31. Kit #2
I gritted my teeth and pressed my forehead harder to the stone, fighting once more to rein in my erratic breathing.
But it wasn’t panic this time, it was rage.
It burned through me, caustic and hot enough to chase away the chill of the cave.
Hot enough to make me see white at the edges of my vision.
“You owe me,” I ground out. “For all the pain I’ve endured in your name, you owe me.
So, if you can’t stop this, at least keep Penny safe.
No matter what comes, whatever plagues or horrors Merrick makes you visit on the world, protect Penny from them.
Protect all my people. My family. If my death heralds the beginning of a dark age that I failed to stop, the very least you can do is protect the only people that have ever cared about what happens to me.
They’ve done nothing to deserve your wrath. ”
My breath caught in my chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the dark.
My family, chosen and otherwise, may not have deserved what was to come, but their pasts weren’t mine.
They weren’t full of complicity, of death, of years of cowing to the whims of my father in his quest to bring darkness to the world.
Anger gave way to grief, then resignation, and my voice was small when I spoke again.
“Maybe this is what I deserve for squandering my second chance. So, punish me, and don’t let them suffer for my mistakes, or for Merrick’s.
” Tears escaped my clenched eyes and dripped onto the stone below me.
“If I know they’ll be safe, maybe I can make peace with this.
I can accept my fate. If I have to die to keep them safe, then I will do so willingly. ”
I was too tired to maintain any sort of emotion for long.
Soon, numbness crept back in, and with the pain in my wrists and shoulders protesting my current position, I sat upright and propped myself against the wall instead.
And there I stayed for an interminable amount of time, occasionally dozing but never falling into a full sleep, the darkness around me never changing.
Judging by the ache in my hips, hours had passed—maybe even a day—by the time the faint glow of firelight appeared in the hall outside my makeshift cell. I wondered if this was it, and I was about to die. But I’d wrung myself out already, and there was nothing left in me to feel.
I squinted against the growing light that was painful even at a distance after so long in the dark. By the time the torch appeared in the doorway, my eyes were slitted in an attempt to see the face beyond the blinding flames.
Merrick, expression smug as he set his torch into the sconce and leaned on the opposite side of the doorway. For a long time, he didn’t say anything, just took in the sight of me huddled against the wall like it was the best thing he’d ever seen.
I didn’t dare speak, either. With the slim possibility that any of my friends were still alive, I wouldn’t chance saying anything that might spur Merrick to make good on his promise to kill them all.
“You know,” Merrick said after several long minutes, “I assumed you would do something like this, but I thought you’d drag my half-brother into it, not Isla. It’s not like you to put someone else blatantly at risk. I always thought you too much of a martyr to involve anyone else.”
There was no point in denying anything when Isla had been vocal about her involvement in front of the Sentinels. She knew I’d try to take all the blame, so she took that opportunity from me, and took credit for the plan that had always been hers.
When it became clear I didn’t intend to respond, Merrick grinned.
“You should know that your contribution to the Vessel will be the most important of them all. The ceremony requires a sacrifice to pull Eeus down into physical form.” He leaned in a bit closer.
“You should be honored that you will be that sacrifice.”
I maintained my silence so long that his smile faded into a sneer. I expected that I would be made an example of, so why give him the satisfaction of a reaction? I was too tired to care, anyway. Too hollow and broken and ruined. Crushed under the weight of far too many regrets.
“That’s it?” Merrick asked finally. “Resignation? You’re not even going to beg for your life?”
Begging wasn’t going to save me. There was nothing left to bargain with. Even if there was, I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. Whatever begging I had left in me when I arrived, I’d done to the gods already.
“Well. You should be proud, you know. You will finally be a part of bringing your father’s vision to life.
For all your efforts to tear it down, you will be the final piece needed to finish the build.
” He quirked a brow at my continued silence, and his cheeks puffed with an irritated breath.
“Still nothing? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
You were always too good at holding your tongue.
My idiot half-brother was the one who always got you into trouble because he never could keep it in. The very worst sort of worthless.”
When even that failed to garner a reaction from me, his jaw clenched and he reached into his robes. When he withdrew his hand again, he held my Penny-menacing knife, and he pointed it at me so it caught the light of the flames.
“You know, I’ve always admired this blade.
It really is fine craftsmanship. I think it would make a wonderful ceremonial knife to complete the final sacrifice.
” His teeth flashed in a predatory grin.
“Fitting that you’d die by the knife you made with your own hands.
It’s almost as if you’re killing yourself.
” He turned the blade so he could examine it with bored disinterest. “But really, you did ask for this. You had a multitude of chances to leave, to stay away, to save yourself from this fate, but you kept coming back. I still don’t understand why, or why others so willingly followed you down this path to ruin.
But soon, Eeus will be here, and he can mete out whatever punishments he deems appropriate. ”
He meant it as a threat, but there was some measure of comfort in his words. They implied that Merrick had not wiped everyone out—that the resistance still lived—even if they were being held captive until, as he said, Eeus arrived to sort them out.
“What if you’re wrong?” I asked finally, voice soft even in the face of his threats of violence.
Merrick scoffed. “Wrong about what?”
“About who Eeus will punish. About who here has followed him best. What if you’re wrong?”
He waved off my warning as he tucked my knife away. “It won’t matter. Once he inhabits the Vessel, he will be bound to my will. He will punish who I tell him to punish.” His sinister smirk returned. “I’ll leave the method up to him.”
He retrieved the torch from the wall sconce and turned to leave, then threw one last glance back at me over his shoulder.
“Well, try to enjoy your last few hours. I’ll fetch you when I need you.”
I watched him go, the light fading in his wake until the darkness swallowed me again.
And finally, I slept.