5. The Law’s Price
V
THE LAW’S PRICE
The bell tolled once.
Seren flinched. No one else did.
The courtyard was packed, shoulder to shoulder—guards in rigid lines, servants clinging to the edges of the square, even the nobles clustered beneath canopies to shield from the drizzle. But the keep itself seemed to hold its breath.
Seren stood on the stone steps of the public chapel in the bailey, a place of supposed mercy, though there was none there. Her hands were folded before her, fingers cold and stiff against the embroidered sleeves of her dark blue gown.
Her stomach twisted again from nausea and from knowing a life had settled there in recent weeks—too early to show, but not too early to fear what monster she would bear.
It was the first time she had been permitted outside the keep since the wedding. And now she knew why.
The gates of the bailey creaked open. Two soldiers dragged the boy into the square. He could not have been more than ten years old.
His feet scraped the wet stone. Blood trailed from his heels. His wrists were bound, arms stretched high behind him in a way that had dislocated one shoulder. His face was swollen from the interrogation, one eye sealed shut. His tunic was in tatters, and his bare feet were black with mud.
“He stole grain from the southern storehouse,” the steward called out, reading from a scroll with a voice bored by repetition. “Two sacks. Enough for three families. The punishment is as declared by law: execution by rope, following confession and cleansing of guilt through penance and blood.”
The priest—Father Osbert—stood beside the platform, murmuring a hollow rite in a voice that seemed to survive rather than approve.
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.