Sweet Girl

CW: Contains themes and/or references to violence and sacrifice.

The shroud was heavy on her head and shoulders. Thick wool that trapped her breath and turned it back on her, warm and stale. She couldn't see – hadn't seen for the length of the walk – but she felt the change beneath her feet. Cool stone blocks evolving into colder, gritted sand. The sound shifting from echo to openness.

His hand at her elbow. Steady. Strong.

She'd memorized that touch. The weight of his palm, the way his fingers pressed just so when he wanted her to stop, to wait, to trust. Even now, walking toward her end, that touch was an anchor. The only thing tethering her to the choice she'd made.

I chose this.

But her heart was hammering against her ribs so hard she thought it might crack through bone. Her palms were slick with sweat inside the shroud's fabric. Her breath came in shallow, panicked gasps—in and out, in and out—trapped in the wool until she was drowning in her own exhalation. The doubt gathering like storm clouds wasn't gentle. It was suffocating. It was real.

His hand squeezed once. A warning, or comfort—she couldn't tell anymore. But his touch steadied something in her. Just slightly. Just enough.

The shroud lifted.

Moonlight struck her face—clean, white, blinding. She blinked against the spots, her eyes watering from the sudden brightness after so much dark.

Whispers rose from the shadows. The tribe ringed the cove, tattooed mouths moving in prayer, eyes fixed on the moon above. Not on her. Never on her, though she stood at the center of their circle.

The walls pressed close. Cold air pooled at her feet. The prayers echoed off stone, multiplied, until she couldn't tell how many voices blessed her transcendence.

Or condemned it.

Her legs faltered. The sand gave way beneath her toes, deep and grasping. The ocean was there—she could smell it, taste the salt on her lips. This was real. This was happening.

Fear shot through her—unbidden, unwanted. Her stomach twisted. Her throat constricted. These were her final moments. Her last footprints in this sand. Her last breath of air that didn't taste like saltwater and death.

A sob broke free before she could stop it.

No. Not now. You chose this.

But her body didn't care what she'd chosen. Her body was rebelling, every muscle screaming live, live, live. Her hands trembled. Her vision blurred.

Then orange flame erupted at the water's edge.

He lit the match.

He stood in the moonbeams like carved stone, one hand commanding the torch, the other reaching for her. Beckoning. The tide made flesh. When his eyes found hers across the distance, something in her quieted. That look—she'd follow it anywhere. Off a cliff. Into the sea. Into hell itself.

She obeyed. Her legs found strength in his stare. Her doubt went quiet.

Desire was louder.

She closed the space between them. Five steps. Twenty? She couldn't count. Only his eyes existed—unwavering, absolute. Safe.

Those eyes. She'd seen them soft with laughter. Seen them dark with something else—something that made her feel chosen. Seen them the morning after, when she'd woken to find him watching her like she was something holy. Something worth saving.

But I wasn't. I'm not. Yet.

A figure appeared behind her with a wooden box. He traded the torch for it without making eye contact. His fingers worked the metal latch. Inside, her transcendence waited.

A circlet of black coral, studded with droplets that held splinters of light. Alive with the pulse of the sea.

He raised his arms. The circlet hovered above her head.

The question settled over her shoulders like a cloak of stones.

She breathed in. Bowed her head.

For him. For what I broke. For what I owe.

Surrender.

The coral came down—heavier than she'd imagined, sharper. It bit into her scalp, her forehead. A tingle bloomed. Grew teeth. Became stinging, then burning.

She hadn't expected pain.

The burn spread. Not outward, but inward. Drilling. She felt it behind her eyes first—a pressure building, hot and insistent. Then deeper, into the meat of her skull. The crown was rooting. Her vision swam.

She lifted her face to his, gasping, and something shifted in his eyes when he saw her wince. A crack in his composure. His jaw tightened.

He moved—sudden, decisive. Large hands gripped her hips, turned her until she faced the sea. His chest pressed against her back. His eyes, gone.

His arms circled her. She was trembling—he felt it, she knew. His fingers knotted with hers. A brace against rising panic.

"Shhh." His voice, fog against her ear. "My sweet girl."

His. I'm his sweet girl.

But the heat in her skull traveled. Crept behind her eyes. Slithered down her throat. She moaned—a sound pulled from somewhere primal.

The coral was awake now. She felt it—tendrils that weren't there before, exploring. Tasting. Learning the shape of her thoughts, the texture of her guilt. It found the memories she kept locked tight and pried them open.

A door left ajar. A secret shared. Their faces when they learned what she'd done.

A sharp sensation pierced her thoughts, her breath catching from the intensity.

"This is the price of our work," he whispered. His lips brushed her ear with each word. His hands held her still through the tremors. "This is what you agreed to pay."

She knew the price her body would pay for her soul's salvation. From the moment she'd whispered her wish into the dark, she'd known what the answer would cost. The pain must be owed to her as penance.

Make it right. Make me worthy of him. Let me pay what I owe.

Her legs grew weak under the anguish, her vision turning in dizzying circles when he gathered her into his arms. Lifted her. She was weightless, helpless as he carried her across the beach into the shallows. His footsteps slowed in the ebb and flow of the tide.

The heat inside her climbed—a pitch in her ears that grew and grew. It found its crescendo somewhere deep in her mind, drowning everything else.

Memories surfaced. Scattered, sharp.

Sunlight on water. His laugh, low and warm. Her hands—what had her hands done? Something broken. Glass? Bone? Trust. Her hands had broken trust.

