Page 28 of Thunder's Reckoning
“That doesn’t explain how she and the children slipped past the guards outside their door!” I roared, fists curling with the hunger to break bone.
Color drained from several faces. Eli swallowed again before forcing words out. “They weren’t there.”
“Oh?” My voice dropped low, deadly.
“I was told they were… visiting with some of the women kept below,” he whispered. His shame was plain. He knew I didn’t tolerate lust within my walls. The women kept below were merchandise—currency. Off limits.
“I want them dragged to the steel room,” I said, each word deliberate. “Their screams will remind the others what happens when temptation outweighs duty.”
“Consider it done,” Eli replied quickly, relief in his eyes that it wasn’t his blood I wanted first.
“Where is Tallis?”
“Locked downstairs.”
“Bring him. And give me the names of every servant, every guard, every shadow that touched her path these last weeks.” My voice deepened, growling like a storm. “If one of them so much as looked at her without permission, string them up in the garden. No hands. No tongues. No legacy.”
I bent, retrieved the ribbon again. Dust clung to the satin now, staining what had been pure.
“She is not like the others,” I whispered. “The children, they belong to the Circle. They’re tools. Tokens. Alliances waiting to be forged.”
“But Sable…” I pressed the ribbon to my lips, inhaling what was left of her. “She is flame made flesh. My bride. My design. My vessel. And fire—” I smiled then, slow, cold, inevitable, “—fire always returns to flame.”
Tucking the ribbon away, I lifted my gaze to Eli’s.
“She will come back,” I said. “And when she does… she will kneel.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE ROOM WASdark, lit only by strips of moonlightleaking through the wooden shutters. Dust hung in the air like memory, dry, stale, and heavy. The cot beneath me creaked with every breath I dared to take, the thin sheet sticking to my damp skin. Everything smelled of old linens and that special soap they made here.
I’d long since learned not to fear the dark.
It was the sound of footsteps that made my blood run cold.
Soft at first. Careful. Like they didn’t belong to a person, but something slower. Something darker. Like the shadow itself had grown weight.
I sat up, breath hitching in my throat, heart punching against my ribs like it was trying to tear its way out.
The doorknob turned, slow and deliberate.
I didn’t have to see him.
I already knew.
My whisper barely scraped past my lips. “Prophet Gabrial…”
He stepped inside as if the door had opened for him alone. Like the rules never applied to him. Like the space was his, and I was his with it.
A man of God, they told us.
A mouthpiece from the outside world.
The chosen one.
His white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled to his elbows, his eyes warm.
Too warm.
