Chapter Fifty-Nine
IT WAS ALMOST dawn.
Two women stood framed in the doorway, their silhouettes swathed in ceremonial white.
Their faces were still, unreadable, hollow in a way that only decades of blind faith could carve into bone, leaving nothing human behind but the motions of duty.
They didn’t look at me; they didn’t have to.
This wasn’t about seeing or being seen. This was ritual, and ritual was never personal.
Without a word, I followed.
The corridor seemed to stretch forever, each step falling heavy and mechanical, as though my body had detached itself from my will.
We drifted past the dormitories, where the air still carried the haze of sleep.
Past the gardens, where the neat rows of rosemary and sage bloomed despite the rot threaded beneath the soil.
Past the shuttered windows that turned their backs to the rising sun as though even light wasn’t permitted to witness what came next.
Each step thudded through my chest, not with panic, not with terror, but with the quiet weight of dread that comes when you already know what’s waiting, and all you can do is keep moving.
They led me to the bathhouse.
The smell hit me before the door shut behind us—steam and lavender laced with lemon balm, a concoction meant to soothe. But the scent never soothed. Not when I was young, not now. It was always a lie, a veil draped over what the cleansing truly was.
This was where brides were prepared to be given.
Where sinners were stripped to bone and remade.
Where girls learned that pain could be made holy.
The air was warm, thick with mist, but I felt cold to the marrow.
They undressed me slowly, without ceremony, peeling the linen shift from my body as though I were an object wrapped for storage.
One held my arms with a tenderness that felt obscene in its purpose, while the other dipped a clay bowl into the steaming basin and poured water down my spine in measured intervals.
Each stream scalded hot at first, then cooled too quickly, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.
I didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. Resistance here was meaningless.
They began the cleansing.
Not with the oils and herbs whispered about in blessings, but with cloths soaked in a slurry of ash and salt.
The mixture stung as it met my skin, scraped in relentless circles across my shoulders, my arms, my back.
Their voices rose in low chants—not full words, but fractured syllables of an old prayer meant to call the fire.
Each pass of the cloth was said to draw out corruption, each sting of abrasion a reminder that purity required pain.
I remembered this.
The first time they scrubbed me like this, I was fifteen being “made ready.” I remembered how the salt burned raw in places that should never have been touched.
I remembered how they told me to stay silent, how I bit my lip until blood touched my tongue rather than cry out.
The memory seared fresh in me now, a ghost layered over the present.
One of them scrubbed harder than the other. Perhaps she remembered me, too. Perhaps she wanted me to feel it.
When they were finished, they dried me with linen soft enough to mock the harshness that had come before.
They rubbed scented lotion across my skin, disguising the sting beneath notes of rose and sandalwood.
Then came the red robe, the soft fabric slipping over my head, flowing down to my ankles, heavy with symbolism.
A matching veil followed, sheer enough to see through but long enough to shroud me like a relic preserved for display.
They didn’t offer a mirror.
The ceremony wasn’t about me. I wasn’t meant to see myself. I wasn’t the center.
I was the object. The warning.
The Flame would speak through me, and every word, every gesture, would be turned into a lesson for others.
When they led me back outside, the air hit like ice.
The warmth of the bathhouse clung for a moment, then was stolen by the wind.
The compound itself had stilled. No children’s laughter, no clatter of tools in the garden, no clink of bowls from the kitchen.
Only birdsong carried thin on the breeze, and the crackle of torches being lit one by one along the path to the Flame Hall.
This silence wasn’t natural. It had been commanded.
Everyone had been told to stand still. To witness.
To judge.
At the entrance to the hall, the girl with the burned hands waited.
Her head bowed, her bare feet pressed to the stone path, a basket clutched tight against her chest as though it held something fragile.
She didn’t look at me directly, but as the older women passed, she stepped close enough that her breath brushed my ear.
“Remember,” she whispered. “When the fire shifts… be ready.”
The words struck like a match against dry tinder.
She didn’t wait for acknowledgment. She simply turned, footsteps soft as ash scattering in the wind.
The heavy doors groaned open. The long aisle yawned ahead, lined with flickering braziers that threw restless shadows against the walls. The hem of my robe whispered across the floor, my veil trailing like smoke pulled behind me.
The doors closed, sealing me in.
The sound was final. A tomb.
I kept my eyes forward, though instinct clawed at me to search for an exit. There were none. Only the aisle. Only the flame. Only the altar.
And him.
The place where Gabrial would stand and twist devotion into spectacle.
Fear knotted in my throat, but I pushed it down. I let my mind reach for something else.
Zeke.
I thought of his voice, rough and warm, whiskey poured under starlight. The way his hands shook when he held me, like I was something sacred instead of something broken. The look in his eyes when he said, I care about you, like he believed it with everything he was.
I clung to that memory. Rooted it deep. Let it burn brighter than the torches. Brighter than the Prophet’s flame.
They could strip me down. Parade me like a relic. Make me kneel until my knees split open.
But they couldn’t take that fire from me.
And when the moment came, when the fire shifted like she promised, I would make sure mine burned hotter.