Chapter Four
BY MORNING, MY arms were still useless.
Every movement lit a slow, gnawing ache from shoulders to wrists, a burn heavy enough to make even the simplest tasks deliberate, lifting a cup, smoothing Zara’s hair, pulling the slip over her head.
The soreness stayed quiet, hidden beneath sleeves and polite smiles, but it lived in every reach, every stretch.
A constant reminder of how he’d stood over me the night before, watching without touching, until patience became its own cruelty.
Zara noticed, of course. Children always notice.
“Why are you moving like that?” she asked as I buttoned the back of her dress.
“Just tired,” I said lightly. “Held something heavy yesterday.”
Her brow pinched. “What was it?”
I smoothed the fabric over her shoulders, hiding the pause in my hands. “Nothing you need to worry about, sweetie. You ready for lessons?”
She nodded, but her mouth stayed tight.
Malik was already in the hall, posture perfect, hands clasped behind his back—trained to be still under Gabrial’s gaze.
He gave me a single, quick glance before looking straight ahead again, the smallest flicker of his eyes asking if I was all right without speaking.
I gave him the faintest nod before the housekeeper’s arrival forced us into silence.
The morning passed in its usual rhythm, lessons, meals, the measured shuffle from one permitted space to another, but everything felt heavier, slower. Every footstep seemed too loud, every door closing too sharp, as if the walls themselves were waiting to report back to him.
I sat on the balcony overlooking the garden, a pen balanced over a blank page in my lap.
My thoughts drifted like smoke, tempting and untouchable.
Even if I dared trap them in ink, Gabrial would read them.
He read everything—lists, idle doodles, the margin notes in books he has me read, his neat red corrections proof that nothing in this house belonged entirely to me.
Above the carved stone railing, a discreet camera stared toward the garden path, not quite aimed at me, but close enough that turning my head would place my face in its glass eye.
I kept still, letting the warm air brush my skin like a hand I couldn’t shake off, knowing it wasn’t the wind I felt, but him.
From the window to my right came the faintest sound, not footsteps, but the subtle shift of curtain rings along a rod. The prickle started at the base of my neck and crawled upward.
“Don’t look,” a voice breathed from behind the curtain. Familiar.
My gaze stayed on the garden. “You shouldn’t be here, Tallis,” I whispered, barely moving my lips.
“Just listen,” he murmured, the curtain’s edge trembling, his shadow a smear along the floorboards. If the light shifted wrong, the camera would catch him. “Move your chair closer to my voice.”
I lowered my eyes and did as he asked, pretending to study the lines in my palm against the paper. “Okay,” I said, the word a thread.
“He watches your every move,” Tallis said, his voice angled toward the wall.
A breath in. A breath out. “I know.”
“More than usual.”
The truth pressed against my ribs like weight. “What can I do?” My voice was smaller than I meant it to be.
“Sometimes it’s not about what you do. Sometimes it’s about what he dreams you might.”
He must dream a lot, I thought.
“I want you to listen,” Tallis said, his shadow shifting again. I leaned ever so slightly, as if my attention had caught on some bird in the trees, shielding him from the camera’s view.
I turned a page in my notebook, then another, the act a poor shield but something to do with my hands. “You shouldn’t be here,” I repeated, because truth sometimes needed to be said twice before it could root itself.
“They’re sending Zara,” he said. “To the Circle.”
The words hit like a fist to the lungs.
“No—she’s too young. She’s not ready—”
“She’ll never be ready for what they want.” His voice sharpened, rare fury flashing through.
“You were fifteen when he officially took you, Sable. She’s five, and he’s already promised her to an enforcer when she comes of age.”
The world tilted. I could almost hear Gabrial’s voice in my head, calm, patient, explaining in that infuriating way of his why this was honor, why I should be proud, why resistance was childish. My heart sagged under the weight.
“I can get you out,” Tallis said. “But we don’t have time. Gabrial leaves tomorrow for business. That’s our window.”
“What about Malik?” I forced the words through my throat. I wasn’t leaving without him.
“Both of them,” he said without hesitation. “I’ve planned for this. There’s a satchel ready, cash, a burner phone, keys to an old car outside the garden wall. You’ll have to push it down the road before starting it; it’s loud. I’ll clear the guards from that side.”
Now I understood the driving lessons in that old truck at the compound, Tallis’ voice in my ear when I was twelve, telling me to keep my hands steady even when the ground bucked. My hands shook now anyway. “Why would you help me?”
