8. Sebastian

8

Sebastian

“Mister?”

I looked up to see the teenage son of the tavern proprietors standing at my door. “Yeah?”

“Governor Trudeau is here to see you.”

I rose to my feet. “Thanks, my guy.”

He dipped his chin in a brief nod, turned, and scurried back downstairs. I leaned down to lace my shoes up, grabbed a jacket, slipped a knife inside the left pocket, and trudged down to the first floor, eyeing the talismans hanging on the banister as I went.

Despite the creepy symbols everywhere, the tavern was a nice little place overall, run by a couple and their two kids who lived in a house attached at the back. They’d all masked their surprise quite well when Augustus informed them of my stay, and since then, they’d been friendly yet reserved.

I hadn’t missed the pointed glances the couple exchanged when Augustus mentioned my mother’s name, though. They knew something. Everyone in this fucking village knew something.

When I reached the landing, I saw Augustus and Rosamund standing at the tavern’s threshold, deep in conversation. Augustus’s brows were drawn into a frown, and Rosamund’s eyes were wide.

“Don’t worry, Papa. I understand,” I overheard her say, lowering her chin in a deferential gesture. “I won’t tell him anything about that.”

I shifted where I stood, trying to stop the rush of blood to my cock as I stared at her. Christ, she was truly stunning. Not a stitch of makeup and still prettier than the models I saw in Manhattan clubs every weekend.

Beautiful, vulnerable, and untouched—the holy trinity of temptation.

Augustus spotted me, and his demeanor instantly switched from tightly wound to friendly. “Ah, Sebastian. Sorry to keep you waiting. Are you ready for dinner?”

“Yes.” My eyes lingered on Rosamund. “I can’t wait.”

“I’ll actually have to go ahead of you, because I need to speak with the other elders,” Augustus said. He looked at his daughter again. “You can show Sebastian around by yourself, can’t you, dear?”

“Of course,” she said, cheeks flushing slightly. “It would be my honor.”

Augustus bade us goodbye and strode out of the tavern. Rosamund shifted nervously and addressed me, not meeting my eyes. “I hope you’re hungry, Mr. Thorne. There’s a lot of food at the feast.”

Oh, I’m hungry, sweetheart. Just not in the way you imagine.

I smiled and patted my stomach. “Starved. And I told you earlier—call me Sebastian.”

Her lips curved in the faintest of smiles. “All right. You can call me Rose, if you like. Everyone does except Papa.”

“Rose it is.”

She stepped out of the tavern and led me to the enormous town square, where a multitude of long tables had been arranged in neat rows, each one laden with an abundance of food and drink. The cool night air was filled with the lively melodies of musicians, and small lanterns strung along ropes lit up the darkness.

Rose walked beside me, her steps tentative, her silence palpable. Her eyes flickered everywhere except toward me, as if she were afraid something terrible would happen if she laid her gaze upon me for even a second.

“We can sit over there,” she finally murmured, pointing to a half-empty table on the edge of the square. “Those seats will fill up in no time once everyone realizes you’re here.”

“They’re excited to have an outsider in their midst, huh?”

“I would presume so,” she said. “It’s a very rare occurrence. Our last outside guest was the census taker, and that was four years ago.”

“Well, it’s nice to feel popular, but I don’t mind if you’re the only one I speak with tonight,” I said, leaning closer to her. “I’m still pretty tired from the hike up here, so I might not be a great conversationalist.”

She smiled faintly at that, but I noticed she still had trouble meeting my eyes.

Part of me loved that she was so afraid of me, but I knew I had to do my best to stave off that fear. For now, anyway. In order to take her out of this place, I needed her to believe she was my willing companion. That meant I needed to trick her into thinking I was safe and trustworthy.

After we sat down, I served myself some bread and stew upon her instruction, and she poured us two cups of sweet wine to accompany the meal. We ate and drank in silence. I didn’t want to push her too much, lest I scare her away for good, and she seemed happy to stay quiet for now.

That was okay with me. I didn’t expect to get her on my side right away. It could take days, even weeks, to make her trust me. For now, just a little smile here and there would be enough.

