There is a storm of sadness behind his eyes and I can see nothing of Oscar’s bright, fierce loyalty. Connor drops his gaze with a shake of his head.

“It’s him or you,” Longsight jeers. “And who would die in your place?”

Hope drops me then, and Connor clears his throat, ready to continue his gruesome patter.

“One cut, Mayor Longsight, and then I take over – this is painstaking work; it must be done right.”

I see the mayor raise the knife aloft. The crowd is noisy, and I hear people from outside pressing at the doors wanting to come and see. The mayor straddles the frame and looks into my face. A bold girl would spit, a brave person would speak. I am neither. He holds me at my neck, pressing down enough for my breath to catch. I wriggle and shift, trying to move my body away, but he just nods to Minnow, who cracks me across the cheek. I don’t know if it’s tears or blood or sweat that drips from my face, but I am done. It starts with a cut, Dad used to tell me, and then the gentle easing away of skin from flesh.

Pushing my chin up and resting his forearm on my chest Longsight’s panting is in my ear; his spit curdles at the corner of his mouth and his eyes are alight – brighter and more terrible than the fire behind him.

“One cut,” he whispers. “I’ll be sure to make it last.” Biting his lip, breath quivering, he focuses on my skin.

Some people say that when a cut is clean the pain doesn’t register. If that is so, then this was no clean cut.

Sometimes pain can sing, it rings so pure. Other times it screams raggedly. But this pain, oh this pain is a wail. The point of the knife punctures the skin like the wail of a mother whose baby is being wrenched from her arms. The edge draws against the skin like the wail of a mourner. The blade drags and sinks like the wail of a creature caught in a trap. The incision gapes like the wail of families torn apart. The knife lifts like the wail of a child for whom no one will come.

But I don’t cry out – for this is just the start.

Through tears, I see the blur of a bloodied knife being passed back to Connor, and I brace my sweat-slicked back against the post, readying myself for the greater pain to come. He stands as Longsight had, feet either side of my own, but his hand rest on my arm, not my throat.