Page 74 of The Year of the Witching

Apostle Isaac’s lips peeled back into a sneer. He moved toward the door, put a hand on Martha’s shoulder. “And so she will be, upon her confession. The Prophet will make sure of it.”

Martha trembled so violently her candle rattled on its pricket. In a rare moment of weakness, her eyes filled with tears. When she finally spoke it was not to the apostle, but to Immanuelle. “Honor and Glory weep for you in the night. Anna is broken. Abram is so sick with grief he can barely eat.”

Immanuelle squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry. Her family and her tenderness for them had always been her greatest weakness. Martha knew that, perhaps better than anyone else.

“Tomorrow, at your trial, you must confess to your sins. Admit your guilt so that you can be forgiven and allowed to return home to those that love you. To me. Hope is not yet lost, if you’re willing to do that.”

Immanuelle laughed at the proposition. If only Martha knew what she was plotting. The sigil she was planning to carve. In the wake of what she was preparing to do, there would be no seat for her at Abram’s table. No place for her in Bethel, except bound to the stake of a purging pyre. Once she had a consecrated blade in her hand—whether it be the Prophet’s dagger or the sacred gutting knife—she would act. It was only a matter of biding her time. “What if I refuse to repent?”

A tear slipped down Martha’s cheek. “Then may the Father have mercy on your soul.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

I have confessed my sins and made peace with my fate. If the pyre awaits, then let the flames rise. I’m ready.

—FROMTHETRIALOFDANIELWARD

IMMANUELLE WOKE ONthe floor of her cell to the echo of approaching footsteps. Pushing herself off the bricks, she stumbled to her feet. The cell door ground open, and red torchlight spilled over the walls as Apostle Isaac stepped onto the threshold. “You’re to be tried today,” he said by way of greeting.

Immanuelle smoothed her skirt over her thighs. Her shackles rattled across the floor as she edged toward the apostle. Two members of the Prophet’s Guard stepped in to block her path, but if the apostle was threatened by her, he gave no indication. He raised a gnarled hand, motioning for the guards to stand down. “Let her through.”

So, they did. One of them grabbed her by the shackles. The other lowered his torch to the small of her back, so close Immanuelle feared her dress might catch alight and she’d burn to a crisp before she ever laid eyes on her pyre.

“Don’t get any ideas, witch.”

The guards took a path that Immanuelle didn’t know, toward the distant reaches of the Haven. As they walked, the brick walls gave way to corridors hewn through rough stone. Some of thesehalls were no more than long caves of packed dirt, the ground so soft that cold mud oozed between her toes with every step.

After a while, they came to a door at the end of a corridor so narrow the guards’ shoulders brushed the walls as they passed through. Immanuelle struggled up a steep flight of stairs—little more than planks of wood embedded into a wall of packed dirt—to the iron door at its end.

The taller of the two guards stepped forward to open it, and Immanuelle was greeted by a cold blast of clean night air. She swallowed a deep breath, savoring the freshness after all the time she’d spent in the reeking catacombs beneath the Prophet’s Haven. Over the course of her detainment, there had been times when she thought she would never walk the plains again. Yet here she was. If this was her last chance now to do so, before the end came, it would be enough. One last night to hear wind in the trees, to feel grass bristle between her toes... to live.

But as Immanuelle peered into the endless dark, she realized the plains weren’t the same moonlit meadows from her memories.

Oblivion lay before her.

There was no light, save for that of the torches, and the distant darkness was too thick to see through. No moon hung overhead, no stars. Even the fires of the purging pyres appeared to have been swallowed by the black.

As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she saw odd, nightmarish shapes in the darkness—the glimpse of a strange face, a little girl drowning in the deep, a man-shaped shade that flickered and shifted, beckoning her into the black with a hooked finger.

The guard gave Immanuelle’s shackles a cruel yank, dragging her forward, and the shapes in the black disappeared.

“What time is it?” she asked, and the night seemed to devour her words.

“It’s a little past noon,” said Apostle Isaac. “Tell me, what witchtaught you how to cast a curse as powerful as this one? Or did you simply whore yourself to the dark to attain this power?”

Immanuelle stumbled over a rut in the road, stubbing her toe on a rock. “I wrought no curses.” Not intentionally, anyway. The real witch-work had been her mother’s doing. She was merely the vessel.

The guard lowered his torch to her back again. “Bite your lying tongue, witch. Save your confessions for the trial.”

She didn’t make the mistake of speaking again.

They walked on. Time passed strangely in the black—as if the seconds slowed—but eventually, Immanuelle spotted lights in the distance. It took her a moment to register the size of the crowd. There were scores of people gathered at the foot of the cathedral, bearing torches and rousing the pyre flames, their faces lit by the glow.

The guards walked ahead of Immanuelle and Apostle Isaac, carving a path through the crowds for them to follow. As she moved through the throng, a chant began, the sound like a hymn without music:“Witch.Whore. Beast. Sinner. Bitch. Mother-spawn.”

Immanuelle entered the cathedral and squinted against the light. There were lamps and torches burning on every post, chasing off the shadows that leaked in through the doors and windows. The pews were packed with the throngs who’d gathered to watch the trial. There were the Prophet’s brides and village folk, and even a few people from the Outskirts.

Behind the altar stood the seven apostles, and, to Immanuelle’s horror, the Moores stood in their shadow, claiming the first row of pews. Anna stood, cloaked in black. She held a damp handkerchief to her eyes, refusing to look at Immanuelle as she passed. Next to Anna, Abram, his eyes bloodshot and flat. Martha stood beside him, dressed in the same dark cloak she’d worn the nightshe visited Immanuelle in the catacombs. Both Honor and Glory were absent, likely still recovering from the blight.

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