignore the soft, purplish dents beneath each eye. So much like their mother, an unrefined version of her sister. She let go of the doorframe and brought her hand to the glass, watching familiarity bend beneath her fingertips. Me, she thought, convincing herself, that’s me, right?
The witch, Tehlor, told the story, and the wolf-man, Lincoln, interrupted every fourth sentence. We infiltrated a cult, she said.Haven, he added. Sophia’s skin reached for bone.
They described a mockery of worship. Pretending to praise God at church, casing the congregation’s rental at the barbecue, and finding a young woman locked away on the second story. The Breath of Judas. Tehlor’s voice darkened. They were killing women, Colin. The conversation muddled. They were going to use her to—
Each person became interchangeable, warped under an onslaught of sudden lightheadedness. What’re you talking about andTehlor’s not lying and what the hell did you two do? Sophia’s heart drummed hard. You don’t get it; you’re not hearing me. She pawed at a drawer, yanking it open. Of course we wanted it for ourselves, but everything changed . . . Her reflection shifted. She did not turn her head, but the thing trapped inside the glass did. Sophia choked on a sob. Willed herself to stay present, to remain in her body. This wasn’t some Heaven’s Gate bullshit. But the woman in the mirror had Amy’s eyes, her blood-slicked smile, and wore their father’s crucifix. Sophia grasped the handle on a pair of shears she’d found in the primary bedroom. Don’t look at me like that, Bishop. You weren’t there.
“One,” Sophia’s reflection sang. The poor rendition of Amy was stitched together by the chaotic energy shackling Sophia’s soul. It was a puzzle upended and remade. Pieces missing. Not quite complete. “Two.” Her cracked lips spread into a grin. Black streamed from the corner of her mouth. “Look at you.”
Rose and Phillip were drowning them. Raping them, they were—
“Three, four . . .” Her raspy voice distorted, turning wicked and slow, like a sun-ripened record. “Baptize the whore.”
Sophia brought the scissors to her long brown locks and snipped. She steadied her trembling hands, tried and failed to keep an ugly sob from echoing through the bathroom, and cut, cut, cut. The blade ran across the shell of her ear on a clumsy snip. Panic warred with the magic festering inside her. Somewhere deep; somewhere she couldn’t reach. She exhaled through gritted teeth and aimed another harsh snap at her hair.
Get rid of it, she thought. Gone, go, get it off me.
Tehlor Nilsen, quiet as a wraith, appeared in the doorway and snatched her wrist.
Sophia froze. She thought of Watership Down, destruction and homemaking. Foxes, wilderness, and rabbits raised in hutches. She’d never met a woman like Tehlor before. She strained against the witch’s hold, but Tehlor simply narrowed her eyes and squeezed.
“Where the hell did you find those?” Tehlor asked.
Fright sharpened into something else. Sophia tried to jerk away—mistake—and yelped when the taller woman pushed her backward, wrangling the shears out of her grasp. Get away, run, stop. She growled and squeaked but couldn’t speak. Considered sinking her teeth into the soft, pale skin above Tehlor’s sweater. She hissed instead. Clawed the same way she had when Haven initiates had taken her. Remembered calloused palms around her thighs, her sister’s fingernails on her biceps, and Rose’s perfume. She thrashed and swatted. Swore she was breathing but couldn’t find any air. She gasped and swallowed, sucking in breath after breath, and still couldn’t breathe.
“Hey, hey, whoa—okay, look at me,” Tehlor said.
Metal on porcelain, clank-click. Soft hands. Warm too.
Tehlor gripped Sophia’s wet cheeks and held her still. “Stop,” she whispered, then again, pulling her full mouth around the word. Stop. “Breathe, Sophia.” Tehlor inhaled deeply. Sophia followed. After three breaths, Sophia’s vision stabilized. “Again.” Tehlor exhaled. Sophia’s heart rate refused to slow. She swallowed, tracking the glide of Tehlor’s bony thumbs beneath her eyes, swiping at stray tears. “You’re a fuckin’ mess, you know that?”
“And you’re a bitch,” Sophia muttered, waterlogged and embarrassingly weak.
She offered a mean smirk. “A bitch who made you breakfast.”
