The guard spat on the ground, narrowly missing the old man, before turning to us.
“This man is convicted of raping a woman who took shelter in his stable. He demanded payment in gold and having none, she could not help but refuse. Instead of offering her mercy, he took his payment by force.”
In a few sentences, the prisoner before us was transformed. I no longer saw a weak, suffering old man. Instead, I noticed the deep scar that ran down the side of his face, still red and puckered and healing. Had the woman left it behind as she clawed at him to protect herself? He limped slightly, favoring his left leg. Another wound his victim had managed to get in?
In front, behind, all around us the crowd yelled and jeered. Fathers screamed justice for their daughters, women for themselves. How many of these women had suffered similar abuse at some point in their lives? Too many, I knew. Too many women were the victims of men.
They are not real.
“Dispense justice. The majority will determine his fate.” The guard did not step back, but he lowered his head. A clear sign of deference to us, the decision-makers. Mere supplicants no longer.
Beside me, Nimra blinked in stunned silence. She’d sunk back fully into her chair. On my other side, Garrick remained upright and unmoved. His characteristic smirk was nowhere to be seen. Something inside of me released. He was not enjoying this any more than I was. Which did not quite fit—Garrick the Red was a bounty hunter renowned for his viciousness. He would take any contract so long as it paid.
And I was a witch, who’d stood by as her coven tortured humans for no crime worse than wandering unbidden into the coven lands. But I’d hated every moment of it. I could recount every death I’d been party to over the past three hundred and seventy-seven years.
Did Garrick keep his own mental tally?
I wished I could hide the revulsion that built inside of me. Not because the old man did not deserve to see it, but just because I wondered what it would be like, just once, to be fully in control. If Garrick felt any of that internal conflict, he masked it brilliantly.
“He dies. That is my vote,” Alize said from the other end of the row of chairs. Her face, like Garrick’s, was a study in immovability.
“Do it,” Nash agreed. He kicked out his feet in front of him and crossed one ankle over the other. Regret turned my stomach. Maybe I should have let Garrick kill him. Not because I did not think the rapist deserved to die, but because Nash was so openly enjoying it.
But was I really any better? Because in the next second, I opened my mouth. “He hangs.”
The roar of the crowd pitched even higher at my decree.
I could have waited. With Alize and Nash’s decisions already made, I could have let Garrick or Nimra cast their votes. Mine might not have mattered at all. But I wanted my word to be the one that sentenced this man to death. He’d violated a woman. It was the next thing to murder, and I believed that he deserved to die. Even if I hated myself a little for it.
“Agreed,” Garrick said from beside me.
“Yes,” Nimra nodded.
Neither of them needed to say it. I knew neither of those votes had been cast for my sake, but I was thankful for them either way. The old man would have died, no matter what I had to say about it.
Before us, the old man transformed again, though this time it was not just in my imagination. His hateful face contorted with rage. “How dare you! You will all rot in the pits of hell?—”
He never got to finish the threat. The jailer slipped the noose around his neck and kicked him forward over the trench.For a brief second, the crowd around us quieted. The old man sputtered, jerked, clawed for his throat, and then died. When that final spasm of life released, the people roared their approval.
His life force fled, a wisp of power that only I felt. The rotting pits of hell where his soul would dwell belonged to my Dark God. I could not see souls, but I felt their presence in the moment when they fled their fleshy bonds. For what was power, at its deepest definition, but life?
My heart did not beat, but I could still feel the rush of blood in my veins as the excitement of the moment ebbed. The sounds of the crowd dulled to anticipatory whispers while the second jailer nudged his charge forward. A pretty woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, her cheeks high with color despite the cold. Her mass of hair was matted, but I could see that the clothes she wore had once been opulent. A woman who came from means.
“This woman is convicted of crippling her sister’s betrothed out of spite,” he said to the group. “She saw that her sister had happiness within her grasp, and she ripped it from her because she could not have it for herself.”
Tears spilled out of the woman’s eyes, but she did not stumble like the old man before her. She kept her chin high as she stared us down.
Something colder than ice overtook me—veins, organs, skin. I might as well have turned to a block of solid ice as the other supplicants began to talk around me. I could not hear them, trapped within my own mind.
Maybe the woman standing there facing judgment and death had committed that crime. But so had I.
CHAPTER 25
BEFORE
“You cannot be here,”Aurienna whispered, the words cushioned by the foliage all around us. It was unnecessary. The thick brick walls of the guildhall kept noises out as well as in. I could not hear what was happening, but I could see it through the windows.
“I am breaking no laws,” I said without looking at her.
