When we returned to Cel Ceredi, the pyre was lined with bodies wrapped in black cloth. While Adrian and I placed the lavender we had collected among the dead, a heaviness grew in my chest, collecting in the back of my throat.

I hated this.

I hated that I had not been able to protect more than myself in battle, hated that I had barely managed that. I hated that whoever had done this—whether Ravena or some strange change in Asha’s influence—only did so because Adrian and I ruled this land.

Perhaps Adrian was right about the benefit of my change.

When we had finished placing the lavender, Adrian took my hand, and we chose a place to stand before the macabre structure, with Daroc and Sorin on one side and Ana and Tanaka on the other. Killian, torch in hand, helped light the base of the pyre, which was packed with dried wood and hay. The fire caught easily and climbed, blazing viciously, and despite how far we stood from it, the heat still stung my skin.

I finally allowed myself to cry, and as the first tear trailed down my cheek, a woman began to wail. She was quiet at first, but soon she had the attention of everyone present, her cries so keen, they were impossible to ignore in the mournful night.

“This is the fault of our king,” she said, twisting to face us. She pointed a crooked finger at Adrian. “You have brought this terror upon us!”

My heart raced in my chest as she spoke. I looked up at Adrian whose jaw was set, eyes hard and angry.

“You,” she seethed, taking deliberate steps toward us—toward Adrian. “You will die by the hands of those you have murdered, and your queen—she will follow!”

I was surprised when Adrian stepped forward, drawing his sword, but the woman turned and ran into the fire. Her screams filled the air once more, guttural and violent, and as I watched her burn and her cries ceased, suffocated by the fire and the smoke, I wondered if her words were a threat or a prophecy.

Eight

Isolde

That night, I could not sleep, my mind racing with everything that had taken place in a matter of days. What stayed with me most were the words of the woman who had screamed her grief at us and how it had driven her to kill herself.

I had never watched anyone willingly burn, and perhaps it stayed with me so vividly because I had not had a choice in the way my life was taken. The more I thought about it, the more I recalled how the smoke had invaded my lungs and the feel of flames licking my skin. It was no wonder I had spent most of this life afraid of fire.

Restless, I rose from bed.

“Where are you going?” Adrian asked.