The cold made itself a third presence in our cell, biting through the thin wool of my jacket and clawing up from the stones until Scarlette and I pressed so close that we seemed to merge at the shiver. The iron bars of the cage divided the moonlight into a crosshatch of white and blue, painting us in stripes like animals bred for the torch. Her hair had fallen loose hours ago and now stuck in sweat-tangled ropes to my neck, my cheek, the corner of my mouth where I tasted the smoke from distant, dying torches.
Scarlette’s foot was a fist of bruised blue, the flesh around her ankle angry and swollen. I had done what I could, torn my own shirt for bandages, tried to keep her moving to stave off the numb, but by now the damage was setting like concrete. If they planned to walk her to the pyre, I figured they’d get half a girl, the rest left in red streaks across the yard.
She pressed her forehead to the crook of my arm and whispered, “It’s almost midnight.” The words came out in bursts, each one hanging in the chill air before fading. “They said they would light the stake at sunrise. Three more dawns. Maybe less.”
I tried to keep my voice level. “We’re not dead yet.”
She barked a laugh against my skin. “That’s optimistic. You always like to lie to a dying girl?”
“Only when she wants to hear it.”
I felt her smile, the curve of her cheek flattening against my muscle. She looked up, eyes ringed in shadow, lips split where someone’s gauntlet had connected earlier. “They’re building it now, you know. The pyre. I can smell the pitch on the wind.”
She was right, the whole night reeked of resin and damp straw, the kind of preparation that took pride in its work.
“I should be afraid,” she said, her voice thinned by hunger and cold. “I thought, if the end came, I’d find a way to make it noble. But I’m not. I just want to run. I want to run, and take you with me, and never stop.”
She shivered so hard it rattled her teeth, and I pulled her closer, arms wrapped around the soft bone of her ribs. There was nothing left to do but hold on.
After a while, I said, “If we got out—if the world let us slip through—I could take you back. To my time. It’s not much, but they don’t burn women for speaking their mind.”
She turned her head, her cheek pressed flat against my shoulder. “Would they burn you? For what you are?”
I considered it. “They’d probably just shoot me. Or put me in a box. But I could keep you safe. At least, for a while.”
Scarlette’s fingers, cold as ice, trailed the inside of my wrist, tracing the blue of the veins, the callused grooves where I’d broken my hand too many times to count. She said, so soft I almost missed it, “I love you, Moab.”
I heard it like a punch, but softer, almost apologetic. I didn’t know if she meant it or if she just wanted something to say before we died. I wanted to return it, but the words tasted wrong in my mouth. I’d never been good at feelings; I always let my actions do the work.
So I lifted her chin with my thumb, forced her to meet my eyes in the patchy blue of the moon. “You mean it?” I asked, voice ragged. “Or are you just trying to make a nice story for the priests?”
She smiled, slow and sure. “I mean it.”
I pressed my forehead to hers, letting the heat of my breath mingle with hers in the cold. “I love you too, Scar,” I said, and it was the truest thing I’d spoken since I’d landed in this godforsaken century.
She melted into me, her lips dry and cracked but insistent, kissing me with the desperation of someone who knows the clock is ticking.
That was when I heard the scrape. Not boots, too light for that. Slippers, maybe, or bare feet. But someone was coming, and they wanted us to know.
I held up a hand, palm out, and Scarlette fell silent. The footsteps paused just outside the torchlight, shadow elongated against the stones.
The voice that came next was a ghost, cracked and old but unmistakable. “Scarlette.”
Scarlette’s head snapped up. She squinted, tried to peer through the dark, but the torch glare blinded her. “Mother?”
The shadow drifted closer, resolving into a woman shrouded in black. Her hair was hidden beneath a kerchief, and her hands were gloved in silk. She held a ring of keys that clattered against her palm with each trembling step.
Lady Elise of Ashburn was not the kind of woman who risked herself after midnight. Even in the half-light, I saw her eyes, clear, cold, the same color as Scarlette’s, rimmed in red.
She pressed herself to the bars, the keys rattling in her grip. “I cannot watch them burn you,” she said.
Scarlette reached through the bars, her fingers scrabbling for her mother’s. They met, knuckles white, shaking with the effort. “Mother, you shouldn’t be here,” Scarlette whispered, voice desperate. “If Aldric finds out—”
“I don’t care about Aldric.” Lady Elise’s breath steamed in the cold. “He’s a butcher and a fool, and your father is worse. I have failed you so many times. I won’t fail you now.”
She fumbled with the lock, her hands shaking so bad the keys jangled a warning into the night. I kept watch over her shoulder, expecting a guard to round the corner at any second.
When the first key missed, she cursed under her breath. The second jammed halfway in. The third finally turned, the lock giving with a wet, metallic groan that echoed off the stone.
