The executioner's voice droned on above them, naming the day and hour someone uncovered her “sins”, recounting how neighbors claimed to see sparks dancing across her fingertips.
A man in the crowd—a merchant possibly, judging by his fine coat—leaned toward another and muttered, “Whispers, they said. Whispers in her sleep. The flame spoke back.”
My fingers twitched toward my arm, right over the place where the mark lay hidden beneath my sleeve. Bare skin under my touch. I could still feel it—that ember-deep thrum, like a sleeping heartbeat curled in my bones.
I looked at Erindor. He was already staring at me. A moment of raw, unspoken terror passed between us—recognition neither of us dared to name.
The bell tolled.
I tore my gaze away just as the executioner adjusted the rope. The woman stood barefoot, her hair shorn to the scalp, bruises mottling her thin arms. She was little more than bone under her torn robes. She didn’t plead. Didn’t fight. Only closed her eyes as if she’d already gone somewhere far away.
The bell tolled again.
Erindor stepped in front of me, blocking my view. I still heard it. The creak of wood, the brutal snap as the floor fell away, the rope swinging. And then the sound of cheering.
My breath hitched. The noise was too loud; the air too tight. My eyes burned hot, tears already forming in my eyelids.
Erindor’s hand found mine, firm and grounding. He leaned closer, his voice low enough that only I could hear. “Breathe, Princess. Walk with me. One step at a time.”
He didn’t let go as he guided me out of the crowd, cutting a path through the crush of bodies until the shouts faded behind us. We passed under a narrow archway where damp ivy clung to the stone, but it gave no comfort. Even the plants here seemed to grow under orders.
He looked at me with a hint of worry in his eyes. “You’re safe,” he murmured, though his tone carried the weight of someone who knew safety here was a fragile thing.
“She was fire-touched,” I said eventually. “Like me.”
His eyes flicked to me. Then away. “No. That was something else.”
I stopped walking. “How do you know?”
He turned to face me fully. “Because what you carry doesn’t want destruction. It wants…something else. Something sacred. And you didn’t steal it. You bloomed into it.”
Words died in my throat, replaced by the chilling phantom touch of a rope and the constricting grip of fear. What if they saw it in me?
We continued to walk. The farther we went, the more the noise thinned into distant echoes, replaced by the steady rhythm of our boots on stone and the hiss of wind funneling between the buildings.
I kept my head down, but he stayed close. Half-step between me and anyone who passed too near. His fingers brushed against mine again, not quite holding this time, but lingering, as if to remind me they were still there.
My breath snagged, and he eased his pace until our steps fell into a shared rhythm.
“Look at me,” he said low and firmly.
A prickle of resistance ran through me, yet I complied. His eyes, unwavering and stark, locked onto mine.
“They cheer because they don’t understand,” he murmured, softer now. “But you do. And that’s not weakness, Wyn—it’s the reason you’ll survive this.”
The knot in my chest loosened. His words sank deeper than I wanted to admit, warm and heavy, settling somewhere I couldn’t quite name.
We turned down a sloping lane that spilled onto a quieter path at the base of the hill. Sunlight filtered between tall stone walls, catching on the wet ivy clinging there, droplets still slipping from the morning rain. The air smelled faintly of brine.
“In here,” he said, nodding toward a narrow archway. “We’ll cut through, and it will take us to the meeting point.”
The meeting point was a place my nerves had been too raw to approach earlier.
In the arch's shade, he slowed again, his voice a near-whisper. “One more breath,” he said. “Then we face the others.”
I nodded, drawing in air until the tremor in my hands eased.
Before I could step forward, his hand rose hesitantly, and he brushed the side of my face, his calloused fingertips skimming from my temple down to the line of my jaw. It was fleeting, nothing more than a touch, but it rooted me in place. His eyes searched mine, as if he was making sure I’d truly come back to myself.
