Larkin couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. That feeling was reinforced when she stepped out of the palace a step behind Harben holding Iniya and Raeneth holding Kyden.

The square was packed to overflowing. Older children packed the trees; younger ones sat atop someone’s shoulders. The air smelled of roasted nuts—druids handed it out in greasy bags. Crushed white shells littered the ground beneath their feet. The crowd jeered and elbowed and jostled. And along the wall to Larkin’s right stood a long line of men and even a pair of women in chains—all waiting to die before a crowd that chanted for their blood.

Larkin had experienced this frenzied excitement before—the day her own town had turned against her and called for her death by hanging or drowning or fire. Cold sweat broke out on her brow, and she found she could not move, could barely breath.

The world swayed, details lost to the nothingness rushing at her from below. A hand closed on her arm. Tam’s face appeared before her. The others waited at the bottom of the steps. Raeneth held her baby tight—maybe she wasn’t such a bad mother after all. Iniya lay in Harben’s arms, glaring at Larkin.

Tam shook her. “The carriage can’t get through. Stay right behind me.”

Gone was the trickster, the jolliness. His elfin face had shifted to all hard angles and a severe expression. He felt it too.

Something was wrong.

“Do you hear me, Larkin? Stay right behind me.”

She nodded faintly. He placed her hand on his back. “Hold on to my shirt. Don’t let go.”

Fisting the fabric in her hand, she followed as he hustled down the steps, the others falling into step behind them. They plunged into the crowd, which had managed to break the invisible barrier between druid and Idelmarchian, spilling onto the white gravel. Tam elbowed and shoved and glared. Out of nowhere, a fist connected with his face. Tam’s head popped back.

The Idelmarchians did not love the druids. They feared them. But right now, they feared nothing. This was why the druids handed out roasted nuts to appease the crowd and stood atop the battlements for safety. They knew this crowd was one step away from becoming a mob.

“Keep moving.” Tam’s teeth were bloody, a stream dribbled from his chin. He barely seemed to notice.

Larkin glanced back to make sure Raeneth and Harben were behind her. They weren’t. She was suddenly shoved hard from the side, losing her grip on Tam. She staggered and would have fallen had the press of bodies not kept her upright. That same press formed a current that left her unable to get her feet under her.

She fought to keep upright, to regain her balance, to find Tam, when she fetched up against a hard chest. The handsome guard from the front door—Blue Eyes—wrapped her up in a tight embrace.

He smiled, showing too many teeth. “The Hero of Hamel and the whore of Garrot.”

She shoved, but he only tightened his grip. One hand reached around, cupping her bottom and pulling her up and into him so the fake belly pressed hard against him.

“Not even his child, as he’s been gone less than a couple of months.” He backed up, dragging her with him toward the stables. “Come on now, what’s one more tumble in the hay when you’ve already—”

Larkin’s magic flared. But she could not use it—not here. She gripped his shoulders to steady herself and thrust her knee into his crotch. He grunted and hunched forward. She grabbed his ears, jerked down, and drove her knee into his nose.

She felt a wet crunch, blood sliding down her shin. But she was already gone, instinctively shifting to a less crowded area. The crowd spat her out. She landed in rotten potatoes, the smell and slime making her gag. For a moment, she lay, breathing in the rot and the horror because she could not make herself move.

“Larkin?” said a male voice.

Not Nesha. Someone had called her by her real name. Her head jerked up. Before her was the long wall where the prisoners were chained. They were covered in rot, the filth and bleakness they wore making them nearly indistinguishable from one another. People clustered around the condemned, weeping and pleading.

One prisoner staggered toward her and collapsed. She recoiled. Until his eyes locked with hers—a dark brown ring surrounding amber. His face was even paler than normal, his black hair greasy and lank. He was thinner too, the hollows of his cheeks carved against his proud face.

“Bane?” she gasped.

His hands came down on her shoulder. “I knew you would come for me. I knew it.”

Come for him? All at once she understood. The chains at his wrists and feet—Bane would hang … today. Hang for killing druids to save her life. He thought she was here to save him.

Guilt was a burning ember in her chest. A thousand memories roared through her, but two floated to the surface and mingled into one. She was in the river again. Cold water slid through her clothes and hair, down past her throat and into her lungs. A druid stood over her. His ax swung toward her head.

Bane was suddenly there, killing the druid and pulling her from the river and shoving her toward Denan. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.” Alone, he’d faced the druids bearing down on them as Denan had hauled her into his arms and run.

