Gavik just glowers, but it’s confirmation enough. Varia’s sentenced him for his crimes in a way no one ever could when he was a human. He was Archduke Gavik—the most powerful man in Cavanos, which is the most powerful country on the Mist Continent. He was above the law. The crown princess might be dangling my heart in front of me cruelly, but she’s also punishing someone who would’ve never been otherwise. Half of me is bitter at her, and yet the other half is utterly delighted.

“In all truth, Archduke…” I wield his old title like a razor as I smile at him. “If I were in your shoes, I would be grateful. Handing out bread is hardly taxing work. Publicly drowning innocent people takes much more effort.”

His face goes blank. “Drowning? What do you…?”

He trails off. He doesn’t remember his human life. He doesn’t remember why he’s being punished so. He’s been commanded into these streets without knowing how much damage he did to the people who live on them. I wish he remembered. I wish he knew what he’d done so he could learn. But people like him—people with hate deep in their veins—never really learn, do they?

“The hunger never leaves, you know,” I say. “It gets quieter, but it never, ever goes away.”

Gavik doesn’t speak for a moment, and the stares of a passing couple force him to warily draw his hood closer to his face.

“You don’t even remember drowning those people,” I continue. “But you did. I saw you do it the first time I came here. You kept this city under your thumb, terrified that one wrong word, one wrong move, would have them all killed. That’s the kind of person you were as a human. A tyrant. A mass murderer. And I’m never going to let you forget it.”

I walk away from him with grim satisfaction in my chest, but it fades when I pass the Temple of Kavar and see the ruined, blackened houses—still singed from the fake witchfire Gavik himself planted. His crimes are many, and even if he can’t remember them, punishing him for them is justice. But it will never bring back the people he killed.

I clench my fists. I’ve killed fourteen men. And they are never coming back, either.

so fearful they were, when they saw the end of their lives coming, the hunger oozes from between my ears. as fearful as these people were under the archduke’s rule. how can you hate him, when you have done much the same?

The dying sun shafts into my eyes, and I welcome the burn. My crimes are many, but there is no witch forcing me to atone.

If no one will punish me, then I must do it myself.

“Zera!”