The Year of the Witching(93)
“What kind of deal, Immanuelle?” Ezra’s voice was tight. “What have you done?”
“I agreed to take his hand in marriage, to save your life and mine,” she said, the words like bile on her tongue. “I’m going to be cut on the coming Sabbath.”
“No.” Ezra’s hands tightened painfully around hers, and in his voice was such revulsion—such rage—that Immanuelle flinched away from him.
“It was either the Prophet or the pyre,” said Immanuelle, rushing to explain. “He said he’d spare your life if I married him, and I agreed to it—to buy you time, to save you.”
“He lied,” said Ezra, in a tone so low, his words were barely audible. “That was the deal I made with him. He said if I pleaded guilty he would make sure you survived your sentencing, and he’d set you free.”
He’d lied to them both, she realized. His deal had never been about sacrifice—hers or Ezra’s. The Prophet claimed he was carrying out the Father’s will, but it was power that drove him. The power to purge, to punish, to control. It was all he cared about.
“Immanuelle, you can’t go through with this,” Ezra said urgently. “He’ll hurt you. He’ll break you, the way he does everyone.”
She closed her eyes, and when she did, she saw a glimpse of that fateful night when the Prophet turned on her mother, and her mother turned on him. “He’s not going to lay a finger on me, or on you or anyone else. We’ll find a way to stop him, to stop all of this, but I need you alive and well and by my side to do it.”
“This is madness,” said Ezra. “Isn’t it enough just to save ourselves? You got past the gate once; we can do it again. We should run, tonight. I know a way out of the Haven, through the back passages. If you can free me from these chains, we can escape before anyone realizes we’re gone. We could make our own way.”
Immanuelle humored the idea. She imagined turning her back on Bethel and all of its troubles, running away with Ezra, making a new life for themselves beyond the gate. It was an appealing dream, but Immanuelle knew it was nothing more. Her fate was not that of a runaway.
“Saving ourselves isn’t enough,” said Immanuelle firmly. “There are other people in Bethel suffering as well, and they deserve better. We have to help them. All of them.”
Ezra didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he asked, “So you’re just going to trade yourself? Barter your bones to that tyrant?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. And then, after I’m cut, I’m going to end these plagues once and for all.”
“How?”
Immanuelle thought of the sigil, of the sacrifice she’d have to make to bring its power to fruition. “Better that you don’t know. That way, if you’re ever asked, you can claim ignorance.”
Ezra sighed and tilted his forehead against hers. Immanuelle was suddenly aware that this was as close as the two of them had ever been. But all she could think of, as they clung to each other in the darkened library, was how she wanted him even closer.
“I hate this,” said Ezra, his breath warm against her face. “I hate that I’m chained up here. That I can’t help you. That I’m going to be here in shackles while you’re cut by him, claimed by him.”
“What’s done is done,” Immanuelle whispered. “This time, let me help you. Let me fight for you.”
Ezra didn’t answer as he slipped his arms from around her. His fingers found her face, her cheek, then skimmed down to her jaw, the soft dip of her chin. He traced a fingertip along the line of her bottom lip, then angled closer. He pressed a kiss to her upper lip, then her lower one.
He said, “All right.”
PART IV
Slaughter
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I have seen the beasts of the wood. I have seen the spirits that lurk between the trees and swam with the demons of the deep water. I have watched the dead walk on human feet, kept company with the cursed and the crucified, the predators and their prey. I have known the night and I have called it my friend.
—MIRIAM MOORE
IMMANUELLE KNELT IN the middle of her bedroom, hands clasped, dressed in the pale silks of her cutting gown. She was supposed to be praying, but her thoughts were not with the Father. As she crouched there on the floor, the occurrences of the past few days flashed through her mind like the bright beginnings of a headache.
Ezra’s sham of a trial had come and gone, as had the sentencing that followed it. Like Immanuelle, he had been indicted on all counts, but she’d heard no word beyond that. She knew only that he was still alive and jailed somewhere below in the catacombs of the Haven. She could only hope they were treating him with more kindness than they had her. Not that it mattered for much longer.
In the days leading up to her cutting, she had traced and retraced the reversal sigil—in the soft crook of her inner elbow, on walls and tables, and into the pillows she slept on at night. And every time she made that mark—committing it to memory over and over again—she prepared herself for the sacrifice at hand. The sacrifice she would make the night of her cutting, when she was called to her husband’s bed. She felt there was some poetic justice in it all. That seventeen years after Miriam had taken up the Prophet’s holy dagger, Immanuelle would take up that very same blade and carve the sigil that would reverse the curses her mother had wrought all those years ago.