Page 59 of Salem’s Rise

Rowan doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he searches my face as though hoping to find some trace of hesitation.

“Jack,” he says, “if I take you there, you don’t get to unknow it. You can’t walk back into your old life and pretend you never saw what you’re about to see.” He holds my gaze. “I’m asking you one last time to think very carefully about what you want. Because if you ask me again, I’m going to believe you mean it.”

My heart pounds against my ribs. Every instinct tells me to listen to him, but I’ve spent a year wondering what happened to Josh. If this is what I have to do to find my brother, I don’t have a choice. Maybe I can still save him.

“Show me.”

He leads me through a service door and out into the night, the party’s warmth and music falling away behind us. Cold air bites at my bare shoulders as he cuts through the trees crowding Strega’s Hollow without hesitation. He knows exactly where to step, which paths are real. He’s clearly done this before.

The chanting reaches us before we see anything. Dozens of voices, low and rhythmic, unlike any language I’ve ever heard. Rowan follows the sound to a massive, gnarled tree, its roots curled over a small, rusted door set into the earth. The Mark of the Veil is etched into the metal. He reaches down and the door groans open, releasing a gust of cold, metallic air.

He descends first down the stone steps disappearing below. I follow, the chanting swelling around us with every step, until the stairs give way to a narrow stone corridor. Two men in black robes and hoods block the way ahead, but neither stops Rowan as he takes my hand and walks me past them.

Wherever we are going, he belongs here. That much is clear.

At the end of the corridor, the passage opens into a vast chamber. Dozens of figures in black robes stand in a wide circle around a candlelit stone altar. Some faces are hidden behind hoods and smooth, expressionless masks—the same masks my kidnappers wore my first week at school. Something cold moves through me at the sight of them. A small, insistent voice claws for attention, certain it already knows what this means. But then my eyes land on the uncovered faces, and the thought slips away before I can hold on to it.

Lena, no longer in her beautiful plum gown, now in a black robe like the others, standing near her parents. Jonah in his robe beside his parents. Georgina. Her parents. Wren, standing among what I presume is her family. Van, standing alone. The Ashcrofts, on the far side of the circle. And at the center, Lucien Blackhollow at the altar, Silas at his right hand, his expression giving nothing away.

The chanting stops the instant Rowan guides me into the room. Every face turns toward me. Silas’s gaze flicks from Rowan to me, and something alarmingly close to fear crosses his features—gone before I can be sure I saw it.

Then Van steps forward.

“An outsider has breached the Ritual Ceremony on Veil Night,” he says, his voice carrying through the chamber. “She is forfeit.”

I look at Rowan, confused. I have no idea what Van means, but coming from him, it can’t be good. Rowan meets my eyes, something like regret passing across his face as though accepting a decision he wishes had gone another way. Then he drops my hand and turns away, crossing the chamber to stand beside his family.

An older man steps forward beside Van. I can see a faint resemblance—the same flat, emotionless eyes, the same unimpressed set to his mouth.

“The Hawthorne heir is correct,” he says, his voice cold and flinty. “The law is unambiguous. The punishment for any unclaimed outsider who dares to enter the chamber on Veil Night is death.”

Death?

Reality falls away and the chamber ceases to feel real. The torchlight, the black robes, the blood-red candles—all of it blurs into some kind of imagined nightmare I might wake up from any second. But when I blink again, I remain there, trapped underground with a deadly cult, and everyone is still staring at me.

My gaze darts desperately toward my friends—Wren, then Lena and Jonah—searching for help, but they look almost as terrified as I feel. None of them moves. Whatever’s going on, they seem as powerless as I am. My gaze flies back to Rowan, the horror of what is happening just beginning to hit me.

He tricked me.

Rowan knew what crossing that threshold meant for me. He knew what would happen when these people saw me. He used Josh’s name because he understood I would follow it anywhere.

Oh my god.

I’ve been such a fucking idiot.

Rowan was wearing one of those masks the night I was kidnapped. Same as Silas. Same as Van. Same as every masked figure standing in this goddamn chamber. Of course he’s Veil. He’s always been Veil.

All those times I’d watched him play dumb, feigning that same bored, blank ignorance every time the Veil came up, like with Professor Pemberton and Professor Endicott, asking questions he already knew the answers to, letting me flounder around for information he probably had memorized before he could walk. It was all a performance, and I bought every second of it.

This entire time, Rowan has been playing me for a fool. His plan was never to help. He’s simply been waiting for the right time to deliver me to them. And Silas⁠—

Silas may have claimed to my face he doesn’t hate me, but everything he’s done says otherwise. He and Rowan must’ve planned this together. One played protector, the other enemy, both nudging me toward the same ending.

Another horrible thought hits me then with terrifying certainty. This must’ve been what they did to Josh. My brother had probably stood where I stand now, realizing far too late that everyone he trusted had already chosen his fate. Whether he is still alive somewhere or dead at the hands of the Veil, I still don’t know, and I don’t think I’ll make it out of tonight to find out.

Georgina’s parents step forward.

“The law also permits exceptions under special circumstances,” Georgina’s father says, his expression stern but measured. “The unclaimed outsider may be removed before blood is spilled if she was brought here against her will.” His eyes fix on mine. Not harsh like some of the others but not necessarily kind either. More like a judge trying to ascertain the truth, without any emotion in the exercise. “Tell me, child, did you come here willingly?”