So many people …
So many pairs ofeyesthat it’s hard to convince myself they can’t all see through my cracks. Can’t see the lie in the way I’m leaning into Cainon’s chest, or in the soft smile I pass him when he plants a too-hot kiss upon my ear.
I almost expect somebody to stand up and scream it. To call me out.
To sow seeds of doubt in Cainon’s mind that prevent me from saving those poor, innocent people trapped in his father’s burrow.
Cainon pulls our horse to a stop beside a stone podium draped in billowing blue curtains trimmed with gold thread. He leaps off, then reaches up and helps me down.
I barely feel him grip my waist, or my shoes setting upon the stone. Barely feel his hand press against my back, ushering me up the stairs, into the podium’s sheltered cove high above the ground.
We move to the balustrade where we look out across the crowd still compacting into the square, parallel lines of armed, stony-faced guards keeping them from filling a path of empty space between us and the obscured structure.
The crowd erupts—booing, yelling, screaming obscenities at a person being dragged by two burly soldiers.
My heart dives.
What is this?
The prisoner’s head is concealed with a sack loosely tied around their neck, making them blind to the fruits and vegetables being hurled their way. They ricochet off the guards’ armor, but the prisoner flinches every time one finds its mark.
My stomach threatens to turn itself inside out as threads of understanding begin to weave together.
This is not a regular gift.
I maintain my passive act, gripping hold of the balustrade to prevent my knees from crumbling as Cainon steps up behind me, then sets his hands on either side of my own—ensnaring me. I suck a tight breath, my heart thundering so hard I fear he might hear it.
“This is all for you, petal.”
I tilt my head to look at him. “Me?”
His eyes are wide, his smile bright and expectant as he nods.
My stare slides to a stack of arrows with blue fletching, their heads cushioned by bounds of white material—perhaps to protect the arrowheads from hurting anyone by accident.
They remind me of the chrysalides I used to find on the milkweed back at Castle Noir. I’d snap them at the stem, tote armfuls up my tower, and set them in a vase to keep them fresh so I could watch the butterflies hatch. I found such joy in seeing them fly for the first time, then flutter out one of my open windows.
I cling to the happy memory with trembling fists as the drape is torn off in a ripple of blue, revealing a pyre standing proud in the center of the square, constructed from hay, branches, and a tall log.
Muscles tensing, I fight to control the tremor threatening to cleave me down the middle as the prisoner is bound to the wooden pole.
A hush falls over the crowd.
The bone-chilling silence haunts me, muscles tensing, Rhordyn’s words booming in my ears like a thunderstorm:
Things are done differently here. That boundary is only ever cut into when they’re preparing to burn someone at the stake.
The memory of potent, charred flesh blasts the back of my throat as the sack is yanked off, revealing a man with golden skin, sandy hair, and azure eyes that find me instantly—sharpened with pain and fear, darkening with ire.
My blood runs cold.
Vanth.
Istep back from the balustrade, trembling hands outstretched, like they will somehow shield me from the scene.
Cainon takes my wrist, turns me to face him, and I gasp when he places a longbow in my hand, staring at the lofty arc of polished wood.
A terrible awareness blooms beneath my ribs …
