But that’s not true. I know it’s not true.
The difference between what the Abbot offered and what Zrynok offers is simple: Zrynok has never demanded my surrender. Never required my obedience. Never tried to reshape me into something more convenient for his purposes.
He loves me as I am. Damaged and suspicious and struggling to trust.
That’s not chains. That’s freedom wearing a different face.
“I chose him.” I raise my blade. “The same way I’m choosing this.”
We clash.
Blade against blade, skill against desperation. Maret fights with the abandon of someone who no longer fears death—each strike committed fully, no energy held back, no thought given to defense or survival. She’s faster than I expected. Stronger. The years of conditioning have given her a body that responds without hesitation, without doubt.
But I have something she doesn’t.
I have a reason to survive.
“Healing is a lie,” she hisses through gritted teeth as our blades lock, her face inches from mine, eyes burning with fervor that I once mistook for friendship. “There’s no healing from what we are. Damaged. Broken. Wrong. The Abbot understood that. He accepted our wrongness and gave it purpose.”
“He used our wrongness.” I shove her back. Press my advantage with a flurry of strikes that drives her toward the altar. “Cultivated it. Made it worse so he could control it.”
“Control is freedom! Choice is chaos! You’ll understand eventually—when the wanting becomes too much, when your executioner can’t satisfy what the Bloom has planted in your blood.”
“Then I’ll deal with it then.” My blade catches her arm. Draws blood. “But I’ll deal with it as myself. Not as whatever hollow thing you’ve become.”
She staggers. Recovers. Comes at me with renewed fury.
Her blade is a blur of steel that I barely manage to block. The altar is at my back now—nowhere to retreat, nowhere to run. The fight is ending, one way or another.
Maret draws back for the killing blow.
Then stops.
Her eyes go wide. Her blade clatters to the floor. She looks down at her chest, at the ceremonial knife protruding from between her shoulder blades—driven deep by someone standing behind her.
Someone I know.
Circe stands in the altar’s shadow, her hands still raised from the killing stroke.
She’s trembling. Tears stream down her face. The knife she’s used—stolen from somewhere in the chapel, grabbed during the chaos—is buried to the hilt in Maret’s back.
“You.” Maret’s voice comes out as a whisper. A wet, broken sound that shouldn’t carry but somehow does. “You were supposed to be beautiful. If you’d stayed. If you’d let us help you?—”
“You were going to kill her.” Circe’s voice shakes. “You were going to kill the person who saved me.”
Maret turns. Slowly. Each movement costing her strength she doesn’t have left. She faces Circe with the knife still in her back, blood spreading across her robes in a widening stain.
“I was going to free her.” The words come out gentle. Almost kind. “Just like I wanted to free you. The Bloom offers such peace, child. Such beautiful surrender. You would have been perfect.”
Circe doesn’t respond. Just stands there, shaking, watching the woman she’s just killed with an expression that holds equal parts horror and determination.
Maret smiles. The expression transforms her face—makes her look, for a moment, like the girl I remember from before the cult took hold. The girl who smuggled extra food to frightened initiates. The girl who held my hand during the worst nights. The girl who eventually chose to stop fighting and became something else entirely.
“Forgive them,” she whispers. Her voice is fading. Her legs are giving out. “They don’t understand what they’re destroying.”
Then she crumples. Falls at the altar’s base. Lies still.
I catch Circe before she can collapse.