Bane’s hands tightened on her shoulders. The hope in his eyes nearly killed her. He expected an army—or at least a plan. She hadn’t even known he was here.

She hadn’t known.

“You can’t, Larkin.” Bane shuttered his hope away, killed it with one hard blink. “It’s a trap. You have to run.”

Her mind clawed its way out of despair long enough to register his words. “A trap?”

“They’re waiting for you to try to free me. You have to go.”

She reached for his cuffs, her sigils buzzing beneath her gloves. She could easily cut him free. Just a tiny bit of magic. A sliver instead of a sword. No one would see. She could melt into the crowd one way, he another.

Bane gripped her hand above her sigil, which prevented it from forming. “Don’t.”

“Bane—”

“The druids are watching, waiting for someone to try to rescue me. We’re surrounded. There’s nowhere for me to go.”

“But—”

“Garrot will find you.”

She froze. Garrot was here? Then the trap wasn’t meant for just anyone. It was meant for her. And Garrot wouldn’t be fooled by dyed hair and a fancy dress.

Denan had told her she would have to learn a balance between loyalty and self-preservation. Even with an army, she couldn’t save Bane—not in time. She could only die with him, and she could not do that to Denan.

Bane must have seen this in her eyes, for what little remnants of his hope snuffed out like a light guttered. He closed his eyes, jaw clenched as if he couldn’t bear it. “Don’t watch me die.”

She pressed a kiss salted with her tears to his cheek. “I love you.” Not in the way she loved Denan. But she loved him still.

She backed away from him. His hands held the shape of hers before slowly falling away. Ancestors, she was leaving him to die. Choking on a sob, she turned back to the crowd, pushing and shoving her way toward the gate.

She hadn’t gone half a dozen steps before two men blocked her path, their gazes fixed on her like a hunter sighting its prey. She turned to the right. Two more blocked her. She turned to the left. Two more—Blue Eyes and Sour Face.

The push in the crowd, Blue Eyes grabbing her—none of it had been an accident. They had been separating her from the others, herding her. They had wanted her to find Bane.

Not they. He. Garrot.

Her magic burned hot, but she did not draw it. Not until she had to. “What do you want?”

Six of them converged on her. From behind her, Bane swore. The crowd scattered from the druids as if repelled. A few at a safe distance called for her death.

She tensed, waiting. And then Garrot pushed between a pair of druids. “Hello, Larkin.”

He didn’t look surprised. Almost like he’d known she was here all along. Of course he had. The druids had known her identity from the start. Bane was right; it was a trap. And she’d walked right into it, just not for the reason the druids had suspected.

Fear burst inside her, coating her tongue so thick she couldn’t swallow. She flared her sigils and dropped into a fighting stance behind her shield. The crowd gasped at the sight of her magical weapons. People murmured—some in confusion, some in fear, some in awe. This was not the spectacle they’d come for, and they clearly hadn’t decided which side to land on—hers or the druids.

Garrot and his men advanced on her. Wanting the wall at her back, she retreated, past the line of rotten potatoes, until she stood shoulder to shoulder with Bane. She spread her shield in front of him as well. Desperate for escape, she risked a glance up, up, up the high curtain wall. Druids silhouetted black against the bright blue of the sky, all of them watching her.

“Oh, Larkin,” Bane whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Sorry because he thought she would die with him.

An arrow clattered onto the packed earth at Bane’s feet. He hissed and jerked, his hand over his ear, blood welling between his fingers. She hadn’t thought to shield them from above. She widened her shield until it encircled them.

Garrot shouted at the druids on the wall, “Stand down!”

A dozen more Black Druids pushed through the crowd to line up in a semicircle around Garrot. Sixteen druids, all of them armed with staffs, paused just beyond her shield.

“You cannot hold your shield forever, Larkin. Surrender.”

Larkin hoped wherever Tam was—wherever her hateful family was—they were far away from here and would not try to come back for her. She licked her lips. “Grant Bane his freedom, and I will.”

“Larkin, this isn’t why I sacrificed my life,” Bane whispered.

“You’re in no position to bargain,” Garrot said.

“Aren’t I?” She glanced pointedly at the druids around him. “You said yourself you want me alive. How many are you willing to lose to take me?”

Garrot grunted. “Alive? Not for long.”

If she was going to die today … She spared a glance at Bane and grinned. “We’ll take as many with us as we can.” Hadn’t Tam taught her that?

