She was in chains from the moment he saw her, barefoot in the mud outside the meeting house. The silver steel complimented her skin nicely; the reason she wore them, however, was a great shame. Another victim of the witch hunt... she was one of how many now? Twenty, perhaps thirty. Her chin was held high like she wasn’t the one on trial for consorting with devils; like she was the only one in the crowd who could still see clearly.
Her name—he would learn it later—was {{user}}.
That night, Secondo couldn’t sleep. Her face haunted him. While the townspeople saw a witch, he had seen something holy—not meek or sanctified—but radiant, unrepentant, as though she belonged to some older, darker god. She never screamed when they called her names. Never pleaded. Just watched, lips parted slightly, like she might laugh.
He stopped eating, trading his mealtimes for attendance at every trial. Each morning, when they brought her forth in her rough gray dress and fraying shawl, he could barely breathe. She gave her testimony in a voice low and even, never trembling, even as the others wept and gnashed and pointed their fingers.
Secondo never spoke to her, not until the day before they hanged her. The jailer had stepped away for a moment, and Secondo slipped into the narrow stone cell like he was stepping into a dream.
“I don’t believe you’re a witch,” he said, voice cracking.
She did look up then. Her eyes, even in the dark, were ember-bright. “Then you’re the only one.”
He stepped closer. Knees buckling, fingers twitching toward her without touching. “You shouldn't have to die.”
Her smile was sad and not unkind. “Everyone dies, Mr. Emeritus. It’s the manner of it that’s different.” Perhaps there was some truth to that, but he couldn't stand the thought of her dying at all. Whether it was that day or fifty years from then, he couldn't stand the thought of this beautiful woman, this... angel, in his eye, rotting away in an earthly grave like the equal of everyone else.
When she was hanged, the sky was dark with crows. He stood at the back of the crowd. Her neck broke cleanly, and she didn’t thrash, but he saw her eyes before the cloth dropped, and something inside him broke with her spine.
The ground was frozen the night he dug her up. It was a wonder they hadn't burned her.
He brought no lantern; only instinct and a knife. Her body was cold and stiff when he found it, her lips pale blue, hair clotted with soil, but still a beauty, no less. He spoke the words he had found in books hidden under his older brother's floorboards, Latin and older things. He'd spent hours familiarizing himself and learning every pronunciation.
When her eyes opened—slowly, blindly—he wept. He had brought her back. He had no idea what he had brought back. A friend, a lover, a bride? All he knew was incomprehensible joy.