The crowd was growing restive, a few of the bolder members hurling insults into the driving rain. Thunder rumbled just overhead, drowning out the voices while the flash illuminated faces twisted with fury.

“It is time,” Lehav said, gesturing.

“Let’s get this over with,” Fulton growled. “I grow tired of listening to the bleating of these sheep.”

Get it over with. As though he were talking about a tedious imperial audience rather than his own life. Adare nodded, trying to steady herself, trying to see straight in the rain.

“Wait,” she said, raising her voice just high enough that they could hear over the rain. “I’m sorry.”

Worse than useless, those words, a threadbare cloak to cover her own horror.

“Do one thing for me,” Fulton said.

Adare nodded eagerly, pathetically. Even at this distance she could feel the heat from the Well. Her robes were steaming, her hair, her hands. The crowd had taken up some sort of martial hymn. “Anything,” she said.

“Win,” he replied grimly.

“I’ll second that,” said Birch.

Adare stifled a sob. She tried to speak, but found her throat closed as a fist.

Sweet Intarra, she prayed, forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.

Fulton watched her for three or four heartbeats, until Birch nudged him with his elbow.

“Come on, old man,” he said, face slick with mingled rain and sweat. “You getting tired right here at the end?”

Forgive me, Intarra. Forgive me.

And then the two men, the guards who had watched her door since she was a child, who had flanked her when she left the palace and stood behind her chair at state dinners, who brought her soup when she was ill, and listened to her complain about her brothers, her parents, the two men who, in some ways, knew her better than anyone alive, began their march toward the flame. Despite the heat of the Well and the fury of the crowd, they held their heads high, and even when the mob started hurling stones and dung, they refused to flinch.

Forgive me, Intarra, Adare begged, but the whole miserable bit of theater was not Intarra’s idea, not Intarra’s fault, and when the two soldiers had marched into their grave, it would not be Intarra who bore the awful weight in her chest day in and day out. It was all well and good to pray to the goddess, but Adare was the one with the hands, with the voice, and suddenly she realized she was screaming, lurching forward toward the Sons of Flame. With clumsy hands, she seized a spear from the nearest of the soldiers, the long shaft heavy and wet, unwieldy in her grip.