Chapter Two - Selection Day

(Adelaide)

Adelaide froze. The room seemed to tilt. The word called echoed in her mind, dragging up flashes she’d never quite managed to explain—dreams of bells that rang without sound, of her own name whispered through trees that had no mouths.

“You never…” Lyra’s voice shook. “You never told us—”

“I came back,” their mother said. “That is all that matters.”

“No,” Adelaide said, her heart pounding. “It isn’t all that matters.”

Her mother’s hand tightened on the iron charm until the edge dug into her skin. “What matters is that you do not go.” Her gaze pinned Lyra first, then Adelaide. “Either of you.”

Lyra’s shoulders curled inward. “We don’t choose, Mama.”

“Sometimes we do,” their mother said. “With the way we walk. The way we speak. With the way we stare down men who think they own the world.”

Her eyes flicked back to Adelaide. The message was clear.

Adelaide’s jaw clenched. “So this is my fault already? For having eyes?”

“For having pride,” her mother said quietly. “The Devil likes pride.”

“Then maybe he should come for the Elders,” Adelaide muttered.

“Adelaide,” Lyra whispered, horrified.

A distant bell tolled, low and heavy, reverberating through the stone and wood of the village. One, two, three slow strikes. Afternoon prayer, calling the faithful to the chapel. On any other day, the sound might have been comforting. Today it felt like a countdown. Each peal vibrated in her bones, as if someone were knocking on the inside of her ribs.

Her mother exhaled shakily. “Enough. We’ve wasted the morning arguing.”

Adelaide snorted. “That’s not a waste.”

“For once, listen.” Her mother stepped back, smoothing her own skirts, as if pressing the frazzle out of herself. “Go to the well for water, Lyra. Adelaide, you’ll help me with the bread. We still have to eat today, Devil or no Devil.”

Lyra nodded quickly, glad for an excuse to escape, and darted to fetch the wooden bucket by the door. She grabbed her shawl, pausing only long enough to touch Adelaide’s arm in passing, fingers warm and light.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“What are you apologising for?” Adelaide asked.

Lyra’s gaze flicked to the faint red mark blooming on Adelaide’s cheek. “For…all of it.”

Adelaide forced a crooked smile. “Go. Before the queue at the well reaches the chapel steps.”

That won a ghost of a smile from Lyra. She slipped out the door, cold air rushing in around her, carrying the smells of damp earth and chimney smoke. The gust kissed Adelaide’s heated cheek, making the sting flare anew, a reminder she was still here, still solid, still standing on this side of whatever waited in the woods.

Her mother turned to the table, dragging a bowl of flour closer. She moved with the stiff, efficient motions of a woman who’d taught her body to work even when her mind was far away. Adelaide watched her for a moment, then stepped to the hearth, feeding another log into the glowing embers. Sparks leapt up, bright and brief, before fading into the sooty chimney. One, two, three, gone—like the girls whose names were only whispered now, never spoken above a murmur.

“You never told us you were chosen,” she said, without looking back. “You never told us what happened.”

“I told you all you needed to know,” her mother replied.

“Which is nothing.”

“Which is that I came back,” her mother said. The dough between her hands squeaked as she kneaded it with more force than necessary. “Enough.”

Adelaide wanted to push. To pry the story out of her, to know exactly what waited beyond the veil—what kind of thing stalked girls through the trees and branded itself into their nightmares for decades.

But when she turned and saw the tightness around her mother’s eyes, the way her mouth trembled as she stared down at the dough as if it had personally offended her, the words died on Adelaide’s tongue. There was something haunted in that look, something that made Adelaide think of the chapel glass at night—how the painted saints’ eyes seemed to follow you no matter where you moved.

The front door banged open.

Lyra stumbled in, breathless, cheeks flushed from the cold. The bucket in her hands sloshed dangerously, water licking over the rim. Her eyes were wide.

Mother straightened. “Lyra? What—?”

“The well,” Lyra gasped. “Someone…someone carved it.”

