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“Silence,” he ordered.

He swiped his finger again and this time no blood sprang free.

“Please,” she repeated.

There was a moment of silence as he looked at her, those pitch-dark eyes boring dark and savage into his Helpmeet’s. Then he turned to the Congregation and picked up a machete leaning against a supply building.

“The one who sent the demon,” he called out, yanking one of the prisoner’s ropes and pitching the man’s body forward.

Ronan raised the machete high and brought it down, severing the man’s head from his neck with a sharp wetthwack.

“And thus ends everyone who dares to stand against our Congregation,” he called out, raising his arms. “Now take his body and let the birds feast on it.”

And the Congregants fell upon the prisoners in a frenzy, bearing them on their shoulders out to the flat plain outside the settlement, tearing the limbs from the dead man’s body even as his heart was still thudding to a stop.

The raw bloodlust terrified me, and then Ronan turned to the three of us.

His mouth was still bloody, the gore splattering his shirt.

“What would you give up to take her out of here safely?” Ronan asked, his fingers still wrapped snugly around his wife’s throat, making sure she stayed with him. I expected there would be more to this between them later.[1]

Without a second of hesitation, Rhyder ripped the Holy Relic from around his neck and threw it down on the ground with such force that it instantly shattered into a thousand shards of broken glass.

My heart hammered with fear, my breath a sob in my chest.

I hadneverseen my brother without it around his neck.

He fell to his knees on the ground then, baring his neck for the executioner.

“Take my life for hers,” Rhyder said. “I won’t fight you.”

I saw Bee look back at Ronan and something passed between them.

For a moment there was silence, only broken by the sounds of their Congregation ripping ours limb from limb outside in the rolling hills.

“It’s breeding season soon,” Ronan said, looking speculatively up at the bare trees and sleeping ground around us. Soon the buds would come out. Soon new little shoots of life and growth would spring from the ground.

“It is so,” Rhyder agreed.

He was still on his knees, and I felt his big hand wrap around my ankle, just a quick reassuring squeeze. Even when he was about to be killed he was thinking of me.

Ronan wasn’t looking at us, but his eyes scanned the skyline, looking at a distant flock of birds. Then they flicked to where Bee stood before him, his eyes dragging down her body. A muscle didn’t move in his face but there was something in that fixed attention on her.

Then he flicked his eyes back to Rhyder.

“If you renounce your Congregation and seek mercy at this one,” he said, “Temperance could be your wife. Not concubine.”

Rhyder stiffened beside me, and I had to repress a gasp. Ronan’s Congregation did not extend mercy; did not accept outsiders. And Rhyder was not just an outsider, but someone who had fought Holy War against Ronan.

“I am confident my Prophet will extend the rights of a wife to my sister,” Rhyder said after a moment.

“Are you?” asked Ronan.

There was a second of silence, and I knew Rhyder was too loyal to abandon his Prophet, but for a moment I had a foolish hope that we could stay there.

“Yes,” said Rhyder.

“Then get the fuck off my land,” said Ronan. “And tell the leader of your Congregation to stay the fuck away or I’ll bring Holy War to your fucking doorstep.”