Chapter Fifty
I WOKE TO darkness.
Not the kind that fades with sunrise, but the kind that waits. Heavy. Dense. Unmoving. It pressed in from every direction, thick as wool and cold as stone. Breathing felt like inhaling shadows.
The air was stale, but not lifeless. It carried the faint musk of damp linen, ash, and something metallic, like iron left too long in the rain.
A room that had been sealed, preserved, used too many times to ever wash clean.
Above me, a single window—too narrow for escape—let in a sliver of gray light that sliced across the wall like a scar.
My wrists weren’t bound, but I didn’t need ropes to remember captivity. My body knew what it was to belong to someone else’s will. My heart was already racing before I even sat up.
The room was small. Intentionally so. A cot shoved into the corner, no sheet, no pillow.
A basin tucked inside a niche carved with symbols I would always see in my dreams, flames inside circles, the old mark of the prophet.
The whitewashed walls looked blank at first glance, but I saw them.
Faint scratches. Claw marks. Lines gouged into plaster by nails and desperation.
Words etched and rubbed away by time and bleach.
My gaze dropped to the grate in the floor. A square of black iron where they’d build fires beneath, flooding the chamber with unbearable heat. Smoke without flame. Heat without mercy.
This wasn’t just a cell.
It was a cleansing chamber.
A punishment room.
And I had been here before.
I was fourteen when Gabrial locked me inside one.
Jolana, Malik’s mother, had told him she caught me slipping out of a closet with Aden. We were the same age, friends who shared stolen laughs in a place where joy was dangerous. But in that world, rumors were gospel, and lies cut deeper than truth.
I can still remember Gabrial’s face, his fury smothered under calm, his eyes burning with something worse than disappointment. It was pure rage and it terrified me. He ordered me locked in the chamber.
The door shut, and silence swallowed me whole.
The first day, no food. My stomach twisted so hard I thought I would break in half. The second, only a cup of water, metal-tasting and warm. My lips split, my tongue thick in my mouth, but I didn’t beg.
Through the walls, I’d heard others in their own chambers, young voices unraveling, confessing to anything just to be freed. Pleas that turned to sobs, then silence.
But I never confessed. I whispered nothing. I curled on the cold floor and made myself endure.
On the third day, I expected the flames beneath the grate, the final stage of purification. But they never came. Gabrial hadn’t ordered it. He loved me in his way, so he withheld the fire. He starved me, broke me with silence, but never gave me the full punishment.
It was mercy meant to wound, because it reminded me I was different. That I was his.
When he finally let me out, he tilted my chin, studied my face. Not to see if I was guilty, but to check if I was still strong enough to be what he wanted.
Jolana was punished instead. When he learned she lied, he had her feet burned. Her screams haunted the halls. That was the beginning of her madness.
She had thought herself clever, once. She believed she could bind him by blood, that a child would tie his power to her.
Malik was the trap she set, the proof of her defiance.
But all it bought her was his loathing. He despised her for it.
For trying to steal what was his to give only when he chose.
That loathing festered, and Jolana twisted with it until she turned on me with a knife in her hand. She wanted me to pay for the truth she couldn’t bear, that he would never love her. That her trap only chained her to his contempt.
That was the day I learned: in Gabrial’s world, love and cruelty were inseparable.
Now, standing in this room again, every scratch on the walls whispered back to me. My legs trembled, but I forced myself toward the door.
It loomed ahead—iron, reinforced, no handle on my side. A flame encased in a circle carved deep into the surface. The Children’s mark. Watching. Judging.
I pressed my palm against it anyway.
Locked.
Of course it was.
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to contain the fear, but it pressed harder, filling the chamber until it felt like I was breathing panic instead of air.
The light overhead shifted, gray to darker gray. Minutes. Hours. It didn’t matter. In here, time belonged to them.
Then—footsteps.
Soft. Bare. Measured.
The scrape of a key in the lock. Precise. Ritual.
I braced myself.
The door opened.
A woman stepped inside. Older. Familiar in a way I couldn’t place. She wore pale linen, sleeves to her wrists, the hem brushing the floor. Her hair was pulled into a long braid. Her face was expressionless, her eyes glassy, dulled by obedience.
She didn’t look at me. Didn’t acknowledge me. She carried a tray—wood worn smooth with years of use—and set it down near the wall. A bowl of plain food. A metal cup of water. A folded cloth stained faintly pink. She placed it on a small wooden table with steady hands.
She turned to leave.
“Wait,” I rasped, my voice cracking, raw from whatever they’d used to keep me under. “Please.”
She paused, but didn’t turn.
“Where are the children?” My voice shook. “Where’s Miriam? Are they alive? Are they safe?”
Nothing.
Her head tilted slightly, just enough to show she’d heard. But her eyes stayed fixed on the door.
“Please,” I whispered, softer. “I won’t tell anyone. I just need to know.”
Her throat worked, one hard swallow. Her fingers twitched at her sides, clenching tight. Her shoulders rose as if she were about to speak, but no words came.
Her lips parted, trembled. For the briefest moment, hope flared in my chest.
Then she pressed her mouth shut, eyes glassing over again, and turned away.
The door shut.
The lock clicked back into place.
