Then I’ll know everything I need to know to keep her crimes—and anyone who seeks to uncover them—buried.
My rage simmers into patience, and I watch the dream unfold with deadly calm. The newly appointed duke steps in close and unsheathes a knife. Inana’s relief melts off her face, twisting into confusion, then to blank shock.
Henry slices open the front of her bodice, baring the center of her chest. Then he presses the tip of his blade to Inana’s sternum, but drops the knife before he can make the first cut. With trembling hands, he removes his gloves and closes his fingers tighter around the hilt. That’s when Inana notices his wedding ring. Her shock turns to fury, and my heart wells with pride when I see her lips pull back from her teeth. She spits words of vitriol, raging at him for what he’s trying to do to her. For covering his shame with murder.
“Yes, I’m ashamed of you,” Henry says, covering her shouts with his palm. I’ve never wanted to pummel someone to death with my barefists so badly. “I’m ashamed I ever loved a sinner like you. But your sacrifice will save Dunway. This has to happen. I must…” For a single second he truly seems to struggle with the moral implications of what he seeks to do. “I must consume a human heart. It’s the only way I can light the brazier. The only way I cankeepit lit. And the first sacrifice must be you. You’re the reason Shades claw at doors at night. You’re the sinner who draws them here.”
Inana scoffs against his hand. “With my sewing?”
“With your storytelling,” he says, bringing his face close to hers.
Her eyes turn down at the corners, brimming with agony. “Those stories were for you. Only you.”
Henry’s tone darkens. “Don’t lie to me. I saw you. I saw you talking to them. Whispering tales to things that moved in the dark. You were never afraid of them. You were always a sinner.”
Inana’s throat bobs, and she sags against the wall, defeated by his words. They must be true, then. I don’t recall her mentioning that part when I overheard her story, but I can’t blame her. How could I blame my beautiful little sinner for being exactly who she was always meant to be? An artist. A storyteller.
Henry tightens his jaw, recovering from his moment of hesitation. He presses his forearm over her shoulder, pinning her in place. Slowly, he drags the knife across her skin, an inch at a time. I grind my teeth at the sight of the blood running down her chest and soaking her bodice. She struggles against his hold, but it’s no use. He has a Sinless’s immortal strength now.
Yet Inana isn’t fully defeated.
Her lashes flutter from the pain, but she gives him a dark smile. “You know what I did today, Henry?”
“Stop speaking or I’ll slit your mouth open.”
“I went to the market,” she says, unfazed. “I went to the market and saw…now, you won’t believe this…a teeny-tiny statue of a cock. Here’s the best part: It had your name on it—”
He halts his cut and slams his palm over her mouth, smothering her words.
That’s when I see movement stirring at the corners of the cell,Shades coalescing in pools of shadow. Despite the daylight streaming through the barred windows of the cell, there is plenty of darkness, between that and the lantern light.
Inana begins to hum against Henry’s hand, and the Shades grow even more interested, some standing at their full height and leaning as close to the lantern light as they dare. Henry growls in his anger but resumes his cut, muttering to drown out the sound of her song.
“Work quickly,” he says to himself, “but carefully. Thirty degrees from horizon to Sylas. Shit, I should have carved the circle first. I’ll carve it last. Thirty degrees from horizon to Sylas. Cut at ninety and one-eighty. Motion at seventy…”
My blood goes cold as his meaning dawns on me. When Inana told this story in the clearing, she said Henry began praying when she was humming, but her assumption was wrong. Because of course she couldn’t have made sense of his muttered words. Only someone like me could know.
He isn’t uttering nonsense; he’s verbally rehearsing an astrotheurgical diagram. One that’s different from the circle I use for light and flame. This one revolves around Sylas, God of Harvest.
Because…
He’s harvesting her heart.
He isn’t merely cutting it from her chest.
He’s removing it while it’s still beating.
My stomach churns. I may know much about the secrets of the Sinless, but there are many things I’ve yet to uncover. Not even the rebels who trained me, fed me secrets from as far back as I can remember, know all that is kept by the church and crown. This must be something only the dukes and royals know—that their heart sacrifices are taken using astrotheurgy. No one ever sees the bodies of the sacrifices once the ritual is complete. The hearts belong to outlaws and criminals, people without rights. People who can be discarded without a care, without honoring their families by sending a body back for burial.
I’m so disgusted I can hardly see straight, but this nightmare isn’t over.
I force my gaze away from Henry’s careful cut, to Inana’s boundwrists. I recall what she said she did next, and I catch sight of the sewing needle fraying at the ropes until her arm swings down, freed from its bonds. Henry pulls back, startled by the sudden movement. Inana flicks her fingers toward her cuff, tugging a second needle free and slashing out at the duke. He winces, slapping a hand over the slice on his neck, but no sooner than he has removed his palm, the cut has sealed.
“Of all the idiotic things you could do,” he says with a dark chuckle. “I can’t be hurt by you. I can’t be killed.”
I hold my breath, even though I know I’m dreaming. Inana never finished her story after this part. She was interrupted by me and the Shades that surrounded the clearing.
This…what’s happening now…is new.