She wound up being wrong about the other villagers at the feast—they stared at me a lot, but they didn’t approach, and the seats surrounding us remained empty. Clearly, my presence made them nervous.

That didn’t surprise me one bit. After all, I wasn’t just a government census taker or a wayward hiker. I was the son of the woman whose brutal murder they’d conspired to cover up. That was enough to make anyone anxious.

I flashed Rose an amiable smile as I tipped my bowl to the side to show her that I’d eaten every last bit of stew. “That was delicious,” I said. “What sort of herbs are in it?”

“Thyme, parsley, and rosemary, I believe,” she said softly. “But I didn’t contribute to this one, so I cannot be certain.”

“Would it be greedy of me to ask for some more?”

“Not at all. It’s a compliment to the cooks,” she said, waving a hand to the huge communal pot in the middle of the table. “Feel free to help yourself to as much as you want.”

“Thanks. Some more wine might be nice too,” I said, giving her a mischievous grin.

This earned me another faint smile. “I agree. I’ll fetch it.”

As the evening progressed and the wine continued to flow, I observed a subtle change in Rose’s demeanor. She was starting to smile a little more, and I even managed to get a brief laugh out of her at one point when I told her a funny story about my early childhood. She still wouldn’t meet my eyes, though, and the conversation was quite stilted. It felt like there was an invisible barrier between us that kept her from fully opening up to me. The right words would break it down. I just had to find them.

“Your father tells me you’re an artist,” I said after my second bowl of stew was finished. “He showed me one of your paintings. It was excellent.”

Those seemed to be the magic words. Rose’s eyes snapped right to mine. “You think so?”

“Yes. You’re very talented.”

Pride flickered in her gaze. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I’ve always loved painting.”

“That love shows through in your work. Truly.”

Her cheeks flushed under the lantern light, and she gnawed at her bottom lip, brows dipping in a slight frown. “Could I… no, never mind,” she muttered, eyes dropping to her lap.

I leaned closer. “Tell me,” I said in the gentlest tone I could possibly muster up. “What were you going to ask?”

“I…” She faltered again. For a second, I thought I’d lost her, but then she drew in a deep breath, lifted her chin, and looked right at me. “I’d like to show you something, if that’s all right. Some more of my art.”

“I’d love to see it.”

“Really?”

“Yes, of course.”

“All right.” She rose to her feet and dipped her chin to the right. “Follow me.”

“Is it okay for us to leave right now?” I asked, brows lifting. I scanned the square as I spoke. I couldn’t see Augustus anywhere, but I knew he probably wouldn’t be too pleased about me slipping away from the feast with his daughter in tow.

Rose nodded. “It’s fine. People come and go all evening,” she said. “In fact, attendance at the feasts isn’t mandatory. It’s only the rituals that we must attend, and they don’t begin until the ninth hour of the evening.”

“All right. Lead the way.”

As we stepped away from the table, a tall young woman with a foxlike face stood and darted over to us. “Rose,” she said, offering her a tight smile. “Where are you going with the outsider?”

“Our guest needs to relieve himself, because he’s had a lot to drink,” Rose replied. “I’m taking him back to the tavern for a while.”

A thrill rushed through me. My little Rose wasn’t so perfectly pure and innocent after all, as evidenced by the lie she’d just told to cover the real reason we were leaving the feast together. I could only assume it was because she knew that being alone with me was wrong, but she wanted to do it anyway. Some tiny, secret part of her was tempted by the thought of rebellion. Aching for the excitement of danger.

That’s my girl.

What a tantalizing tease. I could train her, corrupt her, and defile her, and she’d probably let me do it without much of a fight, because the pious need to obey mixed with the conflicting desire to rebel against her background seemed to make up the very essence of her being.

The heady craving for her stirred in me all over again, sending a rush of blood straight to my cock. Christ, I was already sick of waiting to have her. I wanted to have her right fucking now. Wanted to press my hands into her soft skin, gripping her so hard it left marks. Wanted to bite those plush pink lips as I kissed her, make her scream into my mouth. Wanted to fuck her virginal pussy so hard she wouldn’t be able to walk for a week.

But I had to be patient. Had to play the good guy until she came willingly. Otherwise, I risked losing everything.

