Chapter Three
I WOKE TO quiet that wasn’t quiet at all, air humming through a vent I couldn’t close, the soft tick of the hallway camera turning, and the distant thud of a door two floors down. Guard change. That meant the sun was over the east wall, and the house would be awake whether I wanted it to be or not.
Somewhere below, a man’s voice carried low in Spanish, too quick for me to catch more than a word or two, money, delivery, port. Then the front door closed, and the sound was gone.
My room was big enough to shame a chapel, pale stone, polished floors, and a bed wide enough to swallow a weaker woman whole.
The windows looked like freedom until you got close.
Bars were hidden in the mullions, painted the same cream as the frame so in photos they looked decorative, not like a cage.
The door lock had two sounds: a light click when it opened from the outside, a heavier one when it shut me in at night. I knew both by heart.
I sat up slow, sheets cool against skin still carrying last night’s heat in places I didn’t think about. My robe hung where I’d left it, white and thin, saintly in a way that was pure theater.
The intercom crackled. A woman’s voice, even and careful: “Mother Sable? Zara is waiting in the nursery.”
I let my shoulders drop, just a fraction. I was so tired this morning. “I’m coming,” I said. The red light above the speaker blinked once—heard, recorded, stored—then went dark. I dressed quickly and left.
I took the side passage for the thirty seconds it gave me by the east windows, standing in a thin rectangle of sun that slid across the floor like a secret. I stepped into it slow, like a woman wading into warm water, and let myself pretend the heat was mine.
The nursery door was open. Zara sat on the floor, knees tucked up, hair sticking out in every direction. She had an elastic band around her wrist like a bracelet. When she saw me, her smile lit up the whole room.
“Mommy,” she whispered, because everyone whispered here, and held up a brush, pointing to a picture in her book. “Can we do the braids like this? The long ones?”
“Come here, sweetie.” I sat on the rug, and she climbed into my lap smelling like soap and apple shampoo, the kind the housekeeper used because it made her hair shine, something Gabrial liked.
I brushed through her tangles slowly, careful not to pull.
The sound of it—teeth through silk—settled something small inside me.
Malik slipped in without a sound. At ten, he already moved like someone who’d learned silence could keep you safe. “Good morning, Mother Sable,” he said, polite and formal, eyes flicking to the camera in the corner.
“Good morning, Malik,” I said, smiling at him. “You sleep alright?”
“Yes,” he said, glancing at the camera again. The cameras weren’t just for security. Gabrial wanted proof we followed the rules every second of the day.
“Good.” I hated that I couldn’t just hug him. I started the first braid, fingers working without looking, muscle memory older than my freedom. Zara leaned into me, humming softly until she forgot to be afraid.
“Inside voice,” Malik reminded her gently, repeating a correction he’d once been given. His eyes flicked to me, unsure if he’d crossed a line.
“It’s alright,” I said, smoothing Zara’s hair. “Just a little song.”
I was halfway through the braid when I heard footsteps in the hall, lighter than most, but steady. You felt Gabrial before you saw him. Zara went still in my lap.
Gabrial filled the doorway the way he always did, not by size, but by making the room his. Dark suit. Warm smile. This was daytime Gabrial—Cartel boss to the outside world. The prophet was still there, under the surface, but you wouldn’t see it in front of the wrong audience.
“My family,” he said, voice like honey. “How good we look in the morning.”
“Good morning,” Malik said quickly, bowing just like he’d been taught.
Zara’s fingers gripped my dress. “Good morning, Father,” she whispered.
Gabrial stepped in, changing the shape of the room. He brushed a knuckle along Malik’s jaw like a blessing, then looked at us, at the brush in my hand, the elastic on Zara’s wrist, the braid taking shape in her hair.
“How industrious,” he said. “And yet—” his gaze lifted to my loose hair against the white dress—“I love the flow of loose hair.”
I kept my eyes soft. “Zara asked,” I said quietly. “It’s only for a little while.”
He crossed to us. I felt him before he reached us, heat, weight, that pressure he carried like a storm. He touched Zara’s braid, testing the tension. When his fingers brushed mine, it took everything not to flinch.
“A child’s prettiness is innocence,” he said. “So I’ll allow it today.” His hand slid into my hair, fanning it over my shoulder, slow and claiming. “But I don’t want to see this in a braid, understand?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling the word close something inside me.
He bent toward Zara, smiling in a way that warmed only because he saw himself in her. “You will learn,” he told her. “To be a quiet flame. Bright but contained.”
She nodded, lips pressed. I tied off her braid while he watched, making it look like permission instead of the small act of defiance it was.
His phone buzzed once in his pocket. He glanced at the screen, a name I didn’t recognize, before sliding it away without answering. The look in his eyes said a conversation would happen later, in another part of the house.
He straightened, offering Malik two fingers. Malik took them because it was the ritual and because not taking them meant punishment.
“Walk with me,” Gabrial said. “Recite the virtues on the way to breakfast.”
“Yes, Father.” Malik followed him out.
The intercom clicked again: “Mother Sable, you are permitted the garden between eight and nine. Escort will arrive shortly.”
Permitted. Escort. Words dressed in silk, cut to fit a prison.
I finished Zara’s second braid, turning her to face me. “You’re perfect,” I told her.
She smiled, small and brave. “Can we pick flowers? Please.”
“Yes,” I said, taking her hand.
Rhea, my morning guard, was tall and broad-shouldered for a woman, in a gray suit. Polite—too polite. The kind who believed in the rules.
“The garden doors will remain open,” she said. “You are to stay within the inner path.”
“I understand.”
We went down the broad staircase, the runner thick enough to erase our footsteps. Two men passed us on the way up, talking in low about a shipment and a man named Ortega. We didn’t react or let on we heard.
