“Why, you faked that mark,” the warden said severely. “Let the record show. Governor Creeb personally requested that the mark be examined thoroughly, and it was found to be a clever forgery. One of your revolutionary friends must have done it for you.”
The words clapped against me like thrown stones.
Governor Creeb.
Of course. If he couldn’t punish Neil, the governor would punish me.
My hands curled into fists. This damned mark was supposed to keep me safe. It was my trump card. My final gamble. Revealing it had branded me an outcast, but I’d done it to rescue Neil. And now, they were throwing all of that away.
“And I suppose my arm is, quite mysteriously, going to be discovered missing after I die?” I hissed at him. “So you can maintain your lie when the Sworn come knocking?”
The warden turned his head toward the woman writing in the corner. “Have the comments from the accused stricken from the record.”
“You can’t do that,” I snarled.
“I can,” he replied smugly. He signaled with his hand for the guards to come and collect me to take me back to my cell. He had to clear his throat to get their attention, which irritated him visibly. He took that irritation out on me.
“No food or water for her tonight,” he said to them, calmly, like a doctor prescribing treatment for a hysterical patient. “She is belligerent, and she must be subdued. Put her in a straitjacket.”
I struggled as they seized me, but I was no match for them.
The warden locked eyes with me. He delivered his final words with somberness, as if he were only doing his duty, but I saw the flash of glee in his eyes, the triumphant flare of his nostrils. He was a man who served the werewolves. He was nothing compared to them, he was lower than dirt in their eyes, and so he vented his frustrations on the weak and helpless beneath him.
“You disgust me,” I spat.
He spoke as if I hadn’t said anything at all.
“Her punishment is at dawn.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE GUARDS CAME for me as soon as the window in my cell turned a pale shade of violet to signal the arrival of morning.
I hadn’t slept. My shoulders ached from being in the straitjacket all night, and my knees burned where I’d knelt on the rough stone floor as I’d tried without success to free myself from the ties. My stomach was empty, but my head felt clear and sharp, my skin sensitive, my senses heightened. I gazed at the walls as the guards pulled me from the cell, thinking that these were the last things I’d ever see, and what a pity that they were so ugly and bare.
The guards marched me to the courtyard without a word.
It was dawn, and light flowed from the horizon in shades of bruised purple and bleeding pink. The air was achingly cold as it filled my lungs, and so I took shallow breaths. I was numb, fearful, and furious as they led me outside. Word must have spread of my sentencing, for a crowd had gathered in the courtyard before the platform erected for my punishment. I searched the faces for any familiar ones and found Neil standing beside the steps, his face anguished, his nose red and his eyes dripping tears. His throat convulsed as he spotted me, and he crossed his arms over his chest tightly as if to hold himself back.
Next to him was my grandmother, Delphine Rider.
Grandmother’s expression was grim as she found my gaze. Her long white hair, swept elegantly as always into a chignon (the world could be ending, at yet my grandmother’s hair would be impeccable), glowed like a moonflower in the morning sun. Her cloak, dark purple and made of luxuriously thick wool she’d knitted herself, draped over her arms and trailed on the ground around her. She looked like a queen. An angry, cold queen.
I knew I’d gone against her instructions when I’d gone to rescue Neil. She’d told me never to reveal the Chosen mark to anyone, under any circumstances. Now, the entire village would know what we’d been hiding. Not that any of that would matter when I was dead, at least for me, but I had a flash of anxiety about how this might affect my grandmother. Would she be shunned? Ostracized? Driven from her home?
The guards prodded me up the steps. I was still wearing my father’s cloak, the red side hidden against my skin. My pulse drummed in my wrists and my ears. I swallowed, but I couldn’t seem to ease the rock of fear stuck in my throat and the cacophony of grim thoughts in my mind. I was not the first in my family to die. My mother and father had gone before me. They were waiting on the other side for me. I would make them proud by proving my courage. I would not make my grandmother ashamed by weeping and screaming.
One of the guards held the whip. It was a wicked-looking thing, black and shining, with ten tails that coiled tentacle-like on the slats of the platform floor. He gave it a swish, and the sound sent a shudder of dread across my skin.
The guard gave an order, and the others marched me to the end of the platform, where a wooden pillar rose high above my head, studded with metal hooks. They bound my hands and then settled the ropes over one of the hooks above my head.
Fear spiked in me. I turned my head frantically and caught my grandmother’s gaze. She had her mouth open as if she were about to call out something. I shook my head fiercely at her.
Beside her, Neil was red-eyed and silent, his arms crossed. He was wound like a bowstring. What sort of arrow would he loose after this was over, and I was dead? Would he write more things about the governor on the wall? Would he burn down the prison?
I was angry with him. Angry that his carelessness had led me here. I loved him, but at that moment, I wanted to kick him in the face. How could he have done what he’d did? A useless, stupid action that accomplished nothing and got him captured immediately.
The guard stepped back and gave a few experimental flicks of his whip while another recited my crimes to the growing crowd.
Terror sank its claws in me. I waved in my resolve to be courageous as tears sprang into my eyes.
“Wait,” I called. “First, give my cloak to my grandmother. P-please.”
I couldn’t bear for it to be destroyed. The words came out panicked, almost strangled.
“Sorry, miss,” the guard said. “No can do.”
I barely had time to take a breath before the first stroke came. The lash cut deep, straight through my clothing on my back, sinking into my flesh. I felt the skin open under the bite of the whip. The pain was nauseating. I gagged on a sob, stuffing the sound back in my mouth. Courage. I would have courage. Courage, dignity, strength.
The crowd swam before my eyes. I lifted my head as sweat prickled across my face. My back was throbbing.
The guard yanked the whip away from me with a whistle of wind. I closed my eyes.
“One!” he shouted.
The second stroke was even more painful. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. The crowd murmured below.
“Two!” came the call.
Courage, I told myself. Dignity. Strength.
At the third, my knees buckled, and I sank hard into a crouch. The ropes at my wrist kept me dangling, upright. My lip was bleeding already from how hard I was biting it to keep silent.
Courage…
“Three!”
I was going to vomit. I could feel it.
Thirty-seven strokes left.
I didn’t think I would be conscious after ten.
Tears slid from the corners of my eyes and dripped on my collarbone. I tried to blink them back, angry. I would not die crying. I would not.