The fox-faced woman looked at me, eyes flickering with interest. ““I’m the same when I drink, rushing off constantly,” she said. “But for now, I’m avoiding wine, just in case the fertility ritual worked.”

“I hope it did, Ana?s. You’ll be a wonderful mother,” Rose said softly, polite smile faltering ever so slightly.

The woman smiled back at her again, but I detected a hint of smug superiority in it this time. “Thank you,” she said in a saccharine tone. “You’re so kind.”

It was amazing what you could figure out from a simple facial expression or tone. Clearly, this Ana?s woman knew it must bother Rose to know that she could never marry or have children like she could, and she enjoyed lording it over her to compensate for her obvious jealousy over Rose’s higher status in the community.

She turned her attention back to me and offered her right hand. “I’m Ana?s, by the way. I heard you’ll be staying with us for a while.”

“Sebastian,” I said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. How long will you be with us?”

“I’m not sure yet. I suppose we’ll see.”

“Hm. All right.” She tilted her head. “Well, I just wanted to introduce myself and say that it’s nice to have a guest. But I suppose I should let you go now. I don’t want to cause your bladder to explode.”

She sashayed away without waiting for a response. I resumed the walk with Rose, rubbing my jaw. “That was interesting.”

“Ana?s is very friendly,” Rose murmured.

“You think so?” My forehead crinkled. “She seemed a little full of herself to me.”

“Full of herself? What does that mean?”

“Smug. Self-important. Kind of bitchy, to be frank.”

Rose’s eyes widened, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to smother the peal of laughter that was suddenly spilling out.

“You agree, right?” I asked, cocking a brow.

“Of course not!” she said in an indignant tone, dropping her hand.

“C’mon. You laughed for a reason.” I paused and flashed her a wicked grin. “You can admit it. I’m not going to get you in trouble. And who would ever believe an outsider over you, anyway?”

“I… all right, fine. I suppose I do agree with you,” she admitted in a hushed tone. “I’ve just never heard anyone say it out loud like that.”

“I bet they’re all thinking it, though. Ana?s is obviously a piece of work.” I leaned my head closer to hers. “She’s clearly jealous of you too. It was practically oozing out of her.”

Rose’s cheeks flushed again, and she turned back to face the street. “We should go this way,” she said, gesturing toward a narrow alley. “It’s much quicker.”

It didn’t matter to me that she’d changed the subject without a proper response. We were already building a rapport. Sharing little secrets and laughing together. I didn’t need to take it too far, because then I’d seem pushy and false, and she might start to suspect something about my motives.

Five minutes later, we arrived at the house she shared with her father. She opened the door and guided me down a narrow staircase to a room tucked away beneath the ground floor. The space was cluttered yet organized, with brushes, palettes, and half-finished canvases strewn about.

“As you can see, this is my studio,” Rose said, eyes glimmering with happiness as she glanced around the space. “Papa was nice enough to let me have the whole room to myself. Most people just use it for storage in their own houses.”

“This looks great,” I said, staring down at an almost-finished landscape.

I wasn’t just buttering her up when I said she was talented. It was the truth, evident in every single picture in this room. Her depictions of the surrounding forests and mountains were hauntingly vivid, and her portraits were almost photographic in their detail.

“Thank you.” She stooped to open a drawer beneath a sturdy wooden table, revealing a collection of paintings that seemed to be her imaginings of the outside world—bustling cities, towering skyscrapers, and expansive skylines.

As she thumbed through them, I felt as if I were catching glimpses inside her mind, of her longing for a world beyond the Covenant’s confines. Finally, she pulled out a stack of canvases that had been carefully covered, as if they hid secrets too precious to share.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” she said, unrolling them on the table.

Each painting was a portrait of me, my visage split by a grotesque semblance of a skull covering one side of my face.

“Holy shit,” I muttered, brows rising as I took it all in. She’d managed to capture my likeness perfectly on the side that showed my real face.

“I had a vision of you a long time ago,” she said, staring at me. Shadows flickered on her face from the singular lantern that lit up the room. “I’ve been painting you ever since.”

“With this half-skull thing?” I asked, brows furrowing as if I didn’t already know why she’d depicted me in such a manner.

