Page 83 of The Year of the Witching

“Are you hurt?” Immanuelle said at last, murmuring the words into his shoulder.

“No,” he said, and she could tell he was lying. There was no light to see, but she gingerly lifted the corner of his shirt. She felt the bandages beneath, binding his stomach and chest. They were wet, and when she touched them he hissed.

She sucked in a breath. “Ezra.”

“All right,” he said, wheezing a little. “I might have had a brief encounter with a bullet or two, but I’m fine. What about you?”

“I’m all right.” In truth, she’d sustained a bad beating the first night of her contrition, and several lashings after it, but she wouldn’t trouble him with those things. Not now, not when he was so weak, so frail in her arms.

“Why are you here?”

He didn’t know, she realized. He couldn’t know, of course. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t heard her final confession.

“I was sentenced today,” she whispered. “I was sentenced, and the Prophet decided to free me.”

“How can that be? I haven’t even been sentenced yet myself.”

“Listen to me.” Immanuelle grabbed him by both hands. “About your sentencing, you have to tell them you’ve repented for your sin. Swear that you will.”

“I don’t understand.”

She heard the echo of footsteps in the distance and ducked instinctively, shifting behind a nearby bookshelf. “I made a deal with your father.”

“What kind of deal, Immanuelle?” Ezra’s voice was tight. “What have you done?”

“I agreed to take his hand in marriage, to save your life and mine,” she said, the words like bile on her tongue. “I’m going to be cut on the coming Sabbath.”

“No.” Ezra’s hands tightened painfully around hers, and in his voice was such revulsion—suchrage—that Immanuelle flinched away from him.

“It was either the Prophet or the pyre,” said Immanuelle, rushing to explain. “He said he’d spare your life if I married him, and I agreed to it—to buy you time, to save you.”

“He lied,” said Ezra, in a tone so low, his words were barely audible. “That was the deal I made with him. He said if I pleaded guilty he would make sure you survived your sentencing, and he’d set you free.”

He’d lied to them both, she realized. His deal had never been about sacrifice—hers or Ezra’s. The Prophet claimed he was carrying out the Father’s will, but it was power that drove him. The power to purge, to punish, to control. It was all he cared about.

“Immanuelle, you can’t go through with this,” Ezra said urgently. “He’ll hurt you. He’ll break you, the way he does everyone.”

She closed her eyes, and when she did, she saw a glimpse of that fateful night when the Prophet turned on her mother, and her mother turned on him. “He’s not going to lay a finger on me, or on you or anyone else. We’ll find a way to stop him, to stop all of this, but I need you alive and well and by my side to do it.”

“This is madness,” said Ezra. “Isn’t it enough just to save ourselves? You got past the gate once; we can do it again. We should run, tonight. I know a way out of the Haven, through the back passages. If you can free me from these chains, we can escape before anyone realizes we’re gone. We could make our own way.”

Immanuelle humored the idea. She imagined turning her back on Bethel and all of its troubles, running away with Ezra, making a new life for themselves beyond the gate. It was an appealing dream, but Immanuelle knew it was nothing more. Her fate was not that of a runaway.

“Saving ourselves isn’t enough,” said Immanuelle firmly. “There are other people in Bethel suffering as well, and they deserve better. We have to help them. All of them.”

Ezra didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he asked, “So you’re just going to trade yourself? Barter your bones to that tyrant?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. And then, after I’m cut, I’m going to end these plagues once and for all.”

“How?”

Immanuelle thought of the sigil, of the sacrifice she’d have tomake to bring its power to fruition. “Better that you don’t know. That way, if you’re ever asked, you can claim ignorance.”

Ezra sighed and tilted his forehead against hers. Immanuelle was suddenly aware that this was as close as the two of them had ever been. But all she could think of, as they clung to each other in the darkened library, was how she wanted him even closer.

“I hate this,” said Ezra, his breath warm against her face. “I hate that I’m chained up here. That I can’t help you. That I’m going to be here in shackles while you’re cut by him, claimed by him.”

“What’s done is done,” Immanuelle whispered. “This time, let me help you. Let me fight for you.”

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