Page 115 of The Enemy's Daughter

Don’t watch, I send to Tristan wherever he’s being held down. I don’t even know if he can hear me.

Too many in the crowd nod in agreement. Some even begin to chant.

“Kill the traitor. Burn her.”

My gaze locks with Liam’s tear-filled eyes as a new, terrible thought dawns on me. His first act as Saraf won’t simply be to watch me die.

It will be to set me on fire.

He can’t break with custom now. They won’t respect him without it.

Liam’s face is a stubborn mask. He limps over to me, resolve burning in his eyes. “I will fight for you. I don’t care if I become Saraf. They can go—”

“I’m dying. The arrow was poisoned,” I whisper, then look downat the evidence embedded in my hip. “I can’t be saved. You’ll be the best leader. The one they need. You can be the change we’ve always dreamed about. Make peace, Liam. I believe in you.”

His mouth works as tears flow down his cheeks. “I—I can’t.”

Those words resonate with all that I am.Every part of me rejects this.I can’t either.I don’t want to die this way—with fire. And I don’t have it in me to beg him to do it.

My gaze finds the first arrow Samuel fired that lodged in the bark of the tree, just inches from my thigh. With a grunt, I wedge it out with my bound arm.

Liam’s lips pinch in anger. “They can rot, Isadora. I’ll kill them all before I kill you.”

He will. I believe him. But it can’t happen.

My eyes find Father’s body on the ground, and I think about how I’ve been a pawn to the games of men since the beginning. A pawn to bring war. Hatred.

Revenge.

But I want my legacy to be peace.

And I want this, my death, to be on my terms. I stab the second poisoned arrow into my thigh and cry out.

Liam stares at my leg in alarm. “What have you done?”

He shouts my name, but it’s over. There’s no going back. Tristan and I can’t share two arrows of poison. With any luck, I’ll die as fast as Gerald, sparing me the pain of being burned. There’s a tiny bit of relief in knowing the decision is made. I close my eyes, trying to ward off the crippling surge of fear.

The pain isn’t as I remember it from before. My tongue grows numb and clumsy. My eyelids become stuck open, unable to close. My arms are dead weight. Unattached. My body is shutting downwith double the poison.Please, let it be quick.

Liam looks like his heart just shattered.

My head tilts as my neck loses strength, and something catches in my peripheral vision. It’s Ryland; he’s running toward me. He looks upset. Then Tristan’s there, too, in front of me, crashing into my mind like he plowed clear through a wall. He must have found a way to break free.

Don’t do it, I plead with him.There’s no point. Taking on the poison now will kill us both.

He doesn’t listen, and I’m too weak to resist him.

My head drops forward. It’s almost over now. I feel it.

Everything goes dark.

38

Once, when I was seven, I tripped and scraped my knee on a tree trunk, spilling my bucket of rhuberries. Mum took the edge of her shirt and wiped the dirt off my scratches with rough strokes that made me cry. I always thought it was odd that she was the healer everyone turned to. She never was very gentle.

My pain reminds me of her touch. A lightning rod stabs my hip again, and I moan.

Death is stupidly unpleasant. And cold. I’m disappointed.

---