CHAPTER THIRTY-ONESweet SorrowThe Reapers walked me out through the front doors of the Necropolis, and to the edge of Westminster Bridge. There were crowds of Reapers at either end of it, their dark cloaks billowing in the wind. Some rode on bone stallions.The cold rain felt like needles against my battered body. Below us, the bloody Thames swirled and screeched, hammering its barriers. The storm had made it higher. Further down the river, a large shape was growing closer—Salem’s island of flesh. We could hear its weeping even from here.At the other end of the bridge, the crowd of Reapers shuffled, and two faces emerged from the sea of skulls: Alkin and Sven. A stone dropped inside of me. The Reapers must have taken them both at the docks when Alkin had arrived. Mr. Cillian was going to deliver all three of us to Salem, forcing me to watch as the people I loved were tortured.Mr. Cillian’s eyes lit up at the sight of Sven. He walked past me to the center of the bridge, th

PART VAscensionFebruary—April, 1878CHAPTER THIRTY-THREEPenance“I recognize, in retrospect, why some would take offense to the Immortalist Papers. The fact of the matter is, they reflected the commonly-held beliefs of the age in which they were written. I do not feel it is fair to blame me for spreading ideas that were already commonly-held. You must understand that we are in a period of rapid change, and one can hardly be expected to know what lies around every corner. For God’s sake, I was only doing what I was told! You want me to put my family at risk? My wife, my children? If I’d refused to write those papers, you know what would have happened to them—and to me, for that mat