Page 101 of The Business of Blood
My engagement ring. From Aiden.
I wanted to cut it off. It caused me more pain than just the physical, but I dared not move.
Aidan’s eyes turned distant as he gazed into the past. “I heard his voice when Frank Sawyer begged me for help. When Katherine Riley tried to explain the little boxes of bones in her fire. When the Hammer caressed your cheek.” To my relief, he released my hands to trail his fingers through my tears. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. But you must allow me to finish what I started. What God has commanded of me…or I cannot promise that God won’t tell me that you’re next.”
“Me?” I recoiled, snatching my other hand away from his. Panic laced my blood with shards of ice. “But I don’t hurt people. I’m not a murderer.”
“You’ve enabled one.” He gestured to the Hammer. “You’ve hidden him from justice. Your sins are many, Fiona. Purifying you would be the greatest sacrifice I could possibly make. God has asked for such a sacrifice before, from many of his saints. Think of Abraham.”
I’d begun my retreat in earnest until my hip bumped against the altar. This couldn’t be. To fear the man I loved, the boy I’d trusted with all of myself for so many years, was the worst loss I’d suffered thus far.
He reached out, and I shrank away.
“Don’t be afraid,” he soothed, pointing back up at the stiff, ever-merciful visage of the crucified Lord. “He will forgive you, too. If you take up the sword for Him.” Aidan reached toward the knife, and my stomach plummeted to the floor.
We weren’t all surviving this, I realized. He wasn’t going to stop until someone was dead. Jorah. Me.
Or him.
“Do not tell me I have to kill this man in order to prove my love for God,” I sobbed. “Such a death is not justice, it’smurder.”
“Tell that to Mary. Tell that to little Fayne as they strung his body—”
I slapped him, hoping to knock the insanity away. How dare he bring my youngest brother into this. “No.Stop it! Stop this lunacy.”
He shook his head at me, unfazed even though a red mark spread over the pale beauty of his cheek. Slowly, he slid the knife from the brazier. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
No.Little needles of black punctured my vision.Anything but this prayer. The only one I knew by heart anymore. Psalms 23. The prayer of death. It had been said over every person I’d ever loved.
And now the only person left recited it over me.
My shattered heart turned from glass to stone.
“There has been enough killing,” I shouted at him. “Enough! Do you hear me?” I spread my arms across Jorah, though I knew the action was both puerile and ineffectual. Why would Aidan listen to me when he heard the voice of God?
I took my own knife from my pocket. One I’d replaced from a collection in my home after the riot. The blade was longer than his, but I knew that meant nothing. I’d never used it to kill before. Aidan was stronger than I. Taller. A trained soldier. And still, I’d do what I could to stop him.
All my pride had vanished. “Aidan.Please,”I begged. “You are the last person in the world I have left. My only link to home. Don’t be this man. The voice telling you to do these deplorable things doesn’t belong to God. It’s the same demon who whispers to the Ripper. Can’t you see that?”
He advanced on me. “…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
“Fiona.Move,” Jorah barked. “There’s no reason for both of us to die.”
Aidan’s hand snaked out to grab me, his knife raised, aimed at my heart. The heart he’d broken time and time again. It leapt and jerked like a captured rabbit, but he was simply too strong. I meant to slash at him first, a desperate and futile grasp for salvation. Still, a lightning-quick movement from my periphery stunned me to stillness.
Aidan dropped his knife. It sizzled and sparked against the cold marble floor of the sanctuary. He coughed. Released me. Wheezed in a deep breath and coughed again.
A dark arm slid around his front and held him fast as Night Horse drove his blade deeper into Aidan’s back, into his lung, and then wrenched it out, allowing the air to hiss out and the blood spill over his hands.
I couldn’t fathom where Night Horse had come from, but I was both unutterably relieved and devastated to see him.
As Aidan rattled out another cough, blood erupted from his mouth.
Night Horse met my stare of astonishment with hard, black eyes as fathomless as any hellish void. He bared his teeth in what could have been a silent snarl, or a smile.
Today, vengeance didn’t belong to the Lord.
It belonged to Aramis Night Horse, and to many of his slaughtered people.
