Cinderella Is Dead(39)

He walks up to a young girl near the front of the crowd, maybe ten or eleven years old, and slips his hand under her chin. “Smile. You’re so much prettier when you smile.” I can’t see her face, but she must acquiesce because he grins down at her in a way that makes my skin crawl.

A hulking man in a black hood comes to stand behind the seamstress. He holds a shining ax, its blade as wide as a wagon wheel, and though the sky is overcast, it glints in the light.

“Keep your eyes there,” King Manford says to the girl, pointing to the man.

I recall a memory, so faded I can barely see it in my mind. My mother, me as a young girl, a crowd gathered in the square. My mother stood stoically as a man in a black hood walked through the crowd. Her hand slid down to cover my eyes as gasps erupted all around us.

This is an execution.

“No—” The word is almost silent as it leaves me, as if it knows better than to make itself heard.

A murmur ripples through the crowd, and Constance’s face freezes in a mask of horror and disgust. A guard rolls a stump in front of the seamstress and pushes her head onto the makeshift chopping block.

The king glares at her. “Tell me, woman. Was it worth your life to help some stupid peasant escape her fate?”

I can’t catch my breath. She didn’t do what he is accusing her of, but what can she say?

“If my life could serve a purpose,” the woman begins, raising her head a little and looking directly at the king, “then let this be it. I would die to give even just one person the chance to be free from you.”

There are gasps from the crowd. People look back and forth between one another.

The king’s face twists into a hideous scowl. “And so you shall,” he says. He gives a flick of his wrist, and the man in the hood lifts up the ax. It balances at the apex of its arc, hesitates, and then swings down in one clean motion. The seamstress’s head rolls into the dirt.

A choked scream escapes my throat, but the sound rises and dies in the same breath. There are more gasps from the crowd, the sounds of someone being sick, sobbing. The king mounts his horse and stares out at the gathering of people. “Remember what you’ve seen here. Her life was pointless, and she died because of her own recklessness. Your lives are a gift from me. And I will allow you to keep them as long as the rules are obeyed.” He digs his heels into the sides of his horse and races off with his guards in tow.

I fall onto my knees and look at the sky.

This is my fault. I went to the woman’s shop to get the ribbons, and I let my stubbornness, my hatred of the king’s laws, get in the way of that one simple task. I only wanted to help her and her son. Her son. Will his father now turn his heavy hands to the boy, if he hasn’t already?

Constance wraps her hand around my waist and pulls me up. I can’t even feel the ground under my feet. I just stare at her in silent, abject horror.

“We have to get out of here right now,” she says.

This is the reason no one speaks up. Manford has no qualms about killing someone on a whim. It could have been any of us. We are too busy trying to survive to worry about anything else. We rush to the cart, and I start to climb in.

“Just a damn minute,” a voice snarls. I’m yanked backward and land hard on the ground. A searing pain shoots down my side. My hat falls off, and the braids at the back of my head come loose.

“I knew you was a woman.” The man from the grain stall stands over me, glowering. He picks me up by the front of my coat and slams me against the wall of the alley. My head hits the brick, and my vision goes blurry.

“You’re a pretty thing, ain’t you?” The man whistles, blowing his rancid breath into my face. “Why are you dressed like a man?”

Passersby look at us, but no one stops. My head throbs with every heartbeat.

“Get off me,” I say. I dig my fingers into his arms, but he doesn’t budge.

“Women aren’t allowed to keep no money. Where’d you get them coins? You stole ’em, didn’t ya? Didn’t you just see what happened? Gotta be some kind of fool to—”

Suddenly, his body goes rigid. A glinting blade pressing up against his neck convinces him to unhand me. While Constance proceeds to back him against the alley wall, I put my cap on, tucking the loose ends of my braids underneath. I’m dizzied by the stabbing pain at my side. The man’s eyes dart between Constance and me.

“What are you two playing at?” he asks. A small trickle of blood runs down his neck.

“What makes you think you can put your hands on her?” Constance’s voice darkens, every single syllable taking a beat of its own. Her hand doesn’t waver.

“You gonna kill me, woman?” the man asks incredulously. He doesn’t think she will do it, but I’m certain she will.

“I could do it,” she whispers, her mouth close to his ear. “And not even bat an eye. Slit you open like a fish and let your guts spill out on the ground. I suspect even the dogs would leave your entrails alone, you disgusting little man.”

As she leans away from him, the man notices something in her eyes that makes him take her seriously for the first time.

“Come now,” he says. “You don’t really want to hurt me. A beautiful lady like yourself wouldn’t do that.”

The corner of Constance’s mouth twitches. “That you try to flatter me when I have a blade at your neck makes me want to slit your throat and spare the world your ignorance.”