All around him, people jeered, their voices rising in an unintelligible roar. It was making the feeling worse, making it harder to track his breathing. Beside him, his mother nodded at the police chief.

“Nooses!” the chief shouted, and Franz nearly jumped as men scrambled to place ropes around necks.

Franz reached up to his lapel and detached one of the medals pinned there, slipping it into his closed fist, letting the jagged edges push into his palm. Focus, Franz. Feel the sharpness on your skin. You’re here now. You’re not back there. If he told himself enough times, maybe one day his body would believe him and stop tingling then screaming its way into the past.

“You have been sentenced to death on charges of lèse-majesté and seditious conduct, theft, and high treason,” the police chief continued. “Only His Majesty the Emperor has the power to pardon those who have been condemned to die.”

Franz pressed the medal harder into his fist, tightening his hand around it, the sharp edges slicing through skin. He stared straight into the eyes of the revolutionary in the center: a leader in the movement that had tried to kill him.

None of these men were the one who’d plunged in the knife. But they were all a danger. They had planned it. They had sanctioned it. They were the unrest of the people sharpened into a weapon, striking at the heart of Habsburg.

Franz held his gaze.

“Do the condemned have anything to say?” the police chief asked, and the crowd went silent. Franz’s heart shrieked in his ears.

“You sit in your palace while we live in filth.” The man in the center was the one to speak. “We have no food. We have no supplies. We have no way to get the things we need. And you ignore our suffering. You ignore your people.”

Franz forced his face to stay stony, composed.

“Your Majesty,” the man added, mockingly, with a slight curtsy, awkward with his head still in the noose. “You can kill us, but it won’t make a difference. The people will rise up against you.”

A chorus of yeses echoed ominously through the crowd. Franz focused on his breathing, the feeling of pin against palm, blood pooling sticky where it rubbed too hard.

It was another confirmation of what Franz wished he could forget: He was still in danger. Another knife or, perhaps this time, a revolver, a sword, a hundred fists from a hundred angry men, their voices rising like the ocean. His mother exchanged a glance with the police chief and Franz knew she was as surprised as he was by the crowd’s reaction. The crowd should have been on their side, but instead they were cheering for the men about to die.

The man continued, “I die for the people—”

The crowd roared its approval.