9. Leandra
The blindfold comes off, and I blink against the sudden assault of light.
My eyes water, adjusting slowly to reveal a room that could be anywhere; cream nondescript walls, hardwood floors, a bed with crisp white linens that look almost obscenely pristine.
There’s a window, but heavy curtains are drawn across it, blocking out any hint of where we might be.
I don’t know how long we’ve been traveling. Hours, certainly. Maybe more. The journey was a labyrinth of turns and stops, the engine’s hum punctuated by what felt like deliberate circles, routes doubled back on themselves.
Isaac wanted me disoriented, wanted me lost, unable to find my way out, my way back.
And he succeeded.
My stomach clenches with a cramp. I puked up my dinner hours ago and the nausea of fear mingles with the hollow ache in my belly, creating a sensation that’s almost dizzying.
I should be thinking about food. About water. About basic survival.
Instead, all I can focus on is the fact that I’m alone with a man. Completely, utterly alone.
It’s against every rule I’ve ever been taught. To be unchaperoned with a man, even for a moment, is to invite scandal. To be here, in what appears to be a bedroom, with Isaac...
The laugh bubbles up before I can stop it, bitter and sharp.
It dies in my throat, strangled by the absurdity of my own thoughts.
My reputation? My marriage prospects? As if those things matter anymore.
As if whatever the Esau have planned for me includes a white dress, a respectable husband and a life that follows the neat, prescribed path of a proper Brethren Lady.
No, that life ended the moment my father handed me over.
I’m going to be a different kind of bride now. One of six holy women chosen for the prophet himself.
“Something funny?” Isaac’s voice cuts through my spiralling, chaotic thoughts.
He’s watching me with those dark eyes, the ones that seem to catalogue every micro-expression, every tell. There’s an intensity to his gaze that makes my skin crawl.
“Ner, nooo,” I manage, my voice smaller than I’d like. “Nothing.”
Ezekiel strides in, barely glancing at either of us.
I track his movements like prey watching a predator.
He’s tall, I’d noticed that before but here, in this enclosed space, his height feels more pronounced.
More threatening. He carries himself with the easy confidence of someone who has never been denied anything, never been told ‘no’ in any way that mattered.
As I look at him, I see those colours swirling around him, shifting erratically, almost hypnotic.
It’s mesmerizing, unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
The colours don’t lie. They never have. And yet there’s something about the way they move around him, chaotic but beautiful, that makes me believe he truly is a prophet. That he’s chosen by God.
What is it they have planned? What are they going to do to me?
“Strip.”
The word hangs in the air between us. For a moment, I’m certain I’ve misheard him. That my exhausted, terrified brain has conjured the command from nothing but Ezekiel is looking at me expectantly, waiting.
“What?” It comes out as barely a whisper.
“I said strip.” He says it so casually, like he’s asking me to pass the salt. “Take off your clothes.”
The room tilts. My eyes snap to the bed and then to Isaac and I shake my head, instinctively wrapping my arms around my body. “No.”
“You will…” Isaac begins, and I don’t hear the rest. He’s blocking my exit, I realise. The pair of them had this planned.
“No.” I repeat, louder this time, though my voice trembles. I take a step backward, then another. My eyes dart to the door behind him. If I could just get past him, if I could just…
I bolt.
It’s stupid. Desperate.
I know even as I’m moving that I won’t make it, but my body acts on pure survival instinct. My feet hit the hardwood and I lunge for the door, my hand outstretched for the handle, like I’d even know which way to turn if I got through it.
I don’t even get close.
Ezekiel’s arm wraps around my waist and suddenly I’m airborne, lifted up and thrown like trash.
The floor rushes up to meet me and I hit it hard, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs.
Before I can even process the pain he’s on me, his weight pressing me down, one hand pinning both my wrists above my head while his body traps my legs.
“Get off me.” I thrash beneath him, bucking and twisting, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. “Get off.”
“You can make this easy,” Ezekiel says from his fine seat, his voice maddeningly calm, “or you can make this hard. Either way, it is happening.”
Is this what he did to Cass? Did he hurt her too?
“This is a sin.” The words tear out of me, desperate and raw. Tears are already streaming down my face, hot and shameful. “This is…you can’t…it’s a sin.”
