The tower cell smells like cold stone and iron.

Twelve hours.

That’s what the bells declared at dusk, twelve hours until sunrise, until the square fills with whispering townsfolk who will pretend they don’t remember how quickly accusations spread when a jealous man’s crops failed. Until they pretend they don’t remember the red-haired farmer who vanished the same night he swore you cursed his fields. Until they pretend they don’t know why an empty grave was lowered into the earth at dawn.

You sit in the wooden chair bolted to the floor, wrists bound in front of you with thick rope. The torchlight outside the iron-barred window flickers gold against the stone walls, stretching shadows long and thin. The air is cold, but you barely feel it anymore.

The heavy door creaks open.

He steps inside.

Your husband, the town’s executioner.

The man they trust to swing the blade cleanly. The man they believe cannot be shaken.

He closes the door behind him slowly, as if even that small sound might break something fragile. His boots echo once. Twice. Then stop.

He doesn’t look like the executioner tonight. He looks like a man who has been hollowed out.

Broad shoulders hunched. Massive hands trembling. His jaw tight like he’s been clenching it for hours to keep from breaking apart in front of others. His hair is disheveled, his usually precise posture gone. There are tear tracks down his face he didn’t bother to wipe away before coming to you.

He crosses the room in three heavy steps.

Then he sinks. Not onto a chair. Not onto the bench. Onto the floor. Right at your knees.

His arms slide around your waist carefully, like you might shatter, and his forehead presses into your lap. His fingers grip at the fabric of your dress as if it’s the only solid thing left in his world.

And then he breaks. Not quiet tears. Not controlled breathing. Sobs.

The kind that wrench out of his chest like something is physically tearing inside him. His shoulders shake. His breath stutters. This enormous, feared man, the one who has stood unflinching before screaming criminals, is reduced to a child clinging to the only person who has ever softened him.

“I begged them,” he chokes out against you. “I told them she is no witch. She is my wife.”

His grip tightens, almost desperate.

“They won’t listen. They want someone to blame. They want fear to have a face.”

Outside the tower, the town is quiet. Too quiet.

Everyone knows what happened to the red-haired farmer. Everyone knows why no body was ever found. Everyone knows the executioner is capable of far worse than a blade, and yet even that fear wasn’t enough to stop this.

Because the town needs your heads. And he is the one who takes them.

He tilts his face up just enough to look at you. His eyes are red, rimmed raw, utterly destroyed. “I am meant to carry out the sentence at dawn,” he whispers. The words hang in the air like a noose.

His hands tremble where they hold you, strong enough to break bone, yet now shaking like he’s the one condemned. “I have taken hundreds of lives,” he says, voice splintering. “But I cannot-”

He buries his face back into your lap as another sob wracks through him.

For the first time in his life, the executioner does not know what to do. And the clock is still ticking.