There, on the sun-bleached wood, lay the headless body of the woman whom she must have heard screaming before.
“More merciful than the gallows,” the guard to her left said, his breath hot at her ear, and she couldn’t help the feeling he was enjoying her terror.
“Does it matter when the outcome remains the same?” Lory might have been going to her death, but she wouldn’t allow some sick shit to take pleasure in her fear.
They made it to the pedestal in time to see the group of people from the room with the trees and the stage to march into the courtyard from a side door that seemed to melt back into the wall as it closed behind them.
“On your knees,” the guard barked as they forced her up the two wide, wooden stairs and stopped right before the butcher’s block.
They didn’t need to command her; letting go of her arms was enough to make her collapse to her knees. Someone grabbed her by the neck, shoving her down until her throat lay flush against the blood-smeared limestone boulder. Her left knee slipped, hitting something soft—the corpse of the woman whose head was still lying in the basket she was looking into.
“Any last words?” Top Knot prompted as he stepped to the front of the group, his voice dripping with anticipation.
Lory swallowed the lump in her throat. Last words—too many. So many things she’d never seen, so many places she’d dreamed of once visiting. She hadn’t even left the city the way she’d hoped to one day do, and she hadn’t spat in King Ulder’s food the way she and Evven had joked.
Glancing at the unseeing eyes of the woman who had preceded her on the butcher’s block, Lory asked, “What did she die for?”
“She was Flame-born.”
Lory didn’t care who’d spoken because, behind her, the sound of metal scraping across wood informed her that the axe taking her head was approaching.
“Elory Vednis,” Gray Braid solemnly said, “you have stolen from King Ulder’s personal advisor, Airmal Ycken, a crime that can be punished by death. You have been found guilty and sentenced to die at sunset on this day.”
She closed her eyes.
This was it—this was how Lory would die. Sweat trickled down her temple, blending with the tears collecting in her eyes.
“Your punishment will be carried out by a cut of the axe to sever your head from your neck. It will be quick, unlessyou try to fight your way off the butcher’s block and the cut is partial. Then, it might draw out into the worst kind of torture until you bleed out.” Footsteps rushed across the sandy ground, and Gray Braid paused for a moment before continuing her speech. “No one will hold you down on the stone, Ms. Vednis. It is up to you whether you choose the painful path or the quick one.”
‘The coward’s path’was what she didn’t need to add.
Lory swallowed for what she believed would be her last time.
A draft of cool air brushed her shaking body as the two guards silently stepped back, making way for her executioner.
Lory held her breath.
For ten long seconds, she held her breath, waiting for the blade to fall.
She held her breath as whispers carried across the courtyard, sharp as the hiss of a snake.
Until her head swam and her pulse threatened to leap out of her throat.
When she finally opened her eyes, glancing over the basket with the blood-smeared head, a pair of cold gray eyes set in a sharp-cut olive face was staring back at her. Falcrest’s hair moved on the air like liquid silk, and his mouth was a tight line as he stared back at her like he was going to give the command to execute her any moment.
Lory was aware of the rest of the group—of Top Knot and Gray Braid, even Observant Eye was there—but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man around whom the desert might begin to freeze.
“It has been brought to my attention,” Gray Braid said, her tone less solemn and more irritated, “that you might be of more value to this kingdom alive than you are dead.”
Lory’s heart gave a painful jolt in her chest, and her gaze finally sprang free from the storm-colored magnets that were Falcrest’s eyes to find Gray Braid standing right next to him, her lined face unreadable.
“Ashthorn Ward is accepting new conscripts.”
Anees’s words of caution flew through Lory’s mind—that most of the conscripts didn’t survive their education, that no one really knew what happened at Ashthorn Ward. For all that it was worth, it sounded more like a prison than an academy, but something inside Lory had begun to hope, and fear of certain death was stronger than fear of the unknown.
“What do I need to do?” The words were a mere breath, heat and exhaustion doing their part in making the world sway before her eyes, even as she was kneeling down. Lory grabbed the bloodied stone left and right from where her throat lay in the carved curve made to fit the broad neck of a muscled warrior.
Gray Braid’s mouth tilted up on the side with the opposite of kindness. “Oh, it’s not what you need to do, Ms. Vednis. It’s what you’ve already done.”