The way they all looked at her after. Not angry. Worse; defeated. Like she'd confirmed something they'd prayed wasn't true.

Her begging. Longing to end her guilt, her suffering. Please! Please, I'll do anything.

His voice in the darkness: There is a way. But the cost—

I don't care. I don't care! Whatever it takes.

All of her own making. Every choice. Every consequence.

Even this.

Icy waves sent a shock crashing through her as her body was finally caressed by the water. The fire in her veins met the ice of the sea and something cracked open inside her. She gasped, choking on spray.

He held her tighter. His body was solid against hers. Real. Safe.

She raised her head to drink in his sight one last time. The movement costing her—the coral crown screamed against her skull—but his eyes met hers and the agony dissolved from thought.

Endless pools of blue threatened to swallow all thought. She would cherish this image, his face in the moonlight, her broken body finding comfort in his embrace, the way he held her like she mattered. Like she was worth something.

Then—

A flicker in his gaze. A hesitation. His eyes wavering, looking past her shoulder. Not at her. Away from her.

She felt it. That subtle shift. The way he turned his face, steeling himself. His jaw clenched. And in that fraction of a second, she knew. She saw him seeing what he was about to do. She watched him choose to do it anyway.

Were those tears she saw? Why would he—

He's pretending.

The realization struck like glass breaking inside her chest. All of it. The tender words. The practiced comfort. The way he'd looked at her like she was precious. It was a performance. A ritual. She was a vessel, a ritual to be completed.

He brought me here to die.

Not to save her. To use her. To take her guilt and her devotion and her love and consume it like fuel. And the worst part—the part that shattered her—was that she'd wanted to believe him. She'd been so desperate to be worthy of someone, to matter to someone, that she'd walked into this willingly.

Anger ignited inside her. Pure. Immense. Ancient.

Her body revolted against the lie. She struggled in his hold, thrashing, clawing uselessly at his flesh. His grip only tightened—no longer cradling, now caging her. She was helpless against his mission.

But she was no longer helpless against herself.

The coral's fire was consuming her, growing in its intensity. It answered her rage. Fed on it. She could feel it responding to her fury, burning brighter, burning hotter, something waking up inside the crown that hadn't been there before.

His face remained impassive, determined. The stranger she'd never really known at all.

Then his hold shifted. His embrace turned violent, desperate, and she was plunged under the water's surface.

He did it with his eyes squeezed shut. His teeth gritted. His whole body shaking with the effort—or the horror—of what he was doing. She felt his hesitation in the tension of his arms, in the tremor running through him. He was drowning her and it was killing him and he was doing it anyway.

She convulsed as the water surged into her body, cold and insistent. Her lungs screamed at the invasion. The coral crown burned from the outside while the sea flooded from within. Cold and heat warring inside her. Darkness beckoning her consciousness.

His grip did not falter.

A sound erupted from her core—something ancient, brighter than flame, deeper than the water's depths. A scream that wasn't human. Rage crystallized into power. What the coral's fire had burned away, what the sea's waters had cleansed, she now filled with her fury and wrath. What was meant to be empty was overflowing.

Her body shivered its last fight. Her lungs filled with salt and collapsed. Her heart beat slowed to its final rhythm.

And a wrath beyond measure ignited from her core.

He felt the exact moment her life slipped away. Her body going still. Quiet. His work was finished. He could look at her once more.

He held her, suspended between worlds. Her face, so serene in the dark. A mask of slumber.

He stood witness as the coral crown on her head reached out with coarse tendrils, wrapping round and round, encasing its sacrifice. It moved with purpose, with hunger, consuming her inch by inch. Her hair disappeared first, encrusted in rock and light. Then her face—those eyes that would never look up at him again, sealed behind black stone.

But as the coral worked, something was wrong. The light in the crown wasn't softening like it should. It was intensifying. The coral's tendrils were moving faster, almost frantic, and the stone gleamed with an energy he'd never witnessed before.

Her frame grew heavy and he clung to the textured surface. His vigil lasted until his arms went numb and he was forced to give into the weight, releasing her from his grasp. Her rough edges caressed his fingertips as she tumbled into the depths below.

He stared into the abyss for longer than he meant to, and the abyss stared back.

"Forgive me," he whispered into the darkness.

It never answered him.

When he finally turned toward shore, the moon had moved. Dawn was coming—a gray line at the edge of the world.

The beach was empty. The torch had burned out.

My sweet girl.

He'd called her that. Even as he carried her to her death. Even as the coral crown burned through her skull. Even as he held her under, his hands shaking, his heart breaking with every second her lungs filled with water. Sweet girl. Like she was precious. Like she was innocent.

There is a way. But the cost—

She hadn't hesitated. Not for a moment. She'd worn her guilt like the shroud, heavy and suffocating, and she'd been desperate to take it off. He'd given her a way. He'd given her this.

And she'd loved him more for it.

He retraced their steps to the spot where she'd stood when the shroud had been lifted. He could still see the impression of her feet in the sand. Small. He knelt beside them, his fingers tracing the shape. His chest tight. His throat burning.

He knew his duty was sacred. His task divine. The more willing the Seed, the greater the Harvest. And they were willing. Every single one.

He was told they were grateful to find devotion. He was assured they were blessed to be given meaning.

He believes it too. He has to.

The sky was lightening. Pink now, bleeding into gold.

He sat in the sand beside her footprints and waited for the sun. Waited for the heat to touch his skin and kiss away his doubt.

The surf rolled in. Rolled out.

But the sun did not rise.

Something else did. And her eyes burned with the fury of revenge.