Page 97 of Last Rites

“This one never took anything from you,” Penny said. But when he spoke, what emerged wasn’t quite him. It was like two voices speaking at once, almost in unison, but just off enough that the deeper tone resounded like an echo. “What was lost you forfeited for the sake of jealousy and misplaced bitterness. You robbed yourself of a family and a happy home, and instead of acknowledging your part in that loss, you laid blame where it didn’t belong.”

I stared at him, my beloved, blood soaked but upright. He was as pale as he had been at the moment of his death, and the wounds in his chest remained. He wasn’t alive, that much I could discern, but the rest…

“I don’t understand,” I said, my own voice hoarse. “If you’re Eeus, what or who is in there?”

Penny’s eyes followed my point at the Vessel, and then swung back to me. “You misunderstand,” he replied in that eerie voice. “My husband was drawn into that abomination, and I was compelled to follow. Where he goes, I go.”

“What are you talking about?” Merrick snapped.

For a moment, I was as confused as he was. But then Penny’s words on the road back from Wendwood filtered into my mind, and I thought I understood. He had been gleeful because we were alike, the gods and us. They were lovers, too.

“Paneus,” I breathed.

Merrick’s jaw clenched, and he curled his lip at the god wearing my intended’s body like it was his own. “I didn’t call for you,” he snarled.

Paneus gestured at himself. At Penny. “This one called for aid, and I answered.”

“Penny?” I broke in. “Penny talked to you?”

“To my husband, as did you.” The corner of his lip curved up in a faint smile, and then it was gone. “Though you were less polite.”

“And this was your answer?!” My words came out as a shout, all my rage and pain bubbling to the surface and erupting out of me like fire. “To let Penny die, and then wear his face like a mask? This isn’t what I asked for! I wanted him to be safe!”

“Enough!” Merrick barked. He turned back to the Vessel. “Eeus, you are bound to my will. I command you to destroy them both!”

Paneus straightened to Penny’s full height, and his voice came out with the same vitriol as my own. “You dare try to turn my husband against me?”

The Vessel rose to its feet and took one thunderous step forward, and then another. With the line of guards at my back, there was no hope of retreat. After another halting advance, its hand extended toward me. I brandished my knife, for what little good that would do against bone, but the Vessel slowed to a stop once more. The hand outstretched between us opened, nonthreatening. The golden glow of its eyes bore into me, and I stared right back, unsure what to make of it.

“What are you doing?” Merrick shouted. “Smite him! Strike him down!”

A pale streak broke through the line of guards behind me and darted past. Isla collided with Merrick at full speed, arms around his waist, and took him to the floor. His head impacted the stone with a sickening crack.

With the ranks broken, more people came pouring through. Rosie’s father was first, immediately helping Isla to pin the Right Hand down.

“Kit, do something!” Isla yelled.

Do what?

I stood, suspended between the Vessel and Paneus by my inability to see a way out of this.

Paneus closed the distance between us and gestured to the Vessel.

“You said you were willing,” he said softly in that voice that wasn’t quite Penny’s. “Were you truthful?”

I could hardly bring myself to look at him. It was the cruelest of fates, to be so close to the man I loved while knowing he was gone. The thing wearing his skin was not my intended, and I hated how much I still wanted to reach out to him, or to beg him to hold me because I was collapsing in on myself like a dying star.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I rasped.

“He suffers,” Paneus said, and I recognized his pain as akin to my own. Because the man he loved was hurting, and he couldn’t bear to watch it, either. “We are not supposed to inhabit those who are unwilling, and he feels their pain. But you can help. You can end it.”

I didn’t know how, because it was clear I couldn’t do anything but make things worse. I’d proven time and time again how ineffective I was. The chaos around us was proof of that.

“End his suffering?” I asked, finally lifting my eyes to meet Paneus’s.

He swept a hand toward the Vessel, toward Merrick and Matina and Fletcher all pinned under the weight of Penny’s resistance, toward the guards who were now corralling those trying to escape.

“End everything,” he said. “That is what you wanted, is it not?”