The council chamber droned with the hollow chatter of dukes—men more concerned with their estates than their kingdom. King Simon Riley sat upon his throne of black oak, his gloved fingers drumming in quiet impatience. His mind wasn’t here among their prattle. It was elsewhere. With her.
Then, the doors slammed open.
The thunderous crash silenced the room. Soap MacTavish stood in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes wild with something Simon had rarely seen in him—fear.
Simon straightened immediately. “McTavish?”
“It’s the town square, Your Majesty…” Soap’s voice broke on the words. “They’ve gathered witches. The people are burnin’ them—right now.”
The world seemed to narrow. The chamber fell away, replaced by a ringing silence that pressed against his skull.
Witches.
The word clawed through his chest like a blade. And behind it—her name.
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The one who had tended his wounds in the dead of night when even the royal physician had failed. The one who smiled at him not as a monarch, but as a man. The witch who had taught him that warmth was not weakness.
He had called her healer. Never witch. Never curse.
But the world had not been kind to women like her. And he had not been brave enough to defy it.
His jaw clenched, the memory striking hard and fast.
He remembered the wedding—the hollow celebration, the weight of the crown heavier than ever as he took Queen Amelia’s hand. The alliance had been political, forced upon him by Parliament. Duty, they said. Stability for the realm.
And yet, as he stood before the altar, his gaze had searched the crowd for another face. Hers.
She had not come.
He had sent for her—an invitation sealed with his own hand. When no reply came, he’d gone himself, riding through rain and mist to her cottage in the woods.
Empty. Bare.
The fire long dead, the herbs gone to rot, the scent of wildflowers fading on the cold air.
He had waited—days, weeks—for word. But she’d vanished as if the earth had swallowed her whole.
Until now.
“Ready my horse,” Simon ordered, his voice like thunder. He didn’t wait for acknowledgment. The council shouted after him, but their words meant nothing.
He was already moving.
Through corridors and courtyards, past startled servants who dropped to their knees as he stormed by. His cloak trailed like the shadow of a storm. Outside, the air was sharp with the scent of smoke.
By the time he reached the stables, the sky was darkening—clouds bruised purple, ash rising in the distance. He mounted in one fluid motion, spurring his horse into a gallop.
He rode hard through the town, through cobbled streets and frightened whispers. And then, as he crested the hill overlooking the square, he saw it.
Flames.
The crowd pressed close, their faces lit with the fire’s cruel light. Five women stood bound to stakes, clothes torn, hair tangled, eyes hollow.
And among them—her.
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Her head was bowed, the same hair he once traced with his fingers now matted with soot. Her wrists were red and bleeding where the ropes bit into her skin. And yet, even from this distance, he could see it—that same quiet strength in the set of her shoulders.
One of the men struck a match.
“STOP THIS AT ONCE!”
The shout tore from him like a cannon blast.
The crowd froze. The match trembled in the man’s hand, then fell.
Simon dismounted, boots striking the ground with deadly purpose. The firelight caught the iron of his crown, the edge of his mask—his eyes burning behind it with a fury that made even the boldest shrink back.
“Untie them,” he said, voice low and lethal. “Now.”
No one moved.
Simon drew his sword. The blade caught the flame’s glow, casting blood-colored light across his armor.
“I said untie them.”