It didn’t have to end this way. With no effort at all, the Corrupter could surface, snapping the fragile tethers of mortality that constrained his body, and give the crowd a show to remember. With a single breath, he could reduce the square and everyone in it to ash, send them all screaming to hell in a bath of fire and blood. This body was strong.

But not strong enough. It would withstand his unadulterated splendor for maybe a hundred heartbeats before it disintegrated utterly. And the Corrupter would, ironically, pass into his next incarnation even faster than if he simply waited for these men with their vicious ideals to finish their overly grandiose execution.

They were all dying anyway. Even without the full range of his power he could see how close to the edge they were. The boy with the apple had a mass in his lung that would take him before two years were out; the cart’s driver would drink himself to death shortly before that; and even Maximilien Robespierre, an enthusiastic architect of this grisly little drama, would lose his own head in this very square in just nine months’ time. They bayed for blood, believing it would salve the deep wounds of exploitation and abuse, but not one of them would live long enough to see the stable republic of their dreams.

Escorted from his cart and up a flight of creaking wooden steps to the platform, the Corrupter stood resolute as various proclamations were announced and crimes read out to the gathered mob—and then something familiar whispered across his skin. There.

He’d been looking for them. For the entire hour it took the cart to travel from the Conciergerie, he’d been waiting for that telltale prickle, knowing they would come. The crowd shifted, parting to reveal three figures like the remains of a dock at low tide. Clad in mourning dress, their faces hidden from the sun behind heavy veils, they stood near the base of a wide pedestal. The Corrupter nodded with a smirk, and they nodded back, a familiar conversation passing over the heads of the mob—over the span of centuries.

Rough hands guided him toward the guillotine, and he stumbled, stepping on the foot of his executioner. Locking eyes with the man, the Corrupter sent out a gossamer thread of cold terror. “Pardon me, monsieur. I did not do it on purpose.”

The words were soft and polite, with just a trace of a crisp Austrian accent, and he made the executioner look away first. It was a moment that would linger in the hooded man’s dreams for the rest of his unfortunate life. Then the crowd pressed forward as the Corrupter knelt down, stretching out across the block. Everyone wanted to watch as Marie Antoinette, erstwhile queen of France and enemy of the Republic, met her death.