The judge climbed onto the stage as the executioner secured the noose around Jonas’s neck. “The accused is found guilty of the crimes of murder and treason. His sentence is death.”
Jonas grimaced and continued searching through the crowd. Enne’s stomach tightened. He was waiting for help, she realized, but they had no plan this time.
“The accused is given an opportunity to confess or bring forward names in an attempt to lighten their sentence.” The judge cleared his throat. “I’ve been told you intend to bring forward information. Is that correct?”
Jonas nodded.
A dreadful feeling settled into Enne’s stomach.
There’s no information in New Reynes that I don’t already know, Jonas had told her the day she visited him.Or that I can’t find out.
“Speak your confession for the crowd,” the judge told him.
“I know the identity of Séance,” he said. Though his voice was hoarse, Enne heard him perfectly, and her blood ran cold in her veins.
Once the city knew her name, it wouldn’t be long before they knew her face. And she would never walk freely again.
Levi gripped her shoulder tightly in warning, but Enne’s fingers were already reaching for her gun. Jonas hadn’t damned her, not yet.
Levi wrenched her arm down before she could aim, his expression livid.
Maybe it really was instinct. Maybe she really was a monster.
But he didn’t scold her for that. “You’ll be telling the whole crowd you’re here,” he hissed. She would’ve preferred him to curse at her with hatred, notthis. This cold, unfeeling logic.
“So what do we do?”
“We do nothing.”
She shouldn’t push him—his best friend was dead. He wasn’t himself. So Enne swallowed down her nerves and turned her attention back to the stage, where Jonas was working himself up to speak again.
“Her name is Enne Salta,” Jonas declared.
A murmur passed through the crowd, and Enne winced at the sound of it. She could no longer hide behind a mask. She had come close to considering Jonas an ally, but with five words, he was leading her into ruin.
My only ulterior motive is curiosity, he’d lied.
“Come on,” Levi hissed, sliding his hand into hers and shoving through the crowd, and Enne was too dazed to think anything of his touch. Soon, the wigheads would search her records. They would dig up her life in Bellamy. Her old classmates would stare at her face on the front page of their newspapers and not remember who she was. Her home would be searched, her belongings looted. Everything about her life would be on public display.
“The sentence stands,” the judge said, taking a step back to join the executioner.
“Wait,” Jonas rasped. Enne was no longer looking at the stage—she was pushing, ducking, stumbling her way toward the edge of Liberty Square, her one hand in Levi’s, her other still squeezing her gun. “There’s more.”
Enne cursed Jonas’s desperation. There was nothing he could say that would save him—the wigheads were determined to have a victory today. He was only committing more betrayals, and any remorse she’d felt over his death had long vanished.
“Enne Salta isn’t her true name,” Jonas said. “And I’m not sure what is.”
Do you have other secrets I should know about?
Her heart leaped into her throat. She made a split-second decision to break away from Levi, lunging for the closest bench and climbing on top of it. Although she stood behind the crowd, the whiteboots and civilians focused on the gallows, she was still in plain sight. She could be seen.
But the other option was worse.
“Then it’s no help to us,” the judge said gruffly. The executioner reached for the lever, and Enne aimed her gun, hoping the executioner would pull first.
“No—I’m not done. I don’t know her name, but I know her talent,” Jonas gasped.
Enne fired, but a moment too late. The crowd screamed, but not before Enne made out Jonas Maccabees’s last words.
