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“Jasmine?” Someone asked. I didn’t recognize her voice. “Where did I hear that name?”
“We heard it before coming here, dear,” a man replied. “She is the one they are going to execute at noon.”
“What?” I asked, my chest tightening. “What are you talking about?”
“They are announcing it all over the city,” the man explained, calmly but with a sad tone. “The queen has her.”
“We have to save her!” Aislinn said.
“How?” another man with a shrill voice asked. “Most abandoned us already. Everyone is afraid. And if the hero is captured... That means... It’s all over.”
A wave of subtle, concurring murmurs rippled through them. They were more fae here than I’d initially thought.
“No,” I said. “It can’t be. Not when we know who the hero is. We can’t give up now.”
“What do you expect us to do, son?” A man asked. I recognized him from his voice. He was the white-haired man whom I’d met at the first resistance meeting. Although the resistance did not have a leader per se, they listened when he spoke. “Attack the queen’s army, all thirty of us in here?”
I couldn’t respond to that. He was right. They would die if they did that.
“We should tell the truth,” Aislinn said beside me. “You are right. We cannot attack them. But we have to tell everyone what the queen is doing.”
“We don’t have time for that,” the white-haired man replied. “We only have a few more hours before she dies.”
“We were all ready to die trying to spread the truth,” Aislinn replied. “Now it’s time to come out of our shell and try with all our might. If we fail, we fail. But the Seelie will know that something was wrong. They will keep that knowledge inside of them until it’s time to say it out loud. Like we had. It’s time. This is it. This is what we signed up for.”
Aislinn’s voice rose toward the end. When she stopped speaking, the silence lingered for a moment longer.
I waited for them to feel it. I wanted them to.
I knew it was the right thing to do, and yet, I couldn’t be sure if they would dare to do it.
“We are singers,” someone said.
“We are singers!” a few voices rose.
“Then we should sing,” Aislinn said firmly.
And to my great relief, a loud murmur of agreement rose from the resistance.
Chapter 45: Jasmine
