Chapter Twenty
GAbrIAL
THE DOOR creaked open like it was afraid of me. Good. Everything should fear me.
They dragged Tallis in by his arms, boots scraping ugly marks across the marble floor—marks I’d make someone scrub until their fingers bled. His head hung low, dried blood crusted in his hair, bruises blooming down his jaw. He looked pathetic. Weak.
But weakness could hide rot. Eve had looked pure once, too.
I stayed behind my desk, sleeves rolled neat to my elbows like this was any other meeting, just another trial before judgment. This office had seen a hundred such things. It would see a hundred more.
“I want the room,” I said.
The guards hesitated—half a second too long.
My voice didn’t rise. Didn’t need to. “I said leave.”
Their boots echoed as they backed out, door shutting with a final thud that reminded me of burial vaults. Permanent. Eternal.
Tallis stayed on his knees, wrists bound, chest rising too fast. He looked up at me, and there it was. Not fear. Not regret. Clarity. That was worse.
“I know why you helped her,” I said, my voice quiet as ash. “But I want to hear it. From your mouth.”
He spat blood onto the marble. It spread like a stain between us. “Because she deserved better than the prison you called a life.”
I stood, moved around the desk slow, letting my steps echo. Every sound was a countdown. I let him feel each one.
“Better?” I repeated, savoring the word. “Sable is my chosen flame. She was born for this.”
“She’s damaged,” he snapped, defiance sharp in his broken voice. “Because of you.”
I stopped a foot away, staring down at him. My jaw flexed, but my voice stayed even, colder than stone. “She was sanctified. Purified. The flame burned her clean of her mother’s weakness. She was made sacred.”
“Her mother burned because of your delusions.”
The words struck. A crack through my spine, sharp as lightning. My jaw twitched, once. I didn’t let it show in my eyes.
But he saw it.
“You made us watch,” Tallis said, leaning into the pain. “Said the fire would carry her soul. All it carried was her screams.”
“That woman was tainted,” I said. “She tempted me into sin. The fire was mercy.”
He laughed, raw, blood flecking his lips. “She loved you, Gabrial. Until she saw the monster hiding under a prophet’s robes.”
Love. Filthy word. Loud. Mortal. What I felt for Sable was beyond love. It was divine.
I turned away, not from weakness, but to breathe through the storm building in my ribs. My eyes landed on the far wall where Sable’s childhood drawings still hung. Suns. Crooked houses. A child’s handprint in orange paint.
“I gave her everything,” I whispered. “And she will return. The children too. Malik will rise as shepherd. Zara will be shaped into a vessel worthy of the flame. And Sable…” My voice softened to reverence. “Sable carries the fire in her bones. She is my vessel. My creation. She will kneel again.”
“She carries your shame,” Tallis hissed.
I turned fast, and this time I crouched low, folding my hands like prayer until I was eye-level.
“She is the flame reborn,” I said through my teeth. “Untouched. Sacred. Until you polluted her with your filth. You gave her ideas. You gave her hope.”
Tallis shook his head, slow. “She was breaking long before me. I just showed her the door.”
“You think I won’t find her?”
“No.” His lip bled as it curled into a grin. “I think when you do, she’ll burn you alive.”
We stared in silence. The kind that comes between thunder and the strike. His eyes bled hate. Mine bled truth.
Finally, I stood, straightening my cuffs. My voice was calm, almost gentle. “How many more will burn before she finally kneels?”
He didn’t blink.
“Rohan,” I called, still staring at him.
The door opened.
“Take him to the circle. Prepare the flame.”
They hauled him up. Tallis said nothing, even as they dragged him away. He thought silence made him strong.
But the loudest sound in this world is burning flesh.
And the gods always listen.
***
THE SKY WAS bleeding.
A righteous omen.
The Children of the Flame stood silent, rows of bodies tight as bricks, heads bowed, hands clasped. Even the smallest children were hushed, though I could feel their trembling travel through the ground. They’d been taught well. The fire teaches early.
