The walls had been whispering for nearly two hours. Not whole words. At least, not yet.

It was a low-pitched wail, a cry for help, that beat against the paper-thin plaster of the townhouse and trickled through the air vents, the windows, the floorboards, the crawlspace that Diego used to hide in as a child, when his mother and father were still unhappily married. The more that he listened, the more that the voice gained substance in the quiet. Out. It wanted out. It begged for an escape. The walls were no place for the soul of a god.

“Mom!” yelled Diego. “Come up here, quick!”

Clothes hangers falling, the wham of a suitcase slamming on the floor. Then his mother’s voice as she crawled into the attic. “What is it?” she said.

Diego put a caramel finger to his lips. He tapped on the wall that they shared with their neighbors, and they knelt. Listened.

“Shit,” she whispered. “Another one, already? No wonder the Garcia’s left so quickly.

Just ignore it, Diego.”

“But it’s dying,” he said.

“And you think you can stop that? How about the Alvarez’s, could you have helped them? People separate from their god all the time, and we don’t want the DRP thinking it’s us.”

Diego reluctantly peeled from the wall. He let the god’s voice fade into the darkness, and he followed his mother down the ladder from the attic.

She fixed him with an eye that was as dark as his own. “Have you finished packing yet?”

He fumbled with a button that dangled from his shirt, that his mother had re-sewn a hundred times, rather than wasting any money on a tailor. Since his father had left, their budget had been tight. “I don’t want to go.”

“And I don’t want to send you.” His mother crossed her arms. “You think I want to fight in a war we didn’t start? I was done with the army. Ten years is enough.”

Diego shuffled back to the base of the ladder, his ear tilted up to the mutterings above. If they could hear Mrakau, or this piece of Mrakau, could the god hear them?

He lowered his eyes. “Can’t I come with you?”

“Mijo,” she said, cupping his chin. “I wish that you could, but the barracks aren’t a place for twelve-year-old boys.”

He already knew this. She had told him before. But the thought of leaving her—his heart, his home, the life that they had built from the ashes of the past—if only temporarily, felt decidedly wrong.

Diego’s face hardened. “Do I have to stay with him?”

She knew who he meant: the corruptor, the defiler, the twice god-killer. Diego had never had a chance to meet his step-father. And that was intentional. “They’ll take good care of you.”

Her bottom lip trembled as if it didn’t believe her. “Maybe I’ve kept you apart for too long.”

Diego tried to laugh, but it died in his throat. Five years was five too few, in his book.

His mother checked her watch. “Now, that’s enough moping. Your plane leaves tomorrow, and you haven’t even packed.” She shooed him into his bedroom.

The soul in the attic seemed to fester in her absence. It spoke to the soul that lived in his chest, the piece of Mrakau that he had been given at birth. What kind of a person would rip out their god-soul, stash it in the wall, and leave it there to die?

He thought he knew of one. And he would see him soon.

They went to the airport early the next morning. Norfolk International was already awake; the terminal was swarming with military personnel who had answered the call to defend their faith.

He and his mother said goodbye at the gate. She cupped his chin, and she whispered a prayer to her son and to Mrakau. She even made the sign of the cross on her chest, as if that could have made any difference anymore. Old habits died hard. “I love you, mijo.”

“I love you too, mom.”

And then, right before she watched him walk away, she grabbed his hand and squeezed three times. Once for strength. Once for luck. And once just in case she never came back.