Bonnie glared at him. “No. I can tell her. Perhaps she’ll obey you better and we can move on before the moon rises.”
Jethro’s nostrils flared as he nodded, looking over his grandmother’s shoulder, removing himself from the conversation.
Bonnie waggled her finger at me once more. “Your arrival was meant to be celebrated. You were a gift for my son and grandsons. You were meant to be shared.” Her lips spread broadly. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you, child?”
Sickness rolled in my gut.
Yes, I knew what she referred to. Jethro had said as much when he made me crawl like a dog to the kennels. He’d said I was to be passed around. But it never happened.
My eyes flew to him.
Even then…even when he was so awful, he was protecting me from worse.
The sickness disappeared, replaced with an intolerable ache inside my heart.
“Yes, I understand what you’re saying.”
Bonnie Hawk sat back, dropping her bony hand. “Good. You’d be wise to remember that. Remember that we have rules but freedom, guidelines but exceptions, but most of all, immunity against whatever we please to do.”
Cut cleared his throat, moving forward and stealing the limelight. “Enough.” Snapping his fingers at his son, he ordered, “Jethro. Ask the girl the question again.”
My back tensed. The breeze died, untangling itself from my hair and letting it drape like a death shroud over my shoulders.
Oh, God.
My feet tingled to be free from the pentagram, but at the same time, I didn’t want to move. Perhaps I was safe inside this five-pointed salt etching. Perhaps whatever pathway was conjured could steal me away and protect me from the Second Debt.
She was only fourteen.
The Hawk girl had died to protect my ancestor. She would’ve been petrified and so betrayed. Why was I any better than her? Why did I deserve to be freed when she was killed for a lie?
I swallowed as Jethro faced me completely. His hands were fisted by his sides, his face blank and cold. “Do you repent, Ms. Weaver? Do you take ownership of your family’s sins and agree to pay the debt?”
His voice echoed in my ears. I wished he were asking me anything but that. I fantasised about a different question. So many different questions.
Do you want to run away with me?
Can you forgive my family for what they’ve done?
Have you fallen for me, like I’ve fallen for you?
Infinitely better questions. But ones I would never hear.
I’d delayed as much as possible.
I had nothing left to do but get it over with.
Bracing myself, I locked eyes first with Jethro then with each member of his deluded family. He didn’t need to ask me twice—regardless of my stalling. I knew my role—my part in these theatrics.
If there was any power at all in the pentacle, I summoned it now. I summoned age-old wizardry and asked for one thing:
Let me endure, so I may pay the sins of my past. But let me survive, so I may put an end to those who hurt me.
The wind howled, fluttering the hem of my shift…almost in answer.
Balling my hands, I said, “Yes.” My voice carried loud and clear with a touch of defiance. “Yes, I accept the debt.”
Cut’s forehead furrowed as if he were pissed with my strength and ownership of something so terrible. He looked robbed. He looked furious.
Jethro, on the other hand, looked stricken. His face went white and he nodded. “In that case, let’s begin.”
I closed my eyes, taking one last moment to fortify my soul.
You can get through this, Nila.
You can.
They won’t kill you. Not yet.
Another bout of shivers overtook me. It could be entirely possible that after this, I would wish they would. I might want them to kill me and put me out of my misery.
Jethro gritted his jaw and moved toward the ominous looking contraption that remained hidden beneath a black cloth. Every time the breeze caught the edge, I tried to see what it was. The brief glimpses of wood and leather gave me no hint.
Wrapping his fist in the fabric, Jethro tore it off with a flourish.
My heart instantly suffocated.
I stepped back, scuffing the salt line and breaking the pentacle boundary. Thunder boomed on the horizon; heavy clouds inched closer.
I’d seen one of those things—a long time ago—in a book called Fifty Ingenious Ways of Torture. Vaughn had checked it out from the local library. I’d hated the book so much. He’d chased me around the house with it, flicking pages of blood and gore and absolute pain.
I didn’t need water to drown me. My fear did that spectacularly well on its own.
It was a seesaw.
A terrified giggle bubbled in my chest. I liked seesaws. V had double-bounced me more than once as we played on them as children.
But this wasn’t just any seesaw.
This one destroyed all happy memories of ever being on one. I would never ever go on another.
Not after today.
Not after this.
Jethro didn’t look at me, stroking the end closest to him—what looked like a simple tree-trunk. It’d been carved into a smooth post with leather handholds hammered into the wood.
There were four straps in total.
My eyes followed the length of the seesaw, taking in the fulcrum before gritting my teeth and forcing myself to stare at the other end.
That was where I would go.
That end wasn’t smooth or basic. It’d been modified. It was…it’s a chair.
A simple wooden chair with cuffs for wrists and ankles. There were no cushions, no luxury—a prison cell suspended over the deep lake. It faced toward the pond, barring me from seeing what would happen on shore.