Page 92 of Last Rites

They bound my wrists and ankles to the metal rings, rendering me helpless.

I swallowed a sob.

Willing.

I had to be willing.

I was barely secured when a scuffle drew my notice. A few feet away, Fletcher held Violette, and above me, Matina seized Klaus and dragged him back from the altar. The two restrained the stunned Sentinels and turned them to face the crowd of citizens.

Merrick strode toward them while wearing a chilling smirk.

“Violette, Klaus,” he boomed. “You are found guilty of infidelity and disloyalty to the Right Hand. Therefore, you are unworthy of witnessing Eeus’s arrival or partaking in his blessings.”

If I could think of anything beyond the cold stone grating against my shoulder blades and the ropes drawing my limbs tight, I might have anticipated what would happen next. Instead, the shock of it stole my breath when Matina and Fletcher drew twin ceremonial knives and dragged them across Klaus and Violette’s throats. Blood sprayed, splattering the floor where Violette and Klaus were dropped to writhe in their death throes.

His wife. Merrick had his own wife murdered. Callously. Cruelly. I knew he hadn’t loved her, but some small part of me still managed to be surprised.

It was the same part that clung to a shred of denial about what was about to become of me.

My breaths came ragged, hinting at an impending coughing fit as I squirmed. It was impossible to lie still. Too uncomfortable in knowing what awaited me, willing or no.

When Merrick closed in, looming overhead holding a gleaming dagger, my eyes went immediately to the weapon.

Would it burrow in deep, or cut through cleanly?

Would my neck be split and left leaking, pooling blood across this altar while the townspeople looked on?

Would I feel cold as the world grew distant?

Would it hurt?

The longer I looked at the knife, the more I realized it wasn’t at all like the ceremonial blades Fletcher and Matina had wielded. Instead, it looked eerily similar to Kit’s knife—the one he never failed to carry. But why would Merrick have it?

He bent in, and I cursed myself for how I flinched. His responding chuckle was low and rough, and it grated on me as I stared up at him, breathing too hard, too fast.

“You made this far too easy,” Merrick murmured, quietly enough it was clear the words were meant for only me. “Having you throw yourself upon this makes me feel almost cheated out of my vengeance, but I believe I’ll have it in a different way.” He bent closer, and the shadows on his face frightened me all the more.

He was ghoulish, hovering inches away and backed by the Vessel made of stolen bones.

“I’ll see you suffer yet,” he hissed, “so you’ll rue the day you were born the way I always have.”

It ached.

Still.

After all these months and years, there remained a part of me that just wanted to be his brother. Simply that without the qualifiers that felt more like denials. I clung to childish fantasies about the man I’d thought he was, and my desire to be like him one day. But Merrick was a driven man. Driven to cruelty. To madness. To hatred of me and the life he accused me of stealing.

He would have to live with that, and I supposed—I feared—I would have to die with it. I’d hoped for more time, for the militia to sweep in and spare me this. But we were alone in here, the people of Ashpoint and their god, and the reckoning Merrick sought to bring upon the world.

While I held my breath and the mournful cry that built in my lungs, Merrick faced the onlookers.

“My half-brother is guilty of the same crimes as my late wife. Disloyalty. Collusion. And his faith in Eeus has been false from the start.”

I didn’t shy from those truths; I wasn’t even ashamed of them, but the next thing Merrick said shook me to my core.

“But he is not alone. As you all know, he was brought here by another nonbeliever, an outsider who should have stayed away.” Turning toward the entrance of the room, he issued a final command: “Bring him in.”

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