She continued to show no emotion as they sunk, so very slowly, and writhed, awkwardly, and eventually cried out as the tar burned and their desperate, useless struggles pulled them deeper.

Until the blackness covered their faces, the last part of them to disappear, as they frenziedly tried to draw in air before their lungs would be filled with nothing but pitch.

Though she was caught, on more than one occasion, yawning.

And also, it appeared her brows drew together (as did her future husband’s, in a much more ominous way) when one of the condemned shouted, “Long live The Rising!” before taking his first step into the tar.

The three final traitors were hung by one ankle from a hastily erected apparatus that looked like a yardarm, but on land.

Their throats were then slit.

There they drained of lifeblood and there they remained, even after that lifeblood was gone, and it was whispered they were to be left there to be fed from by the raven and crow, eagle and falcon, hawk, vulture and owl.

And the Mar-el king had his vengeance away from the sea.

As the King of Firenze had his vengeance as usual.

At the pits.

With his bride at his side appearing bored, but it would prove (as she fell asleep against her king in his arms on the ride home), she was simply tired.

This explained a number of things.

The people of Firenze found this understandable.

She’d had a grueling night.

It would be an exciting, busy day for the populace of Fire City and all its many visitors who had journeyed to the city for a glimpse of their king on the day of his majestic nuptials and the celebrations that would happen after. For they had little time to make their way from the pits to jockey for position along the parade route, up the foothills, into the crags and around the mesa in the Sheeonee Mountains that overlooked the city and the enormity of the glassy, smooth surface of Fire Lake.

Many thought it a great shame their future queen’s neck was stippled with purple, for her gown was resplendent.

Stark white.

Well off the shoulder.

The bodice that cut just above her breasts was decorated in an intricate pattern of gold beads. The sheer white sleeves that fell at the wrists in panels so long, when she was standing, if she didn’t have her arms raised, they trailed the ground, were trimmed also with these beads. And the high waistband under her breasts was also patterned in elaborate gold beading.

The floating train at the back of the gown weighed heavily on the high slit at her left leg, completely exposing that extremity after King Mars spanned her tiny waist with his large hands when he took her from Hephaestus and put her on her gold-sandaled feet.