Sin and Sacrifice
blessed brink of blackness that was her only escape.
They used water and smelling salts to revive her, relentless in
their pursuit of the truth. Relentless in their pursuit to break
her.
    Evelyn couldn't break. Wouldn't subject her
sisters to this even if it meant her own death.
    Soon, she knew, it would
come to that.
    Sometime during the
following day, when she was rigid with pain and screaming the walls
down, she felt the blackness swoop in and claim her. Time meant
nothing in her dark world of flitting nightmares and hazy returns
to consciousness. She couldn't focus on faces or voices or commands
that they barked near her ears.
    It was all distant.
Dreamlike. Not a part of her reality. Once, after they'd removed
the scratchy hood, she thought she glimpsed the tattoo of an iron
cross between the shoulder blades of a Templar.
    They all had them. Their
own mark. A brand of power and loyalty.
    The strong scent of urine
and the taste of old blood in her mouth finally woke her. Someone
trickled water past her lips. She could taste it mingling with the
blood. Men moving forward and back through the room were blurry for
long minutes until she squinted and brought them into focus. Four
of them, all built like the warriors they were. Thick chested,
broad shouldered, lean hipped. Dressed in casual, everyday clothes
instead of white robes and red crosses.
    But they were Templars,
every one of them. Men with sharp, assessing eyes and grim
expressions. Hands that had delivered more pain in a day than most
people suffered in a lifetime.
    Evelyn tried to assess the
damage to her person; bloodied, abused fingers, a menagerie of
burns, bruises and bumps and a raw split in her lip. Nothing felt
broken. Fear crept through her system when she realized that if
they didn't kill her soon, they would start to recognize the way
her body healed the superficial injuries.
    By tomorrow all the open
wounds would be closed. The day after that, the burns would be just
blushes and rosettes on her skin. Any fractures she might have
suffered would be correctly healed. And on day three, there would
be no sign of abuse at all. These were gifts from eating fruit off
the Tree of Life. It was part of their immortality, what set them
apart from the rest of humanity. Genevieve, Alexandra and Minna all
had the same gift, given before they were cast out from
Eden.
    The dehydration she could
do nothing about, and it would eventually kill her if they didn't
continue to give her water. Healing ability aside, she could die
like anyone else under the right circumstances. If she suffered
mortal wounds or denied what the body needed to function (food,
water, air), she would perish.
    One of the men, her main
torturer she presumed, broke off from where he murmured with the
other three and approached. In his hand, he had a rolled up piece
of parchment that he unfurled when he stopped before the chair. It
was thicker and more pliable than modern paper with crinkles
through the surface and faded drawings that looked like crude maps.
She glanced up from the paper to the man's face. Hard, cold eyes.
Tight, displeased mouth. Deep lines across weathered
skin.
    “ We will start again. This
time, you will correct the mistakes on this map. After that, you
will tell me how many of you remain.”
    For a crazy moment, Evelyn
wanted to scream. She wanted to rail and rant at this man for
answers she could never give him.
    Because she knew what that
map led to, or where it was supposed to lead, and she wouldn't give
up the location anymore than she would give up her
sisters.
    Day one had been almost
more than she could bear. What pain would he bring for day two? She
swallowed past the dryness in her throat and said
nothing.
    “ So be it,” he said,
retreating to a tray of implements that he rolled closer to her
chair.
    She got a glimpse of sharp,
shiny instruments and other, less familiar objects that looked old
and frightening. Her mind conjured images and ideas in a rapid
slideshow that
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