Page 120 of Thunder's Reckoning

And beneath it all pulsed the stabbing, suffocating fear I could not quiet: I had lied to Gabrial. I had told him Zeke nevertouched me. If the truth was ever uncovered—if they decided my body betrayed me—the fire would not cleanse me.

It would consume me.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

GABRIAL

CHILDREN OFthe Flame compound

The air in my office clung to the walls like incense,thick with cedar oil, wax, and silence. The weight of it pressed down from the carved beams above and coiled low against the floor, as though the very stones themselves were steeped in devotion. I stood at the tall window, fingers laced behind my back, watching the courtyard below where the first light of morning had yet tosoften the edges of the Flame Hall. In shadow, the copper roof looked like it bled.

I didn’t turn when the knock came. I let it linger, let the pause stretch long enough for unease to creep into the doorway. Obedience meant waiting. Waiting proved reverence.

“Enter,” I said at last.

The door creaked open, hinges groaning like a bow across string, and three Wives of the Flame drifted inside. Their veils hung white and heavy, their heads bowed, their hands folded in the sacred stillness that had been drilled into them over years until it became second nature. Old loyalty written not in flesh but in bone. They moved like echoes.

“She has been examined,” the eldest said. Her voice carried no tremor, no warmth, no color. She was a vessel, and nothing more.

I didn’t move. My reflection in the glass stayed still, framed against the ghost of the Flame Hall.

“And?”

“No indication of coupling,” she said. Each word dropped as clean as scripture. “The flesh is unmarred. No bruising, no tearing. No signs of possession.”

My jaw tightened, though I forced the rest of me into composure. They expected serenity from me, not the storm raging in my chest. “You are certain?”

The eldest dipped her head lower, as though bowing deeper would strengthen her words. “Yes, Prophet. If she had lain with him, there would be evidence. I saw none.”

“She is being prepared?” My voice came quiet, sharp as the edge of a blade wrapped in velvet.

“Yes, Prophet.”

“She appeared ready to be reclaimed?”

“She showed no defiance,” the wife replied.

I inclined my head once. It was all they needed. With practiced grace, they backed away from me, retreating through the door like shadows folding themselves back against the wall.

The silence did not last long. Elias and Mateo slipped inside, their boots quiet in the hush, their presence heavier than the Wives’ had been. Each carried a folder, thin but weighted with meaning. I did not have to ask what lay inside.

Elias set one down upon the desk, his hand lingering a fraction too long as though the act itself bore confession. “Everything we could track,” he said. “Her time in Charleston. Who she saw. Where she went. The biker—Zeke—they call him Thunder as you know, spent the most time with her.”

My fingers curled as I flipped the folder open. Ink on paper. Grainy photographs. Scribbled notes. One picture caught my eye and held it, Sable outside a house, my flame, my chosen. And near her, too close, the deceiver. He wasn’t even touching her, but the way his body leaned into her space, the way his eyes burned with hunger, it was all there.

Possessiveness.

My teeth clenched. He wanted her. He thought himself bold enough to stand in my place, to drink from the cup that was never meant for him. I could see it in his face, the desperation of a man reaching for something he could never truly hold.

“Did he claim her?” I asked, my voice low, strangled by the fury curling through it.

Mateo’s head shook once, deliberate. “No evidence of intimacy. No witness statements. They were close, yes, but there were boundaries. He treated her as if she were something he could not quite reach.”

I stared at the photograph again, and for a terrible moment I let myself imagine it, the outlaw’s hands on her, his mouth pressing where mine had been, his shadow falling across herskin. My stomach turned with it. The thought was poison, burning through me, but I couldn’t stop the image from forming.

If he had touched her—if she had given herself to him—I would have cut him open where he stood and bled him like a lamb across my altar in front of her. I would have burned her body with his, ashes tangled so neither could claim the other even in death.

“And Sable never gave him any part of her?” I forced the words through clenched teeth.