The chandelier above looked like winter frozen in place, crystal icicles dripping light that never warmed the floor.
The garden might have been beautiful if it belonged to anyone else. Every hedge trimmed, every bed measured, a fountain in the center singing too sweet. Guards stood at the open doors like bookends. Beyond the path, the outer wall was smooth, pale, and too high to see past.
Zara ran until Rhea cleared her throat, then slowed to a fake walk that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
She tugged me toward a patch of lavender. I crouched while she chose her flower, fingers hovering before settling on the smallest bloom, like she already knew how to keep secrets.
“For your hair,” she said, offering it to me like treasure.
I tucked it behind her ear instead. “For yours.”
The fountain’s song shifted, and I knew without looking that Gabrial was near. He crossed the lawn with one of his men, their voices carrying across the quiet garden. I caught a word or two as they walked close, numbers, names, something about La Frontera.
We made the loop. “Eight-fifty-eight,” Rhea said. “Time to return.”
Zara looked toward the far gate, where ivy failed to hide the wall. “Can we go that way?”
“Not today,” Rhea said, kind enough to make the no worse.
Inside, the air changed, green and sun replaced by beeswax, iron, and the memory of smoke. Zara went to her lessons.
“You may have the library,” Rhea said, “until Gabrial calls for you.”
“What time?” I asked.
“He will ring,” she said.
The library wasn’t free, but it was quiet.
Books had their own weather. I walked the stacks without touching, scanning titles I didn’t care about, handpicked by Gabrial.
Somewhere above, a door closed sharply, and a man’s laugh followed.
Then, the sound of a lighter and the faint smell of cigar smoke drifted through the vent, his cartel side seeping into this side of the house.
By noon, I could feel the call coming. The house tightened. The air thinned. Cameras lingered on my face a heartbeat too long.
“Mother Sable,” the intercom said, “Prophet Gabrial invites you to the solarium.”
Invites. Another silk word.
The solarium was warm, damp, and heavy with light trapped by glass. Gabrial stood near the far wall, back to me, hands clasped like a man at prayer. A vase of white lilies waited on the table, their throats open.
“Come,” he said without turning.
I crossed the room, counting steps like always.
“Have you been doubting who you are?” he asked, eyes on my loose hair.
“No.”
“What are you?”
“A flame.”
He smiled, pleased. “Good. Then burn hot for me.”
I knelt at his feet, the way I’d been trained, praying this would be quick as his fingers fisted my hair.
When he dismissed me, I walked alone down the corridor and stopped at the first window where the bars hid in plain sight. A sparrow landed on the sill outside, head cocked. It pecked at the glass, then hopped away, small and free in a way I wasn’t.
I touched the painted bars, cool under my fingertips, and let myself imagine, just for one breath, the sound of a door opening from the inside.
***
THE DAY SEEMED longer than usual.
By late evening, the house had settled into one of its heavy silences, the kind where you start listening for something to break it. I’d put Zara to bed, took a shower and now stood looking out the window into the inner courtyard, and I’d let myself pause there.
Malik was outside with one of the younger guards — tall, muscled, too quick with his smile.
He said something that made Malik’s mouth twitch into the smallest grin, the kind that came and went before a boy remembered who might be watching.
I watched too long. I wasn’t thinking about the guard, only Malik. But it didn’t matter.
The air behind me shifted before I heard him.
“Interesting view?” Gabrial’s voice was mild. Mild was never good.
I turned slowly. “Malik’s in the courtyard,” I said, keeping it soft.
“I saw.” He stepped closer, his eyes moving past me to the glass. “And the young man with him. Did you enjoy what you saw?”
My throat tightened. “He was speaking to Malik.”
“Mm.” He moved until he was beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine. “Do you think I don’t notice where your eyes go? Who you give your attention to?”
“I wasn’t—”
“Liar.” His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. “Even if your heart felt nothing, even if your thoughts stayed pure, you gave him something that belongs to me.”
My pulse kicked against my ribs. “I’m sorry.”
He smiled faintly, like the words amused him. “You will be.”
He took my chin between his fingers, tilting my face until my neck ached. “Clothes off.”
I hesitated — barely — but it was enough. His hand tightened until my jaw hurt.
“Now.”
The sash at my waist slipped loose under my fingers. The robe slid from my shoulders, pooling at my feet. The air in the room getting colder, each breath lifting gooseflesh along my arms.
“Kneel.”
I sank to the stone, the hardness biting through my knees. He moved around me like he was inspecting a prize, then stepped to the mantel and returned with the heavy brass candlestick — tall, ornate, the Flame’s emblem carved into its base.
“Arms up.”
I raised them.
He set the candlestick in my palms. The weight dragged at my shoulders instantly.
“You will hold it,” he said, “while you think about where your eyes wandered today. And you will hold it until I’m satisfied you understand they are mine to direct.”
The minutes stretched into something endless. The muscles in my arms trembled, my hands slick on the cold metal. The candle’s heat licked my face; wax dripped in slow, deliberate drops, close enough to sting when it splattered.
Whenever my elbows dipped, his palm pressed to the small of my back, steadying me, not gently, but like a man holding something in place until it learned not to move.
When he finally lifted the candlestick away, my arms fell useless at my sides. He crouched in front of me, close enough that I felt his breath against my cheek.
“You see no one else, Sable,” he murmured. “Not the guards. Not the man who delivers the packages. No one. Your eyes belong to me. Your thoughts belong to me. Or I will make you beg for this candle back.”
He stood, leaving me on my knees with my skin still prickling from the wax, my shoulders aching, and my heart thudding so hard it hurt.
When I was dismissed, the cold in the room felt like a relief I wasn’t allowed to name.