Thorns between us

Three: The Offering

The bells started before the sun.

Not the pretty ones for morning prayers. These were heavy. Slow. One, then wait, then another. The kind that makes your stomach drop.

I didn’t sleep. The cell floor was stone and the cold came up through my dress. The iron on my wrists had rubbed them raw. I just sat with my back against the wall and counted the bells. Twelve of them.

When the door opened, two guards came in. Both looked about my age. One of them had freckles. I used to buy apples from his sister at the market.

“Get up,” Freckles said. He wouldn’t look at me.

My legs felt strange. Like they’d forgotten how to work. I stood anyway.

They didn’t chain my hands this time. Just my ankles. The iron clinked when I walked. We went up stone stairs. The air outside hit me and it was too bright. It was a clear morning. That felt unfair.

The courtyard was already full.

People lined the walls, sat on barrels, stood on crates to see. The baker’s wife was there with her youngest on her hip. Old Man Tiller, who sold me thread. Girls I’d danced with at harvest.

No one waved. No one threw anything either. They just watched.

There was a wooden block in the middle of the stones. And an axe leaning against it. The blade caught the light.

My mouth went dry.

A priest stepped forward. He had gray hair and hands that shook.

“Do you have any last words?” he asked me.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. What could I say that would matter? I didn’t mean to? I’m sorry? Sorry wouldn’t bring him back.

I shook my head.

The voice came back then. It had been quiet all night.

“Last chance,”it said. Like it was reading from a list. “Say the word. I can get us out. Five minutes.”

I didn’t answer.

“You’re really going to do this,” it said. “Okay.”

Then it went quiet again.

They told me to kneel. The stone was cold through the thin dress. I could smell sawdust and iron and too many people.

Someone coughed. A baby cried and was shushed.

I thought about the prince. About his hands. They’d been warm the last time I held them. About the way he laughed when I spilled wine on him at the ball.

I thought about my mom, by the river, making me promise to be careful.

I thought about how tired I was. Tired of being scared. Tired of pretending I wasn’t dangerous.

So I did something. I don’t know if it was brave or stupid.

I stopped pushing it away.

All the bad luck, all the wrong things that happened around me, all the part of me that killed him — I gathered it. I pulled it in from my fingers, from my chest, from the places that always felt cold. And I packed it down. Into my blood. Into the center of me.

If I was going to die, I didn’t want it spilling out on anyone else.

“What are you doing?”the voice asked. For the first time it didn’t sound sure.

“Nothing,” I whispered.

The executioner cleared his throat. “Any last words?”

I looked up at the sky. It was blue. Clouds moving slow.

“Don’t bury me,” I said. My voice came out hoarse. “Just... throw me away. Far.”

The priest frowned but didn’t argue.

The axe came up.

I closed my eyes.

It hurt.

A bright, white pain, and then nothing.

---

I don’t know how long I was gone.

Time didn’t feel like time.

The first thing I noticed was the cold. Wet cold. And the smell of mud and stagnant water.

I tried to breathe and choked. Water went into my nose.

Right. I was underwater.

I panicked for a second and thrashed. My chains were still there, but they were loose. Rusted. They fell off my ankles with almost no effort.

I pushed up. Broke the surface.

Air. It hurt to breathe, but it was air.

I was in the Dead Marsh.

At the edge of the kingdom. The place mothers told kids not to go. The water was black and still. Reeds stuck up like bones. There were no birds.

I was supposed to be dead.

I remembered the block. The axe.

I looked down at myself. My dress was torn and filthy. My skin was pale. There should’ve been a wound. There wasn’t. Just a faint line across my collarbone that looked more like a bruise than a cut.

“Well,”the voice said. It wasn’t in my head. It was in the air, in the water, everywhere. “That worked.”

I sat up in the mud. I felt weird. Not hungry. Not thirsty. Not tired, exactly. But heavy. Like I was carrying something.

“What happened?” I asked out loud.

“You died,”the voice said, matter of fact. “And then you didn’t. You gave it somewhere to go.”

The water around me rippled, even though there was no wind.

I put my hand in it. It was cold, but it didn’t feel wrong. It felt... familiar.

When I lifted my hand, little black leaves were growing on the reeds next to me. They hadn’t been there before.

I pulled my hand back fast.

I stood. My legs shook but held me.

The marsh was quiet except for the sound of water dripping.

I looked at my hands. The skin looked the same, but under it, if I stared, there was a faint dark pulse. Like ink moving under the surface.

I didn’t like it. But I also wasn’t scared of it.

“So,”the voice said. “Now what?”

I didn’t have an answer.

The guards had done what I asked. They’d thrown me away.

They thought that was the end.

I started walking. The mud sucked at my feet. With every step, the water behind me closed over my footprints. The trees here had always been dead. Now a few of them had those black leaves.

I didn’t feel alive the way I did before.I didn’t feel dead either.I felt in between.

After a while I reached the edge of the marsh. Solid ground. I looked back once. The marsh looked the same as it always had. Dark and empty. But I knew better now.

They killed me. They disposed of me. But I’m still here. And I have no idea what I am now.

---