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“A hero.”

“A saint.”

We clink our cups.

Harvest Communion looks nothing like communion.

Thank God.

The area behind the main barn has completely transformed since we went into the maze. The long dinner tables have been pushed aside. Bonfires burn in massive stone pits. Hundreds of string lights hang overhead. The band is back, except now they’re playing louder, dirtier music than earlier.

People dance everywhere, spilling across the grass and crowding the space between the stage and the bonfires. Some still wear their masks, while others have shoved them onto their heads or abandoned them around their waist. Black ribbons weave through the crowd with them. Most are still tied around their wrist, but I spot them knotted around necks and belt loops, and one woman has hers wrapped high around her thigh while she dances with a guy near the fire.

Mine is impossible to miss.

Bright red against my skin in a sea of black.

Apparently, I really am the only one and people are starting to notice.

A guy dressed like a cowboy lifts his beer when I walk past. “Bride!”

I lift my drink. “Peasant!”

He laughs.

Mariah grabs my arm. “You’re becoming unbearable.”

“Becoming?”

Ali snorts.

We make it maybe twenty feet before another group stops us for a picture. Then another. Some woman hugs me and tells me she was the Harvest Bride four years ago.

“You were?”

“Yep.” She holds up her phone and shows me a picture. She’s standing right where I am now, smiling with a cheap plastic flower crown and a gold sash across her chest. ‘HARVEST BRIDE 2022.’

Her ribbon is gold.

I frown. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I say, looking down at my wrist. Red satin. Maybe they changed it. “Did you win anything?”

She laughs. “A gift basket.”

I stare at her. “A gift basket?”

“Cider, candles, two free tickets for the next year.”

“I almost died in a corn maze for a fucking candle?”

She laughs harder. “Pretty much.”

“Bullshit.”

Mariah leans over my shoulder. “She expects livestock.”