Page 38 of Wild Devil

“We are here today to recognize the holy union of these two souls,” he says, his voice overly loud, echoing off the walls in an endless din. “May they both be joined in eternal bonds, but to strengthen those bonds, a promise must be made, and a promise must be kept...”

A cry goes up from the back of the room. The guard who followed us in stands apart from the crowd, herding all three girls from the stall. They’re no older than I am, tethered together by shackles on their ankles, and their wide eyes make them resemble a trio of innocent does, captured purely for some hunter’s amusement.

My heart sinks. This isn’t right, that voice in my head warns. This isn’t right. Run, Frey. Run!

Colton digs his nails into the back of my hand as if sensing my thoughts. “You think you are any different than they are?” he asks me, his voice dangerously soft. “You’re not, and if you so much as try to disobey me, you’ll end up the same way. I’ll see to it.”

I barely hear him. My attention is consumed by the guard as he crouches to free one of the girls from her companions. She staggers forward, resembling a dove fluttering through the crowd of silent, darkened onlookers. They move in unison, herding her toward the stage as she glances around wildly, visibly confused.

I feel a desperate impulse to help her. Do something. Move. The second I take a step, Colton wrenches me back.

“Don’t,” he snaps.

“What are you doing?” My voice echoes wildly. “Tell me!”

“This is a necessary act that you brought upon yourself,” my father says, filling the entire room. “You are the reason that this union needs to be purified, because of your lies and evil.”

Purified. That word haunts me as the frightened girl is steered to the altar and forced to mount it. I feel her grab my hand as she passes.

“Please help me, please!”

I don’t recognize her, but a sickening suspicion tells me that she’s most likely from the Salvation outreach program, lured here under false pretenses.

But to what end?

Again, I try to speak. “What’s going on?”

“Consider this my wedding present to you,” my father continues. “And a reminder. Should you think to do anything to me or to destroy this marriage, this will happen.”

He lunges for the girl as two men surge from the crowd to help wrestle her down onto a flat table I’d missed before, positioned directly beneath the pyre. She cries out in alarm as they hold her in place while my father approaches. It is only when he brandishes an object into the air that the shape of what he is holding becomes apparent.

A knife.

“No!”

Colton hooks his arm around my waist from behind, pinning me against him. Trapped, I can only watch in horror as the man I once called Father lowers the blade over the girl’s chest.

And plunges it in.

“No!” I lose track of myself. I’m not even aware of biting or hitting or flailing at my captors—only that nothing I do can get me free in time.

Bit by bit, I watch the blood spill onto the floor.

And in those wide, endless brown eyes, I see the life drain out.

THIRTEEN

FREY

I understand terror and agony. After all, I’ve become well acquainted with both emotions these past few days. But rage? Hatred…

I am blinded by those new sensations, and I cannot think rationally. I just see red. The sound of the blood ramming against my eardrums, is all I can hear. The constant thrumming echoes in my head like a chant. Fight. Fight. Kill. Kill.

My rage is followed by numbness that paralyzes me before I can even comprehend it. I’m numb. Frozen. Throughout the wedding ceremony, I submit meekly over a blood-stained altar like a doll. I can hear the smothered cries and fearful pleas of the two surviving girls somewhere behind me.

And I can gaze into the empty, staring eyes of the girl before me, seeing nothing. Like a morbid soundtrack to this nightmare, my father’s voice drones on and on.

“…By the rights vested in me, I declare you both bound in holy matrimony, a union that has been purified and blessed. May you both live long enough to enjoy the fruits of this marriage.”

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