“Something changed in him after he killed the Witch,” the King had explained when Toran had again asked why the King hadn’t chosen Fell for this mission. “I noticed it the second he walked through those doors, dragging you along behind him. His ambition had shifted. No longer did he care about the Guard or even, I suspect, serving his country. Instead, his every motivation, every thought, centered around the Witch and killing her.”
“All the more reason to have him hunt down the Witch now,” Toran had said.
The King had shaken his head. “You are more than Kohen’s Crown to me, Toran. You’re like one of my own sons.”
For years growing up, Toran had longed to hear such words. As a child, he’d always thought of the King as his father, though he had never dared say so out loud.
“But Fell—”
The King’s hand had come down on his shoulder, cupping it tight. “Captain Fell isn’t the one I trust with my life.”
In his detoxing state, he hadn’t been able to sift out the King’s meaning. “I don’t understand. What does one have to do with the other?”
“I want you to treat the Witch’s life like you would my own,” King Harkett had said. “That is to say, I want you to bring her to me alive. I’ll decide her fate from there.”
Her fate. As if a Witch could have any fate other than death. The last week of drownings was proof of that. The people of Orlonea would never feel safe knowing the Witch still lived.
Continent-wide famine, towns split in two, mountains flattened, lush land stripped of life—all disasters caused by Witches past. Even the current Witch had blood on her hands. Twelve years ago, the Witch had used her power to create a crack in the Disputed Land between Orlonea and Aeos, large and wide enough to swallow more than a hundred soldiers whole.
The people would never trust the Witch.
Marnie screamed.
A guard with bright red hair stepped forward, official document in hand. The entire square recognized it, worn and ripped around the edges as it was. The Condemnation of the Witch. Its beginning contained the only words the Brotherhood was certain had come from the lost holy book of Nephele.
“The Goddess is good. She is powerful. Such power belongs to her and her alone,” the red-haired guard read aloud, her voice so clear no one, not even those in the very back of the square, would mistake the words from the holy text. The guard paused a moment before continuing to read the additions the Brotherhood had written. “For anyone else to use it is a crime. Not just against the people of this country but against the Goddess herself. For this reason, we hunt the Witch. For the Goddess, we find the Witch and bring her to justice!”
The guard gestured to the trembling Marnie behind her. “Is this the Witch?”
The crowd answered with a roar that shook Toran’s bones. People stomped their feet and raised their fists. The combined force shook the platform. Shook him.
“It’s not me!” Marnie cried. Her expression was wild, near hysterical. Her eyes bounced around the crowd, searching for an ally, but all that stared back were the narrowed lids of the fearful. She would have found more pity in the cobblestones under their feet. “I’m not the Witch!”
“Marnie Sorphel, you are accused of being the Witch. Of stealing the power of creation from the very Goddess who gave this land life, gave us all life, and using it for your own benefit. For this crime, like all the Witches that came before you, you are sentenced to death.”
“Please,” Marnie begged. Her pleading would do no good. No accused survived once dragged up to the platform. “Believe me.”
Toran did. But his beliefs didn’t matter.
“The water at the bottom of this well,” the guard continued, “will take your life. In doing so, may it also take the magic from your body and return it to our almighty Goddess.”
With that, the red-haired guard stepped back, her head bowed as she followed Fell off the platform. Two other guards brought Marnie forward. She was weeping now, her body shaking so fiercely she could have been buzzing.
Toran shut his eyes.
In his mind, he saw a woman drowning in a great, still lake—black even in the daylight—and then the memory shifted into his darkest imaginings. He saw the roiling, storm-rocked ocean, bright against flashes of lightning. He saw Loriana. She called for him, screaming at the death that hovered close. At the waves that knocked her head against her knees, at the ocean that latched on to her and refused to let go.
The water waiting at the bottom of this well—having slithered through the ground from the sea—was no different from that which had taken his fiancée. It was eager, patient, hungry. It would swallow Marnie just as it had Loriana.
He opened his eyes. A blur of unshed tears covered them. He rubbed it away.
Marnie’s feet slid out from under her and she hung, still shaking, between the guards.
Toran was shaking, too. He couldn’t watch this. Not if he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t just want a drink anymore. He needed one.
But Toran watched as the guards dragged Marnie, her chained ankles twisting at odd angles as her toes caught the floor. Gripping her arms tight, they lifted her and hauled her over the circle of stones.
It took only a second for Marnie to be tossed over the edge. Her head went first, then her torso and hands, and finally her feet. Only a second for her fall, to vanish into the blackness of the well.
