Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Donal is done too and both he and Mitch walk to the door, open it up, and leave us.
But it’s what happens next that starts to unravel the mystery of this ritual.
For the first time I notice a chair in front of the glass room. But it’s not any kind of chair I’ve ever seen before. And when Donal sits in it, Matrons appear with a crown of some sort with all kinds of metal wires attached. They place the crown on his head and plug the wires into the glass wall. On this side there is a metal panel and more wires, each leading to one of the circles.
This is how they will drain us.
Our power will be sucked out, sent through those wires, and delivered to the crown on his head.
When all but Matron Lightly back away from Donal’s chair, I brace for it. They are going to… flip some switch, or something, and that will be it. We will be ended.
But that’s not what happens.
There is no way to hear what’s being said on the other side of the glass—even if Gemna wasn’t still screaming her fucking head off—because the glass is too thick.
But I can see just fine. And all the Little Sisters are starting to panic. This panic lasts for several minutes while Matrons, and that fucking degenerate Mitchell Davies, all try and calm them down.
Maybe the girls are OK with this, or maybe they are just being threatened. Regardless, they calm down. And then one approaches the center of the room. I don’t know this girl’s name, but she’s from up-city. She is directed to stand in a certain spot marked by a pattern inlaid into the stone floor and then Mitchell puts another crown on her head, just like the one Donal is wearing.
I don’t mean to scream when the process starts, but the cyan-blue lights that comes out of her in a long, pulsating line scares the hell out of me and it’s just an instinct. Her body goes rigid and for a moment, I think she will fall to the floor. I think she needs a chair.
But I’m wrong. The spark is holding her up as it is drained. And it’s not until she is empty, and pale, and lifeless that she finally crumples like a used-up piece of paper and slams face first onto the floor.
I know the girls are screaming. Hell, even Ceela is screaming now.
But then the girl stirs. Her cheek is bloody when she finally lifts up her head and her nose might be broken, but she’s alive.
And I can almost hear the sigh of relief in all the Little Sisters out there.
Something terrible is happening to them.
Something evil and gross.
But they’re not going to die.
Not like us.
And so they form up in a line. Waiting their turn to feed the new god.
No one is coming to save me.
That is what I say in my head, over and over, as the seconds, and minutes, and hours tick off as each girl gives her spark in the name of Donal Oslin.
No one is coming to save me.
It takes a little while before I snap out of the hopeless stupor. But eventually, when the line of Little Sisters is half as long as it was when we started, I finally understand what they’re doing.
They’re not opening a Looking Glass.
Whatever they needed the one up in the Extraction Tower for, that’s over now. And anyway, it’s been rigged to blow up by Aldo. They couldn’t use it even if they wanted to.
This room is also some kind of Looking Glass, but it’s more than that.
That’s when I finally get the answer I was seeking.
This is a door.
This is a door that leads to… wherever it is that Spark Maidens go when they walk into the tower.
They are going to destroy Tau City by draining it of all its spark and then they are going to leave. They are gonna walk through the tower doors and leave tau City to die.
Does Donal know?
Or does he really think they’re trying to turn him into a god?
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Alow hum reverberates through my body, waking me from a dreamless sleep. My eyes open, but everything is blurry. For a moment I can’t remember who I am, or where I am, or what that noise is.
The first thing that comes back is Clara. It’s a happy memory of us in my bed while the Choosing festival goes on in the city down below.
It’s a comfortable feeling. Like sitting in front of a fire on a frigid night.
But then all the other things that have happened since that day come flooding back.
Father’s dead. Mother’s in a cult. Clara… oh, Clara. My eyes are closed but I squeeze them tighter, trying to make it all go away. I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to feel the loss. I don’t want this to be real.