I searched the faces in the crowd for Ruth. For Sam. If they were gone—if they had taken the contracts and run like we’d planned—Emmeline must be with them. It was all I could hope for as Slaughter’s men loaded me, bound and weary, onto the horse-drawn cart beneath the tree. And yet, her scream still echoed in my mind, chilling me.

A stone smacked into my cheek. Another into my forehead. Shouts and cries and jeers bellowed all around me.

When the noose lowered over my head, I was that ten-year-old boy, wandering the dark streets of Bristol all over again. My world suddenly dark, surrounded by the voices of strangers, completely alone.

I would die here a liar and a thief. They would bury me without a casket, without a marker. The grass would soon grow over me, and the man I was would rot away, nameless and forgotten.

And the thought of spending eternity alone terrified me more than the threat of any pain I’d ever suffered under the witness of this tree.

The hangman cinched the rope about my throat, forcing my chin high. I saw her then….Em, vengeful and defiant across the field, looking so much like she had the first time I’d seen her on the ship when they’d pulled the sack from her head. Wild black snarls of hair and eyes like a turbulent sky, scratched and bruised and barefoot in a filthy, bloody shift, her fists clenched, daring the world to touch her.

I failed. I’d failed her. I told her she would escape. That her child would be safe. I was supposed to be a brother, an uncle…the man she needed. But I was worthless, a servant boy bought for less than a barrel.

“Forgive me!” I called to her, my shout breaking on the words as the cart lurched out from under me.