'Don't look, Lillian. Never look into the eyes of a Sin-Eater, you will be as cursed as he is and will forever languish in darkness.'
Lillian Elmes remembers the warning her mother gave her about the town's Sin-Eater only too well.
How could she n...
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My heart. My heart.
The room begins to spin again, and I wish I could reach out and grab it, hold it, and beg it to stop. How can one think when the world is turning so fast? How can one even begin to think when the world is about to end?
'Where are my father and brother?' I manage to say. 'I want to see them. If you are to kill me, then I think you at least owe me one last meeting with my family?'
Mrs. Hawkstone's dress of crows ripples with discontent, or with the thrill, I know not. When she laughs, I realise it is the latter. She enjoys my fear like honey on her tongue.
'Did you really think we would not allow them audience to your sacrifice, girl? The Master needs your heart to suffer, for He relishes your pain, and what greater pain than seeing the agony in your father's and brother's eyes as you all watch each other die?'
All at once, I am torn by her words. I want to see them both more than anything, but I do not wish to witness their suffering, nor do I wish to aid these monsters in their dark mission.
Footsteps and muffled protests echo along an unseen passageway, and I shift, trying to twist in my binds to see Papa and William as they are dragged into the room, by two men – both of whom I recognise from the Lutwyche serving staff. Both men seem unmoved by the situation, and I cannot help but wonder if they are bewitched or willing participants to this horror. The Hawkstone's web is wide it seems, including the new housekeeper at Wilderhope Manor. Who else is embroiled in this dark plan of theirs?
The joy I get from seeing the faces of Papa and William is bittersweet. Both are gagged and their wrists are bound. There is a wicked gash on William's temple that enrages and pains me to see that someone could have treated my brother in such a way. Papa looks exhausted and pale, but infuriated too, to see me laid out on the alter table, a lamb ready for slaughter. His eyes ask me questions his mouth cannot. I smile through the tears that now fall, the emotion of seeing them both overwhelming me.
The men pull their gags free, and William lets forth a torrent of curses that earns him an instant backhand to the face and no doubt a bruise to match the one on his forehead, and which leaves him glowering at his attacker with murder in his eyes.