He hesitated, the curtain pulled tight in his grip. “I failed your mother. She died thinking I betrayed her. I won’t fail her twice.”
I kept my gaze on the same patch of garden, not daring to look. The years—bruises, prayers whispered to nothing—pressed into my bones.
“But he’ll kill you.”
A bitter smile laced his voice. “Then I’ll die doing something worthy of the ash in my blood.”
“What about the cameras?”
“They’ll go down tomorrow night, midnight. I’ll make a distraction. You’ll have a short window to gather the children and get out. Don’t waste it.”
“And the guards at our doors?”
“They like to… amuse themselves when Gabrial isn’t here. They won’t be a problem. Just promise me you’ll follow my instructions.”
“I will,” I said, breathless, my heart a pounding metronome counting down the seconds before we were caught.
The balcony door handle turned.
“Prophet requests you and Zara for luncheon,” Rhea’s voice came, crisp and formal. “He wants you both in white.”
Even her choice of words was a warning. Requests meant expects. White meant possession.
“Of course,” I said, forcing the tremor from my voice.
The curtains swayed once—Tallis gone. Not like a man leaving, but like water closing over a stone, erasing the evidence it had ever been split apart.
***
UPSTAIRS, SISTER IDRIS released Zara with a kiss that left a pale crescent of chalk on her cheek. She muttered at herself for the smudge, then wiped it away, as if even marks of affection needed erasing before they could be seen.
Zara ran the first half of the hall and walked the second, exactly as she’d been taught, before pressing her face into my stomach like five was still old enough to hide there.
“We need to change you into a white dress,” I said softly, framing it like a game. “For lunch.”
She wrinkled her nose. “The white’s scratchy.”
“I’ll put a slip underneath,” I promised, combing my fingers through her hair. “A soft one.”
“Father says I look like a lily when I wear white,” she said, and the word lily carried the faint, warm scent of the solarium. “And that it makes me beautiful.”
“You are,” I told her, and that one had no edges, no lies.
Malik waited at the nursery door, one hand braced against the frame like he needed it to stay upright. He gave me a small nod—more man than boy in that gesture—before glancing at his sister.
“No running in the corridor,” he said, not unkindly.
“I walked the last part,” she answered, chin lifting.
“Good,” he said, and something in me cracked at how hard he tried to be good for a man who taught goodness like it was the sharpest knife.
I dressed her quickly, sliding the softer slip under the scratchy dress, smoothing seams with my palm so they wouldn’t rub. She spun once, letting the skirt float, and I hid my smallest laugh until Rhea appeared in the doorway.
“Ready,” I said.
***
GAbrIAL NEVER ATE with his mouth full. He ate with the room full of attention, with the weight of eyes turned toward him, with the kind of silence that could pass for reverence if you didn’t know what it cost.
He placed Zara’s napkin himself, fingers brushing her knuckles with proprietary care, the kind that said mine without needing the word.
He gave her a soft smile—proud, maybe, to see his reflection in her face, then turned to quiz Malik on his lessons.
The boy answered with his back straight, gripping knife and fork like they were the only steady things left to him.
Between questions, Gabrial’s gaze found me, slow and deliberate, the way a collector studies a rare piece to see if it’s worth keeping.
“You look very beautiful,” he said. “I like you best this way, obedient, polished. You please me.”
It was praise, but it landed with the same weight as a chain settling around my throat.
My instinct was to bow my head. My training was to bow my head. But Tallis’s voice—don’t give him firsts—slid beneath both. I reached for Zara’s water glass first, adjusted it so it wouldn’t catch her sleeve, then lowered my gaze. A defiance so small no one else would see.
He saw.
His eyes drifted, almost lazily, toward the balcony doors at the far end of the room. The sheer curtains stirred faintly in the draft, just enough to shift the light. His gaze lingered there a moment too long—long enough to make my pulse stumble—before returning to me.
“You moved the chair,” he said idly, as if making conversation.
“I wanted a better view of the garden,” I answered, keeping my voice even, though my blood was loud in my ears.
A slow nod. No smile. “Always good to know where the walls are.”
The words were mild, but the way he held my gaze made them sound like a warning, as if he was reminding me that walls didn’t just keep things in—they kept people watched.
Then, just as easily, he turned back to Malik.