My mind often tortured me with thoughts of happier times...Vaughn and me laughing, of my father being so proud, of the sweet satisfaction I got from sewing.
I wanted this to be over. I wanted to go home.
Every time my thoughts turned to Jethro, I shut down. The pain was insurmountable. Every day, I stopped believing he’d survive and worried about the worst instead. In my rapidly unthreading mind, he was dead and I believed alie.
Jasmine tried her best to keep me from the worst.
The Rack she’d denied.
The Judas Cradle she’d flat-out refused.
But there were others she couldn’t reject—she couldn’t disobey her grandmother, no matter that her eyes screamed apologies and our unspoken bond knitted tighter.
Jethro was no longer there. But Jasmine was.
And I learned to love and hate her for helping me.
Her help wasn’t love and kisses and tender stolen moments. No. Her help was selecting the punishment I was strong enough to survive, carving my soul out dream by dream, keeping me alive as long as possible to find some way out of lunacy.
The worst part of my punishment was Vaughn saw it all.
He witnessed what the Hawks did.
He knew now what I was subjected to.
His screams were what undid me; not Bonnie’s laughter or Cut’s smug chuckles—not even Daniel’s demented cackles.
Love was what ruined me the most.
Love was the ultimate destroyer.
But no matter how much I tried to let go...I couldn’t.
* * * * *
“Do you repent, Nila? Do you agree to pay the Final Debt?”
I squirmed in my bindings, choking on terror as Daniel marched me toward the guillotine. All around me stood ethereal figments of my exterminated family, their detached heads hovering above their corpses.
A wail howled over the moor. Was it death? Was it hope?
I would soon find out.
“No, I do not repent!”
Cut came toward me. His face was covered by an executioner’s black mask. In his hands rested a heavy gleaming axe, polished and sharpened and waiting to sever my neck.
Bending toward me, he kissed my cheek. “Too late. You’re already dead.”
“No!”
“Oh, yes.” Daniel chuckled. Shoving me forward, the guillotine grew from simple bascule and basket into something horrendous. “Kneel.”
I crashed to my knees, sobs suffocating me. “Don’t. Please, don’t. Don’t!”
No one listened.
Bonnie pressed my shoulders, forcing me to lean over the lunette and stare at the woven basket below. The same basket into which my head would roll.
