Page 30 of Don't Let Me Go
And under one of those pieces lies a body.
A woman’s body. A wild mane of bloodred hair obscures her face, but the purple tunic bedecked with a large golden brooch in the shape of a wolf’s head is familiar enough. I have often seen the wearer of these things at a distance, passing solemnly through the streets of Pompeii with her handmaidens.
“It’s the high priestess,” Marcus exclaims, darting to her side. “We have to help her.”
I don’t move. Because I can see what he does not or will not. The priestess is dead. The great life that once flowed through her veins is now spilling out in thick pools of crimson blood under her twisted, broken body.
But Marcus is undaunted. He sets down the torch and tries to lift the heavy slab of column. When those exertions fail, he attempts to pull the priestess’s body out from under the crushing weight.
“Marcus, she’s gone,” I whisper. “There’s nothing we can do. She’s already—”
“You...” a voice whispers in the darkness.
I stare at the high priestess, my eyes wide in amazement. That a body so broken and drained of blood should still contain life seems an impossibility. How great must her will to live be that even in this state, she is able to hold off death?
“Save your strength,” Marcus bids her, leaning in close to wipe her wild, bloody hair from her face. “We’ll help you.”
“Iknew?.?.?.?youtwo?.?.?.?would come,” the dying woman answers in a halting, desperate whisper.
Marcus looks at me in surprise, and the priestess’s strange pronouncement leaves me equally confused. She can’t have expected us.Marcus and I would never have set foot in this temple if necessity had not driven us here.
Perhaps she’s rambling. Or mad. In either case, she’s probably too far gone to know what she says. Already she’s sunk back into a silence and stillness that have all the signs of death.
“Priestess?” Marcus whispers, placing a cautious hand on her shoulder in an attempt to rouse her. “Priestess, can you—”
The priestess’s hand shoots out like a snake darting to strike at a startled hare and closes on Marcus’s wrist. At the same time, one black eye in her bloodstained face opens and fixes him with its ferocious gaze.
“Die!” the priestess commands, spitting the word with rage.“You...must?.?.?.?die!”
White with terror, Marcus pries his wrist free and scrambles backward on his haunches, cutting a frenzied wake through the pool of blood. I rush to his side and wrap my arms around his trembling body as we both stare at the convulsing priestess. Her twisting form writhes in the throes of death, yet her piercing black eye never leaves us.
Even when she at last goes stiff and the unmistakable death rattle breaks from her lips to announce her passing, her unseeing, unforgiving eye remains fixed on Marcus and me. Judging us. Accusing us. Condemning us.
“I don’t want to die,” Marcus whispers, his voice small but full of fear.
In the presence of death and with the high priestess’s words ringing in his ears as surely as her blood lingers on his hands, Marcus is falling to pieces. Whatever strength he possessed has fled his body. I can feel him quaking in my arms as if his own soul longs to escape its mortal prison. “I don’t want to die...”
“We won’t,” I assure him, though I scarcely believe my own words. Ihave no idea what Marcus or I could have done to offend the priestess to such a degree that she would use her final words to demand our deaths, but her vehemence leaves no mistake that she meant every word.
“We won’t die,” I repeat, taking his trembling hands in mine and kissing them in the hopes that the touch of my lips might impart some sliver of courage to him even as my own is fading.
As if in defiance of my words, a violent tremor grips the temple. It shakes the building to its foundation, sending stonework crashing to the floor and reminding us—as if we needed reminding—of the endless devastation awaiting us outside.
Marcus releases a sob and pulls me to him, crushing me in a desperate embrace. His chest heaves against mine as warm tears run down his cheeks, staining both our faces.
“I don’t want to die,” he repeats even more frantically. “And I don’t want to marry Lucretia. I want to be with you.Just you.”
“I want to be with you too.” I gasp, choking back my own tears. “Just you. Forever.”
Another tremor shakes the temple, and another column cracks. It splits in half as it collapses, taking with it a chunk of the roof, which crashes in front of us, scattering masonry across the floor and extinguishing our torch. Whatever protection we had from the elements is gone. Rock and ash spill through the wound in the ceiling, poisoning the air around us and turning our sanctuary into a trap.
A sharp animal instinct urges me to flee, but Marcus clutches me to him even tighter.
“Don’t let me go,” he begs, holding on to me as if his life depends on it.
He’s always been larger and stronger than me, his body a shelter against the world that I’ve sought comfort in so many times that it almost feels like home. Even so, I wrap myself around him, as if my thin frame might somehow protect him from the wrath of the gods.
“I won’t let you go,” I promise. “Do you hear me? You are my blood and my heart and my soul. If I had a thousand lives, I would spend them all with you. Because youaremy life. And neither the gods nor death willevertear us apart. I swear it. Our hearts are bound—forever.”
