Chapter Thirty-Eight Violet
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Violet
The cultists didn’t matter. The ritual was nothing. None of that terrified me. My mind was too wrapped up in Grayson.
The shallow cuts they’d already carved into me wept in thin, warm threads down my bare skin, dragging me into the present. Each drop trickled into the carved channels of the altar beneath me, feeding grooves black with centuries of offerings. My lungs hitched on a breath so sharp it hurt.
“Vessel,” the hooded figure murmured. The word was muffled by cloth, faceless, genderless, but heavy with certainty. The knife hovered over my heart, so close I swore I could already feel the phantom slam of steel splitting me open.
My gaze darted around the barn. The crowd swayed like a sea of shadows, their voices dropping into a guttural register. Low prayers slurred together, thick with hunger, with want. My death hung in the air like incense, as if they could already taste me.
Marcus stood to the right of the altar, close enough I felt the heat of him, the wild current of twisted devotion radiating from his skin.
He reeked of rot-sweet fervor, of worship slicking him like oil.
His smile was stretched thin and devout, a prophet unhinged, lips moving in praise to a god that demanded blood.
“Let it all in, sweet revenant Vienna,” he crooned, as if he were giving me mercy. “It will be done soon, Vessel. And we thank you”—his voice broke in a pleasure-filled sigh—“for your sacrifice.”
The blade descended until its cold kiss touched my skin. It was a thin, bitter promise of death. The barn turned to whispers.
“Please.” The word escaped me small and hoarse, scraping my throat raw. I wasn’t begging for mercy. I was asking for strength. To stop this. To let the ember smoldering inside me ignite and burn them all down.
But the knife didn’t slide into me. Not yet. Marcus lifted a hand, and the chanting broke into fragments, then died altogether. Even the candle flames seemed to shudder, leaning inward, waiting.
“Gavin,” Marcus called. “Come.”
The name hit me like a blade of its own. Gavin. The quiet, hollow-eyed boy who’d been a prisoner in the cult just as much as I had. The boy I’d never expected to see again.
The circle opened, shadows rolling aside, and the flames flickered harder, as though they knew what was coming.
And then he came forward. Grayson, but no longer the man I’d known.
The face was the same, yet utterly changed.
He now seemed harder, older, stripped of every trace of the gentleness he’d shown me.
The eyes that had once looked at me like I was salvation now held something colder, something that belonged entirely to this place.
Broad shoulders. That familiar gait I had memorized, the one that had once meant safety, now carried him toward the altar with calm, terrible purpose.
Something inside me tore open with such violent pain it nearly killed me where I lay.
I kept my gaze on him, our eyes locked on each other, time standing still as I silently asked why.
He didn’t rush forward. He didn’t shout, didn’t fight. He looked at Marcus—expression unreadable, carved from stone—and walked like a man already belonging to this place. The disciples shifted to let him pass, bodies bowing in recognition and gratitude.
I stared, the air gone from my lungs. I was nothing to him, never had been. It was clear I was just a means to an end. A sacrifice lured closer to the altar by the promise of . . . life.
Beside me, movement drew my eye. The hooded figure lifted the blade away from my chest and, slowly, deliberately, turned the hilt outward.
Toward Grayson.
Marcus’s voice echoed through the barn like a rifle shot. “My obedient son. My faithful one. You’ve done well—better than I could have asked. Now take what is owed to you. Finish what was promised the summer of your childhood, when you first held her hand and knew she was the Vessel.”
The words weren’t meant for me, but they hit like bullets. Something cold and alien slithered into my gut as I stared at Grayson.
“You two were bound in that moment,” Marcus intoned, his smile almost holy. “Linked. Your path was written in blood. You were always meant to bring her home, Gavin. Do this, and all oaths are kept.”
Grayson’s gaze flicked to mine, catching the candlelight. No anger. No apology. No hint of the man I thought I knew. He reached for the blade, and something inside me split clean in two.
The past surged up like a tide.
I was barefoot, the cold earth damp with rot beneath my feet. The circle was small, but wild all the same. Marcus’s robe dragged through the dirt, its hem crusted with rust-colored stains, its sigils glinting like teeth in the moonlight.
I’d just seen a woman murdered, her blood still warm as it dripped off the altar.
“She is the Vessel,” Marcus thundered. “She will open the gate.”
