Page 100 of Last Rites

“You are much like I am,” he said after several silent moments.

As much as I wanted to rail against the comparison, the softness of his voice soothed me. It was the same tone Delmer used to use when he reminded me how glad he was that I came to live with him. When he told me he was proud of me. The quiet approval of a father that I craved, even now.

“You draw those together who need companionship in the face of loss,” he went on. “You give them a place to belong. You are a shield to shelter behind while they heal and recover. And when you are in need of a shield yourself…”

A flicker of darkness in the fire caught my eye. When I focused on the flames, a blurry image came into focus as Eeus continued to speak.

Levitt holding eight-year-old me while I cried after my father killed Clover.

Letting Nora Halmer wipe my tears at twelve after I told her everything, and she offered me refuge rather than condemnation.

Delmer’s patient smile as he taught seventeen-year-old me that it was safe to let down my defenses with him, and then loving me the way a father should love his son.

Forstford welcoming me at twenty-eight, and rallying to protect me from the people who came to harm me.

Penny showing up on my doorstep last autumn and bringing light into my darkness. He reminded me that I was worthy of love, of happiness, of having a life and a family.

“…I have always brought you into community to help you through,” Eeus finished.

Tears blurred my eyes again as the memories faded and the fire returned to normal.

“You have been the answer to the suffering of others, too. Most recently, Thoma and Penny.”

Penny had said something similar once, that after he lost his father, he found me. I’d been a blessing to him, but also his undoing.

“Then you took that all away,” I muttered, too wrung out to be angry anymore. Too grieved by the very real sound of Penny’s quiet singing from the kitchen that I’d never actually hear again.

“Humans took those things away,” Eeus said. “Took Penny away. But that last one, at least, we intend to give back.”

Hope flared in my chest, but I didn’t dare feed it without some sort of confirmation.

Penny was dead. How could he be given back? And even if he was, I was dead, too.

Without waiting for the question building in my throat, Eeus gestured toward me.

“A willing vessel is always returned. Him to you, and you to him. The two of you belong together.”

Relief made my shoulders slump, and it was all I could do to murmur, “I love him.”

Eeus’s smile was gentle. “I know the feeling.”

Quiet stretched between us as I tried to wrap my mind around the concept of a future. Being able to hold Penny again, to go back to Eastcliff, to Forstford, to live out the rest of our lives in this very house…

But Eeus had said there was more work for us to do.

“What happens now?” I asked. “How are we going to fix things?”

Eeus and my den faded away as the real world around me slowly came back into view, fuzzy and hazy as if I were looking at it from a great distance. I could hear nothing, but saw Merrick struggling against the hands that pinned him, and several people had taken up tools in an attempt to destroy the now-frozen Vessel.

Paneus knelt beside us, still wearing my sweetheart’s face, still holding me and waiting like he promised he would.

Eeus’s voice echoed in my head.

“Judgment must be passed, and balance restored for all the lives taken to build that monstrosity. This cannot be allowed to happen again. The embers of these false beliefs must be stamped out so they cannot smolder and catch elsewhere.”

I watched our resistance struggling to take control of the situation, fending off the guards attempting to free Merrick, and my stomach churned at the thought of Eeus’s punishment landing on their shoulders. The injustice of it burned up my insides.

“Not everyone here deserves your wrath. Many of them have been misguided, searching for the community you promise. They have nowhere else to go.”