The night was not meant for resting; it was an exercise in endurance.
Madeline spent the darkest hours pressed so tightly against the freezing, damp stone wall that she felt the moss grinding into her spine. The windowless cell was a symphony of horrors: the heavy, wet snoring of a dozen men, the smell of unwashed bodies, and the suffocating panic trapped beneath her leather mask.
The recruit beside her—a hulking brute who smelled of stale onions—slept like a restless bear. Every few minutes, he would shift, throwing a heavy, tree-trunk arm over her chest or stretching a heavy boot over her shins. Madeline spent hours locked in a silent, agonizing battle, inching away, holding her breath, terrified that if she pushed him too hard, he would wake up and realize the "boy" beside him possessed the soft curves of a woman.
Just as her burning eyes finally grew heavy, and the merciful pull of sleep began to drag her under... the world exploded.
CLANG!
The heavy iron door slammed inward, striking the stone wall with the force of a cannon blast.
"Rise and shine, sleepyheads!"
It was the guard from the previous night, marching into the room and striking his wooden baton against the iron bars. The room erupted into a chorus of startled, guttural groans. They had been asleep for barely four hours.
"Shut your mouths! Sleep is a luxury for the weak, and the Crown does not employ the weak," the guard barked, pacing the center of the cramped room. "You have exactly twenty minutes. In that time, you will bathe, you will don your training uniforms, and you will force down your rations. The Sergeant is waiting at the proving grounds. Anyone who is even a minute late will wish they had died in their sleep!"
A bath. For a fraction of a second, Madeline's heart leaped. A bath sounded like a divine luxury. To strip away the suffocating disguise, to wash the mud and the terrifying sweat of the carriage ride from her skin...
Then, the reality of her situation crashed down on her like a collapsing roof.
All around her, the cell was suddenly a blur of motion. The recruits, driven by the threat of the Sergeant, didn't hesitate. They stood up and began ripping their clothes off right where they stood.
Madeline's breath hitched in her throat. She had never been in a room with a naked man, let alone a dozen hardened, scarred criminals. Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her veins. She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly they ached, her hands flying up to press against the sides of her mask as if trying to shrink herself out of existence.
Don't look. Just don't look.
"Well, well. Looks like your pretty boy is a bit shy," a mocking voice sneered. It was Brian, one of Derrick's thugs, his heavy boots scuffing the floor nearby.
"Leave him," Derrick's deep, rumbling voice cut in, entirely too close. Madeline could feel the heat radiating from him. "He's only mine to see. He'll get used to us soon enough."
A chorus of cruel laughter bounced off the stone walls. Madeline bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper to keep her from screaming. She wanted to run. She wanted to rip the door open, flee into the fog, and beg Woodsman for mercy. She didn't care if they called her weak. She didn't care if she failed on the first day.
But she couldn't move. If she stood up, they would see her panic. If she joined them in the washroom, she would be discovered and executed before breakfast.
She had to wait.
Slowly, agonizingly, the sounds of shifting bodies and cruel banter faded as the men filed out of the cell and headed toward the communal troughs.
Finally, she was alone.
Madeline let out a shaky, rattling breath and let her head fall back against the stone wall. Her heart was beating so fast it made her ribs ache. You can do this, Madeline. Just breathe. She couldn't shower with them. She would have to wait until they were dressed and eating, then rush to the washroom, scrub herself in under a minute, throw on the uniform, and sprint to the training grounds. It was risky, but it was her only option.
But as the adrenaline receded, the sheer, crushing weight of her exhaustion rushed in to fill the void. Her muscles felt like lead. Her head throbbed beneath the tight scarf.
Just five minutes, she told herself. I'll rest my eyes for just five minutes while they bathe.
She let her head droop to the side. The hard, freezing stone floor suddenly felt as soft as a featherbed. She closed her eyes, just for a moment...
...And woke up to blinding gold.
Madeline gasped, her eyes snapping open. The dim, shadowy cell was completely illuminated. A thick beam of bright, mid-morning sunlight was streaming through the open doorway.
The cell was empty. There were no voices. No sounds of rushing boots.
"No. No, no, no."
Madeline scrambled to her feet, her oversized trousers tangling around her knees. She stumbled out of the cell and into the corridor. It was deserted. Panic seized her by the throat. She hadn't slept for five minutes; she had slept for hours. The sun was fully up.
She threw herself down the corridor, her heart hammering a frantic, doom-laden rhythm. She burst out into the main courtyard, her eyes darting wildly. The only person in sight was a hunched, elderly woman in a grey smock, slowly sweeping dust across the cobblestones with a bristled broom.
"Excuse me!" Madeline shouted, running up to her, her voice cracking behind the mask. "Please, do you know where the new recruits are?"
The old woman paused, leaning on her broom. She looked at Madeline with a mixture of pity and terror. "The Proving Grounds, child. Out the eastern archway, down the dirt path. May the gods have mercy on you... you are very, very late."
Madeline didn't thank her. She bolted.
She ran as fast as the heavy boots would allow, ignoring the burning in her lungs and the suffocating heat of the leather mask. Every step felt like a march to the gallows. Anyone who is even a minute late will wish they had died in their sleep.
She passed through the eastern archway and stumbled to a halt at the edge of a massive, trampled dirt field surrounded by high wooden palisades.
There, standing in perfect, rigid rows beneath the blazing sun, were her fellow recruits. They were dressed in the heavy black wool of the Crown, sweating profusely, their faces locked in expressions of strained terror.
And pacing before them was the Sergeant.
He was a mountain of a man. His arms were as thick as tree trunks, covered in a chaotic tapestry of scars that told the stories of a dozen brutal wars. Half of his face was a ruined mass of burn tissue, covered by a black leather eyepatch. His remaining eye, a piercing, icy grey, scanned the men like a hawk looking for a sick field mouse.
Madeline stood frozen at the edge of the field, her chest heaving. She was still wearing Miguel's civilian clothes. She hadn't bathed. She hadn't eaten.
The Sergeant stopped pacing. He slowly turned his head. His single, terrifying eye locked onto Madeline's small, trembling frame.
Silence fell over the proving grounds. It was so quiet Madeline could hear the blood rushing in her own ears.
The Sergeant turned his massive body fully toward her. He didn't yell. He didn't rush. He simply began a slow, deliberate march across the dirt, his heavy boots kicking up small clouds of dust with every step.
He stopped less than a foot from her, towering over her small frame like an oak tree over a weed. The sheer size of him blotted out the sun.
"Well, well," the Sergeant rumbled. His voice was devastatingly quiet—a deep, resonant bass that vibrated in Madeline's chest. "Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence."
He slowly leaned down, his remaining eye examining her from the tips of her oversized boots to the top of her tightly wrapped head, lingering on the bizarre leather mask.
"And what exactly," the Sergeant asked, his tone dripping with lethal intent, "do we call you, little shadow?"
"M... Mad... Madel," Madeline stammered, her voice trembling so violently she barely recognized it as her own.
The Sergeant scoffed, a short, ugly sound. He stood back up to his full, terrifying height.
"Madel," he repeated, spitting the name into the dirt as if it tasted foul. He looked out over the rest of the recruits, shaking his head. "We really are scraping the bottom of the barrel this year."
He slowly turned his attention back to Madeline, leaning in so close she could smell the scent of polished steel and old blood radiating from his armor.
"By the time I am done with you, boy," the Sergeant whispered, a promise of absolute agony, "you are going to curse the day you ever left your mother's side."
Madeline swallowed hard. She had survived the Woodsman. But looking into the Sergeant's eye, she knew she had finally found the devil.