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My gaze snaps to the door.
I lunge, fingers closing around the handle, wrenching it open in one desperate motion.
Frank is standing there.
He grins as if he enjoyed listening to the sound of my hope collapsing. His hand clamps around my arm, and he shoves me back into the room. I stumble, catching myself on a table.
A wet towel flies through the air and smacks against my chest. I catch it before it falls.
“Wash up,” he says.
Evelyn lowers into an elegant crouch to pick up my knife, letting it dangle between two fingers as if that blood is too dirty to touch.
“Strip down and put the robe on, Zaiya,” she says as she casually walks out. “Or I’ll have Frank put it on for you.”
CHAPTER 48
ZAIYA
The white robe covers very little. It skims my shoulders and falls in two narrow panels that refuse to meet, leaving my body exposed. I feel every stare the moment I’m led into the sanctuary. Actually seeing the faces of the men watching changes everything. Their mouths part, their eyes widening as their attention drags slowly over my breasts and down between my legs.
I thought I had gotten a little used to being looked at. But this is something else. This is appetite staring back at me from the pews.
The rope hanging from a beam in the ceiling is looped around my neck and keeps me upright, lifted onto my toes, making my calves burn and my throat feel too small. Not tight enough to kill me, just tight enough to prove that the smallest mistake would.
I’m on a little platform, a wooden box that’s only inches off the ground, but it’s the perfect height to remind me that one step off will catch my neck in the rope.
My hands are bound behind my back, pulling my shoulders into an angle that makes them ache. If I try to twist, the rope bites harder at my neck, so I swallow carefully and force myself to stay still. I can’t afford to panic.
The pews are full of red. Men and women dressed in matching choir robes, ready to praise the Lord with their songs. The church itself bleeds red from the stained-glass windows. With all the candles lit, it’s more of a hellscape than something holy.
Evelyn stands at the pulpit in front of me. She’s her usual perfect self, with a gentle, patient expression that I once trusted. The one that made me want to crawl into her arms like a child. Now I know it’s a performance. The same as my own mother’s smile for the public while hiding the horror of what went on at home.
Evelyn lifts her hands as if she’s calling them to prayer.
“Believers of the Blood, you will drink from the source tonight. The purest way to indulge. The noble sacrifice of one life to extend others.”
A few people nod, treating her words as scripture rather than condemnation.
“Although,” she continues, coming to stand next to me, “she has sullied herself.”
Her vanilla perfume is out of place in this room. Its warmth is comforting, stirring nostalgia for a life I never truly lived.
Her finger touches my chest. The contact makes my body jerk, and the rope tightens. Air catches in my throat. It’s a simple lesson. Even my flinching belongs to them.
She tilts her head at my reaction, almost amused. “No one wants to drink something that’s been fucked.”
Heat floods my face, humiliation mixed with rage.
“I’m not your sustenance.” I force my voice out.
Her smile doesn’t move. “Be proud to provide nourishment.” She turns to the pews. “Blood from a young woman whose beauty has not yet peaked tastes the richest. It provides the most invigorating injection of youth into the body.”
A quiet sound rises from the men, a pleased murmur. The women stay silent, their excitement contained. I scan faces, trying to find any one of them that looks uncertain, any kind of guilt, any crack. No one cares.
My pulse pounds hard against the rope at my throat. I’m not done fighting. Even if I have to die to ruin her plan, it’ll mean I didn’t go quietly. I didn’t lie down the way I was raised to.
Evelyn lifts a dagger from the altar table. The blade is wavy with an ornately jeweled handle, meant to look beautiful while it destroys. She holds it up and closes her eyes.
