His lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile, his golden eyes burning with an intensity that seemed to see through all my carefully constructed layers. “And you know nothing of justice.” His fingers brushed against mine, a deliberate touch that sent a jolt through me. “Perhaps one day, you will.”
No one had ever spoken to me this way, as if I wasn’t a princess or the Lady of Mercy, but simply a woman capable of more than blind obedience.
I could hear Addie’s voice in my head, her parting words at the castle gates a month ago as she prepared to leave for her arranged marriage. “I’d do it all again. Defy him. Make my thoughts plain. At least one of us should speak the truth, Isi, even if it costs us everything.”
I’d assumed this was her usual dramatics, the sharp tongue that had finally provoked Father into sending her to a court many weeks’ journey away.
Now I wondered if there had been more wisdom in my sister’s rebellious nature than in my careful compliance. If this stranger with storm-gold eyes could see the truth of what I was, how much longer could I pretend not to see it myself?
The man stepped back, his gaze never leaving mine. With a curlof his mouth, he gave me a courtly bow that managed to be both perfect in form and utterly mocking in execution. As if he challenged me to decide. Executioner or savior? Prisoner or liberator?
He reached up to stroke the cinderhawk’s sleek feathers. It preened before he raised his gloved hand and flicked one finger. The bird took flight again, spinning to soar above the village, past the crowd, disappearing into the smoke-hazed sky.
As it vanished, he turned back to me. “Beware. The time is coming, Princess.”
A promise. Or a warning.
Either way, I knew with unsettling certainty that I would never be the same.
“Amarissa,” my father said, his tone carrying the chiding note he’d used since I was a child of ten who’d stood beside him, wearing her hastily stitched-together Lady of Mercy costume crafted from her newly deceased mother’s own robes.
I hurried up the stairs to join him.
“What are you doing?” His voice was kind enough but impatience edged in. A warning.
My skin quivering, I dipped my head forward and pressed for a smile, though he wouldn’t be able to see it behind the mask. “I’m sorry. I’m just overwhelmed by the heat.”
“Very well. Straighten your spine.Bethe Lady of Mercy.”
As he directed his attention back to the elders swaying their incense pots on gilded chains, I studied the crowd.
The man was gone, but the impression of his golden eyes and the phantom sensation of his touch remained.
A whisper in my mind kept insisting he was right about mercy.
About justice.
About everything I’d been raised to believe.
2
AMARISSA
The edges of the platform had been draped with too many direblight lilies, their perfume sickly sweet enough to rake down the back of my throat.
Father stood at the center, swathed in his elegant robes, a chalice full of untainted wine in one hand. The crowd gathered around us while the condemned held their breath. Elders moved among those who would soon die, their faces as solemn in their robes. They dipped a ladle into the wine basin and filled cups, handing one each to trembling hand.
“On this Day of Mercy,” Father called out in a solemn voice, “we cleanse what madness would soon corrupt. We bless this blight-given burden with a sense of peace. We restore harmony to our families and our court.”
My mask hid the twitch of my jaw.
A girl near the front of the crowd began to cry, her fingers clutching her mother’s skirt.
My hands shook, and I had to press my fingers against my thighs to stop myself from leaping off the platform, from reaching out to her. I’d tell her this wasn’t mercy, wasn’t right. How many childrenhad lost a parent to this ceremony? How many a sibling or friend? Each loss carved another piece of my soul away until I feared there would be nothing left but the hollow shell of the mask I wore.
My magic stirred, and the wind changed, a gust coming out of nowhere, scattering lily petals from the platform and slapping hair across faces.
One of the condemned women, pregnant and with autumn hair, gasped. Her wine cup slipped from her hands, shattering on the stones by her feet.
