“We need to go,” he said from the doorway, voice cool. “When the Allmother finds out about this, we shouldn’t be here.”
“Didn’t you hear me? This is some kind of prison. They haven’t sacrificed everyone yet.”
The remaining priests were being stored here the way a spider caches a fly in a corner of its web to consume at its leisure. I was certain of it—the pens that would have held goats and sheep in Death’s temples were full of Smenos’s priests and retainers.
“If Death finds out we’ve seen this, he can’t afford to let us live. We’ve already been down here too long.”
“We can’t just leave them,” I said, whirling reproachfully on Taran.
“There could be hundreds of doors in here. We don’t havetime. Someone will notice we’re missing, Death will come down here to finish the work, and then we’ll be two more bloodstains on that altar.”
He wasn’t saying he couldn’t do it. He was saying he wouldn’t.
“You wouldn’t leave Smenos’s priests down here to die. To be—to befuelfor Death. This is worse than what caused the rebellion! That was one child!”
I said he wouldn’t because I wanted to be right about Taran, not because I was certain I was.
“They’re notmypriests,” Taran said, eyes going hard. “Don’t make me carry you out of here.”
“You won’t. You wouldn’t,” I said, desperate to believe that.
Taran’s response was to grab my arm and bend his legs as though ready to toss me over his shoulder.
I let my knees give out, falling on them despite his attempt to hold me up.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t leave them. Don’t be someone who would leave them.”
Taran made a despairing noise, but he let me go and turned back to the first door. He put his hands on it and concentrated until his fingers sank into the stone like bread dough. Then he braced his legs and pulled.
Sweat beaded on his neck from effort as it slid open, just a crack. As soon as the stone was unsealed, a terrible wave of cries wafted out. Dozens of voices, mortal and immortal, a chorus of hopelessness. Fingers and claws waved frantically through the crack without the power to slide the door open farther.
Taran stopped, no doubt realizing that so many people could never escape through Smenos’s palace unnoticed. His expression went haunted and trapped, and he looked again at the exit.
“I can’t do it,” he said, voice ragged. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell everyone what we saw—Genna, Diopater—”
They wouldn’t help. The most Genna had done was send Taran, even when it was all the gods’ power at risk.
“Please help them,” I begged again. I only had one card to play. “I’ll do—I’ll do whatever you want. What do you want? I’ll be your priestess. Take whatever vows you want. I’ll obey you.”
Anything would be better than leaving Smenos’s priests to die down here in the dark.
Taran’s jaw, if anything, went more taut. “You can’t offer me that! After what you saw tonight? Youknowwhat I could make you do if you promised to obey me.”
I hit the stone floor with the sides of my fists. “These are innocent priests, people just like me. They’re being used formeat. What do you want? I’ll do it.”
“I could have you chained naked in my bed for the next three hundred years. Or I could parcel your body and soul out to the other Stoneborn. Humiliate you in ways you can’t even imagine yet,” he shouted, some echo of forgotten torture bleeding into his voice.
“Is that what you’re asking for when you keep asking me to be your priestess?” My heart was so brittle it felt as though it would crack and stop.
His face pulled into a stiff mask of hurt at my words. “What have I ever done to you, except keep you safe and offer you everything I have? Why do you treat me like a monster?”
Because I don’t want you to be one, even if the rest of them are.
I didn’t answer out loud. I grabbed Taran’s tunic and held on to it, because there wasn’t a single blessing I knew that could help us now. He had to do it.
He trembled as though wavering on the edge of a pit, but finally ducked his head and rubbed his pale cheeks.
“Fine,” he said softly. “I’ll do what I can to get them out. And we’ll discuss later what you owe me, if we survive. Get ready to run.”
