Souls Unfractured (Hades Hangmen, #3)(62)
My eyes widened as I looked at Mae’s tiny sister. She was now with Flame? Flame...? Flame who would be coming straight for us when he found out she had gone. Flame who would f*cking slaughter us all.
Mae looked back at me, but this time I could see disbelief in her stare. I could see her fear. I could see the bravado of strength in front of her sisters, but she pushed through to say, “I always believed in you, Rider.” She shook her head as she spoke that name. “I mean, Cain.” She quickly corrected herself.
“I knew you were destined to be the Prophet. But I always believed you were a good man, deep down.” Mae glanced behind her at Delilah whose blue eyes seemed to be staring off at nothing, as though she was paralyzed by fear. “Even when your men came for me and mistakenly took Lilah, she told me that you begged her to confess her sins. She told me that she knew you were trying to save her. That it was the other men in your confidence that hurt and defiled her.”
Delilah whimpered behind Mae at this revelation. My blood cooled to ice water.
“But sending in a young girl. A young innocent girl, so under the control of The Order, to our home, a girl who killed an innocent to bring us here, to you… well, that is nothing like the Rider I once knew.”
“Mae,” I uttered, and went to reach forward. But her hands gripped onto her stomach tighter. “Why are you holding your stomach like that?” I snapped.
Mae inhaled, and straightening her shoulders, said, “I cannot marry you, Cain. I am not pure like the scripture proclaims I need to be.” She swallowed, and fighting back tears said, “I am pregnant. I am pregnant with Styx’s baby.”
Delilah and Magdalene gasped from behind Mae, but all I felt was a blow to my stomach. My lungs seized, but my eyes could not look away from Mae’s hands on her stomach.
A sob came from Mae’s mouth, and she said, “And he does not even know. I only just found out and I have yet to tell him.” Her blue eyes filled with tears, which then ran down her face. “And now we have been taken. I am with child. I am finally happy in my life, and now we have been taken and given to you!” Mae shook her head and said, “When will this stop? When will you all realize in that commune that we do not belong to you! We are not part of that faith. We have left. We have left and have no desire to ever return! And when will you realize I am not destined to be the prophet’s wife!”
“No,” I shook my head, and stepped backwards. “You are meant to be mine. The scripture says so!”
Mae stared at me in absolute disbelief, and whispered, “No, Cain. I am Styx’s. I have always been and will always be Styx’s. The prophecy was not for me. I am not the one you must marry. Nor Lilah, nor Maddie. Can you not see that? Can you not finally see that we do not belong to you! We are not special. We are no different to any other woman on this planet. It was a senile old man that proclaimed something out of the blue. Something purely based on our looks. God did not pick us out. He did not pick any of us out!”
Crouching down, I felt like my head was full of noise, my heart empty, as was my role in this life. Feeling Mae’s heavy stare, I looked up. Her hand lying over her forehead. “It is all going wrong. None of this is what I was raised believing. And they all look to me. They all follow my lead. And they believe that I should marry you.”
Mae’s head fell in defeat.
Delilah’s blond hair caught my attention from behind Mae. Getting to my feet, I brushed past Delilah who shuffled back against the wooden wall and cowered back in fear.
“What was done to you?” I asked. Delilah sank back and began to tremble. Looking over my shoulder to see Judah pacing outside of the mill, I knew I had limited time. “What was done to you at your trial? What happened to you on the Hill of Perdition?”
Tears ran down Delilah’s face, but then Mae said from behind, “They raped her, Cain. Over and over, before tying her to a stake and setting it alight. They intended to burn her like a witch. Your brother gave her thirty-nine stripes, the scars from which still mar her back. In essence, Cain, they tortured her for hours, and you did nothing to stop it. You washed your hands of her and let them brutalize her, for fun, for nothing but their sadistic amusement. Our scripture does not teach what she went through. It does not even infer it.”
My eyes stayed on Delilah as Mae’s words tore me apart, and I asked, “Is that true? Is what Mae is telling me, true?” Delilah lifted her head.
“Yes,” she whispered, but I did not need to hear the answer to know it was true. I could see it in her eyes. Judah, my men, had done to her exactly what Phebe had declared to be true.
I pushed my hands through my hair and looked to Mae. Her blue eyes held nothing but pain and disappointment. “I did not know they did that. I did not declare that to be her punishment.”
Mae’s eyes fell lovingly on Delilah and she asserted, “But you did nothing to stop it. You left your brother to conduct his own form of punishment, at least that was what Lilah told me. And he did. You gave him free rein to torture an innocent woman.”
“I would not have allowed that to happen if I had known he would stray from the scripture. Judah and I were raised together. We share the same beliefs. I trusted he would do as I would have.”
Mae glanced down, then with a deathly pale face asked, “Then you too have a child consort? You too have taken children?” She wiped away a tear. “Like we all were taken. Have you too awakened a small child? Sarai is but fourteen, yet by the look of things, she is your brother’s main consort. Do you share those beliefs too? After everything I told you about me, about what we all went through? Can you honestly believe that God wants this from his chosen people?”