Page 1 of The Sacrifice

1

Tonight is the Sacrifice. The Monsters Will Come Out to Play

QUINTESSA

With my hands gripping the cemetery headstone so hard, my nails crack, and my skirts bunched around my waist while my sister’s betrothed ruts into me from behind, I’d say I’ve officially hit rock bottom. Especially with the dead staggering toward us.

Darya despises the flouncy fool. Almost as much as she despises me, which she’s done since I was born—unrelated to the present. After all, it’s not like I planned an early morning walk around the cemetery bordering our house just so I could run into him.

Van Wetterton’s hot breath that smells of bacon grease and onions curls toward my ear. He pounds harder, but I only get a vague sense of pressure as he says, “You feel this, don’t you, Quinn? You’ll come for me, won’t you, little gray bitch?”

A bitterness burns the back of my throat. Gray bitch, gray whore, gray girl, they call me. My smoky gray hair flings down my chest, ricochets on my cheeks, and fractures my vision. One nail breaks. And bleeds. I wish I could feel the pain. Not even letting my sister’s fiancé fuck me in a cemetery on Hollow Day can make me feel something. My body doesn’t silence pain, but it hushes it, along with all other touch. Even the worst pain is numbed. That is the price to pay when you’re half-ghost, half-blessed, half-cursed.

And numb inside.

I fake a long moan, smirking at the thought of Van bragging to his Brotherhood about how he was the first to make a ghost climax. Regardless, he and the other Brothers who’ve fucked me will have a good row over it. I’ve had them going in circles since I was sixteen and gave my “maidenhood” to Fynne Hawksburne in the woods behind my family’s home. The abandoned shed was as good a place as any.

The stalkers advance toward us, their guttural rasps growing louder. Some fall over headstones and into open graves from where others have risen. It’s Hollow Night. More will rise by nightfall.

“Nothing beats this rush in your blood, does it?” asks Van with a deep groan. I wouldn’t know. My blood is an icy, slow river.

As he jerks one last time, the momentum propels me forward.

I hardly feel Van’s cum trickling down my thighs when he pulls out and shoves his unimpressive dick back into his breeches. Guess I can mark him off the list. I’ve kept a ledger of names, both male and female, hoping someone in these blasted Borderlands might help me feel something.

He slams his palms together, commanding a wind to gust and push the dead back. Everyone in the god-eater’s five realms has some kind of binding magic. If only I had a normal one.

“Give my best to your sister,” Wetterton snickers cruelly after the stalkers have toppled into a pile of rotting corpses. “I’d say we look forward to having you at the wedding tomorrow, but everyone knows you won’t be there.”

“My deepest congratulations on your impending lifetime of marital bliss,” I sweetly proclaim and pick up my skirts, turning to hurry away before he can see my grin.

Tonight is the Sacrifice. The monsters will come out to play.

Maybe one will oblige me with a fuck I can actually feel before it slaughters me. I laugh at the notion and sneak into the manor through the servant’s entrance. They’re too busy preparing for the wedding and the Sacrifice to notice me.

So, I retreat to my room for an hour’s peace at best before my sisters prepare me. But as soon as the dark, clawed fingers coil around my throat, I know peace won’t come.

Ugh. This time, she straddles me, pins me to the bed with all the weight she bears, and sends ice-cold horror shivering up my spine. Claws sink in. She draws blood.

Fear slashes through me as always, familiar but no less terrifying whenever my Shadow tries to kill me once a year. Always on Hollow Night. She is a silhouette above me — my queer, quixotic nightmare of black and blue like an ever-moving bruise. No mouth, nose, or eyes, only that silhouette, a mirror to mine. No facial features for me to read, but I feel her hatred and savagery. And the mournful rage and trauma behind them. I could never hurt her.

Qora.

I struggle and thrash against her, hoping to get momentum to reverse our positions until my wrists register they can’t move. Eyes flying to their ceilings, I discover the ropes she’s bound around my wrists and tied to the headboard. She’s bound my ankles, too. Unlike her rabid heaving pants, my lungs ache from shallow breaths while nausea clots my stomach.

“If you’d wanted to play,” I wheeze out as my vision turns blurry, “you...could...have...asked,” I strain to get the words out.

I’d give her credit for creativity, but I’m pretty certain I’m about to pass out. And still, I do the only thing I can think to do. With her hands compressing my jugular and wrecking my air, I arch my neck as high as possible and touch my lips to her cheek. A smile curves the corners of my mouth because she’s the one being I truly feel. A cold mist on the surface and withering flesh underneath. The irony.

My Shadow freezes at the kiss.

I stop fighting and close my eyes, surrendering to her. Her claws soften, fingers slacken, and her labored breaths wane to grow long and steady. Opening my eyes to her staring down at me—or what I imagine is staring since she has nothing to peer through—I can’t help but giggle. What comes from her silhouette next is somewhere between a growl and a shriek, followed by a prompt shove on my chest and her rolling off me.

“Aww, Qora, come on, that was one of the best attempts you’ve done,” I half-tease my Shadow, who hisses at me in return and pulses her dark shadows to curl from her silhouette. They remind me of the ink scrawled upon my body. Easing a sigh, I tug at the bindings again and glance at her, “I’d give this a solid seven out of ten.” When Qora lunges at me with a snarling hiss, I flinch but grin and say, “All right, an eight, an eight!” I squeal in correction. It seems to satisfy her, but her shoulders slump in pitiful defeat.

Pursing my lips, I linger within the ripples of relief because I doubt she’s going to untie me soon. “Maybe a monster will kill me tonight, and you won't need to try anymore. Remember that time you pushed me down the empty well, and I twisted my ankle? That was a good one,” I murmur, recalling the Hollow Night when I was fifteen. For my sixteenth birthday, she’d gone all out with a noose knotted around one of my ceiling’s birch beams. I still wish I could hug her for propping up the chair she’d originally toppled.

When Qora doesn’t respond with the few gestures she can, I lean toward her and coo, “Oh, come now, you know you love me.”

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