Chapter Four - The Sixteen

(Adelaide)

By the time the last sliver of sunlight vanished behind the crooked line of pines, the entire village felt wrong. The colours of the world had drained away with it; roofs and fields and faces all flattened into shades of ash and charcoal, as if someone had smeared night over the edges of everything.

The air—usually cold this time of year—had turned thin, metallic, almost sharp. Every breath scraped down Adelaide’s throat like cold iron. She could taste it on her tongue, that faint tang of blood and rain and something older, like the inside of a long-sealed tomb. The sky overhead held no stars, only a heavy, rolling darkness that seemed to press down on Fire’s Peak, suffocating in its weight. The torches lining the paths flickered restlessly, strained by a wind that didn’t move the trees. Their flames leaned and bowed to an invisible rhythm, shuddering as though something walked past them that no one could see.

When the chapel bell began to toll, slow and resonant, Adelaide felt the sound thrum in her bones. Each strike rolled through her like the swing of a hammer, knocking loose fragments of courage she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Lyra flinched. Their mother closed her eyes and whispered something that didn’t sound like any prayer Adelaide had ever heard before. The words slid together like a language worn smooth with desperate repetition, a private litany passed from one terrified generation to the next.

Then the escorts arrived. Six village guards, dressed in ceremonial grey cloaks and carrying lanterns that cast trembling circles of light across the dirt floor. Their expressions were carved from stone—emotionless, practised. Their duty required it. Only their eyes betrayed them: quick, darting glances toward the forest, the way their throats bobbed when they swallowed, as if they too could feel the weight pressing in from the tree line.

“Sixteen Chosen,” the lead guard announced. “Come forward.”

Lyra’s fingers dug desperately into Adelaide’s sleeve. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, voice breaking. The words scraped raw out of her, small and helpless, the way they had when she was little and afraid of thunder. Only now the storm was wearing a face.

Adelaide swallowed hard. Her mouth tasted like iron and regret. She pulled Lyra into a fierce hug, burying her nose in her sister’s hair—sun, hearth-smoke, and the soft lavender oil their mother put on her pillow. For a heartbeat, the scent almost dragged her backward in time—Lyra’s childish giggles, muddy feet, stolen apples—and then the present crashed back over her like cold water.

“Listen to me,” Adelaide murmured. “You are safe. I am not afraid of him. Not tonight. Not ever.”

It was a lie. Bold. Thin. Cracking at the edges. But Lyra nodded anyway, as if she needed to believe Adelaide was unbreakable. Adelaide could feel Lyra’s heartbeat fluttering against her chest, fast as a trapped bird, and she locked her arms tighter around her, pretending she could shield her from things made of shadow and bargains.

Mother’s hands trembled as she cupped Adelaide’s face. “My brave girl,” she whispered. “My foolish, stubborn, beautiful girl. Come home to us. Do you hear me? Come back.”

Adelaide nodded once, sharply. “I’ll be okay,” she lied, forcing a smirk she didn’t feel. “It’s just running. I’m good at running.”

Another lie. A hopeful one. Running from chores. Running along the riverbank. Running down lanes with Lyra chasing after her. Not running from a legend with teeth. Still, the words felt like a thin shield she could wedge between her and that suffocating fear.

Before she could say anything else, the guards took her by the arms—not cruelly, but firmly. The last thing she saw as she was led away was her sister collapsing into their mother’s chest, sobbing silently into her shawl. Her mother’s shoulders folded over Lyra like a cloak, as if she could make herself into a wall. Adelaide clung to that image—two figures locked together in the torchlight—as the distance stretched between them with every step.

The bell tolled again, announcing the beginning of the ritual. It sounded like a goodbye. The echoes chased her down the lane, thinning into a hollow silence that felt worse than the sound itself.

They brought the girls to the old bathhouse—an ancient stone building that smelled of lavender, steam, and the faint underlying tang of fear. Adelaide had never been inside before. Only the Chosen walked through these doors. Moss clung to the stones outside like old fingers, and the carved lintel over the entrance bore patterns worn so faint she could barely make them out—circles and lines that might have been wards once, or warnings long since ignored.

The bathhouse women were waiting—silent, stern, dressed in grey. They bowed their heads as the girls entered. The gesture felt less like honour and more like mourning.

“Strip,” one said softly.

The room buzzed with nerves. Fabric rustled. Tears whispered. Several girls trembled so hard they couldn’t undo their own laces. Adelaide shed her clothes without looking at the others, jaw tight. The cold air raised goosebumps along her arms. She hugged her elbows, not out of modesty, but irritation—at the ritual, at the Elders, at the Devil himself. At this entire cursed decade-ending tradition. Her bare feet stuck slightly to the damp stone, the chill leaching up through her bones, as if the building itself was trying to claim her.