Sophia snorted. Burned toast and shitty scrambled eggs wasn’t really breakfast, but she shrugged anyway. “I thought Lincoln did the cooking.”
Tehlor rolled her eyes. A spotted rat sat on her haunches outside the bathroom, watching. When Sophia glanced at her, Tehlor said, “Gunnhild,” like a teacher would to a student. “Where’d you find these?” Tehlor asked again. She dropped her hands from Sophia’s cheeks and picked the shears up out of the sink.
“The big room.” Sophia wiped her nose and sniffled.
“Did you go through my shit?” She arched a brow.
“Did you expect me not to?”
Clear, gray eyes sharpened. Sophia had spent the last two years avoiding
people like Tehlor Nilsen. She’d seen women striding down sidewalks, laughing together inside cafés, buying discount groceries at the supermarket, but ferocity was something the second De’voreaux daughter had taught herself, and unrefined danger had never reflected back at her until right then. She swallowed hard, lifting her chin to meet Tehlor’s harsh gaze.
“You’re a murderer with a demon-guy on standby. You think I wouldn’t find a way to protect myself?” Sophia added, rallying confidence.
Tehlor nodded slowly. She placed the shears beneath Sophia’s chin, pressing the sharp tip against her throat. “And you think that demon-guy wouldn’t kill you for less?” She offered a tired, playful look, one that said c’mon, be for real, and popped her lips, annoyed. She pulled the scissors away, gesturing to the toilet seat. “Sit down. Let me fix this hack job you started.”
Sophia didn’t move until Tehlor flapped her hands, waving the shears toward the toilet again. She sat on the lid and listened for movement or voices downstairs. Hushed chatter came and went, fluttering upward from the kitchen.
“Ariana Grande would bankrupt an orphanage for this kind of volume,” Tehlor said. She raked her fingers through Sophia’s wet mane. “What’s with the haircut?”
I’m sick of looking like her. “Wanted a change.”
“Uh-huh. And the panic attack?”
“What about it?”
Tehlor played with her hair, pushing it around, scraping her short nails across Sophia’s scalp. “Happen often?”
“Couldn’t say.”
The witch hummed. She didn’t sound convinced. “Well, you took off a bunch in the front, so it looks like we’re doing a pixie or a mullet. Pick.”
Sophia stiffened. Her cheeks flared hot. One time, a while ago, before Haven split from the Austin homestead, Amy had plucked wildflowers while they were on a walk near their parents’ house and tucked the stems into Sophia’s braid. Amy had told her about Daniel. He’s wonderful, and godly, and good, Sophia. He’s just a little damaged. And Sophia had ignored the bruise on her sister’s wrist, shaped like a man’s palm. She blinked away the burn behind her lashes.
“Mullet it is,” Tehlor decided. “If you don’t dig it, we’ll chop it off and turn you into Tinker Bell. Hold still.”
The shears made thick, blunt sounds as Tehlor snipped and shaped. Brown, wavy chunks fell across Sophia’s socked feet, striping the fluffy bath mat. After a while, she closed her eyes, listening to Tehlor make pleased chirps, and anticipating the next snap of metal blades. When Tehlor told her to turn around, she did. And when the heaviest part of her locks gave way, she sighed.
“Are you going to kill me?” Sophia asked, so suddenly it startled her.
Tehlor stilled. She rested her slender hand on Sophia’s shoulder. Silence filled the bathroom, and that long, dreadful pause curdled in Sophia’s gut. But finally, the witch said, “No.”
Another few minutes went by, quiet except for the snipping of scissors and the distant spray from the kitchen sink, until Tehlor set the shears down and pointed at the mirror. Sophia stood, stepping in front of the vanity to assess herself. Different.Thrill jolted through her. Her hair was short and choppy, sticking to her nape and curling away from her temples. Boyish, almost.
Tehlor scooped Gunnhild into her palm and leaned against the doorframe. “It’ll look better when it’s dry.”
