Adelaide’s eyes were on Falstaff. They were puffy and pink, the markers of tears trailing her face like the line of a snail on a cabbage leaf. There were three of her now, my vision distorted by tears. Three crooked Adelaides, their edges blurred and bent.
The three of them swept their gaze across the crowd of men baying for blood, a longing in them, as if awaiting one last chance of mercy. Anything. A crumb. A morsel of it.
I unlatched my pinched fingers still clasped to his arm and reached for my stomach, nails digging into the wool as if I could claw it open, reach inside, and give her my blessing—pry it from the very core of me where it hid like a coward. Instead, I was useless. All of us,useless.
Demetri’s cries, his curses, his threats, wove with their cheers, their baying, theirdemands.
With a small nod, she sniffed, rolling her shoulders and lifting her chin as she met Falstaff’s veil. He crawled closer, blade winking in the candelabra’s light. The acolytes pried her armswide, like the owl upon the Doors of Judgement, her sleeves hanging like wings.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
Don’t look.
Lycandor’s hand drifted from my mouth to my eyes, eyes I’d only just closed. He coaxed them open, nudging at my lashes with his finger.
“Look,” he murmured, helm bent. “We must look.”
Though his grip relaxed, I didn’t run. To her. Or Demetri. I stayed, like adog, or a tree, or a godsdamned relic. It was inevitable. Always inevitable. And there wasn’t a damned thing we could do.
Falstaff made the first slice.
Her ears first, one after the other, thrown to the floor like offcuts. The acolytes supported her arms, refusing to let her slump to her knees. Thesounds… Unable to speak, she gargled, the agonies trapped in her chest, stoppered by her throat. The sisters observed unflinchingly, the sheen of tears filling some of their eyes, all of them watching, like we all did. All except the one with her back to us, tending to the babes who gaped with open mouths, uncomprehending of what horrors they witnessed.
Someone should cover their eyes. I wish someone would have covered mine.
Her lips next, then eyelids, falling to the ground like down from a pillow. A puddle of blood spread around her feet, dripping from the weeping holes in her face, her ears, her mouth. The urge to crawl inside Lycandor’s armour, despite everything, or to bury my face in Demetri’s chest, was overwhelming.
But I did neither.
I looked. And I looked. And I looked. Each part of her taken adding to the tally etched in my bones: the dues of Falstaff, thedues of the High Druid, the dues of the Dendralis, and perhaps, the dues of Lycandor himself.
They left her hands for last, small and chubby, like they’d always been, sliced from her body by two pairs of druids, armed with swords, not scalpels. It wouldn’t be long now. Not with how much blood had drained from her, the pool of it glistening on the marble. It spread outwards, reaching for our toes like a plague.
“Druid Vetrius,” his father commanded from his perch.
With a parting squeeze, Lycandor left me, unsheathing the long sword at his back without pause. The acolytes tugged at the knot at her throat, her scarf unravelling to drape over her shoulders. Shoulders that were limp, her life flowing from her with every weak throb of her heart.
In the space of two blinks, Lycandor severed her head from her neck in one clean swipe. My hand reached for my throat, brushing over the place where the kiss of his blade had parted her flesh. I forced my eyes wide, lips trembling with the effort to keep them open.
Look.
Look.
We must look.
It rolled, tumbling back until her head lost momentum, the pad of her pocked cheek resting upon the marbled stone underfoot. Her boxy headdress, now crimson with blood, had fallen to the wayside. Brown, brambled hair, the front of it plaited, haloed around her. I’d taught her how to do that a long time ago. She’d styled it that morning. A secret braid, one only for her. Lidless, her brown eyes glowed, the pall of death not enough to rob them of their gleam. In them was the child who’d begged us to let her join us in the meadows, who’d made me flower crowns of daisies, their petals half crushed and bruised by her small, clumsy hands.
Her mouth was all teeth, lipless and scissored, the flesh like torn fabric, ripped crudely by hands instead of the neatness of shears. It was still beautiful, though. It was still Adelaide.
A hollow carved into my stomach. A deep, dark, cavernous thing.
Staring, I waited—for the disgust, the terror, more of thetears. But no more came. I gazed upon the ruins of her face and feltnothing, so similar to that strange dream I’d had, all those phases ago.The one with the raindrop. The voice. The abyss.Come. Crawl. Climb.It was tempting to fall into it. To fall and never wake up.
A hush descended, all of us struck silent as sisters.
“And now, the dues of the murderer responsible. How do you plead?”
