Rite of Revelation (Acceptance Book 2) Page 24

  Elizabeth moves into my line of sight. Her lips are moving, but I still can’t hear anything. She shakes my shoulders, until I focus on her eyes. “There was another guard hiding in the woods. They got him.”

  I nod, as if her words mean anything. They don’t. Patrice is dead. She says something else, but it’s lost to me. Letting go of my arms, she takes my hand and gently wipes away Patrice’s blood.

  Thirty-Seven

  Three days later, a sad line of exhausted horses and people march into Allmore and head straight for the dining hall. Three days of Eric walking in silence and crying himself to sleep. Three days of sedatives so Daniel would lie still and not open his surgery scar. Three days of too much time to think about everything that led up to Patrice dying in my arms.

  The room is packed with all the villagers from Arbor Glen. We’ll have to figure out how to accommodate all these new additions, but that can wait. First we need food, rest, and healing.

  The doors to the basement store rooms open up, and the people who stayed behind slowly filter into the dining hall and get their first look at the survivors. Liam grabs a few riders who stayed back to protect everyone hiding in the store rooms. “We left a huge trail from Arbor Glen straight here. I don’t know how much can be done, but go see what you can do to cover up our path.”

  Carol walks through the door with Nellie. She squirms out of Carol’s arms and sprints over to Liam, leaping up into his arms and burying her face in his neck. My heart hurts for the missing member of their trio. Liam turns around and walks over to the table where his parents are sitting. He pauses, but then sits down and introduces Nellie to her grandparents for the first time. And because she’s every bit her mother’s daughter, she climbs into Alan’s lap and shows off the fluffy white dandelion clutched in her tiny fingers.

  Constance finds us in the crowd and runs over, launching into Thomas’s arms. There will be time for tender kisses later, but right now their faces only hold relief. I’m too tired to think about how short-lived that emotion will be. I sink down onto a bench, and Elizabeth settles across from me. She hasn’t said a word since we left Arbor Glen.

  Liam, Eric, and Ethan come over with a basket of bread and some water. They join our exhausted group, and we all sit in silence, passing around the food and trying not to think about what we’ve just done.

  Daniel went straight the infirmary, still knocked out from the sedatives, but he’ll be waking up soon. I’ll need to be there, but I’m not ready to think about that yet. I turn my focus to what I can control. We have so much to do and who knows how much time to get it done.

  I take a big gulp of water and wash down a bite of bread. “We need to send some riders out with a warning to the other villages that the Cardinal is looking for me. They need to be prepared.”

  Liam nods. “Fine, but then I want everyone back here, pronto. No more trading. We’ll just have to make do with what we have.”

  “And then what? Sit and wait for the guards to show up here?”

  “We have the cellar store rooms, and we’ll keep scouts watching from every side of the village. At the first sign of red we all head to the cellars and wait until the guards move on.”

  “Are you serious?” I set down my bread to stare at him. “Let’s just pretend that plan has a chance at working. What happens then? They don’t find us and move on to hunt down another village?”

  Several others at our table turn at my raised voice.

  “What other choice do we have? You saw what happened.” He swallows hard, the past several days of strain pulling at his face. “I won’t let any more of my people die like that.”

  I stand up, unable to contain my anger. “If not us, then it will be another village, and then another.” More people around the room turn to stare at me, but I don’t care. “The Cardinal is not going to just stop. He won’t lose interest and leave us all alone. He has too much on the line to walk away.”

  “Rebecca, please.” Liam reaches out to pull me back down. “We need to sit down and talk about this.”

  I pull out of his reach. “The time for talking is over.”

  Someone from Arbor Glen stands up and shouts from the middle of the room. “So what do you want us to do?”

  I stare over at him and then pause to take in the room. Hundreds of exhausted and terrified faces stare back at me. Eric looks up at me. His eyes are rimmed in red, and dark circles prove he hasn’t slept. And yet, behind the exhaustion, there’s a determination.

  “Fight back.”

  Nervous laughter and huffs of disbelief fill the room. They’ve bought into the lie that the Cardinal is unbeatable. I used to think that, too. I stand up on the bench and raise my voice above the chatter.

  “I’ve seen first-hand what the Cardinal is willing to do to have his way. He won’t stop until he controls it all. One loose thread threatens everything he’s worked to build.

  “He seems unbeatable, but he’s not. I’m just a scrawny girl who, eighteen months ago, only worried about finding the perfect Acceptance dress. But I stood up to him, and now he’s scrambling. Imagine what we could do if we all stood up.”

  I have their attention now.

  “Everything the Cardinal has is built on a lie. This is bigger than just us. Guards just following orders lost their lives because of the lie. Innocent people lose their freedom and everyone lives with blinders on, all to maintain the lies of one man who considers them nothing more than pawns in a sick game.”

  Several people nod. Most of these people were born in these villages. They’ve never lived under the Cardinal’s thumb. But the rest of us know. I find Elizabeth. She isn’t nodding, but I can see the truth in her eyes. She’s lived with the painful consequences of those lies. Eric is crying again, but his face is tensed with anger. Thomas holds Constance tight in his lap, but they both nod at me. They know. We tried to meet his ridiculous demands and lost. We’ve seen how far he’s willing to go to create a distorted version of perfection.

