Page 114 of A Time of Witches

A metallic taste rose in the back of her throat, polluting each word, each swallow, with the tinny taste of fear.

Her lashes fluttered and the world dimmed. There was not enough strength in her to think of such horrors.

Thoughts of Dido from Heroides filled her mind. How the independent widow had given herself to a lover who had cruelly betrayed her. Sybil’s love had been the townspeople, and they too betrayed her.

Through the course of that mockery of a trial, judgment was meted out with an unfair hand. The punishment would be exacted with haste. The lot of them would die the following day.

The remaining six score prisoners would be tried within a sennight.

Sybil and the others condemned to die were broken off from the rest, stuffed into a smaller cell, mixing the seventeen women with the two men. This was a kindness to the Everard couple who had been separated into cages opposite one another these last several difficult weeks. They fell into one another’s arms and held tight. The rest of the prisoners turned their gazes away, as much for privacy as for the inability to bear the envy of such comfort in those final hours.

For the rest were a miserable lot indeed.

Destined for death, devoid of all hope. Alone.

Some wailed their misery, some begged the guards to let them out, bargaining with all their world possessions. Some, like Margery, wept for what they would lose in death, for her inability to ever see her beloved husband again.

Mary Bacon’s husband had continued to fight for her release and had been arrested that day, now contained in the men’s cell. So close and still so far. She wept with pity for him and hope that their son might make his way to the New World, to be free of such unfair persecution.

The old vicar bore the weight of everyone’s pain on his frail shoulders. He prayed until he was hoarse, and then he kept on until his voice was thready and breaking.

And some, like Sybil, sat in quiet regret.

Regret that she had not told Jacinda the truth when she was younger, that she missed so many moments of her life, observed as a sister rather than relished as a mother.

Regret that she would not walk upon the cool moonlit grass once more, that the powerful energy of the earth would remain forever silent, muted by heavy iron shackles.

Regret that she would never again feel the sun’s glory warm upon her face, its radiance reflected in her soul.

Sybil had read once that the last moments of life were brilliant and vivid and meant to be savored.

Except in the prison, they were surrounded by starvation and the promise of death.

Sybil remained awake through the night. Nearly all of them did, save for the few who were so exhausted, they could not stop their eyes from closing. Silver moonlight crested and she wished she could stretch high enough to reach the window, to breathe in the freshness of the night air.

Eventually, sunlight peered into the cell, spilling golden light on the righteous. The wrongfully accused.

The other prisoners had received their rations that morning, but the barrel-chested guard approached them empty-handed. “No use in feeding the dead. But if you have kin and they’ve come, you’ll be called to see them.”

Though they would die with hunger rasping in their bellies, the small mercy to see their loved ones was an expected and precious gift.

And it meant that Sybil would be allowed to speak with Jacinda one final time. To finally confess the words that had been building in her heart for the entirety of Jacinda’s life:

I am your mother.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Lilith

Lilith reread the last line of the grimoire.

No matter what happens, seek solace in the honeysuckle grove.

She knew that clearing, recalling how the night before, it had been awash in moonlight, brimming with an unmistakable hum of power—otherworldly.

Was that where she needed to go?

The candles flickered and went out abruptly, before she’d even left the room.