He wanted to shout at Theodore to kill Tanner now, to fill his lungs with water and have him silently drown. “Nina! Get up!”
But Theodore only watched Patrick with wide, fearful eyes, and Nina did not lift her head to read Patrick’s face.
And before them, with a smile as crooked as the devil, Tanner lowered his hand, his conquest won. “Very well,” he said to Nina. He sighed as though she were a child in the last throes of hysterics. He turned to the man at the lever. “Let her down,” he said, good-natured now, waving his hand flippantly.
But the lever was pulled.
The trapdoor opened.
And Rose Harrow fell, the snap of her neck rallying over the courtyard.
CHAPTER ELEVENNINA
I saw a glimmer of relief touch my mother’s face.
“Let her down,” Tanner said, and there it came, lifting her eyelids from their closed reprieve, slackening her jaw. Together we let loose a gust of breath. My chest expanded.Yes, I thought.Let her down.
She fell.
The moment the trapdoor swung away, the relief in Rose’s eyes fled. There was only confusion as she sank through, then a pop, her spine disengaging at the neck. The wooden beams creaking as she swung.
And my throat seemed to collapse on itself.
And then Patrick was there, somehow freed of the soldiers who’d restrained him. He dove under the platform, his hands still bound, and looped his arms under my mother’s shoes and lifted her torso. The soldiers were slow to follow. Patrick had her neck freed of the rope before they reached him. She toppled into the dirt below, Patrick feeling along her blue-veined neck for a pulse, yelling something to her.
Even from a distance, I knew it was too late. Her body was limp, as though the noose had stripped free her soul. Her final confusion, though, remained. It lingered in death, her eyes forever half fearful, half deceived.
Tanner looked stunned, as though his own words hadn’t ordered her death. As though he had not, seconds before, read to her the words of his god.
My mother was dead.
My eyes swam until Tanner’s face dissolved. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and shouted, hollowing my chest until it protested.
Was it a crime worthy of death, to have been my mother?
And there was Tanner, who had called me a weapon, a knife, a piece of scum. I saw his face on the walls of Scurry pubs peppered with darts and gobs of spit. I saw his name in textbooks and on scribbles meant to frighten me. I saw him standing over me in a long line of men who had stood over me, bending my will until I broke.
Patrick gave up on the corpse and came not to me, but to Theo, his teeth bared. “Do it!” he shouted to Theo. “DO IT!”
I barely heard him.
I stood. My hands lifted of their own accord.
I watched Tanner’s face turn ashen, then afraid.
And I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated him.
If I’d had fire at hand, I’d have scorched him alive. With wood, he’d be staked. But I was a Charmer of earth, and so I’d bury him. Let the worms and beetles consume him down to the bone.
Patrick saw my intent first. His bright eyes turned fraught. His lips formed the shape of my name. He began to rush toward me.
It was Lord Shop who stood in his way, and at the exact same moment, the ground shuddered as though in warning.
But there was no earthquake. Only specks of earth lifting from underfoot, from every corner of the courtyard. Tiny particles I could feel with my mind. A rising dust storm.
The rain ebbed, as though it, too, watched on in awe. A billion flecks of dirt, freestanding in midair, awaiting my command.
The lords looked all around, mouths open.
