32. Penny #2
The world became a blur as rough hands seized me once more. I was untethered and led away, as Merrick ordered, down into the depths beneath the Ossuary. It was a chilly, dank space, too dark and too quiet.
Protest would have been senseless because it seemed I’d been given exactly what I asked for, and I couldn’t take it back now.
I had, in fact, begged for death, and that knowledge kept the tears flowing long after I’d been secured with chains in an underground room, left under the watch of another man who was as distant as a ghost standing by.
In the absence of conversation, I drowned myself in thought. I prayed. I tried not to wonder where Kit was or what he would think of the position in which I’d put myself.
Would he regret knowing me? Loving me?
My arms were shackled, but I could reach well enough to worry the leather cord around my wrist, the symbol of a promise made months ago. A gift of intent.
Kit would have given me the life I’d always longed for. We would have been married men with a home full of happiness. Seeing that future slip away left me hollow and aching as the hours dragged by. My guard slept, but I didn’t. I was too consumed with sorrow and the feat of being brave.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before someone else arrived. Another man who came to fetch us with the ominous announcement, “The time has come.”
The two men walked with me between them, and I wasn’t sure how I managed to stay upright.
Fatigue had me in a crushing grip as we trudged through the caverns.
It felt endless and winding, and I was beginning to wonder if we were lost when, at last, I was brought into the chamber that housed the Vessel.
It was staggering. Massive and horrific to behold.
Bricks of bone had been stacked and mortared into an unholy construct, an idol erected to ruin the world, and it frightened me.
I stared at its hollow eyes and the sharp points of its bone crown, so consumed with the haunting visage that I almost didn’t notice the destination that lay ahead.
When I did finally see it, I immediately wished I hadn’t.
A single, massive block of stone was positioned before it, perhaps six feet long and half as wide, and outfitted with iron rings at each corner. The sight made my breath catch, and my legs locked up. It was an altar, the sacrificial kind, and I was reminded of what I’d been brought here for.
As we marched closer, the rest of the space came into focus. The townspeople had been assembled and packed in close. They were impossibly silent, like they were all holding their breath, and every one of them looked on as my guards led me, stumbling now, to the altar at the Vessel’s feet.
The stares varied. Some were sympathetic, others righteous. They blended into a sea of eyes staring me down, pupils wide and black in the dim light, like carrion birds circling, waiting to pick the meat off a fresh carcass.
My thoughts were scattered and most out of reach, but I did think of Kit.
I searched the assembly for him, somehow hoping both for his presence and his absence.
I wanted his comfort. His reassurance. Even a glimpse of his face so I didn’t feel so profoundly alone.
And I did feel alone. Terribly isolated and afraid despite the sea of people surrounding me.
But he wasn’t there.
On my next search of the crowd, I spotted Isla, bound similarly to me and flanked by a pair of stoic guards. Her expression betrayed her surprise and horror to see me.
Thoma and Liam were also missing, and I hoped again that they’d made it to Eastcliff. I hoped my family was safe. As much as that, I hoped they would forgive me. I prayed they would understand.
While frantic, uneven breaths rattled the cage of my chest, Merrick spoke. He commanded the center of the room, midway through a speech about the conclusion of this decades-long endeavor.
“The work is done,” he crowed, “and Eeus will soon be among us. Those who are faithful should prepare to receive his blessings while those who are not should brace themselves for his adversity.”
Adversity. What a kind way to describe death.
“To complete this final ritual, a willing sacrifice is required,” Merrick declared, then swung the stump of his right arm toward me. “Penwell Oliver has submitted himself to this cause.”
A low murmur rushed through the room as Merrick glanced my way.
“Penny?”
He never called me that.
It was too familiar, almost fond, and it felt like a punch in the gut.
“Will you come take your place upon the altar?” he asked.
He said it as though I had a choice, and I realized abruptly that I did. The hands that guided me here had, at some point, fallen away, and I stood of my own volition. Apparently, I was to walk to the altar. Submit—willingly—to what I could only hope would be a merciful end.
Inexplicably, I moved. I walked forward, clumsy as a newborn foal, and practically collapsed on top of the stone block.
Matina and Klaus appeared out of nowhere, grabbing and positioning me so I was lying flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling and the profile of the Vessel’s misshapen face.
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.”