Chapter 7 Blessed. Blessed. Blessed.
(Adelaide)
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.
When all sixteen stood ready, the attendants lined them up and led them through the back corridor toward the platform. Adelaide’s bare feet slapped softly against the cold stone. Every footstep echoed, stacking on top of the last until it sounded like a crowd was walking with them—ghosts of every Offering that had come before.
As they emerged outside, the night hit her—sharp, cold, smelling of pine sap, woodsmoke, and something else beneath it. Something metallic. The air tasted like the moment before lightning strikes; charged, expectant, holding its breath.
The entire village had gathered. Torches crackled on tall iron poles, casting orange light across the crowd. The platform was draped in black cloth. Bells tolled. Wind stirred the hem of Adelaide’s thin white dress, and the cool breeze pebbled her nipples. The thin material rubbed against her perked pink nipples, teasing her. Heat licked low in her belly, unwanted and out of place, fury mixing with the humiliating awareness of her own body under so many eyes.
It made Adelaide want to tear the dress off, stand before the village naked and bare, exactly like the sacrificial goat they believed her to be. If they insisted on pretending this was holy, she would have liked to strip it of every illusion and make them look at what they were really doing.
The wind rose again, whipping strands of her damp hair across her cheeks. She lifted her chin, refusing to show even a flicker of fear.
The crowd parted as the girls were led onto the stage. Sixteen white dresses. Sixteen bare feet. Sixteen scented bodies. The wooden boards beneath them creaked faintly, as if straining under the weight of all that dread.
The Elders stood before them, hands raised in solemn greeting.
“My people,” Elder Thane proclaimed, voice booming unnaturally loud in the cold night, “we gather for the sacred Offering. A ritual older than our oldest stones. A pact that has kept our village safe for a thousand years.”
Adelaide’s nails dug into her palms. Safe? That’s what they call this? Safe? Her fingers bit crescents into her own skin until she felt the sting, the tiny beads of blood—proof that she could still hurt herself before he ever laid a claw on her.
Thane continued, “Tonight, sixteen brave daughters stand before us. Blessed. Chosen.”
A murmur of reverent awe rippled through the crowd.
Adelaide felt heat crawl up her throat—not from embarrassment, but from pure fury.
Blessed?
Blessed to be chased by a demon? Blessed to be hunted like deer? Blessed to be killed to sate him off for another ten years?
Her jaw ached from how hard she was clenching it. She could almost hear her teeth grinding over his name, turning it into dust.
Thane stepped forward, gesturing broadly. “These noble girls—the pride of our village—take on the burden so that the Devil need not take many. He will hunt only one. Only one shall be claimed.”
A few villagers nodded gravely, pride shining in their eyes. Adelaide wanted to scream. She wanted to shout their names back at them, to ask if they’d still look so proud when it was their daughter’s dress hanging empty at dawn.
Thane pressed one hand to the ceremonial brazier. Flames licked around his wrist but did not burn.
“And the one he claims shall be honoured—kept in the Devil’s realm, her soul forever protected by him, blessed by him.”
Blessed. Blessed. Blessed. The word kept stabbing into her. Her vision blurred for a second—not with tears, but with the white-hot pressure of rage. Lies. All of it. Lies to sleep better at night. Lies to cover the horror of sending daughters into the woods barefoot. She imagined those lies stacking up in the chapel like stones, heavy and cold, until even the saints in the glass turned their faces away.