Beside her, Queen Zephara lounges in her throne with the bored grace of a lioness. One elbow hooks over the chair’s edge, her fingers drumming a lazy rhythmagainst the carved stone. Her mouth is a taut line as her gaze flicks over us, and the streaks of flame framing her eyes in fiery red make every look she gives feel like a slow, deliberate burn.
The guards fan out in a tight semicircle behind us, hands resting on hilts as the court’s narrowed eyes look down at us.
Dav steps forward, all sharp angles and smug obedience. He bows low at the waist, his sword jutting from his hip. “The accused stand ready.”
Solara lifts her chin and nods to the stage. The guards around us part, and the Player steps out of the shadows. She’s draped in black silk shot through with gold, and a layered necklace of orange, red, and yellow glass beads that loops down to her navel and glitters like embers.
“Good people of the Kingdom of Wands,” she begins, “lend me your ears and steady your hearts. Tonight we are offered a rare thing—a story unspooled before our very eyes, hot with disobedience and the stench of betrayal. Watch closely, for what is shown will teach us what we may keep and what we must burn away.”
She paces the lip of the stage in a careful arc, letting the beads washing down her chest clink like wind chimes. “Here kneel two whose acts have rent our script: the Story Witch and Mr. Thorne, the shadow who accompanies her. They are accused of defying your queens and this court, of abandoning their ordained performance.”
Jeers and boos rise from the crowd, and she lifts both hands to silence them.
“This, however, is not merely condemnation. This is theater made moral. We are not met here to pry at private motives. We are met to reckon the shape ofour kingdom. Shall such transgression be corrected by penance? By exile? By a far greater act of sacrifice?”
She sweeps her arms out, and the crowd answers in shouts of encouragement that make my stomach twist.
“Tonight, you will judge the form of the lesson to be taught. The center of our great kingdom is our stage, and you, the people of Wands, our actors’ greatest critics.” She finishes with a flourish, never once looking our way, folding us into the set as if we’re props. “Watch and learn the shape of mercy or, perhaps, the cost of deception.”
Torchlight picks out eager smiles and wide eyes. Children are hoisted onto shoulders as people crane their necks for a better view. The more excitement lights their faces, the colder my dread grows.
Solara rises from the dais, and her movement instantly hushes the buzz of the crowd. “What say you, sister? Are these traitors, or simply wayward performers who have mistaken our generosity for weakness?”
Zephara leans forward and purses her lips. A slow, wicked smile unfurls across her face until she seems to glow with pleasure from the thought. “Guilty,” she purrs, not so much a judgment as an appetite for spectacle.
“Hmm.” Solara taps her chin. “Tell me—why guilty and not simply naive?”
“They disrespected us, dear sister. On the night of the Festival of the First Flame, no less. Such insolence ought to be answered with consequence. And what a marvelous spectacle! I have been desperate for the pyre—a show to break up the boredom. Does not the notion delight thee, Solara?”
The pyre?!
The air in my lungs turns to ash. A chill slips downmy back, pouring icy water into my legs. This is a performance we’re not meant to survive.
“They’re going to burn us alive.” Declan stiffens, and I feel the shift roll through him like a fault line quaking beneath the surface. His shoulders go rigid, arms tense at his sides. His jaw clenches, and a vein pulses at his temple.
His wide-eyed gaze finds mine, edged with disbelief and something else. His confession is still between us like shards of broken glass, and he looks away as if his shame hurts more than whatever the queens decide.
Solara settles back into her seat and tilts her head, her mouth twisting in something like indecision. “I have not decided if death is fitting. There is cruelty in ending a life for spectacle’s sake,” she says slowly. “It has been many seasons since an act has made my heart quicken. This Story Witch, her performances seem like true magick.”
Zephara lets out a sigh and stomps her feet against the stone. “But, sister, I ambored.” A faint smile creeps up the corner of her mouth. “I wish to be entertained.”
Solara meets her sister’s petulance with an unreadable gaze. “We shall not be rash. Let the court speak its judgment.”
“Very well.” Zephara pouts. “Let the court decide. But I shall look forward to the drama.”
Solara turns toward the elders seated around the ornate thrones. “Court, speak.” Her voice lays the matter open like a book.
A murmur rises, a thousand small wagers voiced in the hush.
Something hot and bold releases in me. I’ve had enough of being a prop in other people’s stories.
“Is that how you’ll decide what happens to us?” My voice cuts across the sand. Heads whip in my direction as I rise to my feet. “You’re going to let a handful of people decide what happens to us without ever speaking to us directly?” My hands are fists at my sides. “Is this all a big performance to you?”
Zephara throws back her head and claps, delighted. “Oh, how wonderful!” she cries. “Very bold of you, Story Witch.”
A sharp, cruel laugh peals from the court. It ripples outward until the crowd takes it up, hundreds of throats returning the sound as if on cue. The echo lands on me like cold hands. Heat floods my face, and my mouth goes dry as the amphitheater narrows to that mocking sound.
It shrinks me until everything inside gets tight. The same tangled knot of anxiety I feel after launching a new class that flops, or a polished post on socials that gets three likes and one spam comment. All the rehearsing, the risk, the parts of me I lay bare reduced to someone else’s amusement.
