Sophronia squints when the guards lead her out into the sunlight, a burst of pain exploding in her head at the sudden brightness. Beyond that, she is numb. The furious shouts of the crowd of strangers watching her, the splintered wooden planks beneath her bare feet, the all-consuming fear she knows should be present in her chest—she doesn’t feel any of it.

The execution had been postponed by a day while Kavelle and the surrounding areas were searched for Leopold, but when there was no sign of him, Ansel informed her it would be going forward this evening. Sophronia was almost relieved to hear it––the waiting had felt like its own kind of torture.

“Sophie, what are you talking about?” Daphne asks, her voice low in Sophronia’s mind, but loud enough—mercifully—to drown out the screams of the crowd, screams crying out for her head.

“It’s quite a long story,” Sophronia says softly, her eyes focused ahead on the wooden platform at the center of the city square, at the glinting silver of the guillotine blade. “I only have a moment.”

“Sophie, no,” Beatriz says, her voice cracking. “That can’t be right. Mama will save you.”

At that, Sophronia laughs, the sound hysterical. “She will not,” she says. “But I’m glad you’re both here, even if I don’t understand how. I love you both so much. And I’m so sorry I failed you.”

“What are you talking about?” Daphne asks. “What’s happening?”

But there is no time to explain it—not when Ansel is there, taking hold of her arm and guiding her toward the block of wood, still wet with dark red blood. How many have been executed today, she wonders. Have they saved her for last?

“There’s no time,” Sophronia says, focusing on her sisters’ voices, on the presence she feels in her mind. She allows herself to be guided to her knees, allows her neck to be placed in the groove of the wood. She closes her eyes. “I have friends coming to find you—Leopold and Violie. Please help them. There is so much more at play than we realized. I still don’t understand all of it, but please be careful. I love you both so much. I love you all the way to the stars. And I—”