I tried to ask what was happening then, but Marshall and Tanner, who held me by either arm, wouldn’t speak. Tanner, who had always shown me kindness, wouldn’t even look at my face. They shoved me into a small room with bars for walls, slammed the door shut, and retreated up the stairs.

I called out for Eli, wondering if they’d locked him down here as well, but all I heard was my own voice bouncing off the walls. I was alone.

A small amount of light drifted in through three small rectangular windows high up toward the ceiling. The cell reminded me of the Pierce basement, where all my troubles had begun.

It was longer than it was wide—maybe eight feet wide by ten feet in length. There was a single wooden bench along the back wall and a bucket in the corner. Otherwise it was empty. Cold. A dirt floor.

The hours slipped by slowly as I sat alone, tormented by my thoughts. Waves of nausea washed over me, and I threw up in the bucket twice. My head ached. I didn’t know what lay in store for me, but Sylous had made one thing perfectly clear: I would have to confess and be cleansed or face terrible punishment. What did confession mean now? Was it only something I had to say with my mouth? What did repentance mean now? How would I show them my holiness? By saying and doing all the right things according to the law?

But that meant denying Eli.

I thought about what might be happening to him. Where were they keeping him? I couldn’t fathom them killing a boy! And would Eli really let them take his life? He had the power to save himself, right? He wouldn’t have come all this way just to be killed.

What did Eli hope to accomplish by allowing them to take him? It made no sense to me. In fact, the only thing that did make sense was that Eli really was a Fury who’d deceived me. Everything he said flipped the doctrines I’d been taught since childhood on their head.

But I just couldn’t see how the love and wonder he’d shown me could be so wrong.

My thoughts slipped from Eli to my mother. Would they release her now that it was clear I was the one to blame?

As the daylight died and the sounds of night drifted into my cell, I tried to think back to what I’d experienced on the hill with Eli, but it all seemed so far away now. I’d seen the Fury that smothered Haven Valley—so had everyone else. The only difference was that I’d seen them inside the perimeter before Eli and I had come, whereas the others believed that Eli and I had brought the Fury.