Page 129 of A Time of Witches

For every daughter of the earth who ever felt the weight of judgment and persecution.

A flare of energy roared through her, feeble by comparison to what she’d possessed in the days before. But a spark still amid her draining energy.

Rain came down harder, spattering against the tinder of the pyre, slapping at Jacinda’s face.

As soon as the energy arrived, it ebbed, bleeding out.

It was too little. She could not help Sybil as she thought she might.

She was too weak.

The hot salt of her tears mingled with the rain.

Her eyes closed, yielding to the exhaustion.

“Wait.”

Her eyes flew open at the familiar voice. At the direction the cry had come from.

She looked to the forest and her heart leaped.

Finally.

Kat had arrived.

Chapter Sixty-Four

Sybil

“Wait.”

A woman’s voice lifted on the wind, carrying over the crowd, high and clear.

Sybil followed the magistrate’s gaze as Kat strode over Thingoe Hill, a dark-haired woman behind her.

Anne?

Sybil’s heart seized as she regarded her maid. Why was she here?

Kat braced herself against the savage gusts, her red hair blowing back from her fierce expression, black skirts snapping behind her. She looked like wrath itself come to exact vengeance. “Ye have committed a great sin, Robert Walsingham.”

“The magistrate is not on trial,” Matthew Hopkins said in a bored drawl.

The guards moved forward, but he lifted a single hand to stop them. The crowd loved a spectacle. No doubt Kat would use that to her advantage as readily as Hopkins and Walsingham.

Sybil shifted her feet on the uneven logs, tamping down the hope that dared flicker to life.

“Walsingham ought to be on trial,” Kat snapped. “It is his fault Sybil Brantham is on this pyre.”

“This woman is a witch, and her death comes at no one’s fault, save her own.” Hopkins swept his hand at Kat in a dismissive gesture. “Enough of this. Let us proceed.”

“You cannot.” This time Anne spoke, screaming into the wind, her dark locks wildly blowing about her.

Kat nudged her forward.

The guards moved tentatively as well.

Anne staggered closer and looked first to Sybil, then out at the crowd. “She is innocent. If anyone is to be killed this day… it is me.”