Page 37 of Kiss the Dawn
“Sounds like a damn good reason to me. You should be commending her, not sentencing her to death.”
Clara made a sound of agreement, eyes bright with fervor and support.
“You’re not considering the larger picture,” Frederick said. “In sending you away, she was knowingly dooming us all. That crime against the Isle, against its peoples, is unforgivable. The sentence is irrefutable. I’m sorry.”
“So you lied and told me she was sick? You were going to let me leave here without giving me a chance to meet her?”
“You can’t meet her,” Frederick said. “She’s on the other side of the Isle in a holding cell, in coven dominion.”
“Yougaveher to them?” Jules shook her head in dismay.
They’d interrogated her. Probably hurt her to get the information they needed, and now they planned to kill her?
A ball of heat formed in my chest. “I don’t care where the fuck she is. I want to see her! I deserve to see her.” Darkness clouded my vision, rage vibrating in my chest and surging through my veins, and when I spoke, my voice came out deep and menacing. “Find a fucking way or I swear to all that’s holy you will pay inblood.” Pin-drop silence and stunned faces greeted my threat. My wrath winked out, leaving me shaken and cold.
I let out a slow exhale. “I…I’m sorry.” What the fuck was wrong with me? “Look, there must be a way for me to see her. Something I can do to overturn her sentence. Maybe she was coerced by the Order member? Maybe he forced her hand, put stuff in her head…Why not find him and punish him?”
“He is not the one who was bound by our laws, and therefore, he is not the one who broke them.”
“She was grieving, though,” Jules said. “She’d just lost her husband, and she was grieving. You have to bear that in mind, surely?”
Her words threw me for a moment because if my father died before I was born, then how… “Wait, you have a different father?”
Jules nodded.
But it was Clara who spoke. “Jules was born less than two years after you. They pushed Mother into remarrying, barely giving her time to mourn the loss of her husband or her child.” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “What she did was wrong, but I can understand it. I can forgive her. But the covens will not. The laws are clear.”
Jules looked to Clara. “We can petition. We can?—”
“Done already. We’ve done it all, Jules.” Her tone softened. “There is no reprieve. Nothing we can do.”
Jules’s shoulders slumped, her face crumpled, and she began to sob quietly.
This wasn’t my world. These people were my kin but not my family, and yet I felt for them. For the woman who’d sent me away to save me from a life of duty and phantom chains and was about to pay the price with her life.
I might not be able to save her, but I needed to see her, to show her that her sacrifice wasn’t in vain. “Please…Frederick…Please help me to see her.”
Frederick sighed. “I’ll speak to Daphne and see what can be done.”
“If she gets to see Mama, then I want to too,” Jules said, eyes bright with tears. “I can’t believe you told us she was sick this past month. I need to see her. I need to say goodbye.”
Clara nodded. “I want to see her too.”
Frederick sighed and pushed to his feet. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Frederick left,and my sisters stayed.
Jules was red-eyed and subdued, and Clara sat by the window, looking out at the mist.
The silence was getting to me. “Won’t the others want to see her?”
“They think she deserves it,” Clara said.
My heart sank, and Jules let out a soft sob.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, pull yourself together,” Clara snapped. “Do you think the last thing Mama wants to see is you sniveling?”
“I don’t believe this is happening,” Jules said. “It’s Mama. Sweet, kind Mama.”
