Chapter Fifty-Five
THEY LET ME out not long after Gabrial left, no warning, no explanation, no ceremony.
Just a knock. Sharp. Soft. Like a signal meant only for me.
The same young woman with the burned hands stood in the frame, her eyes downcast, her posture still as stone, her mouth pressed into the kind of line you learned in this place: not sorrow, not anger, just the absence of both.
She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. The message was clear. Follow or be made to.
I stepped into the hallway, blinking against the gold-washed morning light bleeding through the narrow windows. It wasn’t silence that filled the space. It was worse. A curated stillness. A hush so carefully arranged it passed for peace, when in truth it was control dressed in linen.
The compound hadn’t changed in its bones.
Chalk-white walls, corners flaking like old skin. Windows that let in light but none of its warmth. Floors polished to a shine so sharp every step echoed, reminding you the walls were always listening, even when no one stood behind you.
I used to think those echoes meant the Flame was alive, walking with us. That every footstep was a prayer answered. As a child, I pressed my palms to the walls and whispered my hopes into them, believing stone could carry my voice to the Flame God.
Now I knew better. The walls didn’t speak. They just kept secrets.
The woman with the burned hands led me out into the open air.
The grounds spread wide like a village carved from obedience, rows of small cabins for “family units,” roofs sagging under age, walls too thin to hide a whisper.
A single dirt path wound between hand-tilled gardens and woodpiles stacked with military precision.
The smell of ash clung to everything, threaded through with lavender like someone thought flowers could erase the smoke of punishment.
And looming above it all was the Flame Hall. Copper roof blazing in the early light, front steps fanned wide as if welcoming the whole world into its mouth. That was where Gabrial preached. Where his voice soaked into wood and flesh, branding itself deeper than fire ever could.
I remembered standing on those steps as a girl, my dress starched stiff, my hair flowing freely since it was worship day. Gabrial’s eyes sweeping the congregation until they landed on me. I thought being seen by him meant I was chosen—special. That it was holy.
It wasn’t holiness. It was possession.
The place breathed like a single body.
Women moved in cream-colored dresses, hems brushing the dirt, baskets balanced on their hips.
Their heads bent low, their steps measured, always two paces apart as if stitched together by invisible thread.
Men hauled buckets and crates, sweat darkening their shirts, but their eyes never strayed.
Children filed out of the dorms in rows of ten, bare feet padding in near silence as they followed Guides with copper pendants at their throats.
Their lips moved in unison, murmuring prayers that curled like smoke in the air.
No one lingered.
No one faltered.
And no one looked at me for long.
But I felt it, their attention brushing over me like a cold wind. Recognition without acknowledgment. They knew who I was now. The Wayward Flame. The one who had belonged and ran. The one Gabrial had chosen and lost and reclaimed.
I was proof that even the chosen could fall. And a warning that no fall went unpunished.
We crossed the central garden, where rosemary and sage and marigolds grew in precise rows, their scent too sweet, too heavy, cloying like a lie repeated until it felt holy.
At the garden’s center rose the Pillar of Purity, a column of stone wrapped with silk streamers, each one painted with scripture.
The Flame’s mark carved into the base, blackened by old scorch marks.
I used to kneel there. I used to press my palms against the carvings until they burned, telling myself the pain meant cleansing. I’d leave my skin raw and blistered, desperate to prove I was worthy of the Prophet’s gaze.
And I remembered the first time they led me there.
I couldn’t have been more than six. My knees shaking, my braids slipping loose as the women pressed down on my shoulders and told me to hold still.
Gabrial’s voice filled the courtyard, deep and steady, promising the Flame would lick away my childish sins.
I’d cried when the stone seared my palms, but I swallowed the sound, terrified of being seen as weak. When I pulled my hands back, the skin was red and swollen. He smiled at me then—Gabrial—and told me I was “closer to pure.”
I’d glowed under that smile, foolish enough to believe pain was proof I was chosen by the fire. That having his attention was the rarest privilege.
Now the memory sickened me.
A little girl knelt there now. Her head bowed so low her chin nearly touched her chest. Her hair had been cut close to her scalp, the jagged ends stark against her neck. A visible mark of disobedience.
My stomach twisted. I’d never had my hair cut. Gabrial forbade it. He liked me whole. Unmarked. Polished like a relic.
I looked away before the child lifted her eyes and saw me watching.
The woman with the burned hands kept walking. Her silence wasn’t cruelty. It was survival. She’d learned how to fold pain into quiet movements, how to vanish while still standing in plain sight.
She guided me into the communal kitchen.
Wide doors swung open as people filed through like ghosts bound to routine.
A line formed before the serving tables, bodies moving with the same careful rhythm as prayer.
The clink of bowls and cups was the only sound, swallowed quick by the weight of expectation.
I remembered this.
The way hunger here wasn’t just in your stomach. It settled in your bones. In your voice. In the space between breaths. You waited not just for food, but for permission, to eat, to speak, to exist.
