In the center of the open area was the platform. And in the middle, poking through the wooden planks, stood the Witch’s Well.
When Nes first came to the city, she’d foolishly thought the platform was a stage—meant for dramas and comedies people all over the continent might come to see. And the platformwasa stage. One only set for tragedies.
Guards gathered around the stacked stones. Two held a girl between them, their grip on her arms tight enough to bruise.
The accused Witch lifted her head, and Nes lost all ability to move.
Marnie stood on the platform in front of the Witch’s Well. Nes knew exactly how she’d come to stand there. Nes had walked away. Turning Marnie in was Phineas’s way of getting back at her.
A guard began speaking. She did not hear the words. She heard only Marnie’s cries. Felt her fear like it was her own. She couldn’t tear her gaze away as Marnie was thrown, screaming of innocence, into the Witch’s Well.
Nes’s knees buckled. Bent and bowed, they dropped her to the cobblestones.
Her flask clattered to the stone, and she scrambled to retrieve it. She felt like she was swimming through sand. Her hands were too slow, and every time she reached out, the crowd was there to fill the space. No one looked down. Their eyes were all on the sky, awaiting the spark of green light that would tell them finally, this time, they’d gotten it right—they’d drowned the Witch.
But they hadn’t. All they’d found was a girl desperate to live. A girl who Nes herself had taken advantage of. She’d handed Marnie over to Phineas, subsequently handing the girl her death.
She pushed her palms to the ground but couldn’t stand. Her feet weren’t there. Fabrics swished around her, squeezing her in and taking away all air. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning above water as Marnie drowned below.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t—
“Nes!”
A hand snatched up her flask. Another was on her elbow. It yanked her, pulling her up beyond the stomp of boots and the shuffle of worn leathers. Wobbling, she found her feet and stood, all the while clinging to whoever had dared reach for her.
“Nes,” the person said, “are you okay?”
She blinked against the backdrop of sunshine hanging behind her savior’s head. “Suri?”
“Are you okay?” Suri repeated.
She squeezed Suri’s arm a little harder.
“Fine,” she gasped out. She wiped at the sweat on her temple. “Just lightheaded. What are you doing here?”
Suri stood beside her, dressed from head to toe in brown. A brown button-up ran into brown leggings, and a pair of brown boots kept the color scheme together. She even had a brown scarf tying back her long, dark hair. Only her green eyes stood out against all the brown.
“On my way back to the Ditch, I got sucked into the crowd.” Suri glanced around. “You’d think they were handing out gadots by the number of people that showed up today. Is this normal?”
Nes shrugged, but it came off as more of a shiver. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t make a habit of coming to these things.”
And she’d warned Suri to avoid them, too. It had been one of the first things she’d said to Suri upon the girl’s arrival in Gadore nine months prior.
Suri stared out at the thousands of heads filling the square before her gaze landed on the guards atop the platform. Her face soured and she turned away. “I can see why.”
But Nes paused. Not on the guards around the well but on a lone guard standing by the stairs. He was tall and he wore a uniform more decorated than any city or prison guard she’d ever seen. Though he stood high enough for the whole square to see, he did not hide his expression. Despair burdened his every feature, and something flickered in her chest at the sight.
“Nes?”
She pulled her gaze from the lone guard.
Suri eyed her as she ran her fingers through her smooth ponytail. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
People began to leave the square, their eagerness fading as time revealed no green spark. She searched their faces. Plenty ofdisappointment, but not one held a hint of remorse. She shouldn’t be surprised. They used to tear infants from their mothers’ arms to drown them. Some mothers were so afraid their children would grow up to be the Witch that they threw their daughters down the well themselves.
Fear could do despicable things to a person’s heart.
She held out a hand for her flask. “I’m fine.”
