For one overwhelming moment, she thought she could hear the heartbeats of everyone around her. Rapid or slow or stuttering still.
She had made her choice.
It was dawn.
Luca was due outside any minute now. As the princess, it was her right to witness sedition against her rule punished. Instead, she waited just inside the door of the command building, hand hovering over the door handle. Everyone else who wanted to witness the end of the rebellion was out there. The staff, the soldiers who were able, the civilians bitter enough or frightened enough to be awake at this hour.
Any minute now.
Any minute now, they would haul Touraine out of her cell, stand her up against the wall, and shoot her like a rabid dog. Luca could already imagine her dead. The blood in a pool beneath her body. It wouldn’t spread. The thirsty earth would drink her up.
A moan wrenched out of her.
Any minute now, she would push the door open. She would walk out and take her place beside Cantic, who would ask her if she had any testimony to offer. Luca would watch Touraine shake her head, and then watch her die.
Or, if there was a kind god at all in the world—Are you so desperate that you would pray to it, if it would grant you this thing?—Touraine would say she was mistaken. That she had moved in misguided judgment, that she would serve penance however the crown saw fit. Luca would pardon her, and they would figure out what came next together.
A volley of coordinated shots made her hand spasm over the door handle.
No.
Luca sprinted with a foal’s tangle on rubbery legs. Fifty yards in front of her, Touraine swayed on her knees. Her naked chest ran crimson and dark with blood. Captain Rogan stood with his pistol pressed against her forehead.
“Stop!”
Everyone watched Luca as she ran, awkward and in pain. They didn’t matter. She crashed before she even reached Touraine, sprawling into the dust on her knees. Her subjects, noble and military and laborer, watched her crawl through the dirt to the conspirator’s side.
Touraine was such a bloody mess. Her eyelids fluttered as she wavered, somehow holding herself upright.
“Where… the sky-falling fu—” She didn’t finish the sentence, choking on her own blood.
Luca swallowed and pushed the pistol wide before scooping Touraine to her chest.
“You have no say in military justice, Your Highness,” Cantic hissed. As if she could not wait for it to be over. Are you as ashamed as I am? Cantic nodded at Rogan. “Finish this.”
“I said, stop.” Luca stared down the barrel of the gun and into Rogan’s eyes. That this horse-faced bastard should be the one to end Touraine was beyond cruel. And anylight: “All she has done, she has done for me.”
Cantic hesitated. Her mouth half-open to form what words? A flicker of sorrow broke through the mask of stony command.
Touraine’s blood leaked warm against Luca’s pale linen shirt, blending in with the black embroidery. So warm. Too warm. Like the glow of a fire in a winter hearth.
“Sacrifices,” Touraine choked out. “Must be… made.”
“Touraine?”
Before the flash and the sound of a skull shattering, Touraine’s eyes glowed golden.
Luca thought her heart had stopped as everything froze around her, but it hadn’t. Everyone, including her, had forgotten how to breathe. The air was still; the audience was silent. Touraine, too, lay still in her arms. Utterly still.
She did not believe her eyes, which told her that Rogan’s head had broken open, not Touraine’s.
Then, like a wave crashing from its zenith, the entire crowd recoiled in revulsion and panic, and Luca flinched with them, spattered in gore. The firing squad held their spent weapons, blinking in surprise. Only Cantic pulled her pistol, but there was no place to aim.
Fast, faster than anyone could reckon in their confusion, Aranen the priestess, somehow unbound from the ropes that held her, crossed the few paces separating her and the general. Aranen’s eyes glowed golden, her hands and mouth were smeared with blood, and she reached to brush a palm over Cantic’s cheek.
Luca didn’t have time to cry out, but the general’s reflexes were well honed.
Cantic pulled the trigger with the barrel of her gun against Aranen’s belly. The priestess barely flinched, a slight recoil of force. She never lost contact with Cantic’s skin.
Bile rose in Luca’s stomach. The general’s skin turned grayish and drained, while her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Blood pooled in her eyes until her eyelids overflowed; it leaked from her mouth, nose, and ears.