Page 121 of Thunder's Reckoning

Elias cleared his throat. “All signs point to restraint. Emotional protection, perhaps. But no physical bonding, Prophet. The wives confirmed as much.”

Relief came slow, like breath after near-drowning. It did not soothe, it settled, heavy and immovable.

She was still mine.

My flame. My altar made flesh. My chosen.

To destroy her would be to cut open a vein in my own chest. And I would do it, if she were tainted like her mother, if she had given what was mine to another man. I would burn her and scatter her ashes without hesitation. That was the price of betrayal.

But now…

Now I did not have to burn her.

I could reclaim her.

I closed the folder with a snap that echoed in the silence. “Prepare the sanctuary,” I said, my voice returned to calm, smooth and measured once more. “She kneels at dawn.”

The men bowed their heads and left.

I turned back to the window, resting my fingers against the carved frame, watching as two boys hauled wood toward the purification pit. The logs stacked high, each one a promise of flame.

She didn’t know it yet.

But this was mercy.

And mercy, in the hands of a prophet, was never soft. It was edged, sharp as steel, honed by jealousy, sanctified in fire. A gift carved from bone, soaked in blood, and claimed as mine.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

IT WAS ALMOSTdawn.

Two women stood framed in the doorway, their silhouettes swathed in ceremonial white. Their faces were still, unreadable, hollow in a way that only decades of blind faith could carve into bone, leaving nothing human behind but the motions of duty. They didn’t look at me; they didn’t have to. This wasn’t about seeing or being seen. This was ritual, and ritual was never personal.

Without a word, I followed.

The corridor seemed to stretch forever, each step falling heavy and mechanical, as though my body had detached itself from my will. We drifted past the dormitories, where the air still carried the haze of sleep. Past the gardens, where the neat rows of rosemary and sage bloomed despite the rot threaded beneath the soil. Past the shuttered windows that turned their backs to the rising sun as though even light wasn’t permitted to witness what came next.

Each step thudded through my chest, not with panic, not with terror, but with the quiet weight of dread that comes when you already know what’s waiting, and all you can do is keep moving.

They led me to the bathhouse.

The smell hit me before the door shut behind us—steam and lavender laced with lemon balm, a concoction meant to soothe. But the scent never soothed. Not when I was young, not now. It was always a lie, a veil draped over what the cleansing truly was.

This was where brides were prepared to be given.

Where sinners were stripped to bone and remade.

Where girls learned that pain could be made holy.

The air was warm, thick with mist, but I felt cold to the marrow.

They undressed me slowly, without ceremony, peeling the linen shift from my body as though I were an object wrapped for storage. One held my arms with a tenderness that felt obscene in its purpose, while the other dipped a clay bowl into the steaming basin and poured water down my spine in measured intervals. Each stream scalded hot at first, then cooled too quickly, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.

I didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. Resistance here was meaningless.

They began the cleansing.

Not with the oils and herbs whispered about in blessings, but with cloths soaked in a slurry of ash and salt. The mixture stung as it met my skin, scraped in relentless circles across my shoulders, my arms, my back. Their voices rose in low chants—not full words, but fractured syllables of an old prayer meant to call the fire. Each pass of the cloth was said to draw out corruption, each sting of abrasion a reminder that purity required pain.