They lined the walls, the rooftops, the spaces between buildings.Mothers held children on their hips.Old men leaned on walking sticks.
Two guards—men who had once bowed when he passed and now looked at him like meat.One carried a cloth.The other carried nothing, which meant his hands would do the work.
"The Okpalaeze has been found guilty," the first guard announced.His voice carried, meant for the crowd as much as the prisoner."Of treason against the Borjigin people.Of cowardice before the enemy.Of selling a member of the Imperial family to save his own skin.The sentence is death."
The crowd murmured.Approval, mostly.A few voices raised in protest—those who had loved his father, who remembered when Somadina's name meant something other than shame—but they were drowned quickly.
"The method," the guard continued, "was chosen by the Khatun of the Valthorne.May her reign be long."
He stepped forward.
Somadina's eyes went wide."Wait—wait, I demand to see her—I demand—"
The cloth cut him off.
It was rough, untreated, designed to absorb rather than repel.They pressed it over his face—his nose, his mouth, the desperate gasping holes through which he tried to draw air.And then the second guard picked up the bucket.
The first splash was warm.
Somadina's body went rigid.His scream was muffled by the cloth.He thrashed against his bonds, but they held.
The crowd watched.
Some laughed.Some turned away.
The bucket emptied.The cloth came away.Somadina gasped, choked, spat, vomited—adding his own filth to the filth already coating him.His chest heaved.His eyes streamed tears that could not wash away what he had breathed.
"Again," said the guard.
They did it four times.
By the end, Somadina was not screaming anymore.He was not even crying.He simply hung in his bonds, limp and broken, his chest rising and falling in shuddering gasps that brought more filth into his lungs with every breath.The bucket sat empty beside him, its contents now coating his face, his hair, and the ground beneath him.
The guards looked at each other.Nodded.
The prince was hanged at the city gates, his death ultimately by hanging.
She never came.
Somadina's eyes, bulging and bloodshot, sought her in the crowd until the very end.He scanned faces as he rose, searched the windows as he swung, and looked for her even as the darkness closed in.She would come.She had to come.She was the only one who mattered, the only one whose eyes he wanted on him, the only one whose contempt had always felt like attention, and attention from her was the only thing that had ever made him feel real.
She did not come.
He had wanted, so desperately, to make her look at him.
He died still wanting.
Chapter 41
Theendofaman would always be his own lasciviousness, and Ragnar Valthorne had figured he had already met his end.
The old ancestral shrine was silent.
Ragnar walked through the corridors alone.Usually Nkiru would be there to announce his arrival, but the girl was still recovering from her injuries and Azul preferred her to sleep her time away.
So this was just him, and her.
He found her in her room by the window, her little snake taking up all walking space on the floor.
