'Don't look, Lillian. Never look into the eyes of a Sin-Eater, you will be as cursed as he is and will forever languish in darkness.'
Lillian Elmes remembers the warning her mother gave her about the town's Sin-Eater only too well.
How could she n...
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'Yes, I trust you,' I say.
Do I though? Can I?
'Forgive me,' he says.
I know not whether he speaks to me or to Mrs. Smallman, who bucks and thrashes with all the vigour of someone very much alive, although the coldness of her skin and her deathly mask tells me otherwise.
With a skill that I know will leave me with more unsettling questions to ask, Daniel raises the dagger and brings it down in one swift motion, thrusting it into the centre of Edith's forehead and piercing her skull with ease.
The effect is instant.
Whatever dark light had shone in Edith's eyes; it vanishes completely. Her body stills. Her jaw slackens, that awful swollen tongue filling the opening between her grey lips. I cannot believe that she is so still. To go from that terrible, tortured being that fought so violently against us, to this lifeless thing. I am not sure what I expected, but this abrupt end certainly wasn't it.
'Lillian? Lillian, say something!'
I blink and look up, his words breaking through the haze of my disbelief.
Daniel stares at me, a note of concern, and I think wariness, in his expression. He thinks this has gone too far, that I have reached my limit. I see it in his eyes.
'Is it... is it done?' I whisper, as if the very sound of my voice might conjure Edith back to life, or to whatever horrendous existence it was she was living.
Leaning back on his heels, Daniel's body slumps, exhaustion seeping from him in waves.
'Whatever she had become is extinguished, but it is not done,' he says. 'We must inter her body back into the ground from whence she came. Then, aye, it will be done at last.'
'Oh,' I say, a touch dismayed. He is right, of course. Mrs. Smallman cannot just be left here, although I cannot imagine that we can do as he says without the assistance of the Wilderhope staff. 'And how are we meant to manage that? Shall we call for Mr. Turner to help?'
