The collar was overkill.
Rugged steel, the spikes of a bulldog, thorns that dug against her throat every time she moved. They wanted a show. They wanted her head on a pike, paraded through the streets as crows pecked at her remains. I couldn't give them that. This was the next best thing.
Still, I hadn't considered how it would be to hold her leash. To watch her gasp for air, wrists bleeding, weakened from silence and my own excessive vengeance.
Weakness, Mother whispers, and I almost flinch. Embrace the pain. It makes you strong.
How she learned that lesson, I've no idea. Perhaps I taught her that. Perhaps she ached to see me stumble, pulled upwards by nothing but her own ability. How my little feet wobbled in protest, begging to collapse, only to be jerked forward like a puppet on strings.
She killed me. The words drench me in a cold sweat. Because of her, I am gone.
If I could hug her, I would. Bury myself in her skirts and beg forgiveness as I didn't in life. For giving her an M instead of death, for allowing her to gather the strength to strike. For the memories that haunt me, even now, and make me doubt her mother's love.
Instead, my fingers curl around another wrist, one gleaming with blood both fresh and old. The Sounder has wrought more damage than I anticipated, less than Harbor Bay, but more than she deserves. When we are back, I will destroy it.
Her eyes snap to my face, and I drown in them. She's looking at me. She's looking at me, not Cal, not her river boy, not any of the Reds she's so desperate to save. I have earned her hatred. I must savor it.
My smile rises, slow and wicked, a glint of sunlight catching on a knife. I cannot show mercy. Not here. Not now. I must save that for the moments unseen, the short memory of a Court who will demand fresh blood soon enough. I need not torment her forever.
Dispose of her. Mother has no patience for my musings. Behead her as your brother did to Tiberias.
I yank the chain too quickly, and she stumbles. "Bear witness to this prisoner, this victory." I loosen the chain slightly, allowing her to gaze upon the crowd. They jeer back, over three hundred Silvers, commoner and noble alike. "Here is the leader of the Scarlet Guard, Mare Barrow." A rumble through the chain, like she's trying not to laugh. "A murderer, a terrorist, a great enemy to our kingdom. And now she kneels before us, bare to her blood."
My hand curls before I register it, Mare's flinging to catch her balance. They swoop inches from my face, and a traitorous part of me is tempted to run my lips over them. The same part that still keeps hold of her wrist, a dance without steps, curtsies, or the security of precedent.
More words fall from my mouth, yet none of them hold my attention. Every spare thought turns to her wrist, to the assurance that she is mine mine mine, mine to love as boldly as I dare, mine to hold as close as I know how, mine to watch as she breathes in and out, a slow release I will never replicate. She's going to destroy me.
I can't let her.
The crowd cheers, and the chain shakes. She's trying not to cry. Trying not to break as she did on the bridge. I should be overjoyed. Not empty. Not the turn of a wheel in a ditch, kicking dirt at all who might help it.
"Mare Barrow is a prisoner of the crown, and she will face the crown and council's judgment. Her many crimes must be answered for."
Bold words that hide the shakiness beneath. The hesitation, the obsession, the rotten corpse of a heart still aching from Mother's loss. The vengeance for a death she must feel no guilt for. She displayed her corpse, after all.
