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When the rite concluded, a wedding ring was cast into the darkness. I did not hear it strike the floor. The young woman was led away smiling.

I find that smile difficult to forget.

I read the entry twice and placed my hand over the opal on my neck, and then I understood it. I was the latest in a long line of women, strung together by deception. We were one, even if we weren’t blood. I was avenging all of them.

I turned the page. The next entry, dated six months later, sent a quiet shudder through my slouching spine:

Seven days they kept me in the house they built. From morning until dark they shut me inside a narrow clothes-press scarcely broad enough to sit in, with my knees drawn beneath my chin and no light but what entered at the crack beneath the door. I learned the passage of the hours by the footsteps beyond it, and by the numbness creeping first into my feet and afterward into my legs. Sometimes they left me there so long that I believed they had forgotten me; then the key would turn, and they would draw me out, give me water, a little food, and read aloud from their book in voices as mild as ladies instructing a child in Scripture. They told me what would be required of me. They told me how much easier it would become when I ceased resisting. Then they put me back into the dark. On the eighth morning the door of the house stood open. I have never known whether they released me because they understood I would die before I gave them my name, or because, by then, they could no longer endure the sight of me looking back at them. I signed nothing. I promised nothing. I walked home through the rain with blood dried beneath my fingernails from clawing at the inside of that door, and when my dogs heard me at the gate they began to howl before they saw me.

And on the next page, the hand pressed so hard it had torn the paper in two places:

The dogs woke me at three o’clock. I note this because they are seldom mistaken. No disturbance was visible from the windows. Nevertheless, neither animal would leave its post. The cold arrived shortly thereafter. Toward morning the sensation passed.

The dogs settled. I did not.

This marks the fourth occurrence.

The entry after that was a list: names down the left margin with a year and a single line beside it.

Adelina, 1881. Brought by her husband. Asked me the week before for the receipt for honey cake. Returned six months later and did not recognize my face.

Mary C., 1882. Sang while she worked. The women said she had a lovely voice. No one remarked upon its absence afterward.

The Pruett girl, 1884. I never learned which sister. They were so alike and now there is only the one and she does not remember she was ever two.

For one dark moment, I imagined my own name there in ink:

Marlowe T., 2026. Buried a fox. Asked too many questions.

I turned another page, and several folded sheets of paper fell out of the journal. I unfolded them and found hundreds more names, printed out from a database. A header at the top of the document read The Received. I studied it and gasped. It was the coven’s own records, dating back to 1890, that tracked every woman they’d fed to the Bridegroom. And Damian, I guessed, had printed it out and given it to Branwen. Unwittingly, their own records had completed Clemency’s work.

I read on, until I found an entry that wasn’t a record about anyone but herself:

I have been asked to set down the whole of the severing: the working itself, the words said over him, the order of what is done. I shall not.

Paper burns. Paper is stolen. The severing must be obtained from me directly, spoken into the ear of the one who will perform it, and only after she has been judged fit to attempt it. I will carry it to my grave and out the other side, and there it will stay until the right woman calls me up to ask for it.

I record only this much, so that she may find the door:

The way out exists. I know this because I found it. I perceived it by instinct, then proved it by setting our rites against the surviving teachings of the oldest mystery schools. What I set down here is not the severing. It is only how to reach me. The rest you will have from my own mouth, or not at all.

Then, on the next page:

If this book has come into your possession by theft, curiosity, vanity, or ambition, close it.

I will not come.

If it has been placed into your hands by one of my blood, and if she has given it freely, then you may proceed. But understand this: the severing cannot be performed by an onlooker. It must be undertaken by one who has stood as his bride. The law of the thing is vile, but exact. A marriage may be witnessed by many. It may be arranged by others. It may even be forced by those who profit from it. But it can only be broken by the one who was bound.

For that reason, no man may stand inside the circle. No unwilling woman may be used to complete the number. No bargain may be made in my name.

To call me, set my mirror at the northern point.

Place beside it three things: salt, iron, and a living flower. Speak my name once. Then say:

Clemency Hart, daughter of no master, keeper of the severing, I call upon you with the leave of your blood and the consent of my own will. I have stood before the Bridegroom and I come now to put aside his claim. If I am unfit, refuse me. If I am false, deny me. If I am afraid, let fear stand witness and not master.

After this, be silent.