Page 5 of Jailer to the Death God
It’s a mercy, this. The only healing I can grant to my childhood friend.
“I love you, Lei,” I whisper.
Rose is at her other side, laying the book down, kneeling. “We both do, darling. May you find Thistle in Arawn’s realm.”
I have never killed anyone before. My hand shakes as I lift the dagger, as I set its edge to Leilani’s throat. I want to ask Rose to do it. But she has already done more than her share.
This part, I will bear alone.
“Gods, Vale, make it quick.” Rose’s voice is choked with tears.
Her desperate urgency spurs my resolve, and I slash, quick and sure, right across the jugular vein. Leilani’s blood pours out, scarlet laced with streaks of sickly white.
There’s relief in the act, relief in the purging—the thing done, her torment finally over. She can rest now, my Leilani, my sweet girl.
I lean over her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Rose does the same.
How wickedly arbitrary is death, how fickle. How dispassionately hateful in its choice of whom to take and whom to leave.
I move on, slitting throat after throat. One at a time, all around the circle, in the sharp cold blurred by a haze of aromatic smoke.
My hand and the dagger seem detached from the rest of me. Their actions are mine, and yet not mine.
My two bodyguards and two servants huddle in a knot at the edge of the clearing and watch the carnage.
Rose follows after me, dragging the bodies nearer to the pit so their blood will flow down, along the vines into its black depths.
My fingers are chilled to the bone now, riven with sharp pain from the cold. I forgot to bring gloves. Even if I’d worn a pair, they would have been soiled.
My dagger slices through the pale, mouldering skin of the eighth throat, and I move on to the ninth.
I bend over him. His neck is a mass of boils, and his eyes stare up into the gray sky, sightless and filmed.
My heartbeat stutters.
Maybe the plague stole his sight. That’s why he looks like this, like he’s—
Like he’s already dead.
The others were all breathing—I could hear it, the telltale rasp of plague victims. But this one—there’s nothing. Not a sound.
I tear open his robe and press my ear to his chest.
Nothing.
“Vale?” Rose’s voice carries a strident uncertainty. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s already dead.” I crumple, bowed over, my bloodstained fingers clasping the knife handle, setting its hilt to my brow. “The ritual can’t be completed. We’ll have to go back to the palace and find nine more, get more supplies—try again tomorrow.”
“No. No, we can’t start over—this has to be done now. My sisters, Vale—they’re so little. You know how fast the plague kills children. No child survives. I can’t watch my sisters die, Vale, I can’t—”
“What do you want me to do?” I look up, desperate, tears scorching lines along my cold cheeks. “Will his blood still work if he’s dead?”
“You read the ritual. Blood must be spilled from nine living sacrifices. The lives must be spent with the purpose of summoning Arawn. This man didn’t die bloody, for the purpose of the spell, so it doesn’t count.”
“Then we must start over. Perform the ritual another day, and this time bring an extra body or two...” I halt, nauseated by the very words I’m speaking.
Rose glances aside, toward the servants and guards.
