Once Luke was finished questioning me, he led me back to the central chamber and ordered me to stand by the edge of the bath, several paces behind a podium which had been brought in and placed in front of the pews. I had a hood on, blocking my view of most of the room. But I could hear the voices. The bodies—shuffling to their seats. The quiet, polite conversations. The eager electricity in the air, like a crowd before a show.

  And the muffled screaming through gags. The source of these I could see clearly, as they were shuffling down the central aisle of the room in two messy lines. They had bags over their heads and ropes around their wrists, each one tied to the person behind them so the robed figures could guide them more effectively. I couldn’t even grimace. Instead, I wore a smile.

  Not a cruel smile. Not like they stitch onto villainous faces in stories. It was a welcoming smile. Like the sweet owner of the local bakery would wear. I could feel the message it was preparing to send as soon as the bags were pulled from the victim’s eyes. It was disarming and hopeful, and I could barely stomach its stench.

  ’I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You’re safe here.’

  ‘You’ll understand soon.’

  ‘It’s your fault whenever we aren’t kind.’

  I was wearing the lie my grandmother had raised me with. I wanted to tear the skin it was written with off of my skull. I wanted to bleed, and to scream, and to die. Anything would be better than offering that smile to the crowd in front of me. No such mercy would be granted to either of us.

  Luke had no speech this time. The voice he used to elevate himself was missing when he next spoke; instead, his words dripped from his mouth like ice in a lukewarm room. “For years, we have tried to guide you as you were led astray. For years, we have warned you that Aethon’s mercy would only hold for so long. But you ignored us. And so, today. Today, as most of my children are leading the lost home, those who are left have led you adulterers here. It is time to pay you the wages of the lives you’ve lived.”

  He was too close to me, and I wasn’t given the free will to turn my head. I couldn’t even twitch my eyes. So I could only guess at his movements. But whatever he did, the other robed figures responded immediately. I wondered if he’d done anything at all, or if all of them were like me. Unwilling members of Luke’s sick cult. I knew he could send commands without any outward indication of the act, since I’d felt myself complying with more than one silent order.

  The robed men untied a man and woman from the front of the right line of bodies, forcing both of them up the aisle and to their knees once they reached the altar. The hoods were torn from their heads, and I saw the bruises and cuts of a struggle littering their faces. Both tried to protest, but neither could form words around their cloth gags.

  “Lexus,” Luke said, a disappointed sigh coloring his voice, “and Thina. You are two of the truest adulterers who have ever entered this temple, and both of you continued to attend as if you walked in Aethon’s light. I was here, you know. For your wedding. I watched Aethon tie your souls together. Like the fibers in a rope, you were to be stronger together. To support each other. You were given a clear and joyful path. But after only a few years, you rejected it.” Luke took a few steps forward, kneeling in front of the pair as their eyes bulged. He put his hand on the woman’s face and grit his teeth, actual tears forming in his eyes.

  “Thina. After you left your marriage, how many men have you allowed to defile you? How many times have you rejected the home chosen for your heart and offered warmth meant for your husband to other men?” There was vitriol in his voice as he lectured the woman, and his eyes were red as they turned to the man. His right hand left her face just as his left landed on the man’s shoulder.

  “Lexus. You, too, have gone astray. You have sought the comfort of women besides your wife. Professed to them your love. Offered to them the home built for you to shelter your wife. This alone could be forgiven, if not for your complacency. When your wife went astray, it was your responsibility to protect her from herself and keep Aethon’s word unbroken. Yet you sent her out to the wolves to be devoured. You sent her with your blessing, and you have rejected your role as a guiding light in her life.”

  I could see panic in both pairs of eyes as Luke’s fingers flexed around Lexus’ shoulder, digging into it hard enough that I could actually see red staining the white shirt. Every word Luke said was unsettling. Nothing that poured from him was anything like the Aethon I understood. Every admonition in Aethon’s name was like some sick, distorted version of everything I knew about the sun. Luke’s version of Aethon looked much more like the god I’d seen in Chandara’s play than the one I’d always understood. He spoke of Aethon like the god was a spoiled child, determined to get his way whether it was good for him or not. But Luke’s voice was so impassioned. Like his grief was so... real.

