Chapter3
When the plane touched down, I thought I had arrived in Switzerland.
Outside the porthole, it was a wash of dreary gray. The pilot didn't even look back. "We're here."
A van waited at the end of the runway. The driver, a thickly built woman, offered only two words: "Get in."
The doors locked with a heavy clunk. The road grew increasingly violent, flanked by chain-link fences crowned with coiled barbed wire.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Shut up."
Iron gates clanged shut behind me. I stepped out of the van.
The building was a slab of brutalist gray, its windows heavily bolted with iron bars. A brass plaque hung above the lintel: Virtue Academy—a clandestine, private disciplinary institution. Nominally in Switzerland, it was actually hidden deep within a remote ravine bordering Switzerland and Germany, entirely erased from any map. I learned later that this place was designed exclusively for "family shames": rebellious daughters exiled by wealthy dynasties, cheating wives, and girls like me, who had "loved the wrong person."
Maggs, the head disciplinarian, stood on the front steps, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. "Cecilia Wentworth? Get inside."
She leaned back behind her desk. "Why are you here?"
"I made a mistake."
"What mistake?"
"I shouldn't have loved someone."
She exhaled a plume of smoke. "Who?"
"My brother."
Maggs laughed. "Shameless." She slapped a sheet of paper onto the desk. "Read it."
The printed words dictated my sins: I am shameless. I have no dignity. I am disgusting. I do not deserve to be human.
"I am shameless..." My voice trembled.
"Louder!"
"I am shameless! I have no dignity! I am disgusting! I do not deserve to be human!"
She jutted her chin toward the corner of the room. A bed of broken glass blanketed the floor.
"Kneel."
I backed away. She lunged, grabbing a fistful of my hair, and forced me down. My knees smashed into the jagged shards, and blood instantly seeped through.
"Read."
I screamed through my tears. The blood pooling beneath my knees painted the glass a slick crimson.
I knelt there for four hours that day.
From that day on, the wounds on my knees never really healed.
That was only the beginning.
The following days were carved into a rigid, punishing routine: waking at five every morning to recite the "Seven Commandments," kneeling on washboards in the morning, and attending reflection sessions in the afternoon.
Maggs stood at the podium and declared, "Starting today, you will learn to confess your sins. Only when you admit them will you be eligible for forgiveness."
I didn't understand what my grave sin was. But I learned to keep my mouth shut.
Physical conditioning involved wooden, ribbed washboards; kneeling on them felt like resting my weight on razor blades. The instructors called this "grinding away the rough edges." My knees went from bleeding to scabbing, and from scabbing to oozing rot. At first, I bit the pain back, but eventually, they swelled so severely I couldn't even pull my pants over them. Every step I took felt like walking on the points of knives.
The academy doctor diagnosed it as chondromalacia patellae. Prolonged kneeling, coupled with chronic infection, had worn away more than half of my cartilage. If I continued to kneel, my knees would be permanently deformed.
When Maggs heard the prognosis, she merely sneered. "Perfect. A woman who can't stand won't go around seducing men."
During the afternoon reflection sessions, every girl had to take the stage and detail her "crimes." If your confession wasn't convincing enough, you were thrown into the dark box.
My first time inside was because I failed to cry on command.
There were no windows, no lights. Complete, smothering blindness. I crouched in the corner, listening to the heavy rhythm of my own heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.
On the first day, I thought of Lex, of my mother, and of the star pendant hanging around my neck.
On the second day, the line between waking and dreaming dissolved entirely.
By the third day, I was licking condensation off the walls. The scrape of rough concrete against my tongue was the only proof I had left that I was still alive.
When the iron door finally screeched open, I covered my eyes and wept, trembling violently.
After I came out, I realized I had somehow forgotten how to cry. It wasn't that I didn't want to—the tears simply wouldn't fall, and my throat felt as if it were constantly caught in someone's deadening grip.
