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Goosebumps spread over my skin. I glared at him as he smirked at me, and tried to flinch away as he reached out and flicked one of my tender nipple piercings. “How cute,” he mocked. “I knew there was a freak in you. It really is too bad, Rae. We could have had so much fun, but…” He shrugged. “You’re promised to another. It’s a shame I can’t keep you.”
I was promised to another, but it wasn’t him and it wouldn’t be his evil God. He raised up the knife again and pressed it into my skin. I held my breath, my head going light as I tried to ignore the pain, the dragging burning sensation of him slicing me open.
“Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit,” he said, and the crowd echoed him: “Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit!”
I tried not to look down, but I couldn’t help it. The sight of the blood streaking my skin made my vision blur. But I wasn’t going to scream, I wasn’t going to give him the goddamn satisfaction of knowing it hurt. Lines and circles, runes, a language I couldn’t understand—he etched them all into my skin, just like I’d drawn that summoning circle onto these floorboards once. It seemed so long ago now. A lifetime.
Back when I’d thought I was invincible. When I still thought my greatest adventure would be to catch a ghost on camera.
But now, no one would believe what I’d seen. No one would believe the way it was all going to end.
Jeremiah stood, and as he stared down at me, he licked my blood from the edge of his knife, and smiled. “Brothers and Sisters, it’s time. Unchain her, so that she may walk to God.”
My guard gripped me by the arms as another masked figure stepped up and unlocked my wrists and ankles. The freedom renewed my struggling, but between my hunger, dehydration, and blood loss, my fight was weak. I was hauled to my feet and forced to walk, Jeremiah close behind; back between the rows of white-cloaked figures, who closed in and followed behind us. Out the doors of the chapel, into the rain, into the woods. Up a narrow path through the trees, the absolute silence of those following me chilling me to the bone.
The path evened out, and there, set into the hillside among the trees, were the old wooden beams of a mine shaft. More of those fishbone trinkets had been hung around it, words I couldn’t read etched into the wood of the entrance. Jeremiah took my arms and led me away from the guard. His masked followers gathered around, watching as he dragged me toward the entrance, and it was as if the forest itself held its breath.
The shaft was dark, plunging down into nothingness. I stood at the edge, pressing back against Jeremiah, shaking my head.
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”
I shuddered at the touch of his breath on my ear. “Good-bye, Raelynn. Go now, to God.”
He shoved me down, into the dark.
I hit mud, tumbled, slipped off a ledge, and fell until I plunged into icy water. It was so cold that I choked, my muscles cramping as I tried desperately to swim. I broke the surface, flailed, and realized my feet could touch the thick mud below. I trudged forward, utterly blind, my arms outstretched in the dark. The water grew shallower, and I crawled out onto wet, pebbly ground.
My glasses were gone, lost in my fall. Above me, the entrance I’d been pushed through was a pale gray square in otherwise total darkness, dripping rain into the pool I’d just climbed from. As I watched, even that pale light began to disappear with the sound of hammers.
They were boarding up the shaft. They were sealing me in the dark.
Shivering, watching my only source of light disappear, I let myself cry.
I sobbed, despair gripping me so hard that for a moment, I only wanted to curl up there and wait. Wait to die, to waste away in the dark or be taken by whatever monster lived down here. I wept until the hammering stopped, and then the silence was so much worse.
I was alone. Completely and utterly alone.
Leon must have died in those woods where the Reaper left him. My protector was gone, his life given up to protect mine—and for nothing. The Libiri had made their final sacrifice. The God was going to be set free. Perhaps it was better this way, that I would die before I could see what became of this world under the rule of an evil God.
But as my tears stopped, and the minutes passed, I realized I couldn’t just lay down and wait to die. Not when Leon had fought so hard for me. Not while I still had some strength in me. Not while I still had a weapon.
I fumbled at my boot, reassuring myself that the dagger was still there. It was just one small knife with unknown magical properties, but it meant I wasn’t entirely helpless. My vision was shit without my glasses, but I tugged my lighter out of my back pocket and after a few tries, managed to get it to light. The cavern around me was a blur of dark shapes with few defining features, but at least now I’d be able to see enough in front of me to know if I was about to walk into a pit.
In the flickering light, I realized there was something lying in the mud beside me, half-submerged in the murky water. I held the lighter a little closer, frowning—
And realized I was looking at Victoria’s muddy, naked corpse.
I scrambled away, and gagged but there was nothing in my stomach to come up. There was a tunnel at the back of the cavern and I stumbled toward it; anything to put distance between myself and the body. Leon had been right: Jeremiah had killed his own sister, and thrown her down here to rot in the dark. I was shuddering violently, and had to lean against the mouth of the tunnel to swallow down my panic. Even knowing that Victoria had intended to kill me, seeing her dead was horrifying.
I’d eaten with her, drank with her, laughed with her. Villain or not, I’d once thought she was my friend.
I had to pull it together. I had to keep moving. Somewhere, surely there would be another way out.I wasn’t going to end up like that. I wasn’t going to be a forgotten corpse abandoned underground.
No. Fuck no.
The caverns were eerily silent. The shuffle of my boots echoed as I trudged down the narrow tunnel, with only my lighter illuminating the way. I paused at two branching tunnels, trying to steady my rapid breathing. There was a trick to this, wasn’t there? Something like, if there was a breeze coming from one tunnel, then that was where the exit was? But I held up my lighter to both paths, and neither seemed to make a difference.
I went to the right.