As a child, I used to bow my head over the plain bowls of soup and whisper thanks for the chance to eat at all. I thought gratitude would make the hunger worthy of the flames.
But hunger was never holy. It was just another chain.
You didn’t raise your voice here.
You didn’t raise your eyes.
You kept your thoughts clean, your posture straight, your heart open to the Flame.
And if you failed, even by an inch…
The fire rose to meet you.
I glanced back toward the garden, toward the little girl kneeling at the Pillar of Purity, her shorn hair marking her like a scar.
For a moment, I saw Zara in her place.
Saw my daughter’s small body bent low, her chin to her chest, waiting for the burn of stone against her palms. Waiting for Gabrial’s voice to call pain a blessing.
The thought sliced me open.
I clenched my fists at my sides, nails biting into skin, and swallowed the rage before it could rise. Outwardly, I stayed still. Inwardly, I made a vow.
Zara would never kneel there.
Not while I had breath in my body.
Not while the fire still burned in me.
***
THE KITCHEN AIR was thick with the scent of baked bread and something heavier, judgment steeped into the beams, clinging to the rafters like smoke that never cleared.
The long table stretched before me like an altar, each woman along its length performing her quiet rite: spoon to bowl, head bowed, silence held like scripture.
I sat at the far end, a chipped bowl of soup cooling in front of me, untouched. Hunger twisted in my belly, but hunger was nothing here. Hunger was ordinary. What was searing were the weight of eyes.
Across from me, three elder women sat like stone statues draped in linen. Faces I’d known since childhood, sharpened now by age, their mouths drawn in lines that had never softened.
Mother Maelis stirred her spoon in slow circles, her voice cutting without ever lifting her gaze. “You’ve brought shame to the Prophet.”
My tongue burned with reply, but a sudden press of fingers against my leg stopped me.
The girl with the burned hands. Her touch was brief, firm. A warning.
I lowered my eyes to the soup. Let silence swallow what I wanted to say.
Mother Anara inhaled through her teeth, that sound I’d feared as a girl. It meant you’d already stepped too far. “Still you carry yourself as though the fire owes you understanding.”
“It doesn’t,” Maelis agreed smoothly. “But obedience would’ve been enough. If you’d only stayed in your place, the Flame would have kept you clean. Unspoiled.”
Her words cut deeper than they should have.
Because my place had never been the same as theirs.
Gabrial had taken me from this hall, from these benches, from the rows of linen dresses and thin bowls.
He had lifted me from their world to his estate, into a life none of them could touch.
He’d wanted me with him always. And they had never forgiven me for it.
Their envy seeped through every syllable, coated in reverence so no one could call it what it was.
“You were chosen,” Maelis said, her spoon pausing midair. Her eyes lifted then, flinty and unyielding. “He gave you what no one else was given. His home. His voice. His hand.”
Her lip curled, just faint. “And still you ran.”
The words slid into me like hooks. I clenched my hands beneath the table until my nails bit skin.
Sister Anara leaned forward, gnarled hands clasped as if she were blessing me.
“Do you think any of us would have refused what you were given?” Her voice rasped like old parchment.
“Do you think we wouldn’t have burned gladly for the chance to be near him as you were?
And yet you—his favorite—turned away. You spit on the altar.
You let the outside touch what was sacred. ”
Her eyes flicked over me, lingering on my hair, my skin, my silence. “Defiled.”
The word cracked through me like a whip. My chest tightened, fury clawing hot in my throat.
But I kept still.
Because Gabrial would never let them mark me. And they knew it. Their only power was their verbal poison.
The women rose together, linen sweeping the floor in unison, a practiced motion like a ritual ending.
Mother Maelis lingered just long enough for her shadow to stretch over my bowl. Her voice dropped, soft and final. “Don’t expect us to weep when the Flame takes you. You lit this fire yourself.”
Then they left, their steps folding back into the reverent hush.
The girl with the burned hands stayed. Silent.
Eyes forward. Her presence steady, a quiet shield against the venom they left behind.
The long, thin burn down her cheek caught the light, pale as chalk where her jaw clenched tight, like even her scar refused to fade, a mark of what fire tried to take but couldn’t.
Later, when we stepped out into the evening air, her sleeve brushed mine. A whisper slipped from her lips, almost lost to the lavender-scented wind. “They’re watching you closely.”
I kept walking, gaze fixed on the path ahead, but I felt the eyes, two guards by the dormitory wall, arms crossed, postures easy but eyes sharp as knives.
“Soon,” she breathed, never breaking stride. “Things will happen. Be ready.”
My pulse jumped.
I didn’t ask. Didn’t dare. I only gave a small nod, careful, measured. Enough.
We walked on, the guards’ presence clinging to my back like hands ready to close.
The breeze shifted, carrying something darker under the herbs and flowers.
Not lavender.
Not rosemary.
Ash.