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How many had it been? Ten strokes? Twenty? Sweat coated my palms and the rest of my body, making it hard to grasp the handle. Slyne met my gaze for the briefestmoment when I looked up. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to see there.

It was that same, warm, encouraging smile as when she’d led me in for lunch. The rest wore expressions mirroring the statues they stood in front of. The same people I’d laughed with, if briefly, only hours before.

“Again,” Devoin said.

So again the ropes slammed into me. Was it even my own arm moving? It was hard to tell.

Then again.

And again.

I beat myself over and over at his command. I thought there was no end to the pain, until one split my skin wide open. I cried out at that, for the first time, the flail falling from my grasp as I bent over. Tears ran freely from my eyes. My brain tried to tell me to reach for the handle, to keep obeying. Instead, I crossed my hands over my chest, my forehead falling at Devoin’s feet while my entire body shook.

“You have taken yourself as far as you could,” Devoin said.

Was his voice gentle? Or was everything just distant? Hope bloomed in my chest. I’d done it. I’d maimed myself to his satisfaction. I’d endured and shown them I belonged—

“So I will take you the rest of the way and lead you to the gods’ forgiveness.”

I couldn’t force my body up, but I twisted my head, finding his eyes.

They didn’t seem benevolent or spiritual. Not even impassive.

They seemed… victorious.

I’d seen the same eyes on Nelson. Too many times.

How was this different from Greymere?

Devoin lifted the scourge in his hand. The swish of it whispering through the air lasted an hour. When it hit me, I screamed. It was a sound I’d never made before. A sound I hadn’t known I could make.

Raphael didn’t yell like this when they beat him.

Is this the same thing he went through? As a vampire, a mortal enemy of the witches? Was that the same as my fate?

“Stop!” I begged when he lifted it again. “Please. Mercy!”

“You must accept that pain is the will of the gods. As long as you fight it, you cannot be one of us,” Nelson said. No. Devoin?

He hit me again, harder. Blood splattered from the blow, landing in front of me. My mind seized on the drops. The red haze of memory grabbed me.

Blood and blood and blood. Flesh torn apart. The cries for mercy, cut off as her corpse was shredded—

More drops joined it.

The drops of red turned to a sea, blood flowing. There was screaming. My own? My memories? No—other.

A thud. Another thud.

In my vision, Devoin collapsed.

His body—his head was gone, blood flowing from the neck.

I lifted my head.

Bodies.

Bodies everywhere. Bloody, brutal kills. As bloody as I remembered. Even as I looked, I didn’t reallysee. My memories laid over the scene, a wave of déjà vu choking me.