“Robena Coilleghille must face death,” Constance says without hesitation. “She must be confronted with it; she must give herself over to it. If you pardoned her now, she would never know if she would be brave until the very end.”

She takes a breath. Her heart is an ember in her chest. How it burns! Like a bonfire on the solstice.

“But I do not believe she should die. If I held that axe, I would nick her neck, and let that hot blood spattered on the stone be enough. I would leave her a scar to remember her penitence by, one for her fingers to trace should she be tempted to folly again. I do not know if her doom can be turned aside, here in her garden, but— that is my judgment on her.”