Beside me stood a boy—Gavin. His hair hacked unevenly by dull scissors, his eyes darker than the surrounding night. He trembled, but didn’t pull away when I reached for him. I squeezed his hand, steadying him, and he squeezed back.
Gavin. The little boy who used to cry when the woods turned too dark, who whispered his nightmares to me when no one else would listen.
Marcus looked at me that night and named me the Vessel.
But Gavin stared at me, and something changed.
Fear hardened to defiance. His small fingers tightened on mine.
“I’ll protect you,” he whispered. “I swear it, Vienna. I won’t let them hurt you.”
The memory snapped me back to the present like a whip.
Grayson—Gavin—stood above me now, the knife in his hand, firelight crawling up the blade. My blood thundered so hard it made me dizzy. A stupid, shameless part of me still wanted to believe he wouldn’t do it. That the boy who swore to protect me was still somewhere inside him.
But I was bound to the altar. I was about to die and was terrified. “Grayson . . .” My lips trembled as I spoke his name.
He shifted, but the blade didn’t come down. We stared at each other for a suspenseful moment. Time stood still.
Marcus’s murmurs coiled through the barn, a language meant to wake the Blood God. His eyes gleamed, fever bright, his smile wide and sure. He believed the prophecy was seconds from fruition.
The weight of the room crushed the air from my lungs. My chest rose and fell too fast, my pulse hammering so violently I thought my heart would burst before the blade even touched me.
Grayson’s gaze locked on mine. It was steady, unreadable. He leaned close, his breath hot against my face. For one terrible second I believed it, believed that he would plunge the knife into me and finish what Marcus had promised.
“I’ll protect you,” he whispered, voice raw. “I swear it, Violet. I won’t let them hurt you.”
And then the blade came down.
I screamed, bracing for the pain, only to feel rope tear instead of skin. The knife slashed downward, severing the bonds at my wrists, and then my ankles. Frayed fibers snapped against my raw, bruised flesh.
For a heartbeat, everything stopped. The altar no longer bound me, but the weight of the cult’s gaze still pinned me in place.
Grayson yanked me behind him, his body a wall between me and the crowd. “I’ll die before I let them touch you again,” he said, voice breaking but deadly serious.
Marcus’s face contorted with rage. “No!” he snarled, his voice like acid. “She is ours. The prophecy will be fulfilled tonight.” His roar consumed all the empty spaces in the barn, eyes wide and glittering with madness. “We’ve waited long enough.”
Grayson brandished the knife at Marcus. The crowd stayed frozen, stunned, leaderless. For the first time, they didn’t move, waiting for Marcus to tell them what to do. But Marcus was too consumed by his fury to speak.
“You made me this,” Grayson snarled, his voice a tremor of rage and remorse.
“You broke me open and fed me to this cult. You made me think all I was good for was betraying Violet. I was supposed to bring her to you, to fulfill the prophecy you twisted around us both. But you’ll never touch her again—even if she hates me. Even if it kills me.”
Marcus’s laugh shot out of him like something splintering, sharp and unhinged.
“Rewrite the prophecy?” he hissed, eyes wild.
“She is the prophecy. You were born to deliver her. You dragged her here to complete what was carved into blood before either of you drew breath. If you want to die at her side, boy, then bleed with her. We’ll give both of you to the Blood God. ”
Grayson’s face twisted, but he didn’t falter.
“She was never yours,” he snarled, his voice sharp at the edges like splintered glass.
I’d never heard him like this—raw, almost broken.
The Grayson I knew was calm, cold, calculating.
Every word chosen for a singular purpose.
Had any of that been real, or just part of the trap?
Everything blurred. In one swift move, he slammed Marcus back against the altar, the wood groaning under their weight.
The knife spun across the blood-slick boards. I lunged before thought could catch me, fingers closing around the hilt. It was slick, heavy, and meant for sacrifice, but now it burned in my grip.
Marcus whirled, his elbow cracking into Grayson’s face with a sick thud.
Grayson staggered, spinning before he hit the ground hard, blood pouring out of his mouth and nose.
Marcus straightened, arms outstretched, his skin wet with crimson.
“Sweet Vienna. The Vessel.” His grin split wide, grotesque, teeth stained red where Grayson’s fist had already broken him.
I moved before I even thought. The blade was in my hand, and then it was in him.
It sank deep into his abdomen with a wet crunch.
Bone resisted, then gave way. Marcus didn’t scream.
He locked his eyes on mine, calm, almost reverent, and the world stilled around us before tipping into a darker place.