“That’s how you appeared to me in the first vision, and I’ve been seeing you like that ever since,” she said. “Sometimes I even imagined your name was Sebastian, despite the fact that we’d never met before. Can you believe that?”

Yes.

She must have heard my mother screaming for me and my father on the night Augustus and Jean-Pierre abducted her. Long after that, her subconscious had correctly connected the young boy she saw in the window that night with the man she saw in the woods years later, aided by her fantastic creative talents which enabled her brain to associate certain details of my younger face with my current features.

I didn’t tell her any of that, of course. It suited my plan far more effectively to let her believe that the universe had shown her clues about my existence long before we ever met. As if it was fate that we’d come together one day.

“How strange,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “Perhaps it’s a sign that we were supposed to meet.”

Rose kept staring at me, chin raised high. “I used to think the Entity was warning me about you. Telling me that you were a malevolent spirit,” she said. “Or perhaps he was simply letting me know that you were coming. So tell me, Sebastian. What are you?”

“Are you asking if I’m a dark spirit?”

“Yes.” Her eyes were still fixed on me. All the wine she drank earlier had obviously emboldened her. “So… are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then how do you explain this?” she said, gesturing toward the paintings. “Why did you appear to me looking as if death itself had touched you?”

“I think I can explain. But it’s a long story, so it might take a while.” I looked pointedly at the singular stool by the table. “Is there somewhere we can both sit?”

She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a few seconds. Then she nodded. “We can go down to the river. It’s nice there at night.”

“You trust me enough to be alone with me down there, even though you aren’t sure if I’m an evil spirit or not?” I cocked my head. “Wouldn’t you feel safer heading back to the feast, with everyone else around to save you if need be?”

“I can actually trust you more down by the river,” she said. “Dark spirits cannot linger by flowing water, so it will be rather revealing to see you there.”

Well, fuck, all right then.

She led me out of the house and down an alley that ran behind it. From there, it was a short walk down to the river that flowed beyond the east side of Alderwood.

We settled on a smooth log seat by the water’s edge, the cool air of the wilderness wrapping around us in a cold embrace. The moon cast a silvery glow over the rippling water, illuminating the dense forest on the other side, and the stars above were bright and clear, their brilliance undimmed by city lights.

“It really is beautiful out here,” I said, looking over at Rose. She was the most gorgeous thing in sight.

“It’s like my father always says. Alderwood is our very own paradise,” she replied. She tilted her head and cast a curious glance at me. “You said you could explain your appearance in my vision.”

“Yes. During my undergrad, I was—”

“Undergrad?”

“Sorry. My first university degree, before I went to law school,” I said. I kept forgetting she wasn’t a member of the modern world and therefore wouldn’t understand every single word or term that the rest of us used for things. “During that time, I was a member of a secret society.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “That sounds intriguing.”

“It’s a brotherhood of sorts. An exclusive group of fellow students. You can only join by invitation,” I explained. “There’s more than one society, but each one has different traditions.”

“What’s the point of it?”

“It’s like having a second family. They watch out for you, and you watch out for them. So, for example, one member might be able to help you out with a job if you need it.”

Rose raised a brow. “That just sounds like a normal group of friends to me. So what’s the secret?”

I chuckled. “I’m getting to that. Like I said, each society has their own traditions and practices, and most of them are kept secret from non-members. The society I was in carried out certain practices that most people would think of as… intense. Overly so. It was basically a glorified fight club.”

“A fight club?” Her nose wrinkled. “Does that mean you physically fought other people? Or did you just watch others?”

“We’d fight each other, yeah.”

That wasn’t all we did, but she didn’t need to know every single detail.

In reality, we terrorized people in our city. We went on ‘hunts’ which involved us seeking out anyone who had dared to cross any member or challenge our authority, and we didn’t just beat the shit out of them like childish playground bullies. We’d play mind games and set traps to instill fear in our targets; a fear that would end in bloodshed once we finally decided to drop the hammer and come for them. By the time we were done, they knew not to mess with any of us ever again.

It was brutal and twisted, and it probably hardened our minds a little too much, but it forged an unbreakable bond between us.

Rose frowned. “But… why?”

