Page 109 of Salem’s Rise

“He got it wrong,” he says. “The knife turned on him, claiming him instead.”

The grief in his face is real. I hate him for that too.

“That doesn’t make sense. Knives don’t kill people on their own.”

“Veil knives do.” Silas looks away, as if he’s said something he isn’t supposed to.

I don’t understand what he means, and yet my stomach tightens as I think of Van. The way the knife had pulled my hand with it, almost as if it had known exactly where it wanted to go. The memory leaves an uneasy prickle at the back of my mind, but Silas is already speaking again.

“If Josh had asked me about the Blood Rite first, I would’ve stopped him,” Silas continues. “But he was angry with me. I’d told him to stop chasing the Veil. That I wouldn’t help him anymore because I thought that was the only way to keep him safe.” Guilt weighs down his voice. “So he did it alone.”

“All this time, you knew he was dead, and you never said a word.”

“I was going to tell you tonight.”

“Right.” A scoff escapes me. “Before or after you had Van kill me?”

“I didn’t send Van.” His hand lifts, then falls again. “Please, you have to listen to me. There’s more I need to tell you⁠—”

“And my roommate?” I can barely stand to look at him anymore. “Van said putting her in the walls was your idea.”

He doesn’t deny it.

“Everything about you is a lie.” I stand and back away toward the door, watching his face collapse with each word. “I’ll never trust you. And I won’t be your partner anymore.”

“Jack, please⁠—”

“Stay out of my way, Silas, or I’ll kill you,” I hiss, and he goes utterly still. “Just like I killed Van.”

He doesn’t follow me when I leave. Maybe he understands that nothing else he says will matter. Maybe he knows I won’t believe him anymore. Maybe I have broken his heart into a million little pieces just as he’s broken mine.

Or maybe he’s simply calculating his next move.

By the time I reach my room, the shaking has returned so violently I can barely turn the key. I lock the door behind me, sink onto the floor, and finally allow the truth to take hold.

All this time, I have endured The Rites because I believed every trial brought me closer to Josh. I let myself be trapped in a nightmare tunnel, nearly thrown off a bridge, and seconds from drowning because somewhere beneath the fear, I held on to the certainty that he was still waiting for me to find him.

But I was already too late.

The grief opens inside me, a vast hollow place with no bottom. For several minutes, I can do nothing but sit against the door with my trembling hands in my lap. I keep waiting for the tears to come, but they don’t. The world feels strangely silent, as though every sound has been swallowed by the same emptiness growing inside me.

My brother is dead.

Josh is dead.

I’ll never come home to find him waiting for me with a grilled cheese and tomato soup made from scratch because he knew I hated the canned kind. I’ll never hear him tease me for stealing his hoodies or answer his nightly calls, the ones he made just to remind Mom and me to lock the doors before bed because he said he couldn’t live with himself if anything ever happened to us.

How will I live in a world without Josh? Without my big brother? I don’t know who I’m supposed to be in a life where he no longer exists.

And then…

I remember.

That day on the bridge, Silas had said the winner of The Rites receives one impossible wish.

A boon. Bound by the Veil itself.

Even after all I’ve seen and heard, I’m still not sure I believe such a thing exists or if magic like that can even be real. I don’t know whether the promise is literal, or whether anything in this world has the power to reverse death. But I have witnessed impossible things happen, things I cannot explain away with logic or reason no matter how hard I try, and if there is even the smallest chance that the boon is real, then the goal has changed.