Graves raises his hands as my mother’s wrists are shackled to the marble stage. She pulls and yanks, her short blonde hair slicked to the sides of her face with sweat and tears.
“Will the initiate step forward?” Graves asks.
My grandfather does so and swallows.
“Dad? Dad! What’s going on?” My mother’s voice screeches.
My grandfather looks away.
Her cry rips through me. She doesn’t understand what’s happening—what she’s being traded for. All I can picture is Thea standing in her childhood home while Phil Harmon watched Graves put a price on her life. My jaw locks. This is what they do. Destroy women and pretend it’s business and sacrifice. Bile sloshes up the back of my throat. I’m not sure I could do what my grandfather is doing now.
“It is time, Initiate. You will recite the final piece and stand at our place. As per our ceremony, each member of the Eight will leave a permanent mark on the Offering. It is up to the leader to dictate if it is to be physical or psychological. Initiate, you may recite.”
My grandfather clears his throat. “I give you no name. I grant you no will. You belong to the council’s control.”
He steps back and screws his face as tight as possible. He must not react. He must not show heart. He must sever his connection to her. Her name will not be spoken. She has no free will. Seven prompts. Each one given by a leadership member. The intent to humiliate, debase, and sever the relationship between the joining leader and the Offering.
Graves speaks first. “Strip her.”
“No!” she yells, and before the Chamber Guards approach her I look away. My grandfather’s eyes hollow, they blacken as his body trembles, but he shows little emotion.
Kenji lays a hand on my shoulder. “Is that?”
I nod.
“Shit.”
My mother is stripped. Her face is drained of color, and she’s frozen. Locked between shock and surrender with the humiliation.
My grandfather stares straight ahead. He knows I’m here, yet he doesn’t seek me out. I hate my mother for choosing herself over me. For leaving me with him. But at this moment, I’m glad she can’t see my shadowed face. Knowledge that her only son watches on would only add more disgrace.
Another member of the Eight speaks. “She is to be branded.”
They bring forth the branding iron, and my mother’s skin burns, her screams echoing throughout the chamber.
Still, my grandfather stares ahead, his focus locked on the bigger picture. Power. Seduction. Money.
He doesn’t care. He severed his connection to my mother long ago. His eyes sparkle, liquid-dark gleaming under the dim ritual lights.
It’s mostly the same. Nakedness, branding—meant to intimidate the Offering, but more so to see if the initiate breaks. If he lasts, he’s succeeded in ridding himself of weakness. It’s controlled evil. It’s intentional. We watch in silence while he doesn’t react. He won’t be rewarded with praise, only with status.
It’s the depraved who can follow through with this. It’s they who advance to the Eight because they can stomach this. Those with morality, with heart, or care, can’t. It’s my goal to sit on the Eight someday, to destroy Echelon Vanguard from the inside.But how will I ever get through this? If that was Thea … I’d burn this chamber down with everyone inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THEA
It’s late, and Slade hasn’t come to my room.Did our encounter on the couch scare him?I’ve long given up pretending I’m asleep and pace the rug instead. Rain sprinkles outside, and I stare at the dock, longing for better weather to get out of this dang house. The lake is choppy and agitated, the jagged ripples breaking across the surface violently, and as I press my forehead to the window, I wonder if it’s some kind of omen.
It’s 2:00 a.m. when I hear smashing upstairs. Something hits the floor above me with a dull thud, and I tilt my head back to look at the ceiling. Is he home? Another sound, this time sharp, shatters and cracks. Another crash follows another.
I run to the door, my pulse hammering. Yanking it open, I scurry out and down the hallway until I reach the stairs. There’s a louder, high-pitched splinter, and Edmond’s voice echoes along the mezzanine.
“Sir, no, not the lamp.”Crash. “That was five thousand dollars, Slade!”
I jog up the first few steps, pausing when something heavy and thick smacks against the wall in Slade’s suite.
“Destroy it if you must, sir. But it’s not your fault … No! I will not ‘go away.’ What do you want me to do?” Edmond’s voice getsmore intense, and by the time I’m three-quarters of the way up the stairs, he’s at the top. He descends.
