For a moment her mind refused to let her see the horror and barbarity of the sight before her. But the self-protective blindness could only last so long. Like the specters of a nightmare, the shapes began to materialize through the hazy mist of nightfall.

The wood latticed bars . . . the iron frame . . . the tiny square of a prison that was barely enough space to stand and open to the elements and the scorn of onlookers.

No! An involuntary cry escaped her lips as she saw a movement inside the cage. “Mother!” she sobbed, lunging toward the tower as if she would free her. Every instinct in her body screamed to go to her. To do something. To put an end to this travesty. How could they do this to anyone? How could her mother possibly survive? Oh, Mother, I’m so sorry!

But she’d barely taken a few steps before her father caught her and pulled her away. She started to scream and kick, but he quieted her with a warning. “You are only making it worse. Do you want her to hear you? Do you think she wants you to see her like this?”

She knew her father was only trying to prevent a scene—he didn’t care about her mother’s feelings—but it worked. Somehow she knew that it would kill her mother to know her daughter had been forced to stand witness to her suffering.

But she couldn’t give up. She had to do something. Her mother needed her.

Past the point of caring about her father’s anger, she tried again. “Please, Father, I’m begging you. Please do something to help her. You can’t leave her like this.”

But he could. And that’s exactly what he did, dragging her sobbing and pleading from the castle.

Joan had never felt so helpless in her life. She’d failed. Her knees collapsed, and she would have slid to the ground had her father not been holding her up.

The pain and devastation on her face had finally penetrated the black haze of his anger.

Too late he seemed to realize that he might have gone too far. He held her up against him as if she were one of the pretty poppets he used to buy her as a child. “I’m sorry you had to see that, daughter. But it was for your own good.”

She looked at him as if he were mad. How could that possibly be for her own good? She would never forget it. Just as she would never forget his cruelty in bringing her here.

What he saw in her expression must have alarmed him. He looked truly uneasy as he wiped some of the hair back from her face. Feeling the chill on her skin, he jerked off his plaid to wrap around her. “Your mother is dead to us both. We will not speak of her again.”