Steam billowed as they were guided into the baths—deep stone tubs filled with water warmed over fires. The heat sank into Adelaide’s skin, loosening her muscles in ways that made her furious. Her body sighed with relief even as her mind recoiled, and the contradiction set her teeth on edge. They would soften her, smooth her edges, make her easier to swallow.

They weren’t doing this for comfort. They were preparing them.

Soft hands scrubbed her arms, her back, her legs, with cloths soaked in fragrant oils. The scent of crushed rose petals and yarrow filled the air—too sweet, too soft, cloying. It coated the back of her throat like honey turned sour, a sweetness that made her want to choke rather than breathe deeper.

“To mask fear,” the bath attendant murmured when Adelaide recoiled. “He prefers the scent of flowers.”

Her stomach twisted. “Does it matter what he prefers?”

The woman looked up. Her eyes were grim. “Everything matters.” There was something haunted in her gaze, as if she’d watched too many Chosen walk in and not enough walk back out.

Adelaide clenched her jaw so hard it ached.

Another woman poured warm water over her head, fingers digging gently through her hair, untangling knots, combing it until it fell like ink down her back. It felt wrong—being tended to like she was something precious.

She wasn’t. She was prey being polished. A lamb brushed until its coat shone before the knife. A candle trimmed so it would burn just right.

When they stepped out of the bath, dripping and flushed, the attendants rubbed their skin with handfuls of fresh blossoms—wild jasmine, fever lilies, and crushed violet petals. The fragrance clung to her like a second skin. She smelled like a meadow after rain. She hated it. Underneath it, she could still smell herself—salt and skin and the faint copper tang of the cut on her palm. She clung to that, to anything that was still hers.

The girls were led into the next room, the dressing chamber. Torches flickered against the stone walls, casting wavering shadows. A long row of sixteen white dresses hung on a wooden beam—simple shifts, thin cotton, sleeveless, falling to the knee. No lining. No protections. No warmth. Nothing underneath.

Barefoot. Bare-legged. Completely exposed. The sight of the dresses in a perfect line made her stomach drop; it looked like a row of shrouds pretending to be clothing.

The chill of the stone floor bit into Adelaide’s feet as an attendant held the slip out in front of her. “For purity,” the attendant said as she slipped the fabric over Adelaide’s head. The fabric whispered down her body, clinging in places where she was still damp. It was soft—too soft—and cool against her warm skin. She shivered involuntarily. The thin cotton left nothing to the imagination; the curve of her waist, the line of her thighs, the points of her breasts—all of it outlined in ghostly white. It felt less like being dressed and more like being stripped again.

“You are beautiful,” the attendant murmured.

Adelaide stiffened. “I’m not trying to be.”

The woman only smiled sadly, then reached for a crown of small white flowers.

Adelaide stepped back. “No. No flowers.”

“You must—”

“I will not carry flowers for him,” Adelaide snapped. “Try again, and I’ll throw them in the fire.”

The attendant hesitated—then nodded and removed the crown. For a heartbeat, Adelaide saw relief flicker across the woman’s face, so swift and small she almost doubted it had been there at all.

Good. Adelaide wasn’t giving the Devil a single petal. He doesn’t get to take pretty things that don’t fight back. And she would fight.

When Adelaide caught her reflection in the small brass mirror, she barely recognised herself. Damp dark hair flowed loose down her spine, face scrubbed clean, cheeks flushed from the bath, lips parted with her uneven breath.

She looked like a sacrificial lamb dressed for slaughter. Her chest tightened with anger so sharp it was almost a blade. This is madness. We stand here, smelling like flowers, while they prepare us to be hunted like animals. Her own eyes in the reflection were the only thing that still felt like her—rigid, bright, unbending. She clung to that too.

A few girls sobbed quietly as attendants braided their hair with sprigs of wildflowers.

Her hair, still damp, fell loose down her spine. Her skin gleamed with scented oil. The white dress made her look fragile in a way she despised. If the Devil wanted something delicate, he had chosen wrong. Under the soft skin and clinging fabric, everything in her was wire and flint.

The attendants finished their work in silence. The girls were lined up, sixteen white shapes glowing faintly in the torchlight, like ghosts. Their shadows stretched long behind them, thin black versions of themselves already reaching toward the door, eager to flee where their bodies could not.

A hush fell as the doors opened. “It is time,” the guard announced.

Time. The word settled like ice in her chest. It was as if the entire evening had been sliding toward this single syllable, and now it locked into place with a cold click she felt in her teeth.