A knock on the door triggers my heart and it pounds hard in my chest. I stand, hoping it's Travis. Knowing that this is our last chance. That once the Binding begins I will have to give myself to Harry or cancel the ceremony.

And canceling the ceremony means throwing myself on the mercy of the Sisters. Begging them to allow me to rejoin their ranks even if it means being nothing more than their servant. A woman in our village is not given a second chance at marriage.

I smooth my hands over the white fabric that drapes down my legs. My hands shake as I reach for the door. My stomach tenses, my whole body flooding with fear and hope and joy.

The light outside the door is the blinding last gasp of the day, and for a moment I think it's Travis and that my life has finally fallen into place. That I finally understand where I belong in this world.

And then I hear the rustle of skirts as Sister Tabitha steps through the doorway and stalks to the middle of the room. She turns to face me, looks me up and down with her sharp eyes.

“I have come to prepare you for the Binding,” she says. “To give you the blessing of the Sisterhood.”

I want to crumple right there, to fall into myself until I am nothing more than a heap of emptiness on the floor. My head feels light, my vision blurry. My throat burns to scream and cry. But I refuse to allow Sister Tabitha to see any of this and so I raise my chin, close the door and steady myself by placing a hand against the wall.

We are alone in the little one-room cottage that will house Harry and me, until we have children and need more space. The thought of children with Harry falls like a stone inside my stomach.

In the last few days I had already begun to imagine what Travis's and my children would look like, how their tiny hands would curl around my finger. I had already dreamed an entire life between Travis and me. And now that was the only life that we would ever lead together—the one in my dreams.

Sister Tabitha and I stand facing each other, our backs rigid until she smiles just a little, releasing a breath as if on a laugh.

She shakes her head. “There are things we must accept in this world, Mary. Things that may not make sense to us now, but that we must adhere to. That we must keep sacred if we hope to persevere.”