3
RÍAN
Crows skulked atop lampposts,anxious to sink their talons into the bodies swinging from the gallows once the crowd dispersed.
Another miserable day brought seven more names to the register.
At the far side of the wooden platform, a wailing woman crumpled to the ground. No one asked if she was all right or stopped to offer condolences or words of comfort. They strolled right past, ignoring her and the corpses growing cold in the breeze.
Fat raindrops splattered on my forehead, the looming clouds no longer able to hold back their tears. No sense drawing the hood of my cloak. I longed to feelsomething, even if it was discomfort.
I brought my palm to the first man’s knobby ankle and inhaled deeply. My well of magic swelled with what remained of his life force. If I could use this power to defeat the Queen, then their deaths wouldn’t be for naught.
At least that’s what I told myself as I withdrew the ledger from my coat and added his name.
Willie Breen. Half-fae. Seventy-three years of age.
Another round of sobs from the woman with mud seeping into her skirts brought a fresh wave of heaviness to my chest as I stepped over to the next victim in line.
Amie O’Dea. Witch. Eighty-five years old.
Dell Shelly. Grogoch. Two hundred and four.
Taren O’Dowd. Witch. Sixty-four.
Mary Brennan. Half-fae. Fifty-two.
Michael McMahon. Pooka. Forty-three.
I reached the end of the line, where the grieving woman had fallen silent, her chin tipped up toward the clouds, tears and raindrops mixing on her ruddy cheeks.
The body in front of her belonged to a woman with a distended stomach beneath her stained shift.
Shit.
The sudden lump in my throat made it impossible to swallow. She’d been pregnant, and they’d hanged her anyway.
She didn’t look familiar, and the letter that had arrived said there were to be six Danú executed. This woman made seven. Rounded ears peeked from behind mousy brown hair. She could still have been a witch or half-fae. Impossible to tell in death.
I knelt onto the stones next to the woman and offered her the handkerchief from my pocket. “Did you know her?” I asked, inclining my head toward the final victim.
Pushing to her feet, the woman dabbed the handkerchief beneath her red nose. “Her name was Polly McGill. She was my sister.”
I rose as well and swiped a hand down my breeches to loosen the grit coating my knees. Another pair for the laundry. “What was her crime?” Not sure why I bothered asking since the woman was probably human. This damn heart made me too soft.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “My sister was tainted.”
What the hell did she mean by that? Besides the tortured look on her face and glazed eyes, the dead woman appeared healthy to me.
“Polly’s always been a good girl. Smart as whip.” She lifted a pale hand toward the pooka dangling next to Polly. “Until that monster’s magic seeped into her mind. Made her do unspeakable things.”
Unless the pooka had somehow managed to steal the woman’s heart, his magic wouldn’t have been strong enough to influence Polly one way or another. Not that I could say that aloud. “What sort of things?”
“Abandon her good family to carry thatthing’sdemon spawn,” she spat.
Any sympathy growing in my heart for this vile woman evaporated.
“So she fell in love with a pooka.”Thathad been her crime. Polly McGill had found the one thing everyone in the world spent their lives searching for, and she’d been killed over it.