He grinned back. “Better to go down fighting.”

She cut through the center of Bane’s chains. He gripped the links and tried an experimental swing, the chains shuddering against her shield, making it ripple. She ignored the faint echo of pain.

“I’m going to pulse my magic,” she murmured. “It will throw them. Take out as many as you can, then retreat back to the wall.”

He gave a curt nod.

She pulsed and threw the druids back a dozen feet. She charged, aiming for Blue Eyes. Flat on his back, he managed to lift his shield. Her sword easily cut through hardwood and then flesh. She tensed for a pulse of regret—she’d never killed a man before.

All she felt was satisfaction.

The man next to him died just as quickly. Then the druids were up. Three charged her—one at her front and two at her flanks. She managed to block one’s swing, her sword slipping easily through the shield of the other.

Too late to duck the swing of the third, she braced for impact. Bane’s chains slammed across the druid’s chest. The man’s staff hit her back with half the original force. Still, her lungs froze, refusing to draw breath. She staggered. Half a dozen druids swarmed her. Her hands were wrenched behind her back.

Out of options, she pulsed, the shock wave throwing them all. She landed hard, the edges of her vision going dark. Bane lay stunned beside her. A druid stood over them, blade aimed for Bane.

Sucking air into her spasming lungs, she stabbed and spread her shield around them. She gasped and heaved in a breath, the darkness giving way to color and light.

Bane scrambled to her side. He bled from numerous wounds, the worst sheeting blood from his middle. “You all right?”

She managed a nod.

Relief touching his face, he hunched over, his face ashen. The druids regrouped as well, more of them pushing through the crowd.

Bane had managed to grab a sword and shield. He held out his chains. She cut them off at the first link.

“How many more times can you do the pulse?” he asked.

Her magic already felt thready. “That was it.”

Bane winced. “All right, then.” He kissed her full on the mouth. She froze, too shocked to react one way or another. He pulled back just as quickly. “Before I lose too much blood.”

She stared at him. This brave, cocky man. They never would have lasted—not with his womanizing ways—but she loved him still. And if they were going to die … Well, there were worse ways.

She squared off beside him and released her shield. Two dozen druids swarmed them. She managed to take down three in one swing before they tackled her. Her arms were bent cruelly behind her back, her wrists tied so she couldn’t use her sigils. Her sword and shield sputtered out. A druid hauled her up.

Bane had been tied just as tightly. Garrot wrapped his arm around Bane’s neck and backpedaled, dragging a weakened Bane up the steps to the stage. Larkin surged after them, only to be wrenched back, her shoulders screaming with pain.

Garrot wrapped the noose around Bane’s neck. She didn’t want to beg for Bane’s life—not when she knew Garrot would not give it to her. She didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. Still, a word ripped from her throat. “No!”

Heaving, Garrot stared at her, hatred screaming from his expression. And she was back to that awful day—the day the druids had hauled her up the stairs to the gallows. She’d stumbled. Garrot had pushed her, and she’d fallen to her knees. The crowd had screamed for her death.

Bane had saved her. He’d shoved her away from a frenzied mob and into a second-story window while screaming for her to run. And she had. She’d run as fast as she could into the Forbidden Forest, where she’d fallen in love with another man. When Bane had come for her, she’d only gone with him to save his life.

Despite all that, Bane had once again risked his life to save hers. Now he was dying for that choice, dying for her. And despite the power coursing through her, she couldn’t save him—not like he’d saved her.

“Don’t watch,” Bane said.

Garrot was breathing hard. “Make her watch.”

The druid holding her pinned the back of her head against his chest.

Bane shook his head and mouthed, “Don’t watch.”

He was still trying to protect her. He didn’t want her to have this memory of him to carry for the rest of her life. But she would gladly carry it, so he wasn’t alone in these last moments.

“Please,” he mouthed, and the pleading on his face … She closed her eyes. It was the best she could give him. She would not watch his death, but she would not let him face it alone either.

She waited, dreading the moment when the trapdoor snapped. When it came, even the crowd’s shouts couldn’t drown out the crack of Bane’s neck. And then she had to see. Had to know if it had really happened. She opened her eyes—only for a moment. It was enough to sear the image into her memory for the rest of her life.

Larkin dropped as if her knees had been cut out from under her. The druid’s arms around her kept her from falling. I couldn’t save you, she screamed in her head, for she would never give Garrot the satisfaction of knowing how deeply he’d wounded her. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.