Page 122 of Thunder's Reckoning

I remembered this.

The first time they scrubbed me like this, I was fifteen being “made ready.” I remembered how the salt burned raw in places that should never have been touched. I remembered how they told me to stay silent, how I bit my lip until blood touched my tongue rather than cry out. The memory seared fresh in me now, a ghost layered over the present.

One of them scrubbed harder than the other. Perhaps she remembered me, too. Perhaps she wanted me to feel it.

When they were finished, they dried me with linen soft enough to mock the harshness that had come before. They rubbed scented lotion across my skin, disguising the sting beneath notes of rose and sandalwood. Then came the red robe, the soft fabric slipping over my head, flowing down to my ankles, heavy with symbolism. A matching veil followed, sheer enough to see through but long enough to shroud me like a relic preserved for display.

They didn’t offer a mirror.

The ceremony wasn’t about me. I wasn’t meant to see myself. I wasn’t the center.

I was the object. The warning.

The Flame would speak through me, and every word, every gesture, would be turned into a lesson for others.

When they led me back outside, the air hit like ice. The warmth of the bathhouse clung for a moment, then was stolenby the wind. The compound itself had stilled. No children’s laughter, no clatter of tools in the garden, no clink of bowls from the kitchen. Only birdsong carried thin on the breeze, and the crackle of torches being lit one by one along the path to the Flame Hall. This silence wasn’t natural. It had been commanded. Everyone had been told to stand still. To witness.

To judge.

At the entrance to the hall, the girl with the burned hands waited. Her head bowed, her bare feet pressed to the stone path, a basket clutched tight against her chest as though it held something fragile. She didn’t look at me directly, but as the older women passed, she stepped close enough that her breath brushed my ear.

“Remember,” she whispered. “When the fire shifts… be ready.”

The words struck like a match against dry tinder.

She didn’t wait for acknowledgment. She simply turned, footsteps soft as ash scattering in the wind.

The heavy doors groaned open. The long aisle yawned ahead, lined with flickering braziers that threw restless shadows against the walls. The hem of my robe whispered across the floor, my veil trailing like smoke pulled behind me.

The doors closed, sealing me in.

The sound was final. A tomb.

I kept my eyes forward, though instinct clawed at me to search for an exit. There were none. Only the aisle. Only the flame. Only the altar.

And him.

The place where Gabrial would stand and twist devotion into spectacle.

Fear knotted in my throat, but I pushed it down. I let my mind reach for something else.

Zeke.

I thought of his voice, rough and warm, whiskey poured under starlight. The way his hands shook when he held me, like I was something sacred instead of something broken. The look in his eyes when he said,I care about you,like he believed it with everything he was.

I clung to that memory. Rooted it deep. Let it burn brighter than the torches. Brighter than the Prophet’s flame.

They could strip me down. Parade me like a relic. Make me kneel until my knees split open.

But they couldn’t take that fire from me.

And when the moment came, when the fire shifted like she promised, I would make sure mine burned hotter.

CHAPTER SIXTY

WE GATHERED INthe war room longafter Charleston had gone quiet, when the city slept and only the neon lights and the roll of the tide marked the hours. Phones were powered down, burners tossed into a lead-lined toolbox in the corner, and every man in that room knew—this wasn’t club business no more. This wasn’t about patches or territory. This was blood.

The old table stretched beneath the low light, scarred surface buried under maps, surveillance photos, and sketches that looked like they’d been dragged outta hell itself. My uncle’s hand-drawn blueprint lay in the center, lines so worn it looked ready to split clean in two.