Page 3 of Thunder's Reckoning

I shut the door behind me, the sound louder than I meant in the stillness. Then I lowered myself to the floor, knees strikingstone with the same grace drilled into me since childhood. Palms flat. Eyes down.

“I give myself as flame, to burn for the one who created me.” The words scraped my throat on the way out. They always did. I said them anyway. I always said them. If I didn’t, he’d make me repeat them until the sound cracked in my throat, until the taste of blood bloomed at the back of my tongue.

There were eyes in this room, I didn’t need to see them to know. Obedience hurt less than defiance. But obedience never set anyone free.

The door behind the altar creaked open.

I didn’t look up.

Gabrial’s steps were soft. Always soft. Like his voice. He moved the way a snake might, calm, deliberate, knowing the strike would land no matter how slow it came.

“You’ve forgotten your place this week, Sable.” His tone was quiet, but quiet never meant safe. He began circling behind me. “I saw the way you looked at the younger guards. Are you thinking forbidden thoughts about those men?”

My lips stayed pressed shut. Anything I said would be wrong. Gabrial was jealous in a way that could ruin a body. The only answer that wouldn’t pour gasoline on his mood was silence. But in my head, I thought of every place beyond these walls. Places he’d never touch.

He dipped his thumb into the ash bowl. The smell curled into my nose, burned cloth, clove, and something darker I’d never identified but would carry in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

He pressed it hard to my chest, just above my heart. I flinched before I could stop myself.

“Here.” His thumb dug deeper. “This is where your fire lives. It’s mine to tend. Only mine. Understand?”

I gave the smallest nod, my gaze fixed on the blackened candle. Its flame flickered. It looked shorter than usual.

Hope stirred, foolish and fragile. Maybe this would end faster tonight. And maybe, one night soon, I’d find a way to make it end for good.

Then he reached forward and replaced it with a fresh one—longer, slower to burn.

“Tonight,” he murmured, “we don’t rush the cleansing. Tonight, we linger in the fire.”

The air left my lungs in a slow, controlled exhale. My eyes burned, but I didn’t let the tears fall.

Not even when he leaned close enough that his lips brushed my ear.

“Come, Sable. I’m in the mood for something special.”

Special meant rough. It meant he’d take every jealous thought, every imagined slight, and carve it into my body until I remembered—bone-deep—exactly who my flame belonged to.

CHAPTER THREE

I WOKE TOquiet that wasn’t quiet at all, air hummingthrough a vent I couldn’t close, the soft tick of the hallway camera turning, and the distant thud of a door two floors down. Guard change. That meant the sun was over the east wall, and the house would be awake whether I wanted it to be or not.

Somewhere below, a man’s voice carried low in Spanish, too quick for me to catch more than a word or two, money, delivery, port. Then the front door closed, and the sound was gone.

My room was big enough to shame a chapel, pale stone, polished floors, and a bed wide enough to swallow a weaker woman whole. The windows looked like freedom until you got close. Bars were hidden in the mullions, painted the same creamas the frame so in photos they looked decorative, not like a cage. The door lock had two sounds: a light click when it opened from the outside, a heavier one when it shut me in at night. I knew both by heart.

I sat up slow, sheets cool against skin still carrying last night’s heat in places I didn’t think about. My robe hung where I’d left it, white and thin, saintly in a way that was pure theater.

The intercom crackled. A woman’s voice, even and careful: “Mother Sable? Zara is waiting in the nursery.”

I let my shoulders drop, just a fraction. I was so tired this morning. “I’m coming,” I said. The red light above the speaker blinked once—heard, recorded, stored—then went dark. I dressed quickly and left.

I took the side passage for the thirty seconds it gave me by the east windows, standing in a thin rectangle of sun that slid across the floor like a secret. I stepped into it slow, like a woman wading into warm water, and let myself pretend the heat was mine.

The nursery door was open. Zara sat on the floor, knees tucked up, hair sticking out in every direction. She had an elastic band around her wrist like a bracelet. When she saw me, her smile lit up the whole room.

“Mommy,” she whispered, because everyone whispered here, and held up a brush, pointing to a picture in her book. “Can we do the braids like this? The long ones?”

“Come here, sweetie.” I sat on the rug, and she climbed into my lap smelling like soap and apple shampoo, the kind the housekeeper used because it made her hair shine, something Gabrial liked. I brushed through her tangles slowly, careful not to pull. The sound of it—teeth through silk—settled something small inside me.