The Flame Bearers stood ready on either side of the platform, their faces painted in purity: white across the eyes, black across the mouths. Sight without sin. Silence without question.
Tallis knelt in the center, wrists bound, face swollen and purpled with bruises. He should’ve looked broken. Instead, he stared ahead, jaw clenched, eyes steady. Defiance where there should have been repentance. He wouldn’t beg. He thought it gave him strength.
Fool.
I stepped onto the platform, robes brushing the wood like whispers of ash. My flock pressed in closer, hearts thudding, lungs waiting for my words to decide the rhythm of their breathing.
I lifted my hand.
Stillness deepened.
“My flock,” I said, voice smooth, rich, carrying like smoke across the rows. “We gather in sorrow… and in clarity. For the Book of the Returning Flame tells us: Let not the rot fester among you, for what betrays the body must be excised with holy fire.”
“Amen,” they answered in one voice.
I circled Tallis slowly, each step measured. “This man—this traitor—once bore the light. He prayed beside us. He swore loyalty. But rot crept in. Doubt took root.”
I stopped behind him, laid a hand on his bruised shoulder. He flinched, but his head stayed high.
“He whispered poison,” I said. “He opened gates that were sealed by fire. He aided in the poisoning of my sacred flame.”
Sable. Her name cracked through me like thunder. Even now I could feel her absence like a wound that would not close.
“She was sanctified,” I said, louder. “Anointed by the Circle, sealed in divine purpose. And he stole her from us.”
Tallis lifted his head, blood dripping from his split lip. “You took everything from her first. Her mother. Her childhood. Her future. I only gave her a door.”
The crowd stirred. My fingers twitched. I wanted to strike him where he knelt, but ritual demanded patience.
“You lit the fire under Liora,” he went on, voice ragged but strong, “because she would not bow to you. And you’ll do the same to Sable, the second she says no.”
The name tore through me again. Not with shame—no. With hunger.
I leaned close, my mouth by his ear. “She will not say no.”
His laugh was jagged. Ugly. “Then she’ll burn you with her.”
Enough.
I raised my hand. The Flame Bearers moved in, hauling him to his feet, binding him to the post. Arms spread wide, head lifted like a false martyr.
I took the torch myself. Always myself.
“The fire cleanses,” I told them. “The fire corrects.”
I pressed the flame to the dry kindling at his feet. It caught fast, leaping hungrily up his legs. He gritted his teeth, jaw locked as the fire climbed higher. Skin blistered, hair caught, the stink of burning flesh curling into the air.
Someone in the crowd whimpered. A child. The sound was swallowed quick by a mother’s hand over a mouth. Good. Fear must be learned.
Tallis didn’t scream. Not even when the flames ate his chest. His silence was a defiance all its own, and that only made me hate him more.
I breathed deep of the smoke, of the sacrifice, until his body sagged against the ropes, blackened and curling. When the last flame guttered out, I turned back to my flock. Their faces were pale, eyes wide, fear raw and ripe in the air.
Perfect.
“Let this stand as truth,” I said, lifting my chin. “The flame does not forget. The flame does not forgive.”
I stepped down from the platform, robes untouched by soot, the crowd parting like the Red Sea before me.
One of the children whimpered again. Too loud this time. A boy, no older than Zara. His mother clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late, my eyes found him.
He froze. She froze. The whole row turned to stone.
I smiled, slow. Cold. “The flame hears all,” I said, my voice carrying across the silence. “Even the whispers of doubt.”
The boy’s eyes brimmed, but he did not move. The mother bowed lower, pressing his head down until his forehead touched the dirt.
Good.
Fear was obedience. Obedience was survival.
I turned from them and raised my arms once more to the crowd. “Let this be burned into you as it was into him. The flame does not forget. The flame does not forgive.”
The words hung heavy, sinking into every bowed spine.
Then I walked away, the smell of charred flesh clinging to me like incense, my flock trailing silence in my wake.
Patriarch Gabrial. Prophet of the Flame. Judge. Executioner. And I would not rest until my vessel was returned to the fire.