Adelaide’s pulse skipped. “Carved what?”

Lyra set the bucket down hard enough that water splashed onto the packed earth floor, forgotten. She pressed a shaking hand to her chest. “The sign. The old one. Like on the chapel glass. The one with the…with the horns.”

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Her mother’s face drained of colour. “You’re sure?”

“It’s fresh,” Lyra said. “The chips of stone are still on the ground. Everyone’s talking about it. They say it’s a mark. They say it means he’s already looking.”

Adelaide imagined the worn stones of the well—places she had sat as a child, heels knocking against the rock—now slit open by sharp, deliberate cuts. The image made her stomach twist. The well was life to Fire’s Peak. Marking it felt like a hand around the village’s throat.

The bell tolled again in the distance, as if to agree. The Devil’s sigil, at the village’s only well. Marking the water. Marking them. Adelaide’s skin crawled, but she pushed the feeling down, wrapping it in anger instead.

“Then let him look,” she said, her voice sharper than she intended. “Let him look at someone else.”

Her mother’s gaze cut to her, fierce, terrified. “You do not tempt him.”

“I’m not tempting anyone,” Adelaide shot back. Her heart hammered against her ribs, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. “I’m just tired of acting like we’re already dead.”

Lyra flinched at the word. Mother’s shoulders sagged for just a moment, the fight draining out of her like water from a cracked jug.

“You are not dead,” she said finally, voice quiet. “You are my daughters. You are here. You are warm. That is what I will hold, until they ring that cursed bell tomorrow.”

She lifted her chin. “Now. We bake. We eat. We breathe. We live this day, do you understand? We will not let him steal that, too.”

Her defiance, small as it was, lit something in Adelaide’s chest. A spark. A thin, stubborn flame that refused to be snuffed out by bells or bargains or carved stone.

“All right,” Adelaide said.

She moved to the table, dusted her hands with flour, and plunged them into the cool, sticky dough beside her mother’s. The familiar motion soothed the restless coil of energy in her limbs, just a little. The dough yielded beneath her palms, soft and elastic, clinging to her skin; she pressed harder, imagining fear and helplessness folding under her hands the same way.

Outside, the village hummed with whispers and the distant clatter of preparations for tomorrow’s ceremony. The sky sank a shade darker, clouds thickening. Somewhere beyond the grey, the sun crawled toward its winter bed, dragging them all closer to the edge of the decade.

The Devil, wherever he was, had already marked his path.

Adelaide pressed her palms into the dough and imagined, with fierce stubbornness, every step her sister would not take into that forest. If someone had to be dragged into a nightmare, it would not be Lyra. She would see to that. Even if the Devil himself stood in her way.

Morning broke pale and reluctant, as if even the sun hesitated to rise on Selection Day. Thin light bled over the rooftops, turning the frost on the thatch to a dull, colourless sheen. The world looked washed-out, like an old painting left too long in smoke.

Adelaide barely slept. Her dreams had been snarled shadows and running feet—trees swallowing her whole, hands reaching from the dark, Lyra’s voice calling her name from somewhere she could never reach. Sometimes the voice had not been Lyra’s at all, but something deeper, older, wrapping around her name like a promise or a threat. When she finally opened her eyes, grey dawn leaked through the gaps in the shutters, cold as breath on glass.

Her mother was already awake. She always was.

The smell of porridge simmering over the fire tugged Adelaide from her straw mattress. The house felt smaller today, like the walls had inched closer during the night. Quiet, too quiet—aside from the faint clatter of spoons and hushed footsteps from the neighbouring homes, as if the entire village was sleepwalking. Every sound seemed muffled, as though thick cloth had been wrapped around the world.

Lyra sat at the table, shoulders hunched, red thread already tied around her wrist.

Adelaide’s stomach lurched. She hated the sight of it—that thin strip of braided wool, bright as fresh blood against pale skin. A mark of eligibility. A mark of prey. It seemed to glow in the dim light, an accusation more than a ribbon.