Half a month later, Maggs announced it was time for a "routine physical."
The man in the white coat told me to strip. I clutched the hem of my shirt in refusal, so he simply tore it off me. He forced my legs apart, cranked a metal speculum inside as wide as it would go, and thrust his fingers in. Pain tore through me, making my spine arch off the examination table; it felt as if my lower abdomen was being punctured straight through.
"Relax."
I stared at the ceiling and counted the plaster cracks. When I reached seventeen, he finally finished.
He stroked my bare leg as he pulled away. "Next time, remember to take your clothes off yourself."
I learned later that these examinations were not standard protocol. Only I received this special treatment—once a month, without fail, repeatedly subjected to that man's brutal internal invasions.
Two months later, my period arrived. The cramps were agonizing enough to fold me in half, and heavy, dark clots fell uncontrollably from my body. The doctor ran an exam. My ultrasound report read: Bilateral fallopian tube thickening, pelvic effusion, chronic pelvic inflammatory disease.
She took off her glasses. "Your fallopian tubes are severely blocked. Repeated pelvic infections, coupled with a total lack of timely treatment, have caused permanent damage. You will never be able to bear children."
"Furthermore," she paused, "this chronic PID will stay with you. The pelvic pain, lower back aches, and fevers could persist for years. There is currently no cure."
I lay there motionless.
Outside the window, inmates were running laps. Out in the corridor, someone was chanting, "I am shameless."
I stared straight up at the ceiling as a single, silent tear slipped sideways into my ear.
By the third month, my knees gave out completely.
After kneeling on bare concrete for six hours one day, a sickening crack echoed from my left knee the moment I tried to stand. I collapsed, totally incapable of getting back up.
Maggs walked over and shot me a single glance. "Fragile." She ordered the others to drag me back to the dorm.
From then on, I walked with a severe, permanent limp. The pain flared up viciously on overcast days. The doctor dismissed it as post-traumatic arthritis; the cartilage was entirely gone, leaving raw bone grinding directly against bone. It was irreversible. Not unless I got artificial joint replacements—which this place would never authorize.
By the fourth month, my voice vanished entirely.
One morning, I woke up, opened my mouth to shout, and produced absolutely nothing. Instructors slapped me back and forth, ordering me to "speak." My tears fell in sheets, but my throat felt padlocked from the inside.
"Psychogenic mutism," the doctor diagnosed. "The psychological stress was too high, so your body shut your voice down for you. Think of it as mitigating your sins."
From that moment on, my silence became absolute.
In the fifth month, they threw me back into the dark box—punishment for shoving the doctor during my exam.
Seven days.
No light, no sound, no time. My lower abdomen burned continuously, and my ruined knees throbbed with a drilling agony the moment night fell. I curled up in the corner, every single inch of my body submerged in relentless, screaming pain.
On the fourth day, I saw my mother.
She wore a floral dress, crouching down to gently cup my cheek. Her hands felt incredibly warm.
"Celia, survive."
I nodded frantically and threw myself into her arms, but she dissipated into the air, vanishing like mist.
In the suffocating darkness, I hugged my knees. My pale lips moved continuously, making no sound, merely forming the shape of a single word, over and over:
Lex. Lex. Lex.
By the sixth month, my head was shaved entirely bald. Maggs declared that "long hair disrupts discipline."
The gaunt girl in the mirror wore a coarse gray uniform. She walked with a crippling limp, her scalp shaved bare, the delicate star pendant still resting against her sunken collarbones.
One night, I lay on my metal cot, tracing the edges of the star. Lex's face had already blurred in my memory. All I could clearly recall was him standing in the doorway in that dark gray sweater, prying my desperate fingers from his sleeve, one by one.
And then turning his back.
I wondered, did he truly despise me now?
Or did he genuinely have no idea what kind of hell this place actually was?
I didn't know.
I only knew that I had to live.
Mom had said it. Survive.