“The point was to make us all resilient through the shared experience of violence crossed with camaraderie. Resilient and formidable,” I said. “And it worked. We were an unbreakable brotherhood. Even though it was years ago, I still trust all those guys with my life, and I always will.”

Rose’s nose wrinkled. “Hm. All right.”

“I know how strange it must sound to someone like you. But to us, it was normal,” I said. “Anyway, we had initiation rituals for new members. I guess that’s sort of like the proving rituals you have here.”

She nodded slowly. “Ah, I see.”

“During the initiation rituals, we would dress in black and paint ourselves to look like specters. We did that to unsettle the new recruits. Make them see what they were getting into.” I rubbed my jaw. “I know it doesn’t sound that scary at first. It’s just face paint and black clothes, after all. But trust me, when you’re only eighteen, and you’re already nervous because you have no idea what’s coming, and you get tied up with a bag over your head, shoved in a van, and dumped out in a dark cathedral filled with candles, creepy music, and a hundred guys with skulls for faces… you get scared. At least most of the guys do.”

Rose frowned. “You weren’t scared during your initiation ritual?”

I set my jaw and looked out at the water. “I’ve gone through worse. So no.”

“Oh, of course. Your mother’s—” Rose abruptly cut herself off, and she lowered her voice to a murmur. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

My stomach tightened. “It’s fine.”

“Please, continue with your story.”

“Well, that was pretty much it.” I turned back to her. “I don’t know anything about this Entity of yours. But if I had to guess, I’d say he showed me like that in your visions to warn you.”

“Warn me of what?”

“My history. So you’d know I was coming, but you’d also know that I’m no angel.”

In truth, I’d revealed myself to her at the Alderwood boundary fence one day four years ago, face painted up to look like a terrifying specter in the way I’d learned in the society. I’d mostly done it to scare her, and I didn’t realize just how much it would affect her. But clearly, she’d taken the encounter to heart and absorbed it into her personal lore, thinking of me constantly, dreaming of me, and even painting me.

That served me well, though. With her belief that the so-called Entity had sent me to her in a vision, she would be much easier to seduce.

She nodded slowly. “Perhaps that is the case. Sometimes it is difficult to divine the Entity’s intentions.”

“Or maybe I really am a dark spirit after all,” I said, flashing her a wicked grin.

Rose laughed. “I know you’re not a dark spirit, Sebastian Thorne.”

“Oh, yeah?” I raised a brow. “How?”

She jumped up to stand in front of me, one hand on her hip and the other motioning to the water behind her. “If you were, you would have weakened and faded away by now. The water would have carried away all those dark fragments until nothing remained.”

“Ah. I see.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You find my beliefs stupid, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”

“Not stupid,” I said, shaking my head. “Just… new. I’ve never met anyone like you, Rose.”

That was actually true. I’d never met a woman even remotely like her.

“Oh.” Her face softened, and she sat back on the log, seemingly mollified.

“Maybe you can teach me about your beliefs,” I went on. “That’s what you do, right? Teach?”

“Yes. But I teach children. You’re a man.”

“A good teacher can teach anyone. And I have a feeling you’re a very good teacher.”

She looked down at her lap. “Thank you, Sebastian,” she murmured. “You are far too kind.”

“Did you go to university to learn teaching?” I asked, cocking my head. “Or did you get a qualification some other way?”

Rose straightened her shoulders. “I learned right here. Women cannot attend outside universities.”

“Wait…” My brows furrowed. “I thought this was an equal community.”

The tip of her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “It’s more that everyone is considered fully human under the Entity’s eyes, and everyone receives equal provision in terms of food and other resources. But in some ways, we aren’t equal. Women have an elevated status.”

“You mean the men have an elevated status?”

She shook her head. “No. The women. We are more important than men in certain ways. Therefore, we are less… disposable, as awful as that sounds.”

“Go on.”

“We all have different roles in the community, obviously, but most women also have one of two other crucial roles. Life-bringers—those who carry and give birth to the next generation—and celestial virgins like me, who are essential for certain rituals that aid in keeping the Darkness at bay. Men cannot do either of these things.”