  “We can’t sit this one out and pretend it’s someone else’s problem. I don’t know about you, but I’m done living in fear. I’m tired of wondering when the Cardinal is going to rain blood and fire down on the people I love. If we ever want to be free, we have to stand and fight.”

  A handful of people around the room stand, and more follow suit.

  “We have to stop hiding and pretending that it’s okay that we live without. That we don’t need the medicine and technology that could save the lives of so many.”

  I look down at Liam, and he’s staring at the table, ever so slightly nodding his head.

  “There’s never a good time to fight.” I’m shouting now, reaching to be heard over the calls for action. “It’s easy to say we’ll leave it to tomorrow. But the Cardinal just showed us that we aren’t promised a tomorrow.”

  All around the room, people bang their cups on the tables and shout encouragement to each other. The laughter is gone and everywhere I look, determined stares meet my gaze. This is it. This is the beginning of everything.

  I hold my arms out wide to include the whole room. Two villages combined as one because the Cardinal thinks we’re disposable. We call ourselves the Freemen, but we aren’t. Not as long as we let ourselves live in fear of discovery. But we could be.

  “Brothers and Sisters. We’ve proved that if we stand together, the Cardinal is no match against us.” I stare into the eyes of so many people I love, and my heart aches for all the loved ones I’ll never see again. “Before you stands the future.”

  The End

  The story isn't over yet.

  Rebecca escaped the PIT, found a family among the Freemen...and watched too many loved ones die. All she wants is the Cardinal to leave her in peace, but he's made it clear that's never going to happen.

  When the Cardinal attacks other Freemen villages, she finally understands that no one is safe from his wrath. As the only one who's stood up to the evil that is the Cardinal, it's up to her to convince the others that the
y can't hide forever. It's time to fight.

  The Machine predicted Rebecca would become the Cardinal's enemy. It may have gotten that one right.

  In the conclusion to the Acceptance series, enemies become allies and old friends emerge, but in the end, sacrifice may be the price of freedom.

  Keep reading for chapter one of Rite of Redemption.

  One

  “Before you stands the future.”

  This is what the Cardinal promises every Candidate right before the Machine pretends to sort out the criminals. It’s what I told everyone here in Allmore when I convinced them that we have no choice but to fight back against the Cardinal. For all of us standing around the huge unlit pile of wood, tomorrow could hold anything. But not for Patrice.

  Eric eases her body onto the hard platform, taking care to fold her hands together and smooth back the little bit of black hair that had grown in since her cut in the PIT. Patrice could be sleeping, but I know better. I held her bleeding body in my lap and watched her take her last breath. I still see her dark eyes staring up into mine when I close my eyes to sleep at night. I hear her final words—love him—every time I look at Daniel. No, she is not sleeping. Patrice is dead, and there’ll be no more tomorrows for her.

  Eric’s face is free of tears, but dark purple bruises stand out under his blue eyes. Elizabeth stands with her arm around his shoulder, the closest I’ve seen them in ages. Sadly, she knows all too well how he’s feeling. The gut-wrenching pain of losing the person who holds your heart. Even thinking about losing Daniel that way turns my blood to ice water and gags the breath already struggling to flow through my lungs. Eric and Patrice had so little time together, not nearly long enough. But he loves her. Even now, as she lies on her funeral pyre, cold and gone. His eyes may be red from days of crying, but the love he has for Patrice shines through the layers of pain.

  Beside me, Daniel grabs my hand. Where Eric’s pain is on full display, Daniel is almost stoic as we prepare to say goodbye to his sister. He stands as straight as a pine tree, using his crutches only for balance. He should still be in bed. A Cardinal guard shot him in the leg only a few days ago when we stopped them from burning Arbor Glen to the ground. But we couldn’t wait any longer for Patrice’s release, and having it without Daniel was never an option.

  So he stands here next to me, gripping my hand so tightly it hurts and staring with a singular focus at the last member of his family. Instead of sadness, his whole body ripples with anger. His normally easy smile is missing, and a clenched jaw has taken its place. His legs tremble, not from the pain of standing, but from the need to move.

  I squeeze his hand back to let him know I’m here, but I don’t know if it makes a difference.

  “I will find a way, Rebecca.” Daniel’s words hiss from his barely moving mouth. “I will get to him and make him pay for this.”

  I squeeze his hand again but don’t respond. It’s the same conversation we’ve had every day for the past three days, since we got back from Arbor Glen with an entire town of refugees and his dead sister. Daniel is determined to hold the Cardinal responsible for Patrice’s death. Not that I don’t agree, but Daniel isn’t in any position to run off anywhere. And he’s not seeing straight enough right now to stop and plan before he runs into the lion’s den.

  Liam clears his throat and looks to Daniel to start the ceremony, but Daniel either doesn’t notice or refuses to notice. My heart aches for him, to know his pain. I’m trying to share it, but he’s got it locked up tight as if he wants it there to fuel the anger that boils under the surface of his every word.

  I step forward, not even sure what to say, but feeling responsible. “Patrice was not an easy person to love.”

