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His eyes meet mine, and all I can see in them is resignation. “It doesn’t matter, does it? They’re still dead. Why we did it doesn’t matter. Not to them.”
I open my mouth to say something, what, I don’t know exactly. But before I can, there’s the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs beyond the entrance to the huge stone room that we’re in, and a moment later I see Jaxon being shoved forward, Cayde just behind him.
Two Sons are holding Cayde up, forcing him to walk despite his knee. I can see that his face is twisted in pain, but he’s hobbling forward anyway, his eyes dark and full of an anger that just might save us, if we could get free.
Right now, that’s ahugefucking “if.” Jaxon’s nose is bleeding, his eyes slightly glazed. From the bruises on his face, I’m guessing that they beat him enough to leave him feeling out of it and woozy, and enable them to get him here. If they hadn’t, they’d have had a hell of a time, I’m sure of that. If Cayde hadn’t been crippled, he and Jaxon together could have taken out a good number of them.
A small, hopeless sob bubbles up from my lips. We’d thought we’d had it under control, but they’d been systematically breaking us down, making sure that we were in a position where we couldn’t band together and fight back. We’d thought we were being so secretive, but now I feel like a complete idiot.
The men in power here have been eliminating threats to it for centuries. And we’d thought that we could stop it simply because we’d decidedno more.
A small, frightened squeal comes from the steps, and my head jerks up, my blood running cold.No, no, no, I think, adrenaline spiking through my veins, but I know who it is before I’m even able to see her.
Mia is being dragged down the stairs, her curly hair wild and loose around her face, her hands bound behind her back too and a gag tied around her head, keeping her from screaming. Her eyes are wide and frightened, and they lock onto mine immediately, terrified and pleading.
Oh god, no.
Everyone I love is in this room, at the mercy of the men that we tried to defy. And all I can think is that I’m about to lose all of them.
The Sons drag Cayde and Jaxon to the pillars on either side of the altar. Two of them hold each man as another undoes their wrists long enough to bind them again behind the pillars. Cayde is barely able to struggle, off balance and his face screwed up in pain as he tries to keep his weight off of his injured knee, but Jaxon starts to struggle, trying to break free from the two Sons holding him. For one brief moment, I think he might overpower them, but the burly Son on his right delivers a hard punch to his gut, making Jaxon double over as another strides forward, grabbing the front of his shirt and shoving him backwards against the pillar hard enough that the back of his head smacks against it.
Jaxon groans, slumping against the stone, and they finish the job of restraining him quickly.
“Fuck you!” Cayde yells, yanking against his restraints anyway, his voice thick and laced with pain. “Fuck, Athena, are you alright?”
I swallow hard, trying to somehow get a grip on the situation. It’s too much, too fast. Mia is being dragged towards the altar, forced down to the floor and her wrists tied to a large ring attached to the side of it. Her eyes meet mine, and I can see frightened tears welling up in them, sliding down her cheeks and soaking the fabric shoved between her lips.
I’ve never felt so helpless. I’ve failed all of them, but especially her, because the only thing Mia ever did was be nice to the new girl on her first day at a prep school where she didn’t belong. If she hadn’t spoken to me that day, hadn’t gone out of her way to make friends with me, she wouldn’t be down here right now with us, facing whatever fate that’s waiting for us.
“I’m alright,” I manage, forcing down the panic that’s threatening to crawl up my throat and take over. If I let myself start to panic, I won’t stop. I’ll start crying, or screaming, and it’ll all be over. I might as well give up and die right now. “I’m not hurt. Are you—”
The sight of torchlight flickering down the stairs interrupts me, followed by the heavy footfalls of more people entering the room. Like something out of a horror film, a procession of robed and hooded figures begin to file into the room, surrounding the altar in a wide circle around us. Their hands are clasped in front of them, heads bowed, and then three more figures enter, wearing robes of a slightly better quality, embroidered around the hoods and hem.
Cayde, Dean, and Jaxon’s fathers, I’m certain of it.
The one in the front is carrying a goblet with letters etched into the sides, and the one in the back has a long dagger held ceremoniously in their palms. As they stride past us towards the altar, I can see that it has three gemstones embedded in the handle—blue, green, and clear.
None of this seems promising.
My heart is pounding as the four Sons bringing up their rear step towards Dean and I, grabbing us and pulling us to our feet. I wobble slightly in place, my heart racing as I look around the robed figures.
This can’t be real.
It can’t.
It’s like something out of a dream, some awful B movie, something you watch at Halloween and make fun of how ridiculous it is.
But it is.
It is real.
It’s fuckingreal.
The boys’ fathers circle behind the altar, placing the goblet on one side of it and the dagger longways on the other. And then, stepping back so that they’re side by side, they drop their hoods in unison, revealing their faces.
Philip St. Vincent, the current ruler of the town, is in the center. Dean’s father is on his right, and Jaxon’s is on Philip’s left. They look at us, cool and impassive, and utterly without mercy, and in that moment all I can feel is a deep sense of absolute hopelessness.
Everything we’d tried to prepare for, every plan we’d tried to have, is gone in an instant. And it feels overwhelmingly as if we were insane to ever think we could succeed.
