Page 66 of Last Rites

“I’m impressed that you put up with her infidelity all this time,” I said. I was too tired for vitriol, so my words came out more matter-of-fact than I meant them to.

Even still, Merrick’s face darkened and I could practically see his rage bubbling up to the surface.

“Certainly makes you look less in control of things than you claim to be,” I continued. “That doesn’t really do much in the way of increasing your power. Powerful men are usually more able to keep their spouses in line.”

“You know well enough that she manufactured those claims against you,” he said. “Thought she could fool Levitt and me with them.”

The fact that he expected me to believe her accusations against me months ago were her idea and not his was almost enough to make me laugh. While I didn’t put it past Violette to come up with something like that on her own, I doubted she’d have done it in service of her husband. She’d have had her own agenda. It would have served her, not him.

My smile in response only made him angrier. The vein at his temple throbbed, and a dark flush splotched across his face and neck.

“Oh, I’m not talking about me.”

His expression went blank, surprise momentarily overwhelming his fury until he reined it in again. “If not you, then who?” he ground out.

“You’re really unaware?” I propped my chin in my upturned palm with a nonchalance I didn’t actually feel. “They aren’t exactly discreet about it.”

“Who?”

I wanted to take some kind of pleasure in Merrick’s anger, in how little control he had over things in his personal life when he had so much over my fate. But none of this changed anything for me, for Penny. It was inflicting pain for pain’s sake. And it felt awful.

There was no going back now, though.

“You sure don’t want to suss it out yourself? It would be far more satisfying that way.”

Merrick stalked across the room, stopping on the other side of the desk so he could loom over me. He looked almost as angry as he had in the ritual room when he’d confronted me about the flooded caverns.

His chest heaved as he growled, “Tell me who.”

I hesitated. I could tell him I was lying, trying to get a rise out of him in retaliation for setting us all against Forstford. And maybe I should have, but I was done keeping secrets for people who didn’t deserve my protection.

“Klaus,” I said after a moment. “They’ve been carrying on for some time, from my understanding.”

Merrick sucked in a breath through gritted teeth, straightened, and brushed his hand down the front of his robes. It was like I was watching a bird settle and smooth its feathers. His lips twitched, but he kept his composure long enough to turn toward the door so I could no longer see his face.

“Go home. You have an Oath to prepare for.” He paused in the doorway and threw one last sharp glance at me over his shoulder. “I’m sending people that I trust to oversee things while you’re on the road. Just in case you thought you might come up with some foolhardy plan to try weasel your way out of it.”

I wanted to tell him that he needn’t bother. My foolhardy plans were what got me into this mess, and I didn’t think I had it in me to concoct another one. The situation couldn’t get much worse, but it could still get worse.

And if there was even the slightest chance that going through with the seventh Oath meant Penny survived past the end of all this, I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.

25

Penny

Iwent ahead with my plan, doubts be damned and Kit along with them.

No, I didn’t mean that. But I did think it. A few times.

He hid from me. At his job and in his room, and too often, in a liquor bottle. Did he think I didn’t notice? Or assume I didn’t care?

Regardless, I completed the rites Sybil gave me, the last of which was bringing a community together. I’d already done that here in Ashpoint. I made a new family in the absence of mine, and I was proud. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was doing something right.

But that didn’t make it easy.

None of this was easy. I’d started the process to become a vessel assuming it was a temporary thing: a short-term agreement between myself and a god. Realizing my sacrifice could be ultimate gave me pause, as well as cause to shed more tears than were healthy, but it still felt right, somehow.

And I’d never fully realized how badly I needed that.