I went still.
“I was a boy. Fifteen, maybe. Angry. Alone. He found me like that.” His voice wasn’t bitter. “I did things I’m not proud of. Things I’ll never be proud of.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t press. But he must’ve felt the way my breath caught.
“I’m not ready to talk about it,” he added, his voice quieter now. “Not all of it. Not yet.”
I turned my head slightly toward him. “Okay.”
“But I will,” he said. “One day. I’ll tell you everything. I just…need you to let me do it in pieces.”
I nodded. “That’s enough.”
And it was.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wynessa
Caerthaine was different.
The air was damp, as if it had just rained, even though the sky was clear. The streets grew narrower, darker. Buildings leaned in too close, their windows shut tight. A ceremonial bell tolled somewhere beyond the rooftops. Dull and echoing. A sound meant for endings.
Erindor slowed his pace beside mine. He said nothing as he looked in the direction the bell tolled.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Execution bell.”
I gave a slow, disbelieving blink. “Execution?”
He nodded.
The road bent around a corner, the narrow lane opened into a vast stone square, and I understood.
A crowd had gathered. Dozens of people, all quiet, all watching.
At the center stood a raised platform—the gallows, weathered and straightforward. Beneath it, guards in slate-blue cloaks stood with halberds in hand, their helms shaped like curling waves. Their silver breastplates bore the crest of Kaelor, the god of water: a moon cradled in a rising tide, and the primary godworshipped in Caerthaine.
But the figure on the platform was not waterborne. She stood in what remained of torn white robes, her wrists bound tight with fraying rope. Someone had hacked her hair short and uneven; tufts stuck out like broken reeds. Bruises mottled her skin in sickly shades of purple and yellow, and grime clung to every hollow of her thin frame. She looked starved, with her cheekbones jutting sharp, collarbones like drawn bowstrings. Ash and dried blood marked her bare feet. A sign hung from her neck: “WILD FIRE–FALSE GIFTED”
The air was forced from my lungs in a sudden rush, matching the unexpected, absolute silence that descended upon the square.
A hush fell over the square.
“False gifted…” I whispered, but it came out broken. “But…that’s not her fault.”
“No,” he said. “It never is.”
The woman on the platform was young, maybe no older than Jasira. She held her chin high, but her whole body trembled. A priest stood behind her with a bowl of sea salt and a twisted piece of coral, symbols of Kaelor. He spoke a prayer I couldn’t understand. The water gifted of Caerthaine believed in control more than anything else. In grief channeled, not worn. In silence and tradition. In drowning, no one can guide.
And fire…fire was everything they feared.
The executioner stepped forward, his voice a chilling pronouncement, cutting through the murmuring crowd. “By order of the Crown, this woman stands guilty of consorting with wildfire—of harboring imbalance within her blood and soul. Witnesses attest she spoke in her sleep of surviving flame without injury, of hearing it whisper to her. The court sentences her to death for these crimes.”
Wyn’s stomach turned. “They kill for rumors?” she whispered.
Erindor didn’t look away from the platform. “In Caerthaine, they kill for imbalance.”
