Chapter 1
Prudence
My knees ache from the hard-packed dirt of the Reflection Room. I drag in air that tastes of mildew and rotted wood, a smell that has soaked into the boards of this enclosure for longer than I have been alive.
I try to shift my weight, but my thighs scream. The room is three feet tall at its peak, narrow as an outhouse, and I have been locked inside since Housemother Ruth shut the door on me hours ago, or maybe days—I cannot tell without the sun.
There are no windows in here. Only a slot in the door for Father to pass judgment through when he is ready.
I clasp my hands and press my forehead to my knuckles. A psalm rises in my throat, the way it always does when fear takes hold.
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
I have recited the lines over a hundred times since Housemother Ruth locked the door.
I shall not want.
But I do want—or, rather,I don’twant. That is the whole of my sin, laid bare.
I don’t want to marry Father.
Blessed is the daughter who bends.
I bent when Elder Morrison put his palm flat on the back of my neck at harvest and left it there until the sweat of his palm soaked into my collar. I bent when my only friend, Sister Mercy, walked down the aisle to marry a man with liver spots on his hands, and she did not look at me once. I cried, and I was made to confess my sinfulness in front of the whole Flock while they prayed loudly for my wretched spirit.
But when Father, in his study, his pale watery eyes on my mouth, told me I had been chosen—a blessing, he called it—I did not bend. Not fast enough.
“The Lord has placed a blessing upon you,” Father announced. “I have prayed on it, and the answer has come. You will take the vows. You will become my ninth bride. And in so doing, you will be lifted from your orphan’s portion and made whole in the household of the anointed.”
The floor tilted beneath me. I felt as though I was going to be sick.
My face moved before I could stop it. I do not know what expression crossed it—revulsion, maybe, or fear—but Father saw. Father sees everything.
“Girl. You harbor doubt.”Father’s voice was as soft as always, yet I could sense his displeasure.
Willful defiance. Ingratitude.
Infractions warranting correction. And all true.
I don’t want to marry him.
Here in the Reflection Room, where Sister Ruth put me to await my sentence from Father, the thought remains. It’s like a worm burrowing under my ribs, and I know it is a sin, yet I cannot stop thinking it. I have seen his other wives. Sister Grace, whose eye was swollen purple for a month last spring. Sister Faith, who walks with a limp she did not have before her wedding night. Sister Elspeth, who was once smiling and fullof life but who now weeps at the dinner table and walks around quieter than the dead.
And there are the others. The sisters who stop appearing at meals. The ones who are spoken of for a week and then not at all. Where do they go? When I asked Housemother Ruth once, she went still and white, and she said, “Never ask that again, Prudence. Never.”
I have counted. Seven sisters gone in two years. Seven.
A bolt slides and a soft voice sounds through the narrow slot in the door. He has come to dictate my punishment.
“Sister Prudence.”
My spine locks. Father’s voice is soft, but it’s worse than shouting.
“Yes, Father.”
“You have grieved the Lord.”
“Yes, Father.”
