The Year of the Witching(62)

Her heart beat so violently she feared he would hear it. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning.”

The Prophet leaned even closer. She could feel his breath against her ear as he whispered, “And I’m afraid that you do.”

“Enough.” The Prophet looked up, his hand slipping from Immanuelle’s head, as Ezra entered the dining room and edged around the table to her side. “She’s answered your questions, and the sun’s setting quickly. We should be on our way.”

The Prophet’s gaze darkened as it fell on Ezra, and Immanuelle wondered if he was even capable of looking at his son with anything other than scorn.

“Let’s go,” said Ezra, and this time there was a threat between the words.

The Prophet’s lips peeled back in a sneer. He started to speak but stopped at the sound of his name.

“Grant . . . the boy is right.” Immanuelle turned to see Abram standing on the threshold between the dining room and kitchen. He leaned on his favorite cane—a birch branch with a pommel he’d whittled into the shape of a hawk’s head—and his mouth was carved into a thin line. He spoke again, louder this time, though Immanuelle knew every word was a struggle. “The roads are dangerous . . . at night . . . with the sick lurking.”

Immanuelle was so relieved to see Abram in that moment, she could have wept. Gone was the feeble, quiet man who’d reared her. The man before her now stood resolute, his shoulders squared, his jaw firmly set.

She remembered something Anna had once said, how, in the wake of Miriam’s death, after Abram had lost his Gifts and the title of the apostleship was stripped from him, he became a ghost of the man he had been before. But now, in this moment, as he stepped firmly over the threshold to stand alongside Immanuelle, it seemed like that man had been resurrected.

Ezra placed a firm hand on his father’s shoulder. “He’s right, Father. The sick are out of their senses, mad with fever. It’s not safe to travel the roads after sunset. We should be on our way. Now.”

Immanuelle waited for the Prophet to rebuke them, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned his gaze on her again. This time his eyes didn’t warm. “These are dark days, that’s certain, but the Father hasn’t turned his back on us yet. He’s watching. He is always watching, Immanuelle. That’s why we must remember what we believe in and keep to it, if nothing else.”

As soon as the Prophet departed, Immanuelle stood, the motion so abrupt her chair clattered to the floor. But she didn’t stoop to pick it up. Shaking and without a word, she fled the dining room to the front of the house. Abram called after her as she opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. There, she dropped to a crouch, pressed a hand to the planks to steady herself. She drew several ragged gasps, but the air was thick with pyre smoke and it did little to ease her burning lungs. She could still feel the Prophet’s hand at her head, his thumb pressing between her eyebrows, and the memory of his touch alone was enough to make her quake with fear.

“Immanuelle.” Ezra stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Are you all right?”

She pushed to her feet, smoothed the creases from her skirts in a vain attempt to collect herself. “You should be on your way.”

“Humor me for a moment.”

“Why should I?”

“Because this is meant to be an apology.”

She frowned. “An apology for what?”

“For being drunk and harsh and careless. For my actions at the pond in the midst of my vision. For hurting you. For behaving more like an enemy than a friend. I don’t ever want my actions to make you doubt my loyalty that way. Can you forgive me?”

It was, perhaps, the best apology Immanuelle had ever received. It was certainly the most earnest. “Like it never happened,” she said.

Across the pastures and through the rolling smoke, Immanuelle spotted the Prophet on his horse, waiting for Ezra. There was a gravitas to his gaze, and even at a distance, she could tell he was watching them. “You need to go. Now.”

“I know,” said Ezra, but he didn’t move, just stood there staring after his father. It took her a moment to see the expression on his face for what it was: dread. “Do you still believe we can find a way to end this?”

Pyre smoke rolled across the road, obscuring the Prophet from view. “We have to.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE





I often wonder if my spirit will live on in her. Sometimes I hope that it will, if only so I won’t be forgotten.

—MIRIAM MOORE





THAT NIGHT, IMMANUELLE dreamed she walked through a field of amber. As far as the eye could see, waves of golden wheat rolled with the breath of the wind. Crickets warbled summer songs; the air was thick and sticky, the sky clear of clouds.

In the distance, two figures moved through the wheat like fish in water. The first, a girl with golden hair and a wicked smile. Immanuelle recognized her from the portrait in her mother’s journal: Miriam, her mother.

Walking alongside her, a tall boy with night-dark skin and eyes like Immanuelle’s. She knew, without really knowing, who he was upon first glance: Daniel Ward, her father.

Together, the pair waded hand in hand through the wheat, smiling and laughing, enraptured with each other, their faces warm with the light of the rising sun. When they turned and kissed each other, it was with passion . . . and yearning.