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  “You said you fell out of love. You said you weren’t happy. You wrote the word ‘divorce’ on a piece of paper and declared your wisdom greater than Aethon’s, and you each became adulterers,” Luke lectured. “Well. You two were not lost. You had found Aethon’s Grace, and you chose to stray. Chose to mock him, by sitting in his temple and calling his name, all while rejecting his wisdom. You had your chance, and it is time for judgment. You swore to stay with each other. You swore to support each other. You face Aethon, and you each said you would stay by the other’s side until the day you died.” Luke stepped aside, gesturing to me, and my body stepped forward, positioning me directly in front of the couple.

  “Allow me to introduce Acolyte Mars. Mars was sent to us today by Aethon himself. She is a tool of the sun. An angel, you might say. And she is here to render judgment,” he introduced. Still, my heart was steady, like nothing was wrong. The violation of being denied even my panic made me want to choke. But the fear of what came next drowned it out. “Mars. Please. Offer them Aethon’s grace. See to it that they fulfill their promise to each other. Let them live the rest of their days side by side, as they swore to Aethon they would.”

  I pulled my hood back, and I smiled down at the pair. In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Luke’s mother. She was trembling. I was actually envious of her. I couldn’t shake. I couldn’t shiver, or retch, or convulse under the reality of what I was about to do. Instead, I closed my eyes and let my comforting smile lie to the bound pair before me. And I began to chant.

  Blue sparks spun around my feet first, spinning up my body and exploding into a cyclone of aura. As they flew from me, they rained on the couple before me, landing in a dome around them. I didn’t use that spell often. I had little use for it, especially with the way the days were repeating. I hadn’t used it in years, actually. ‘Haste', I called it. A name I chose in my youth, when I’d designed it as a possible combat spell. It was too cruel to use as an attack, however, and too slow to cast to buy me time to think. I’d never excelled in combat, and the spell itself had gone unpracticed.

  It was a misnomer. It did speed time, but only in a contained area. I couldn’t go anywhere while inside, and its primary use would have been aging more quickly than those around me. Of course, it was exactly what Luke wanted. A punishment fitting for a couple who’d chosen not to live their final days together. Horror gripped my heart as my lips continued to rebel against me. Guilt clawed at my mind and left deep trenches where it did. It would only be a moment. By the time I was done with my chant, the spell would have done its job. For nearly everyone in the room, the judgment I was dutifully delivering would feel sudden—and brief.

  But not for Lexus and Thina. For them, it would feel agonizingly slow. I hurried time around them so each breath for us was hours for them. Hours with a gag in their mouths and a rope around their wrists. Hours, and then days. Stuck on their knees, side by side. Terrified, and thirsty. Together, until their lives were over.

  I would have burned my soul to ash to stop myself from casting. I would have left my body empty and forgotten, a shell of a broken woman. If only it would stop my aura from trapping the innocent pair. I would have spent the last moments of my own life—just to avoid owning the hands that ended theirs. But I couldn’t. My body wasn’t my own. My aura belonged to Luke, and it did as he ordered. My mind alone was free, and it could only watch.

  When I finally closed my mouth and let my aura dissipate, both of my victims were dead. Their wrists were bloody with desperate attempts to escape, although the blood was dry. Their gags had been chewed through, but still hung from their necks. Their bodies stank of decomposition. They’d died of thirst, inside my spell. They had suffered and died slowly, and desperately, and they’d been left to rot. I was the tool used to do this to them.

  My eyes rested on them, and my mind screamed. My hands went to the side of my robe, and I offered an almost playful curtsy before returning to my spot and pulling my hood back over my face. A deep hatred was brewing inside me then. A loathing which boiled and bubbled beneath my skin. For Luke, perhaps the cruelest man I’d ever met. And for myself, for allowing my aura to cause such pain.

  Luke wasn’t a simple zealot. His darkness didn’t end at stealing the minds of the people of Beddemmor and forcing them to pretend the Quiet wasn’t real. He wasn’t a strange teacher presiding over a service for the dead. This was more than a place of control. This was a cult, dedicated wholeheartedly to death. He could call it judgment if he wanted, but the only person there who was paying for legitimate mistakes was me.

  I needed to end this, whatever it took. Even if it destroyed me to do it.

  “Thank you, Mars,” Luke said. “It is heartbreaking to see such promising children of Aethon, straying so far that such judgment is necessary. But take heart in the grace we are buying for them.” He paused for a long moment, and I caught another glimpse of his trembling mother. Finally, he gestured to his men again, and a new captive was brought to the altar. He was forced to his knees between the two corpses, and I knew I’d be called on again to offer him Aethon’s so-called grace.

  I wanted death.

  End of the Second Day