Queens of secrets.
Victims turned executioners.
I don’t shiver. I’m not that kind of girl.
But something in my chest tightens. I flip backward and forward, skimming. Names are absent. Everything is coded. No full identities, just first initials, occupations, “husband,” “patron,” “sister,” “the girl with the scar,” “the one who prayed.”
Whoever built this wanted it to survive discovery.
And whoever hid it here wanted it to be found.
By who?
Someone like me?
Someone who’d recognize the pomegranate and think: Underworld. Descent. Seeds.
Persephone ate the seeds.
She became queen of the place nobody wants to go.
I close the journal slowly, my fingers pressing into the leather cover.
The chapel is silent.
But it feels… crowded.
Not with ghosts.
With women.
With intent.
I tuck the journal under my arm like it belongs to me—which, honestly, it does now. Finders keepers. God should’ve put a better lock on the door.
I pass framed photos on the wall near the entrance—old black-and-white shots of sisters with stern faces, girls in uniforms, the convent garden in bloom. Everyone looks clean. Everyone looks saved.
I wonder how many of them were just hiding.
I leave the chapel with the calm of someone carrying contraband through an airport. Smile on the inside. Nothing on the outside.
Back at the house, I make peppermint tea and curl up on the sofa with my mug, the journal open on my lap.
The leather creaks as if it’s stretching after a long sleep.
I find the question again.
What happens to women like us?
Who wrote that?
Who needed an answer?
I stare at it until the letters blur slightly, not because I’m emotional, but because my eyes are tired. Being a symbol is exhausting. So is being underestimated.
My pen is on the coffee table. I pick it up and hover the tip over the page.
The obvious answers come first. The ones people want.
