The Luna Queen's Rebirth novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Rope

They built the gallows at the edge of the Moon Hall yard, as far from the black stones as the wall allowed.

I had asked for that. I had asked for the pitch and pine to be hauled down to the river before dark and thrown in.

"Not fire," I told the Moot, the night before. "Never fire. Fire is what she gave me."

Thirty Alphas had looked at each other, and then at me, and nobody argued.

So at dawn the city stood in the cold with its breath smoking, and watched a plain beam and a rope.

Perdita came across the yard between two riders, in her prison grey, with her brown waves tied back.

She walked to a market she had been to before.

The captain went up first. He cursed her the whole way, and she did not turn her head.

Then an old woman pushed through the crowd to the foot of the steps.

She was a midwife of the city, with flour on her apron and a face.

"My lady," she said to me, "I looked at her at midnight, as the Moot asked."

"And?"

"She isn't carrying. She never was. Not this year."

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