  A small ripple of laughter rolls through the crowd, and the fog of tension hanging over the ceremony lifts the slightest bit. “It’s no secret we didn’t get off on the best foot. And it wouldn’t be a lie to say she hated me the first time we met. Not that I can blame her.” After all, it was my idea to hack the Acceptance ceremony, an act that sent her straight to the PIT. Guilty by association.

  “But we both changed, and I’m so glad to know that, before she died, we came to be friends. When Daniel and I took our vows, she became my sister, something I’ve never had. And she filled a new spot in my heart I didn’t even know was empty.

  “She was stubborn, hard-headed, and often times rude. But she was also kind and, like so many of us, afraid. Afraid of the future, afraid of being alone, afraid of never knowing her place. But Patrice died knowing exactly who she was, and I hope she knew how very much she was loved. She will be missed, but Patrice will live on in me.”

  I step back, but Daniel doesn’t move an inch. I want so much to wrap him up and hold him until all the tension he’s holding melts away, but he won’t let me and it’s killing me.

  Constance takes a tiny step forward, her hands unconsciously rubbing the tiny bump of her belly where her miracle baby is growing. “Patrice was quiet in her affection. She wasn’t one to give an unsolicited hug or say “I love you” for no reason at all. But she did love us. One day, about a week ago, she came to visit with me when I was having a particularly cruddy bout of nausea. She told me about a segment on one of the news stations she’d seen. They were talking about cures for morning sickness. She brought me a cup of ice cold water and some salty snacks because the newscaster said that would help. She also suggested we try to get some ginger on our next trade ride and then she could make a tea that would help.

  “When I tried to thank her, she brushed me off and pretended to be mad that there wasn’t anything more interesting to watch on her Noteboard than stories about pregnant women. But I know the truth. She watched that segment for me, and I’ll never forget her kindness. Patrice will live on in me.”

  I use my free hand to wipe tears from under my eyes, and around our circle several others do the same. I had no idea Patrice had done that, and it makes me ache for her loss even more.

  All around the circle, other members of Allmore speak up, sharing similar stories of Patrice doing them some small favor or going out of her way to help, but acting the whole time as if the entire world around her was an inconvenience. Even Carol, the woman who bakes the world’s best bread, and Liam, our village leader, have a story. Each new tale makes me want to hug her and slap her at the same time. There was so much more to Patrice than she ever let me see, and now I’ll never get the chance.

  Finally, the stories die down and a brief lull hangs over us. It’s not uncomfortable, just a moment for us all to breathe in the finality of our loss. I squeeze Daniel’s hand. Now is the time for him to speak, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. He doesn’t even squeeze back, just keeps staring at Patrice as if his will power alone could bring her back to life.

  Eric watches Daniel, and when it’s obvious he’s not going to speak, Eric breaks the silence.

  “Patrice was a challenge; that much is clear. But that’s exactly what I needed. She challenged me to stop playing the guilt-bearer. She pushed me to be more than the mistakes of my past. Patrice might be the first person to ever see me for the potential Eric I could be. She broke me and then put me back together, and I loved her.”

  Eric’s voice breaks, and I want to run to him, but I hold steady. My place is beside Daniel, my husband, because whether he’s willing to admit it or not, he needs me.

  “A huge part of me wants to stop trying. To jump back into my little hole and wallow in my loss. But I can’t, because if Patrice saw me do that, she’d kick my ass.”

  Almost everyone laughs at that. Everyone except Daniel.

  “I owe it to her, and every other person we’ve lost, to keep working to be a better person. And I have to keep pushing to have a better future so no one else has to live in fear of being the Cardinal’s next victim.”

  At the sound of the Cardinal’s name, Daniel’s head jerks up as if he’s been in a trance for the past half-hour. He nods at Eric, and the two of them stare at each other for a beat of a
minute that feels like an eternity.

  Without losing eye contact with Eric, Daniel steps forward. “Patrice will live on in me.” His voice booms through the silence, and I jump at the suddenness of his words. He steps back, and all around us, the gathered crowd repeats the mantra back to him.

  “Patrice will live on in me.”

  Daniel turns away from Eric and returns his steady gaze to Patrice. Four men standing around the circle simultaneously lower their flaming torches and touch them to the tar-wrapped cubes that will set the flames burning hotter than any of Carol’s ovens in the bakery. The heat drives our circle back, but Daniel only takes a few steps, staying way too close to the blaze. The anger that held his eyes all night disappears, and the grief slips in, his eyes watering as the flames consume his sister.

  I tug his arm back until he gives in and hobbles back several feet on his crutches. There’s nothing left for him here, and I can’t imagine him joining in on the post-release celebration.

  “Come on.” I thread my arm around his elbow. “Let’s go home.”

  Looking out one more time at Patrice, the rest of the village is barely visible through the flames and choking smoke. The faces around the pyre blur in the building heat. I close my eyes and wish on every star in the sky this is the last time I have to stand in front of a colossal flame and watch another person I love disappear from my life. Because this image of the village on fire feels too much like looking into our future.

  Read the stunning conclusion to the Acceptance series. Get your copy of RITE OF REDEMPTION today.