“That doesn’t explain why they’re allowed to leave Alderwood for a degree while women aren’t.”

“Yes, it does,” she insisted. “The outside world can be very hard and dangerous. It is too risky to allow someone as important as a woman to go out there. But we need to do business with outsiders on occasion, and we also need to have healers and other such professionals in our midst, and for that we must send someone out to the world. So we send the men.”

“To be honest, Rose, that doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“It doesn’t have to,” she said. “We come from very different worlds. Certain things won’t make sense to the other.”

“That’s true.” I tipped my head to look at her. “I didn’t mean any offence. I’m just trying to learn and understand your ways.”

“I know, and I’m not offended. Believe me, some of your outsider ways seem just as strange to me,” she said, lips curving in a small smile. “Like that secret society of yours.”

“Touché.” I grinned. “Now… seeing as I taught you something about my world, how about you teach me something about yours? Something you haven’t already told me.”

Rose’s forehead wrinkled. “What would you like to know?”

I stroked my jaw, pretending as if I hadn’t already planned out this exact conversation in my head earlier. “The cave. I’d like to know more about that.”

She stared blankly. “There are lots of caves in this area. Which one do you mean?”

“The cave Dubois and Brouxard found. Your father told me the story. It was over four hundred years ago, right?”

“Ah. The forbidden cave,” she replied, nodding slowly. “Yes, it was a very long time ago.”

“What happens there now? Do people ever go in?”

“The elders, healers, and alchemists frequently go there. They have the sacred knowledge to keep the Darkness inside, and they must tend to it often to keep the village safe. The rest of us cannot go there at all, and we don’t want to anyway.”

“Why?”

“We are too frightened. You see, if one of us went inside, the Darkness could easily latch on to us and escape.”

I shifted my body slightly closer to hers. “So you know where it is?”

“Yes. We all know. But I won’t tell you where it is, Sebastian. I cannot risk your safety like that.”

“I understand.” I cocked my head. “You said something about alchemists. What are they?”

“Alchemists work to prolong human life using certain materials. Only our brightest men can become one. They must attend an outsider university to study multiple subjects, and it takes many years.”

“Which subjects?”

“Chemistry, biology, and…” Rose trailed off, brows knitting. “I cannot remember the third word right now. It isn’t one we use here often. Something to do with farmers, I think.”

“Agriculture?”

“No, the word sounds like ‘farmer’.”

I frowned. What kind of farming would these freaks be doing in a cave? Fungus farming? Was that even a thing?

A lightbulb suddenly seemed to switch on in my brain. “Pharmacology? Is that it?”

Rose’s face brightened. “Yes, that’s it. You know it?”

“I certainly do,” I muttered, turning back to face the silvery river.

Why the fuck would an isolated mountain community need to have members with an extensive knowledge of pharmacology? Separate from the healers, too, who at least had an obvious reason to study the effects and use of different drugs.

Whatever the answer to that question was… it lay in that forbidden cave. One way or another, I had to find it and go inside. See what these freaks had killed my mother to protect.

“You seem troubled,” Rose said, casting a curious look at me. “Did I say something to upset you?”

“No.” I looked back at her, eyes skating over her lips. “I was just thinking.”

“About?”

My eyes were still on her lips. “I was wondering if you ever thought of leaving Alderwood.”

She swallowed hard and turned away. “I told you, women cannot leave, and I wouldn’t want to go anyway. My position here is far too important.”

“I saw your paintings, you know,” I said. “Of the outside. Or at least the way you imagine it based on what you hear from the men. You’re curious.”

“I…” She hesitated, briefly gnawing at her bottom lip. “I confess, I am curious about it on occasion. But I know what it’s like to live out there, and I know how lucky we are here. Paradise, as we discussed earlier. Why would anyone want to give that up?”

“To see what else is out there. To see if it’s really as dark and dangerous as they say,” I said softly. “To see if there’s anything better than paradise.”

I wasn’t sure if she was aware that I was still looking at her, or that I’d shuffled nearer to her on the log, knee almost brushing hers. It felt strangely intimate to be here like this, cloaked in shadows and moonlight, close enough that I could feel the heat from her body crossing the mere inches between us.

