“LaRoche—you have tried to kill me twice. To attack a member of the Sabourin line is treason, punishable by death. Do you confess to this sin?”
“Yes,” he snarled. He was unwavering in his beliefs, I had to give him that. “All my sins will be banished by the sword of the Scion. But his light will never banish the darkness of your bedamned birth.”
The hairs on my arms stood. I swallowed, and motioned to the edge of the platform. Luca appeared from behind a flapping drape, and he wasn’t alone—he had a girl with him, towheaded and freckled, younger than twelve. Pierre saw her in the same moment the crowd did. His eyes widened, his own freckled nose wrinkling.
“Annalise?” For the first time since I’d met him, his face crumpled with something like regret, and I saw just how young he was. “What are you doing here?”
“Pierre!” The girl moved toward her brother, but Luca caught her gently and drew her back. His desert-blast eyes snagged on mine, and I read the message in their glittering depths easier than any line of text.
He’d been reluctant when I’d asked him to find the other LaRoche children. I didn’t blame him—I wanted to keep them out of this almost as much as I wanted to find a way to save a brainwashed boy from execution. He’d finally agreed to bring the eldest to the trial, but he’d made me swear an oath.
Promise me this girl will not be witness to her brother’s death.
I’d sworn.
“Do you see?” I leaned in until my face was inches from Pierre’s. I could smell his stench, and it wasn’t all physical—I smelled fear, and hatred, and a creeping note of venom, piercing as a lode of rot in a week-old fruit. “I will set you free—your sister is here to take you home. Your new home, with the rest of your siblings—an orphanage run by the Sisters of the Scion.” It was all true—although my stomach churned to think of those fate-poor children growing up in that loveless house of an uncaring god. “Isn’t that nice? Every Matin and Compline, they will take you through your Salutations, and you will praise the Scion in all his light.”
Pierre sucked in a rattling breath, his eyes fixed on his sister. A tear tracked down his dirty face, and the hope blossoming on his face seemed to surprise him.
I softened my voice. “I will set you free. All will be forgiven. Nothing more will be said of treachery or treason. I just need one thing from you.”
Pierre held his breath. The crowd held it with him.
“All I need is the name of Sainte Sauvage.”
I watched that precious flower of hope fester and die. His face crumpled. Words formed on his lips:I don’t know.And then I watched his mouth tighten, his brows clench, his fanaticism roll over him like a cloud.
Say it, I silently pleaded with Pierre—with anyone who would listen.SayI don’t know. Say it so I believe you.
“Sainte Sauvage is our savior,” he hissed through shattered teeth and a broken life. “I would never speak his name in front of Dusklandtrash.”
The word was a clarion—a klaxon crying doom. Pierre heard the sound of his own death knell and laughed madly. A stiff breeze whipped the hilarity from his lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luca usher a weeping Annalise out of sight.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t order his execution.
I stared desperately toward my advisors; toward my friends. Pierre kept laughing.
“I don’t know what to do.” My voice came out ragged. I buried my fists in the skirts of my ruined dress and rounded on the crowd. I scanned their upturned faces—a rainbow of pale to dark, punctuated by the gleaming whites of their eyes—but I couldn’t tell what they wanted. “How can I serve justice when Sainte Sauvage flouts all rules? Will no one rid me of these lawless Red Masks?”
I heard the whistle of an arrow. Time slowed. Panic shoved against weird calm and paralyzed me. The wind of its flight kissed my cheek.
Metal and wood—fletched in scarlet feathers—sprouted from Pierre’s throat. An arc of blood left his neck and splattered across Sunder’s uniform. Pierre gave a choking death rasp.
How had I become so familiar with the sound of death?
“No,” I whispered. Shadows clutched at the corners of my mind and juddered at my fingertips. Still I couldn’t move. Ipromised— “He wasn’t supposed to die today.”
“You did this!” The voice rang out, masculine and smooth as sunlight through honey.
Gavin.
He rose from his simple chair like they said the Sun had once risen over the horizon, and I fought the urge to shield my face from his light. He wasresplendent, although he wore nothing but his kembric regalia over a pale doublet. His bare head shone glitter-black in the low sunlight, and his face was alight with hot righteous fire.
Ilovedhim in that moment, like a child loves its mother or a flower loves the rain.
Love.
But I didn’t love anyone. Especially not Gavin.
