“I’m scared,” I admitted, knowing the undead army was gathering again, and I would soon face my end.
“Do not be frightened of what you cannot control, Hector Briar. You are smart, if only you apply yourself. Surely you have worked out what Bahmet’s deception has been?”
I didn’t have the energy to reply. I bowed my head, struggling to breathe in without inhaling the scent of my loved ones’ burned flesh.
“If to fail means to burn, then why only set up six pyres, when far more contenders were placed into the trial?”
Emon’s question sparked something in me. An alertness that I didn’t think myself ever capable of again.
“Think, Hector. And think quickly.”
“I’m fucking thinking!” I bellowed, rage scalding my throat.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
I couldn’t hold on to a single clear thought. Not as Kai and Romy continued to plead for help, not when Verena fell into the same silence that had captured Arwyn. Fire consumed me in different ways. It burned through my mind, eating up every possible thread of sense until I was left hunched over the ground.
“You must burn, Hector. For you are a witch. These are the Witch Trials, are they not? So burn. Burn like many have before you. Burn, so you can be freed.”
Verena, Romy and Kai had returned to the flames when they used their magic.
When I had used mine, it was Arwyn who suffered my fate.
Why… why… why…why.
One pyre was left.
“Burn. Hector. Now.”
I lifted a palm up, pictured the element I wanted until a small bud danced on my hand. In the seconds that passed, I waited for my punishment to come. But my fate did not end the same as those who had gone silent on their pyres.
“I can’t.” I could barely breathe. “Bahmet isn’t punishing me. It’s not fucking working!”
Something shifted out the corner of my eye. It could’ve been one of Bahmet’s undead, but I didn’t care. I had nothing left in me to give. What was the point in fighting against Bahmet when all he wanted to do was play with me. I was never going to win, not on the game board of a demon’s own making.
Emon hissed, loosening his grip on my arm and flinging himself in the direction of the movement. I followed to find a man, wide-eyed and very human, fumbling with something in his hands. I narrowed my gaze, trying to make out what it was.
“Burn. Burn. Burn,”Emon was screeching in my mind, words that I could barely understand. The serpent coiled, and then sprung himself into the air just as the human succeeded in what he was doing.
He was holding matches. One had been struck. Where he had found them was beyond me, but that didn’t matter.
“It worked for Father Tomin,” the Hunter said. “Saw it with my own eyes. He just…”
The Hunter couldn’t finish because he’d lifted the match to his skin and erupted in blessed fire.
“Buurrrrrnnn!”Emon cried out, his black-scaled body passing through a puff of smoke as the Hunter’s body was transported to the sixth andfinalpyre.
The darkness laughed again.
Bahmet’s enjoyment was a palpable thing.
I watched as the box of matches withered away to ash on the ground. As the ash floated upwards, it formed into a shape of shadow, which solidified into a monster.
Horns, the face of a goat set upon the shoulders of a broad man in a perfectly tailored suit.
Bahmet had come to congratulate me for losing, and claim my soul. He was clapping, the demon’s glee evident in every ounce of his body.
Emon slithered across the ground, narrowly missing the polished boot that stamped down over him. Our fear was shared. I scooped my familiar up, not hesitating as the tight coil of scales wrapped back around my wrist.