As if the same thing had just occurred to her, she turned her head to look at me, eyes lingering on my lips. I was struck by the idea that she might want me to kiss her, but then her eyes flicked upward, and she carefully moved her knee away from mine, inhaling sharply at the same time.

“As I said, I have been curious about it. But that is all,” she murmured.

“Has anyone else ever been curious and actually done something about it?” I asked. “Anyone who wasn’t able to leave for business or education, that is.”

A faint smile curved up her lips. “Yes. When I was still in school, two boys from my class wanted to see the outside world. They’d heard a lot about it from the men, you see, but neither of them had good enough test scores to warrant them getting an outside education. So they decided their only chance to see the outside world had to be created themselves.”

“How so?”

“They spent an entire summer digging out a tunnel under the fence. One day, they finally finished it, and they walked all the way down the mountain to Pinecrest Falls.”

“What happened to them?”

Rose let out a light, tinkling laugh. “Nothing! They couldn’t do anything. They had no money or identifying documents on them, because we don’t have anything like that here. But those things are necessary in your world, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

She shuddered. “It all sounds so terribly complicated,” she said. “Anyway, those boys quickly returned. Things out there didn’t look so tempting once they were actually amidst it. They realized how good they had it here, and they never wanted to leave again.”

“Did they get in trouble with the adults?”

Rose shook her head. “The adults thought they were just exploring out in the woods all day, like most children do when they have their summer break.”

“No one turned them in?”

Her smile faded. “No. We all knew about it—the classmates, I mean—but none of us breathed a word. We didn’t want the boys to be punished.”

Ah. Things were finally getting interesting again.

I laced my fingers together, eyes narrowing on her. “How does punishment work around here?”

“Well, firstly, if someone is accused of a crime, they must attend something we call a Confession.”

“Like a Catholic-style church confession?” I asked, recalling Dubois’s Catholic roots.

“I don’t know. What does that entail?”

“You go to church, get inside a wooden confession booth, and confess your sins to the priest on the other side of the booth. Once you’re done, he assigns a penance based on the severity of your sin. It could be a prayer, or an act of charity, maybe. Then the priest declares that you are forgiven and have reconciled with God.”

Rose slowly shook her head. “Our confessions are nothing like that. They aren’t voluntary, either.”

That sounded ominous.

“So how do they work?”

“There are two parts,” she said. “Firstly, the accused is publicly interrogated after imbibing a certain type of tea.”

Ah. The infamous truth tea.

“It compels people to admit their sins, but it isn’t completely accurate, because there are certain workarounds for those who are mentally strong enough,” Rose went on. “For example, you could tell the truth when you’ve had it, but not the whole truth. Or you could tell the whole truth, but worded in very specific ways to make you look better.”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“The second part of the confession process is the firebrand rite. The person is laid out on an altar while a knife is heated in the bonfire nearby. Once it is hot, it will be pressed against part of their body. If they feel any pain, it is because the Entity hasn’t protected them. That means they are guilty. If they are innocent, the Entity shields them from the pain, and they are absolved and set free.”

“So if you scream or even wince, you’re guilty?”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

“The prescribed punishments are related to what the person did wrong. They must offer up a part of their body that was used to commit the sin. For example, if they stole, they could offer up a finger, or even their whole hand. If they cheated on their husband or wife… well, you catch my drift, I’m sure. The offending body part is removed and cast into the flames as a burnt offering to the Entity.”

I stared at her, skin crawling with revulsion. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes, of course.” Rose looked confused. “You wanted me to teach you our ways, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I just…” I rubbed my jaw, shaking my head. “I haven’t seen anyone around here missing any body parts, so I was surprised to hear that.”

“Ah.” Her face brightened again. “That’s because crime is extremely rare here. People know the consequences of sin.”

I fucking knew it.

This so-called paradise, where everyone walked around looking dazedly happy, had a dark side after all. Just like every other cult or fundamentalist sect. The people seemed happy on the outside, but they lived in perpetual fear. Not only that, the vast majority of them were also never permitted to leave, and they faced punishment if they even made an attempt.

I stared at Rose, dark possibilities creeping into my mind.

Perhaps, as my prisoner, she would have more freedom than she ever did here.