Page 87 of Last Rites

They bit into every broken blister and bruised bone, but the short length of chain between them was a relief. The new position didn’t pull on my shoulders as much. It was by no means comfortable, but I would take whatever small mercy I could find in this place.

Once I was secured to his liking, Klaus stepped back and retrieved his torch. From the doorway, he smirked at me, his face ghoulish in the firelight.

“Get comfortable, Mister Koesters. You’re going to be here for a while.”

And then he left.

There in the dark, more alone than I’d even been, exhaustion took me to my knees. Sharp stones pricked my shins, but knowing it may be my last chance to feel anything at all, I couldn’t bring myself to move.

Besides, that small bit of pain didn’t hold a candle to the turmoil churning inside me. And yet, tears still wouldn’t come.

The stone walls seemed to close around me. There was no telling how deep inside the mountain I was, but I could feel it pressing down on me like miles and miles of dirt anchoring me into an inescapable grave. The weight of it all made my chest heavy and breaths come in short, rapid gasps.

I was going to die here.

Maybe not in this particular hole, but somewhere in this prison of stone. I’d had my last taste of fresh air, of sunlight, of warmth. All things I took for granted and wished I’d appreciated more.

And Penny… I should have looked a little longer that last time, held him a little closer, told him I loved him once more. Reassured him that I didn’t blame him for any of this, and that I didn’t ever want him to feel guilty for how this was always going to end.

But the worst of all was that I didn’t even know if he was still alive. For all I knew, the militia had already sentenced him and Rosie to death for their connection to the Bone Men. The thought of him dying at all, but especially dying alone, was what finally wrenched a sob from my chest. Because I promised I’d never leave him, and I’d broken it again. I could feel his fear, his loneliness, his agony, and it compounded my own until I was drowning in it.

If we were both gone, who would protect his family? Our family? There was no way to know if Thoma and Liam were able to get out of Ashpoint, or if they’d reached Eastcliff in time to get the Olivers to safety. If Merrick rounded up our friends the moment we left for the seventh Oath, they could all be dead. There might be no one left. I may have damned them all by association, and there was no absolution for that.

No one else was coming.

There was no way out.

It was over, and I failed.

All I’d ever succeeded in doing was making everything worse. In the end, I was alone anyway. Just like my father promised I’d be.

Cold sweat soaked my shirt and made me shiver in the chill of the cave. My head grew lighter, and the echoing of my panted breaths sounded farther and farther away as consciousness faded. I pitched forward, pulling the chain tethering me to the wall taut so I could press my forehead to the stone floor hard enough to hurt. The sensation took the edge off my panic and gave me a chance to drag my focus away from past and future horrors and onto my breathing.

In for a count of four, hold, out for a count of four, hold again.

Let my lungs burn in their emptiness long enough that all I could think about was the next breath.

In for a count of four, hold, out for a count of four, hold again.

I repeated the mantra in my head until the tightness around my ribs eased and my mind quieted again. Empty and numb, but quiet.

In the ensuing silence, there was only one last thing I could do. Maybe I couldn’t stop all of this, but if the gods really did exist, surely they could. If anyone was responsible for fixing what the Bone Men broke, it was them.

“It’s your turn,” I whispered to the dark, to Eeus and Paneus, or whoever might listen. “We did everything we could, we tried, and we failed. Now it’s on you.

“Merrick is going to summon you into the Vessel and bind you to him. To his desire for suffering and destruction, because if he couldn’t have what he thought he deserved, then no one should. And if you actually exist, Eeus, and if you’re actually a god, how could you let that happen?

“And how could you, Paneus, if he’s supposed to be your lover? I would do and have done everything in my power to protect the man I love. So, why haven’t you? You’ve both had decades to do something, anything, but instead you’ve allowed the Bone Men to run unchecked. To pillage our dead and destroy the communities you claim to foster. To kill anyone who gets in their way.

“So, do something. Put a stop to this before it goes any farther. You owe it to every one of us who has suffered under their darkness. To every person who came here seeking community and found instead a prison from which there is no escape because there’s nowhere else to go after you’ve been marked by this place.”

I gritted my teeth and pressed my forehead harder to the stone, fighting once more to rein in my erratic breathing. But it wasn’t panic this time, it was rage. It burned through me, caustic and hot enough to chase away the chill of the cave. Hot enough to make me see white at the edges of my vision.

“You owe me,” I ground out. “For all the pain I’ve endured in your name, you owe me. So, if you can’t stop this, at least keep Penny safe. No matter what comes, whatever plagues or horrors Merrick makes you visit on the world, protect Penny from them. Protect all my people. My family. If my death heralds the beginning of a dark age that I failed to stop, the very least you can do is protect the only people that have ever cared about what happens to me. They’ve done nothing to deserve your wrath.”

My breath caught in my chest, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the dark. My family, chosen and otherwise, may not have deserved what was to come, but their pasts weren’t mine. They weren’t full of complicity, of death, of years of cowing to the whims of my father in his quest to bring darkness to the world.

Anger gave way to grief, then resignation, and my voice was small when I spoke again.