He actually laughs at that. The sound is low, dark, and makes something in my chest constrict with terror.
“The Esau commit no sins in the eyes of God,” he says, and there’s something almost reverent in his tone, like he’s reciting scripture. “We are His chosen. His instruments. Everything we do is ordained.”
“Please.” I whisper, and I hate how broken I sound, hate the sob that catches in my throat. “Please don’t do this. Please, I’ll do anything, anything…”
“You are my wife.” Ezekiel states, “I have every right to fuck you now.”
I stare up at him, confused through my tears. “What?” We haven’t been married. We haven’t had our hands tied and our blood mixed. He can’t just declare it so and it be true.
But he’s not listening anymore. His free hand moves to my dress, finding the collar, and then he’s ripping.
The fabric tears with a sound that seems impossibly loud in the quiet room.
I scream, renewing my struggles, but it doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters. He tears through my clothes like they’re paper, shredding my dress, my underwear, all of it until I’m exposed and sobbing beneath him.
“This is necessary,” he says, and I can hear him working at his belt, and the clink of metal makes my stomach heave. “This is ordained.”
“God’s will made manifest.” Isaac says from across the room, and I realise with horror that he is still here. He is witnessing this.
“No, no, no…” It’s a litany, a prayer, the only words I can form as he forces my legs apart.
The pain when he enters me is blinding. Searing. I feel like I’m being split in two. I scream again, the sound ripping from somewhere deep and primal and he just keeps going, keeps pushing until I’m certain something inside me has broken irreparably.
“Stop crying,” he grunts above me, his breath hot against my face. “You’re being weak.”
But I can’t stop. The tears pour down my temples, into my hair. I can taste salt, snot, and my own helplessness as he fucks away. My body feels like it’s being torn apart, each thrust a fresh violation that sends new waves of agony through me.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be real, but it is.
God help me, it is.
He’s not gentle. Not for a second. There’s no care in his movements, no consideration for the fact that I’m in pain, that I’m begging him to stop through my sobs.
He uses my body like it’s an object, something that exists solely for his purpose, and all the while he’s murmuring about God’s plan, about divine will, about how this is all necessary.
I can smell him, I can smell his sweat, his stench as he grunts and bucks away. I can feel him on my skin, in me, I can feel every awful second that he is violating me.
I try to disappear into my mind, to go somewhere else, anywhere else but the pain keeps dragging me back, anchoring me in this moment, in this horror.
He starts to pick up pace, fucking me harder, grinding my body against the hardwood and I can feel the splinters starting to dig into my flesh.
“Fuck,” He groans, “Fuck, you’ve got a tight little cunt.”
He doesn’t sound like a prophet now, does he? He doesn’t sound like anything other than a monster.
When he finally finishes, the sound he makes is so satisfied. He’s pleased with himself, pleased that he’s ruined me. He pulls out, and I feel something warm and wet between my thighs that I know is my blood mixed with him.
I don’t want to look, I don’t mean to, but my eyes latch onto him, his body, the part of him that is bloodied and somehow still hard.
“There,” he says, staring down, examining his cock like this was some sort of experiment. “That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?”
Isaac is standing beside him, staring at me, staring at where I’m exposed, where I’m still bleeding.
The shame of it crashes over me in waves. I curl into myself, trying to cover my nakedness with shaking hands.
I can’t speak, can’t form words.
I just lie there on the floor, trembling and bleeding and broken.
He picks up his clothes, making himself presentable again like nothing has happened, like he hasn’t just destroyed something fundamental inside me.
“You’ll learn,” he says as he tightens his belt. “This is your purpose now. Your calling. God chose you over your dead sister. The sooner you accept that, the easier things will be.”
God, what did Cass go through, what did she endure, and what horrors will I now suffer?
“I’ll have food in the hall,” He continues, but not to me, to Isaac. “Have your turn, then come find me. We’ll need to adjust the schedule, speed things up now that we only have a few months before the ritual…”
I can’t process those words. I can’t process anything. All I can do is stare at Isaac, at the colours swirling around him. They’re muted, dull, like he’s hiding something.
Oh god, he’s going to do it too, isn’t he? He’s going to hurt me.
I try to scramble back, to get away but my body collides with the bedframe and he’s on me, pinning me down, taking what he wants and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.