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I look him in the eyes without wavering.
Then nod a silent agreement.
A breath leaves him slowly, the stiffness in his posture loosening just a bit.
He leads me across the chamber to a stone basin set into the wall. Steam curls faintly from the water gathered inside.
“Let me cleanse you.”
He peels the dirty sundress from my shoulders and pushes it down my body until it falls at my feet in a heap. I’m too numb to fully process the intimacy of his removal of my bra to bare my breasts to him. Or the way his fingers hook into my panties before pulling them down too. Exposed piece by piece until I’m standing naked before him in the cold stone chamber.
Edwin dips a cloth into the warm water and wrings it out. When he lifts it to my face, his touch is careful as he wipes away the tracks my tears left behind in the filth. Then he moves down my throat. My collarbones. The slow sweep over my breasts.
I wish my nipples didn’t tighten beneath his fingers.
Every movement is filled with reverence. As though he’s not only cleaning me but claiming my body, inch by inch, before the Order can see it.
Then he kneels.
The cloth passes between my thighs with a tenderness that makes me shiver. Not meant to arouse. Not exactly. But the intimacy of it burns. My body remembers his cruelty from earlier, and this softness after it feels worse somehow. More dangerous.
Because I like the contrast.
Because some broken part of me wants both.
When he finishes at my feet, he rises and reaches for a white cloak draped beside the basin. The fabric is heavy as he settles it around my shoulders before he lifts the hood over my head.
“There’s no turning back now.”
He extends his hand. A final chance to choose him.
I look at it for only a moment before I place my hand in his grasp, my fingers closing around his wide palm.
He leads me from the chamber into a tunnel stretching endlessly through the earth. The walls sweat with dampness. Torches burn at even intervals, their flames snapping against the darkness. The ground dips and rises, forcing us to move carefully together.
He never lets go of my hand. I belong to him now. With every step, I feel it more, carrying me farther from the girl I was supposed to be and closer to something I’m afraid to know.
The air is thick with the smell of dirt and river water. Our footsteps echo lightly, but somewhere far off, a ceremonial hum travels through the stone, too faint to make out.
The stone door appears without warning. It groans open as we approach, the sound vibrating through my chest. Beyond it waits a circular chamber drenched in firelight.
The space is vast. Larger than I could have imagined. Stone columns rise towards two levels that wrap around the room, where masked figures stand shoulder to shoulder, forming a perfect ring along the balconies. They look down at us without emotion, without names.
A wall of judgment.
Patrick and Bridget wait near the altar in the center. She wears a white cloak that matches mine. In front of them stands a masked man I assume is Liam again.
Only the roar of the flames fills the chamber as Edwin leads me forward.
When we stop before the altar, he releases my hand. Then he says nothing. His expectant stare is all I have to guide me.
This is where I make my choice publicly. Where I prove to him and to everyone that I’m doing this of my own accord, freely choosing to go through this messed-up ritual and whatever comes after it.
My pulse pounds so hard I feel it in my throat. I want to scream, to run, to split open the silence with an ugly, human sound that would slap everyone here in the face. But I understand what he’s asking of me.
So I sink to my knees.
Cold stone bites against my bones. I push back the hood and bare my face to the rings of masks above. My breath shakes as I shrug the cloak from my shoulders, letting it fall away.
