Prologue
Kieran, aged 12
It was cold up here at the front.
My simple jacket did nothing against the wind that whipped through the open courtyard. The seats behind me were unmanned.
Deliberately so.
To isolate us.
Beside me, Mother kept her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed straight ahead. I wanted her to look at me.
To see I was there, grieving beside her.
But she wouldn’t turn. So I held my hands firm in my own lap. I kept my back straight.
And I dried my tears.
Her black dress and veil shifted in the wind like living shadows.
In her hands she clenched her wedding ring tightly, twisting it around and around.
She wouldn’t look away from him.
Neither could I.
Levi Hawthorne — my father — looked nothing like the man I knew.
His skin was thin, stretched tight over bone, as though they had starved him down to a wraith of himself. He wore rags, loose threads tugged by the wind. Old bruises darkened his face, layered over one another like history.
Still, he watched us with dry, defiant eyes. He said nothing.
And I knew they would take him from us, just as they had taken everything else—our home, our power, even our hope.
Nineteen other men stood beside him, bruised and bloodied but still defiant, their silence louder than any plea.
The ropes around their necks hung loose. For now.
All of them watched the platform. Watched the lever.
Some trembled. Some wept quietly. But no one begged. There would be no point.
We all waited for that final moment—the second the lever would fall and everything would end.
And then Gideon Quinn appeared.
I straightened in my seat. I did not blink.
I watched every step, every gesture.
He wore a fine suit, wool tailored to perfection over a white silk shirt.
I clenched my threadbare sleeve in my fist.
His shoes shone even beneath the grey sky. His blond hair was styled tight, not a single strand out of place. Around his neck hung the white and gold scarf of the Order.
He smiled.