Sophia shifted her gaze to Tehlor’s reflection, meeting her eyes in the mirror. They studied each other for too long, poised on opposite sides of an impossible conversation. Sophia remembered Tehlor at the revival, levitating, eyes milk-white, like a snake about to shed. How small she’d looked after that, heaped in the bathtub, barely breathing. She remembered Amy, soft as a hutch-raised rabbit, tender and easy to pull apart.
“Do you regret it?” Sophia asked, as if Tehlor could read her mind. Maybe she could.
“Is that what’s goin’ on your pretty little head?” Tehlor cinched her brow. A single tattooed finger followed Gunnhild’s spine, stroking like a metronome. “The only thing I regret is forgetting your sister existed for long enough to let her stab me. If I could go back, I’d kill her first. Well, okay, not first. Second. Right after Rose.”
Sophia had known liars her entire life, but she’d never met a liar like Tehlor. Someone so familiar with dishonesty that the act itself seemed second nature.
Tehlor rolled her lips and flared her nostrils, inhaling a deep breath. “They fucked you up, didn’t they?”
Sophia recalled the exact moment Daniel’s rib cage had snapped through his skin, bending like antlers. She’d wanted to wield that power, to break those bones, to be the last earthly thing he saw. But she’d plunged her hands—corpse hands—into her sister’s stomach instead. Tore through to her core. Unmade her.
She flicked her eyes away from Tehlor and looked at her reflection again. “Who’s downstairs?”
“Oh, we called a priest, actually. For the whole portal to hell thing you’ve got goin’ on.”
Sophia whipped toward her, teeth set, fighting the urge to make a fist or grab the shears.
Tehlor sputtered through a laugh. “Calm down, I’m kidding.” She grimaced. “Sort of.”
Chapter two
Salvation was idealistic. Silly, immature, and learned. But it was a concept Sophia understood, something she could tuck into tired places where defeat tried to burrow. She stood at the top of the stairs and prayed to a silent savior, repeating familiar thoughts like a comfortable tic. Almighty, have mercy. She pulled at the webbing between each finger and pushed her feet against the floor.
“Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed,” she whispered, swallowing the stone in her throat.
Sometimes she tested her own limitations for belief. Asked herself questions, nitpicked familiar verses, lashed out at Christ for his role in her abandonment. But no matter how often she invited doubt to take root, she knew one thing for certain: no creation could exist without its creator, and she’d already met the devil.
Okay. She pushed her freshly dried hair out of her face and slid her hand along the banister, descending the staircase one step at a time. A cinnamon-scented candle flickered on the table in the sitting room. An unfamiliar person stood next to the fireplace with their thumbs pushed through their belt loops and a holstered pistol strapped to their hip. At the mouth of the hallway, another newcomer made a soft, reverent sound, ah-hah but gentler. She gave him a once-over, glancing from his speckled brown socks to his fox face, narrow and studious, a handsome example of proper symmetry. Behind him, Lincoln stood at attention and Tehlor leaned against the back of the couch, cradling her rat.
Sophia switched her attention back and forth, watching the man in the hallway step forward while the person across from her adjusted their glasses.
“You’re Sophia, right? I’m Colin.” He rolled his sleeves to his elbows, exposing odd, angular tattoos scrawled across his fair skin. He smiled and shot a nervous glance at his companion. “Colin Hart. I specialize in hauntings—”
“He’s an exorcist—”
“Bishop,” Colin hissed, pursing his lips.
Sophia steeled her expression. She set her mouth and locked her knees, hyperaware of the gold crucifix seated on her sternum.
“I’m a brujo. She’s a witch. He’s . . .” They flexed their jaw. “Not supposed to be alive.” Bishop lifted their brows and quirked their head, meeting her icy gaze. “What’re you?”
The question stunted her. What am I? She shied away from the magic humming in her stomach, spreading like lichen.
“I’m nothing.” She stared hard at Bishop. Gold bolted across their eyes, fast as lightning. “What’s a brujo?”
“A spicy witch,” Tehlor said, sighing. “Okay, look, they know everything, okay? They know about Haven, they know about the Breath of Judas, they know you’re—”
“Being held against my will?”
“An accomplice,” Lincoln rasped.
“A participant,” Tehlor corrected. She saddled Sophia with a knowing look. “She controlled a corpse, remember? Tore big sis to pieces.”
