Long Live the Queen

""Queen Justine of the Depths, you have been sentenced to death for high treason and the kidnapping of the sole heir to the throne, Princess Evangeline," his voice was loud and clear as a bell, and though the crowd remained dead silent, she could feel the tension in the air, so thick she could cut it with the sword that would soon end her life. "However," she inhaled sharply.
Fool, stupid, stupid fool.
"However," he repeated, "it has been decided that if you confess as a traitor and reveal the whereabouts of the Princess, your sentence will be lightened."
Fool king.
She laughed, a harsh bitter thing, and when she spoke, it was in a voice so hard and sharp she didn't recognize it as her own.
"You say I'm a traitor." Cold, sharpened like the executioner's blade. "And, maybe I am. All I know is that I did what had to be done. I will not let her be used like some pawn." The sad look in his eyes snapped back to the eyes of a calculating ruler, and they searched her face before turning to the executioner. He nodded, and she was shoved forward.
Justine was not afraid. She was not scared of death, or what she'd meet in the afterlife. But she hoped, prayed, her daughter would rise and destroy everything that her predecessors had built.
Her knees hit the wood platform hard, and her shoulders were pushed down. Her chin hit the block, stained with the blood of all the traitors before her, and then, and only then, did she start her whispering, so quiet it merely looked as if she was just mumbling to herself.
The fools, all of them.
No one was gifted enough to recognize the spell that was cast and woven, made stronger by the blood that was to be shed."