The first breath of smoke goes in hot. Comes out thin.

My lungs are rationing already.

Iron bites my wrists where the chain loops twice, then once more for spite. The pole at my spine is rough—bark still clinging. Green wood sweats sap that glitters in the firelight. Bright as tears.

Not mine.

The guard pulls the chain hard enough to lift my shoulders. I've stitched those knuckles. Boiled the thread in vinegar and prayer.

"Stay still. It will be better this way."

My laugh comes out as a cough. "Better for whom?"

He doesn't answer. His mouth works. Chewing guilt into something he can swallow.

Coward.

The faces are the worst part. Not strangers. Maren—whose baby I turned with my own hands—clutches that child to her chest. As if I'm the danger. The cobbler looks through me like I'm already smoke. I set his son's wrist when it bent like a question mark. Held the boy and pulled until the bone remembered where it belonged.

"You begged me to save you," I say. "Every one of you."

The priest lifts his hands. "She speaks with a forked tongue—"

I spit. "No. I speak with the tongue you used when you wanted my help."

My collarbone itches.

No. Not an itch.

A waking.

The Ash Mark shivers like a coal stirred. A brand the size of a thumbprint, pressed into my flesh years ago "for my protection."

For their ownership.

It throbs. Once. Twice. Each pulse a measured tap, like a clock in a room where someone is dying.

"Witch," someone says. Not fear. Relief.

"Witch—witch—witch—"

The baker throws the first torch. It arcs in a slow, beautiful curve. Lands with a hungry hiss.

Heat blooms. Slaps my shins. Climbs.

The Ash Mark answers, pulsing harder, pain precise as a needle pushed under nail.

One. Two. Three.

A voice enters my skull. Fitted like a blade in a sheath.

Velvet. Patient. Assuming intimacy.

Ask properly.

The words arrive behind my eyes, inside the hollow of my mouth.

Who—

You won't survive unless you ask properly.

The cough tears at my throat. The chant swells.

"What do you want?" I rasp.

A pause. Like fingertips tracing the inside of my ribs.

Not that. Ask.

My wrists strain against heating chains.

No one is coming. No sudden rider. No pardon.

Only the heat. And the end.

Unless I say a different word to a different listener.

"Please," I say. Small. Not pretty. Not for the crowd.

Ready to pay the price?

My eyes snap open.

The fire has climbed to my knees. The chains are hot enough that my wrists feel wet—sweat, maybe. Or blood.

And then I see him.

Standing where no one stands. A pocket of stillness in the moving mass. People shift around him without noticing, like water around a stone.

He is wrong-beautiful. Features too perfect. Posture too effortless. As if gravity is a suggestion he tolerates. Dark hair like wet earth. Skin that catches firelight without reflecting it.

And his eyes—

Molten gold slipping toward void.

They are fixed on my collarbone. On the Ash Mark pulsing like a heartbeat that isn't mine.

Not lust. Recognition.

Like my flesh is a door with his name carved into it.

What price could be worse than this?

"Yes," I say.

He tilts his head. Listening to the sound the word makes when it hits bottom.

Then he moves. Not through the crowd. Through the space between moments. One breath he's there. The next he's at the pyre's edge, stepping over pitch and flame like it's a curtain of rain.

The villagers recoil. Their mouths still form the chant while their throats forget how to make sound.

He walks into the fire.

The flames lick his boots and die. Curl toward him and collapse, snuffed as if the air refuses to feed them. He stops so close I can smell him under the smoke: winter air, old stone, something metallic like a coin held too long in the mouth.

Up close, the wrongness is worse. Too still. Too certain. A statue that learned to breathe and decided breathing was optional.

"Please?" he says aloud. Almost amused. "And you answered my question."

His finger touches my neck. Ice-cold. A shock so sharp it steals my breath. He tips my chin with it.

Not gentle.

A claim.

The Ash Mark flares. My vision whites out.

When it clears, his arm is around my waist. The contact is wrong—solid, unyielding. Like being held by a door that has decided to close.

The priest stammers a word that isn't a name. Just a choking sound.

Orryx.

He presses his mouth to mine.

Not tentative. Not asking.

A seal. A stamp. A signing in flesh.

Cold pours through my lips, down my throat. The fire recoils. The flames bend away as if terrified.

The world folds. Heat to cold. Smoke to clean air. The chant to nothing.

We drop.

Mud catches my shoulder. Rain needles my skin. Trees loom overhead—black trunks, dripping branches.

I cough ash out of my lungs in thick gray clots. My wrists are free. The chains are gone. The skin beneath is raw, weeping.

I drag myself forward anyway.

Distance can be safety. Distance can be—

A shadow falls over me.

Orryx stands between two trees as if he's always belonged there. Rain beads on his hair and slides off without soaking.

He watches me like a collector watching a seal set in wax.

I swallow. My throat burns. "What did you—"

He tilts his head.

Then, softly, almost amused, almost tender in the way a knife can be when it's sharp enough,

"You have no idea what you've done."