I stared at them, my heart beating wildly as I tried to determine what they were. Tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
A heart.
The deep bluish-purple flesh should have been rotted by now if it was what I suspected. I gagged, horror dawning along with my realization. The piece of flesh beside it was less identifiable, but I couldn’t stop my hand from trembling where Gray held me.
“It’s a liver,” he said, answering my silent question.
Two.
A heart and a liver.
I swallowed back bile, blood roaring in my ears. “What have you done?”
38
WILLOW
I hadn’t thought to ask if something had been taken from the second victim. It hadn’t seemed relevant when he lay there dead and…
Hell.
I tore my eyes off the organs lying discarded upon the floor, wincing when Gray tucked his fingers beneath my chin and raised my stare to meet his.
“Why?” I asked, searching his gaze for any sign of remorse. “You—that night when you came to my bathroom. You seemed worried for me.”
“I have had centuries of practice lying to na?ve little girls just like you,” he murmured, the words striking me in the chest and causing a deeper ache to bloom.
Juliet came into the room, another Vessel at her side as they shuffled the ten remaining new students into the space. Gray was quick to bend down, taking the discarded organs in hand and placing them on top of the mirror on the floor. The female Vessel compelled the new students into a circle surrounding us, raising goosebumps all over my flesh.
“What are you doing?” I asked, holding her stare.
The humorous woman I’d met in the car on the way back from my mother’s house was gone, her mouth set into a stern line as she went about her business and maintained her compulsion.
Gray stepped away from me, approaching the first of the witches. The girl cowered, flinching back even though her feet wouldn’t allow her to move as Gray held out his hand. Juliet happily slipped a knife into his hand, and he turned to hold my gaze as he dragged it slowly across the young witch’s throat.
“No!” I screamed, running forward.
Gray raised a hand, catching me around the front of the throat and holding me pinned there even as I struggled against his grip. The strength he possessed, the sheer power in that hold… He’d allowed me to think I stood a chance.
My feet left the ground as he lifted me, stepping to the side as the witch fell to the floor with a thump.
“Brain,” he said callously, and to my horror, Juliet nodded, bending down beside the felled witch to gather the body part.
“Why?” I rasped, clawing at Gray’s hand where he held me still. I watched in horror as he dragged his blade across another throat, uncaring for the life he ended. I felt the soul leave, felt the life end and death claim it.
My fingers tingled, magic that I didn’t know how to use yet coursing through them. Gray felt it spark against his skin, smirking at me as he stepped to the side and moved onto the next witch.
“Are you going to come out and play with me, Little Necromancer?” he murmured, smiling cruelly.
His expert cuts across throats ceased to matter. They stopped existing as I focused in on that heated stare and felt nothing but hatred for the man who had deceived me. For the murderer who would kill my own kind.
“Your aunt was one of the few who couldn’t be compelled, not with those bones attached to her hip. The way she screamed lives on in my dreams.”
Silence roared in my head, deafening and drowning out the subtle whimpers of the few witches he hadn’t killed. Another throat, another slit.
“What did you just say?” I asked, the emptiness in my chest spreading ever wider.
“Your aunt screamed when I cut her throat before she could ever lay a hand on me to Unmake me,” he repeated. He watched his knife cut across the next throat, allowing it to move much more slowly. Letting the witch feel every piece of skin sever before death finally claimed him.
I recognized him as one of the ones who had attacked me that night, and the fact that he seemed to get extra attention from Gray should have come as a shock.
“Why? She was a Hecate witch. Why would you kill her?” I asked, the breath rushing out of me. None of it made any sense. None of it added up.
Gray cut the last witch’s throat, walking me backward toward the mirror at the center. He stopped just beside it as Juliet continued to gather the organs from the bodies that littered the Tribunal room floor in a circle.
He released me, letting me fall to my knees in a heap as I stared up at him.