I sank to the floor, the tray untouched, hands shaking in my lap. The silence wrapped itself around me like a burial shroud.
I remembered how this worked.
Gabrial didn’t need chains or bruises to break you. He didn’t need blood. All he needed was silence, the right kind. The kind that erased you.
He trained everyone around you to act like you didn’t exist. To ignore your voice. To walk past you as though you’d already been buried.
He didn’t have to scream to destroy you.
He just had to make you invisible.
And I knew exactly how long a person could last before they started to believe it.
***
THE NEXT TIME the door opened, it wasn’t the same woman.
This one was younger—late twenties, maybe, though time blurred people in this place until age was impossible to pin down.
Her steps were slow, almost reverent, like the stone floor itself might bite if she moved too quickly.
She wore the same pale linen dress as the others, its hem frayed at the edges, sleeves hanging too long for her narrow frame.
Her blonde hair was pulled back in a braid wound tight, the kind done in silence, with hands that knew nothing but obedience.
I didn’t speak at first.
I was curled in the corner, knees drawn to my chest, skin cold and clammy against the wall.
I hadn’t moved much since the last “meal”—bread gone stale, water gone sour.
Sleep hadn’t touched me, not with the weight of the chamber pressing in.
The cot behind me offered no comfort. No blanket.
No pillow. Just a slab wrapped in thin cloth, as bare and stripped of warmth as everything else here.
She stepped through the threshold carefully, eyes lowered.
Shoulders stiff. Back straight. A posture carved into her bones by years of doctrine.
But there was something in the way she carried herself that didn’t match the mask.
Silence clung to her, but it wasn’t hollow—it was charged. Watching. Measuring.
That’s when I noticed her hands.
Red. Blistered. Healing.
Burns. Fresh ones.
I knew those marks. I’d seen them before, on girls who’d dared question, even for a breath, the Prophet’s teachings.
Doubt was treason here, but rarely fatal.
Instead, they were dragged before the flame.
Not consumed entirely—no, that would end the lesson too quickly.
Just scorched enough to leave a reminder etched into flesh. Purity bought with pain.
I remembered the sound. The hiss of skin against heated stone. The smell of it searing the air. And the Prophet’s voice, smooth as oil, whispering about fire being both punishment and salvation.
Her fingers tightened around the tray she carried, trembling just enough for me to notice. Bread. Water. A folded cloth. The ritual of survival, served without kindness.
But then her gaze flicked up. Brief. Almost imperceptible, and in that instant, I saw it.
Defiance.
She dropped her eyes again just as fast, as though regretting the lapse, or fearing someone had seen.
“What’s your name?” My voice cracked from disuse, hoarse and raw, but I forced the words out. I leaned forward just enough to show her I wasn’t afraid. Not of her. Not of speaking. Not anymore.
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even flinch.
She set the tray against the wall with practiced grace, her eyes fixed downward.
That’s when I saw more, the faint line of a long burn that traced down the side of her face, healed but impossible to hide.
Not just her hands. Her jaw was clenched, her arms rigid.
Her body carried wounds the cloth couldn’t cover.
She turned to go.
“Wait.”
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
She froze.
I stood, not fully, not close, but enough to rise above the crouch of fear. My voice softened. I didn’t want to scare her.
“I know what they told you,” I said. “You’re not allowed to speak to me. I remember how it works.”
Still, she didn’t move. But her breath caught, a harsh, almost hidden sound. To anyone else it would have been nothing. To me, it was everything.
“I just need to know,” I whispered. “The children. Are they okay?”
Her grip on the tray whitened. The tendons in her hands stood out. Her spine went rigid, but she didn’t turn. Not yet.
Her head lifted, just barely. Enough for me to see the outline of her expression. She didn’t meet my eyes, but the emotion was there, burning behind her stillness. Not fear of me. Rage at this place.
She held herself there for one more heartbeat, locked in a war only she could fight. Then she turned, walked to the door without a word.
But right before it closed, her eyes flicked toward the tray.
A small, piercing glance. Intentional.
And then she was gone.
The lock clicked back into place, echoing through the chamber like a final breath.
I waited. My pulse pounded in my ears, but I didn’t move right away. Not with the camera in the corner still watching, its black lens glinting like a second eye. I forced myself to wait, to let the silence settle back in, to make my movements look routine.
Finally, I crouched beside the tray. I shifted the bowl aside, my fingers steady though every nerve in my body screamed.
There—tucked beneath the cloth—was a scrap of paper, folded so small it looked like nothing at all.
I stared at it, my chest tight, afraid it might vanish if I blinked.
Then I slid it into my palm and carried it to the cot, turning my back to the wall. My hands shook as I unfolded it beneath the cover of my body.
The message was written in small, tight script.
The children and the woman are safe but separated. Just obey and be patient.
My vision blurred. Tears welled hot, sliding free before I could stop them.
I folded the paper back into the cloth with trembling hands. If she had been caught carrying it, she would’ve been dragged to the fire again—or worse. And yet she had risked everything.
I didn’t know her name. Didn’t know her story. But I knew this: she remembered what it meant to resist.
And now, so did I.
Tears ran down my face. Silent, steady. Not from fear.
From hope.