Chapter 27
BILLY
Penelope places the heart down on the altar with a squelching slap, blood up to her elbows, crimson beads dripping off of her fingertips.
She didn’t hesitate.
She looked at me, holding my gaze, and thrust that dagger into Clara’s chest like the woman never meant shit to her.
I’m both proud and terrified.
Proud that she didn’t break down, that she didn’t fail, that she proved herself for one last time.
And terrified of what she’s become.
A monster.
Like me.
Milus’s voice smashes through my thoughts, forcing my feet to move, “Step forward, children of The Obsidian. Stand before the altar where fate is carved and sacrifice is given.”
I step inside the circle of black candles, joining Penelope whose eyes are already lifted unto mine. There’s blood on her cheek, and a glint in her eye, but it’s the smile on her face that makes my heart pound harder than it ever has before.
In this moment, she’s saying so many things.
I did it, Billy.
For us.
For you.
“Tonight, two paths become one, two souls bared, two hearts feeding on one. To be bound by will, by blood, by sacrifice.” Milus’s hands lift, arms outstretched wide, he looks at me and for the first time in my life, he speaks to me like I’m worthy. “Speak, Two, and let us bear witness.”
I turn towards Penelope, take her hands, and they fit into mine like a sin I’ve been waiting my whole life to commit.
The moment we touch, something ancient, merciless, ferocious inside me settles, like a beast finally given permission to stop pacing its cage.
She’s shaking, just a little, but I’m not.
Not anymore.
The tremor in her palm only fastens my resolve, seals it into my marrow.
She thinks she’s the one surrendering.
That she’s giving something up.
Herself.
Her life.
She has no idea I’m doing the same.
I look at her, really look at her, and the world falls away, every robed figure, every whisper, every candle burning itself down to nothing, the hissing wax drips fading away. All I see is the woman who has ruined me so beautifully, so completely, that I can’t remember who I was before her.
And I don’t want to.
There is devotion in her eyes that matches the same inside my heart, but there’s fear there too. And I love her for both. I love her in the way a blade loves its sheath, deeply, dangerously, knowing the fit is absolutely perfect only because one was always meant to cut the other.
When her fingers lace through mine, hot, wet, bloodied, something dark curls around my spine, possessive and quiet and absolute.
I feel the vow forming before I speak it.
Not the one The Obsidian wants.
The one they fear.
The real one.
The one soaked in blood and love and certainty.
She is mine.
Not because I claimed her, chose her, but because she followed me into the dark and chose me right back.
And as we stand before the altar, I understand the truth I’ve been avoiding.
If loving her damns me, then let damnation come.
Ruin me.
Because I will drag her into the abyss with me long before I ever let her go.
In this moment, I finally realise what it is The Obsidian, my father, fears above all else.
This.
What I’m feeling inside my chest at this very moment.
How we are supposed to be nothing but devout followers. Our loyalty above all else is with him. That’s why they choose our Pairs for us, no attachments, no emotions, no feelings. That way we are programmed to always choose The Obsidian, our god, before anything and anyone else.
Except love warps that.
Because I, I will choose my Penelope above all else, including them.
“I offer you not purity, but the truth of who I am. My rage, my devotion, my ruin. I bind myself to you with every flaw sharpened, every shadow named. Should the world rise against you, I will become fire. I Pair myself to you not gently, but entirely. I am Two. We are Two.”
They’re not the vows I would say to her out of choice, despite meaning them, my own would be fiercer, more violent, more deadly. I would rip the world apart with my bare hands just to find her. Because that’s what she does to me, provokes something inside of me that would otherwise lie dormant.
Something I created over twelve long years ago, a monster just for her.
“I come to you unhidden,” she starts, her voice as thrilling as it is calming.
“Bearing my scars, my hunger, my madness.” There’s a soft smile on her face when she says that last word, something there just for me.
“I offer you the parts of me the world tried to bury. I vow to stand with you when everything else fails, to choose you when choice becomes sin.”
Her fingers are tight in mine, her eyes on my own like they’re the only light she needs. She worships me with her words, even though they are practised, rehearsed, ones she didn’t choose either. But the way she says them, meaning them. Undoes me.
“I vow not to be your peace, but your equal storm. I walk willingly into your fire. I carry your name, your sins, your salvation. In The Obsidian’s sight, I promise, I will not turn from you, not in blood, not in fear, not in death. I am Two, we are Two.”
I take the bloodied silver dagger offered up by Milus, the same one Nellie used for her offering, and slice off a piece of the heart atop the altar.
I cut it into two, both Penelope and I lifting a half each, and then we place it on each other’s tongues.
Holding each other's gaze, we chew and swallow the piece of meat she provided.
“You are bound,” Milus announces, “bound in darkness, bound in vow. Rise,” he instructs. “As halves no longer, but as one true Pair. Two.”