Page 11 of The Thornwyck Rose

The boy was placed on his knees.

Henry had ordered her to silence.

Commander de Montfort had warned her in private tones that any show of mercy would be seen as rebellion.

The boy’s head sagged forward like he was already gone, beaten to the brink of death, only to take his last breath in a public square. He was beaten so badly his own mother might not have known him.

What if this boy was Seren’s son? What if she were his mother?

The questions plagued her, slipping through ribs like a frigid spearpoint.

Would she still watch? Would she still say nothing?

Seren’s shoulders stiffened around a corded neck. She took a step forward without realizing what she was doing.

Her foot splashed into a shallow puddle.

A guard’s eyes flicked toward her, hand tightening on his spear.

She stilled—afraid to move forward and unwilling to step back to her place.

Lord Henry sat beneath a canopy of crimson, dry and detached, a goblet in one hand. His gaze found hers.

This was her education. He had let her come today on purpose. So she would watch and learn.

The rope was knotted. The boy was forced to speak his confession through broken, bloody teeth. The executioner whispered a mercy—and then yanked the cord.

The boy kicked once.

Twice.

Then nothing.

The bell tolled again.

The crowd murmured, shifted, and returned to their duties. But Seren stood rooted, her knuckles white around the carved cross on her chest. She felt its ornate bronze throb in her palm like a second heart—a calling from the Lord.

The boy had been a child, no older than the ones she had helped feed in the Marches—a child like the one she would be bringing forth into the world before next summer.

She turned slightly toward the priest beside her.

Father Osbert’s face barely moved. But his eyes flicked to hers. Sadness and resignation lived in them. His eyes told her to say nothing, so she said nothing.

But as the boy’s body was lowered, and Lord Henry stood to return with Father Osbert to the chapel within, Seren lifted her face to the chapel’s iron cross. For the first time since entering Castel Thornwyck, she prayed not to endure, but to act—to atone for the life growing inside her—by saving others before they suffered.

Her knuckles stayed white, still clutching the cross pendant around her neck. She would not stand by while a child was cleansed through torture.

Her father had told her to use her hidden chamber of poison for the Lord’s righteous hand, so she prayed the Lord above keep her from harm, if her hand proved righteous.

VI

THE POISON PRAYER

THORNWYCK KEEP, DECEMBER 1085

The next child was a girl.No older than seven. She had been caught pocketing dried apples from the fall larders one month after the boy’s execution by rope.

Seren still had not told Henry of his child, but her handmaids knew she had missed her monthly blood. They had urged her to tell him, but she would use it strategically, when it suited her most. Claim she had hid it from the handmaids, not knowing what was happening to her. She would feign ignorance and hope the Lord de Thornwyck leaned into his beliefs about women.