Page 107 of Death of a Mortal

It made my sleeping heart race. And that made me think of what Noxie had said so long ago. How a mortal’s heart beats faster, so fast, trying to fit in a lifetime of beats in a short lifespan... It certainly felt like my heart was trying to fit in as many as possible in its final hour. For the first time since I had accepted my fate, I felt sad, wishing I could see Noxie, speak to him in my mind one last time.

My palms grew slick as the king read the same list of transgressionsthat the chamberlain had read to me. I was so lost in my thoughts of Noxie that I nearly didn’t hear the king when he addressed me,

“Ignacia Corren, the accused, how do you respond to these accusations? Do you admit guilt or claim innocence?”

“Do I actually have the option to respond freely, Your Controllingness? If I said I was innocent, would I be granted a fair trial, oh, Royal Reigning Puppet Master? Or has this been rigged, just as you’ve rigged every one of my appearances, statements, and actions since I arrived at Ashthorn, King Caedryn Mortal-Murderer?”

There was no changing my fate, I knew that, but the beet-red color rising in his face and steaming anger were worth making those my last words. They wouldn’t change anything, not the mortals’ beliefs of who I was and wasn’t, nor the faes’, but I would die with a smile and rest peacefully in a grave knowing my last action was to insult the king I could not kill.

The murmurs in the crowd made Caedryn and Malvina look desperately around for the guards to control the situation.

“Will my betrothed not come to my aid?” I yelled up to Varyn. “Will mylovingfiancé not defend me?”

His expression didn’t change, but his face reddened. That was as much of a rise as I would get. It was enough.

I just smiled at Caedryn, looking him dead in the eyes.

“If she will not respond to the accusations, she will be assumed guilty, and proceedings will follow suit!” He could barely contain his anger.

I, on the other hand, wasn’t the slightest bit mad that my official statement had gone down in history as “guilty.” Ihadcommitted the acts I was accused of, but I would never convince a crown and crowd of Caedryn-loving fae that they were justified. This was likely the biggest reason I accepted my death instead of fighting it.

“I open the proceedings with the first witness to the crimes aforementioned—myself, the reigning monarch in Ashenholt. We will follow my testament with witness statementsfrom—”

“Cut the shit, Caedryn!” I yelled up to him, high above on the balcony. “All your witnesses saw me do all the stuff you said. Get on with it already. You’re wasting these poor folks’ time.”

That caused an uproar.

“You dare address your king in that manner?!” This came from the chamberlain, the closest of the royal court to me in the courtyard.

I looked at him, and then at Zareth smiling beside him, then at a child standing not twenty paces from me, who spat at the ground. I looked to my other side to find Ponytail whispering to Buzzed Head. A few fae in the crowd weren’t jeering or mocking. They just watched, silently waiting.

Then I looked to the balcony above, where Malvina looked at me with passive disinterest. But Varyn? He looked conflicted. He looked…torn between sadness and anger. But I didn’t have time to linger on what that could mean.

The precious seconds I took to look around me felt like a lifetime, staring down the one-eyed barrel of tunnel vision. Everything slowed, and I felt death closing in.

“The public will now decide if the verdict of guilty, punishable by death for these crimes, is justified. Citizens…” Caedryn raised both arms to the sky.

The cheering around me was deafening. That was it—the sentence. The public screamed for my blood with excitement and rage.

“The great citizens of Dolvenar have spoken! Death by execution, publicly, will take place immediately!”

I felt nothing.

“But first, the guilty still wears the royal clothing my wife so generously gifted her. When we thought her an ally to the crown and desired to strengthen the alliance between mortals and fae. It is time she gave them back!”

Now, I felt something. Bubbling rage that was all my own, sleeping monster in my chest be damned. He was taking my life, and yet he still wanted to humiliate me in my last moments breathing.

Guards moved toward me—Round and Dumb. So they were stillaround after all. From behind me, one of them drew a sword, the sound of it coming out of the scabbard like the swishing of the blade that would surely end my life after the king had his fun.

I felt the blade slip under the back of the filthy dress I had worn for over a month in the dungeons. When he sliced upward, he cut both fabric and the skin on my back, causing me to spasm away from him as far as the chains would allow. The fabric opened at the back, exposing my skin to the cold winter air. Blood trickled down my back. It wasn’t the death slice I wished it had been. I didn’t want this humiliation, this nakedness, with this crowd seeing me and judging me.

For the first time since Nella died, it wasn’t vengeance and my death I wished for. In that moment, I wanted desperately to be invisible. Not to die, but to disappear.

The fabric still covered my front, unable to be entirely removed from my body because of the long sleeves and shackles still around my wrists. So Round waddled his way to my front side and grabbed the top of the bodice of the dress and pulled it down as far as the cuffs would allow.

He exposed my breasts and stomach, bringing shame to the back of my eyes and bile to the back of my throat. Now, I wished for death.

I tried to cover myself, but the chain attached to the ground wouldn’t stretch high enough for my hands to reach any further than my navel.