When I sat up, the movement came slow and deliberate – the kind you made when you weren’t yet sure how much of yourself had returned to you. And something in me moved with it: sharp and rising, a heat I hadn’t summoned but awake now all the same – stretching like a muscle remembering its own strength.
The quilt slipped off me in a heavy fold. Someone – Maeve, most likely – had left a bundle at the end of the bed: clean clothes, neatly folded. I dressed piece by piece, the fabric still stiffwith line-dry and sunlight, handling each with the same dutiful care I might have used for armour. Today, the linen tunic, kyrtill, and woollen trousers would serve as my shield against an entire town who would rather see me hang than hear me talk.
At the window, I drew back the curtain with the tips of my fingers and squinted against the light. The sun had already cleared the rooftops, bright and unrelenting in its climb. Whatever time I thought I had, it was less than I’d hoped.
The square was already thick with bodies by the time we turned the final corner. Word had travelled faster than even Maeve expected – passed from mouth to mouth like fire jumping rooftops, each retelling adding its own soot and smoke. The Elders stood in a line atop the raised platform, their robes drawn close, their expressions carved in that particular way people used when they wanted to look measured and looked anything but. They did not speak – they were waiting; for Maeve, for the crowd to settle, for whatever spectacle they thought this might become.
She walked ahead of us, her back straight, her stride unbroken, and without a single word the people parted to let her through. She had lived too long among them, set too many bones, stitched too many wounds and banished too many fevers to be challenged outright. But when Mathias and I followed in her wake, the air changed – it thickened and pulsed, like the breath of a hound just before it bites.
Gasps met us first, sharp and almost delighting in their cruelty. Then the curses came – witch, liar, butcher, whore – “String her up,” someone barked. “Burn the rot out of her,” shouted another. A woman next to me spat at my feet. But no one stepped forward. No one blocked our path. They only watched as we walked through them, flinching as if the sight alone might mark them.
I expected no different. Their venom was old, familiar, almost worn thin with use. Let them curse. Let them drag my name through themuck and call it justice. I hadn’t come for forgiveness, and they hadn’t come to offer it. I had come to offer them a way to keep their souls intact – nothing more, nothing less. They could hate me all they liked, as long as they stayed alive to do it.
We stepped onto the platform one by one – Maeve first, then Mathias, then me – and though no one touched me, I felt the recoil ripple through the Elders like a stone dropped in still water. One of them stepped back outright, her mouth curling in distaste. Another turned half away, as if even the act of looking in my direction might draw contamination. Only the third – the oldest of the three, his beard streaked through with white and his eyes sunken into hollows too deep for age alone – held his ground. But even he would not meet my gaze.
Their attention shifted to Maeve then, sharp as flint. She held it without shrinking, hands resting at her sides, her chin lifted just enough to show she had walked into this willingly.
“Alright, Maeve. You brought her here,” one of them said, spitting the words like venom from his mouth. “Now speak your peace and be done with it… so we can be done with her.”
Weathered and unmoving, she kept her gaze on the crowd, not the Elders – as though her answer had been given long before she stepped onto the platform. The pause stretched, unflinching, until the space it left became mine to step into – carved not by welcome, but by fear.
I let the moment hold, just long enough for the weight of Maeve’s silence to settle across the square – and then I stepped forward, the boards beneath my feet groaning faintly as if even the wood resented my presence. A sea of faces stared back, their expressions fractured and flinty: some closed like fists, others taut with suspicion, and a few already twisted in scorn. They’d come for blood, or for spectacle, or simply because they feared being the last to see me hang – but they had come, and I could work with that.
“I have not come here to make peace.” I said then, every wordlouder than the one before. “And I have not come here to ask for your forgiveness.”
“You wouldn’t get it!” Someone shouted from the crowd. A bottle flew to the foot of the podium, shattering against the cobblestones.
“You’re a monster!” Someone else shouted.
“And a butcher.” I turned to look into the crowd, as if to find those who had raised their voices. “And a devil. And a murderer. And who said it just now, awhore? Probably that too, just not a very well-paid one. I have burned my way through cities, and I have stolen crops from farms to feed my armies, and I have starved villages by taking all they had and more.”
The whole square had fallen so silent even those at the back could hear the creak of the wooden podium boards as I shifted my weight.
“I have earned all the names and all the accusations you can spit at me many times over. I have not come to deny that, and I am not asking you to pardon me for taking your lands or the lives of your loved ones.”
“Then why have you come?” It was the bearded Elder who spoke, his face bewildered. “If not for absolution?”
“You can keep your absolution,” I said, my gaze steady on his. “Cling to your grudges, polish them like heirlooms, count them like debts – so long as you’re still alive to do so.” I turned then, to face the crowd. “Because I am here to tell you that right now, it is not my hand or my blade that threatens the life and limb of all of you.”
There was a murmur on the square. Feet shifting, muttered words, another bottle thrown but it landed at the feet of those in the first row.
“You’ve heard the rumours, yes? Of Haedor burning? Of the black banners beyond the Twin Cities?”
“That was your doing, cunt!” Someone shouted, and this time I saw who it was. A young man with chestnut brown hair, barely old enough to grow hair on his face.
I locked my eyes on his and pointed directly at his chest. “Yes, yes, itwas. I was the cunt who gave the order to burn the city.” A few people turned to look at the young man, whose face had by now flushed red. “Under those black banners that are now just beyond Veldrith and Drannoc. And you know what it means if those banners move across the river and the marshes and come here?”
“You mean to burn us too?” ‘Shouted someone else now, an old woman a few rows to the left of the young man. I turned to her next, my hand still outstretched.
“I mean to stop them from coming here.”
The whole square suddenly erupted in noise – boots scraping cobblestones, fists pounding against chests, curses flung like stones from a slingshot. The platform shuddered beneath me as if the crowd’s anger had weight enough to shake the beams loose, but I held my ground, hands open at my sides.
The din only rose – furious, desperate, ragged at the seams. Someone hurled another bottle, this one striking the base of the platform and shattering in a scatter of green. A man near the front tore the scarf from his neck and waved it above his head like a banner, shouting something I couldn’t make out over the roar. For a heartbeat, I thought the crowd might surge – not with intent, but with instinct, the kind that tramples before it thinks. I didn’t step back, just raised one hand, slow and steady, trying to coax their attention again.
“Enough,” I said, louder than before and more deliberate – the word cutting through the roar of the square like a blade. The square roared only a moment longer, then started to settle, slowly and unwillingly.
“You’re lying!” Someone said, not quite a shout, but loud enough for me to hear it and people to nod. “Trying to save your own skin.”
