He lunged forward and threw me into the cell, the iron on my ankles catching on the threshold.
I hit the floor hard. My knees cracked against the unforgiving stone, sending a jolt of white-hot pain through my hips, but I barely registered the agony. As I scrambled to my knees, I moved toward the shadows near the shared wall.
Without a word, I reached for the narrow gap in the masonry and slid the keys through the crack. I hoped he saw them. I hoped he understood that even if I was headed for the block, I would not leave him to the same fate.
The heavy iron door slammed shut, the lock clicking with a sound that felt like the final nail in my coffin. I stayed there on the floor, my forehead pressed against the freezing concrete.
The shadows in the corners of my eyes seemed to mock me, flickering with a life I would soon lose.
I had hours.
Only a few turns of the glass until the light left the sky and the axe took the rest.
I curled into a ball, my blunt nails digging into my palms until I drew blood from my dried-up gash, waiting in the silence for a miracle that felt miles away.
42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The iron doors of the manor were flung open with a reverberating crash that echoed into the storm, and the night answered as if summoned.
Rain descended in sheets, a relentless curtain of silver that blurred the world beyond the threshold into a shifting haze.
The air was so cold it burned as it entered my lungs.
I barely had time to steady myself before hands seized me.
Fingers twisted into the fabric of my tunic and wrenched hard, and the floor vanished beneath my feet. I was thrown forward into the downpour, my body striking the rain-slick stone with a jarring crack that sent shock rippling up my spine. My knees slid, skin scraping, palms scrambling for purchase as the threshold gave way beneath the torrent.
For a moment, I remained on my hands and knees, rain hammering against my bowed head, soaking through cloth and skin until I could not tell where the storm ended and I began. Myhair clung to my face in thick strands, water slipping down the curve of my jaw and dripping from my quivering chin.
Slowly, I lifted my head.
The plaza stretched before me, transformed into a living, heaving mass of bodies and torchlight. The flames hissed and spat beneath the assault of rain, casting fractured amber light across thousands of faces turned in my direction.
A thousand eyes.
A thousand judgments.
The guards hauled me upright, their grips bruising, but I straightened of my own accord before they could force me to.
My legs trembled—from cold, from exhaustion, from the knowledge of what awaited at the center of the square—yet I locked my spine and refused to bow beneath the weight of it.
If I was to be made an example before them, I would not kneel.
The roar of the crowd reached me in waves. It swelled and broke like the sea against stone, punctuated by the high wails of children and the angry barking of dogs straining at their leashes.
I searched for my mother, even as logic screamed at me to look away. I had told myself I did not want her here—that I did not want her final memory of me to be my neck bent over grain and steel. Yet a selfish, childlike part of me still ached for the sight of her face.
I did not want to die alone.
The guards hauled me toward the steps, the wood groaning beneath our weight as we ascended. My body felt strangely distant—simultaneously too light and too heavy—as if my spirit were already untethering from my skin. I let them drag me, my vision narrowing until all I could see was the dark, water-swollen block waiting for my neck.
They threw me to my knees, the skin tearing as it dragged across splintered wood. I winced, my stomach rolling in asickening wave as my eyes latched onto the dark, ancient bloodstains etched into the grain of the platform.
“Lady Kaelia! Is it true?”
I lifted my head, rain streaming into my eyes and stinging the raw skin of my face.