Maybe that would have been less painful than this. Again, there came the wrench of loss. Over the last few weeks, she had learned what it was like not to be lonely. It had taken so little time for Hæra to creep into Madeleine’s heart like a worm boring into an apple. Madeleine had spent decades keeping herself apart from the world, even her fellow nuns, even Becca. Then she’d let someone in, and it had changed her, and she hadn’t been alone, and she’d thought maybe she could question everything she’d believed her whole life and it’d be okay, and…

She sobbed and wrapped her arms around her knees, squeezing them as if she could shrink into something too small for the world to notice. Too small for it to hurt. She’d given up her life and vocation for someone who’d intended to betray her in the worst possible way.

No, she reminded herself yet again. You had to leave, the convent wasn’t right for you. No matter what, you did the right thing. At the moment, that didn’t make anything feel better. It didn’t change what Hæra had done, or what Hæra was.

Not human, just a creature that wore a human face when it suited her. Madeleine had feared to see that transformation all along, and now she knew why. It exposed the awful truth, and while Madeleine had spent the last few years facing a lot of new truths, she wasn’t ready for this one.

The memory of Asgall’s words blew through her worse than any gale.

He hadn’t just said that Hæra intended to eat Madeleine. He’d said that Madeleine had had no choice but to return to Jorsay—that she and Hæra were “bound” together, and Madeleine would never be able to leave.

She remembered that night she’d tried to change her plane ticket so she could leave Orkney sooner. She hadn’t been able to. Some inner voice had talked her out of it, promising freedom of all things—what a cruel joke. Was it Hæra’s voice? Forcing her to stay through some enchantment?

She’d asked Hæra that, on the day Hæra had told her what she was. Hæra had denied it, but that could have been a lie like everything else.

If that was so, if they had a “bond,” then what would be left of Madeleine at the end? Would she be like Jonathan, who’d stared at Asgall with a broken look on his face—still tied to him after years of pain and enmity? Jonathan had said Hæra and Madeleine had been given into each other’s keeping. He’d been in a position to know, but he hadn’t told her the truth either.