They aren’t God.They’re just men.
Blade up, I charge.
THIRTY-EIGHT
GWENNA
“Morgan!”I scream so hard my throat burns.
Her head jerks up, swiveling blankly around. “Gwenna?”
“Tais-toi.” The Brother on her left tugs at a chain and Morgan lurches toward him, giving an unearthly cry of pain. Only then do I see what it’s connected to: shackles, inlaid with spikes. Her bare ankles.
“No!” I start crying all over again.God, no, no, no, please, kill me, take me, just don’t hurt my friend, don’t hurt this girl who’s wise and witty and beautiful and nice even when she really doesn’t need to be, please,please.
The Brother at my back shoves me forward.
“Kneel.”
“What are you doing to her?” I try to turn around, but their hands force my shoulders square, to the massive facade of the chapel, the granite faces of saints and the thin pinnacle arching above them.
“What are you doing to her?”
By way of answer, he slams me to the ground, to my knees. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Now they take the blindfold off of Morgan. And when they do, her eyes are wild, terrified like I’ve never seen them.
Do something, I think.Cast a spell. Hex them. Call down a thunderbolt or something.I know she can’t, know I’m being ridiculous, but at the same time I cannot bear to see her like this, my competent, confident best friend on the verge of tears.
The prior-at-arms sweeps into my field of view, blocking her from sight.
“She will confess,” comes his voice from behind the mask. Me. He means me. “She will confess to all her sins.”
Me. He means me.
From deep in his robes, he produces something: a long sheet of paper, covered in neat rows of text.
“She will answer,” he goes on. “And when she has finished, the witch will be released.”
Okay. Okay. I nod, almost eager, happy to do it.Anything you want.
“Gwenna!” Morgan’s voice ricochets across the stones. “Don’t. Whatever they ask you to?—”
The rest of her words are lost in a rattle of iron shackles and a cry of pain.
No. I’ll do it. I can do it, I can say whatever they need me to say. I don’t know what will happen after that or where the four of them are or how much longer I’m even going to live. But if it’ll save Morgan, I can do it.
The prior extends the paper, and, heart racing, I take it.
The words are small. Script, precise but cramped, and between adrenaline and my shaking hands and the pain of my knees on the cold flagstones it’s hard for me to make out exactly what it says.
“She will confess!” the prior says.
“Confess!” The Brothers speak as one, a rumbling chorus of deep voices. “Confess!”
“Just…give me a second,” I cry, a tremor in my voice. I swallow, tense my hands to force them from shaking, and train my eyes onto the top. But I can’t. I can’t read. I’m too nervous, too frantic, too?—
The paper is snatched from my hands.
