31. Thirty-Two Rowan

T hey marched me and Maeve downstairs and out the main doors. People swarmed through the castle, taking axes to the beautiful wooden mouldings and smashing the ancient furniture. As we were dragged across the courtyard, someone tossed an end table from one of the upstairs windows, where it smashed against the cobbles with a sickening crack. Panic rose in my chest, settling on me like a familiar weight.

They're destroying our home.

Everything I'd loved in my life was tied to this house. For all of us, Briarwood was more than stones and wood and windows. It was the place where we'd uncovered our true selves. Corbin had taken five broken people and given them the magic of Briarwood, and this castle wormed its way into all our hearts. I loved it the same way I loved Maeve, and the guys, and Corbin.

Corbin…where is he? I twisted my head around, trying to see him on the ramparts, fighting amongst the crowd. If they found us, did that mean...

And the others, where were they? Was this it – the end of Briarwood coven?

I'm glad I let Obelix go back on the roof. I hoped like hell the little rascal had the sense to hide up there somewhere, and that he'd escape unscathed. At least one of us would.

"You can't do this," Maeve yelled at the men dragging us down the narrow path toward the meadow. "This is illegal. It's vandalism and assault and you'll go to jail for a very long time."

One of them – I think it was the one named Gus who Flynn fought at the pub – snorted. "That's unlikely, witch." He pointed to a figure standing beside the door. I recognised the female officer who'd spoken to us at the church, the one who lost her colleague to the fae. She caught me watching her and made a slicing motion across her throat.

My body jerked as the panic crashed over me. My ears rang. Heat surged through my body, followed by a sharp, stinging pain along my right arm, so intense that tears sprung in my eyes and I looked down to make sure the limb was still there, still attached to my body. It felt like someone had hacked it off. The pain seared down my leg, carrying with it a paralysing fear that everyone and everything I loved was about to be murdered in front of me.

My weight slumped against my captor. He yelled at me to move, but my body wouldn't obey. Two other men ran over and they dragged me out the side gate and into the meadow, where an even bigger crowd waited. Torches flickered over the faces, so many faces I recognised from the village. So many people who wanted me dead. They must be right about something.

It looked like the movie set of some hillbilly horror film, only it was sickeningly real.

"I had to knock this one out." someone called. They dragged Arthur's body beside mine. Blood pissed from a cut on his head. As they threw him down beside me I noticed his stomach rising and falling. He was breathing. But for how much longer?

"No!" Maeve reached for Arthur, but her captors tore her away. I lurched toward her, but rough hands pulled me back. Someone threw a black hood over my head and tripped me so I slammed into the earth. The pain from the fall became one with the pain in my arm and leg, surging through my body and driving my panic to the brink. My whole body spasmed. I lost control of my motor function. I was a trembling, sobbing ball of uselessness.

Corbin…

The thought pricked through my ruined mind. Where's Corbin?

"Did you get the fire out?" Blake called to Flynn.

"Aye…but they started another one and I—" Flynn's voice dissolved into a scream that curdled what was left of my mind.

They're going to kill us all. They're going to torture Maeve, Corbin, and the others in front of you, and it's all your fault.

The fear completely paralysed me. Wild, wretched noises fell on my ears, and it took me several moments to realise I was the one making those horrid, inhuman sounds.

Something hard hit my cheek. I turned my head toward the blow and copped an apple in the eye.

Sweet juice exploded over the front of my hood. The villagers jeered as they pounded us with stones, fruit, even the butts of their wooden torches. I jammed my face into the ground in a vague attempt to protect myself. Hard objects battered my body, followed by the blows of fists and feet.

"Witch!" "Sorcerers!" "You killed my sister!" "You cursed me with cancer!" "Die, you evil creatures!"

"I can't use my magic!" Blake yelled.

"Me neither," Flynn called back.

I couldn't use my magic even if I'd tried, but now I knew it was no use. My mind drew back to a night outside the squat, where a guy had paid for a half hour with me. I'd taken him around the side of the building, to an area we usually used for customers. We had an old rotting couch there, and some supplies for shooting heroin in a tin behind the rubbish bins. As I went around the corner, two other guys came out of the shadows, their teeth glinting, their eyes hungry for violence.

I'd curled up into a ball then. I went to a different place. Their blows slammed into me, their hands tugged down my pants, but I didn't feel any of it. I was somewhere else. I'd moved into this weird dream world beyond fear.

I went to that same place now. Objects thudded against my skin, knocking my brain around my skull. My friends screamed. But I wasn't there any more. I was a ghost, floating above my broken body, watching the horror with detached interest.

Sometime later, it might have been minutes or hours, rough hands grabbed my body and hoisted me to my feet. I slumped against them. My legs didn't support my weight any more. Maybe they were broken. My hood was ripped off.

My ears buzzed. Dried blood glued my eyelids together. I managed to throw one open, but the sight that greeted me made me wish for the darkness again.

At the front of the crowd stood Daigh, his arms held above his head like Christ at the crucifixion, a look of utter triumph on his face. Beside him, fae stood in neat rows, bows drawn and pointed directly at us. At me .

"Hello, daughter," he addressed Maeve.

"I knew you were behind this," she growled from somewhere on my left. "You lied to me again."

He shrugged. "I'm not the only one who lies. You told a lie to your friends tonight, didn't you, daughter? You didn't think to tell them it was you who broke the magic of the protective charms and let the humans into the castle."

His words made no sense. He might as well have declared Queen Elizabeth was a teapot. No way would Maeve have done this. That's not possible. Even if she'd wanted to, she never would have even had the chance...

I waited for Maeve to deny it, but she didn't. "Why did you do this?" she cried, her voice high, wavering.

My heart ripped into pieces as the truth of her lack of denial slammed into me. Maeve did this? But why? She loves us. She loves me.

But no, of course, she didn't. She couldn't. Because no one could love me. I wasn't worthy of love, I'd been shown that time and time again, but still, I refused to let go of my hope. Maeve had let us all believe, when really…she'd been under Daigh's spell the whole time...

"I did it all for the dream," Daigh said. "Because I finally understood how to get what I want."

He lifted one arm above his head. The fae behind him parted, revealing a structure that turned my blood to ice.

An open bonfire burned bright, in fragrant disregard for the summer fire ban. The swaying grasses of the meadow had been stomped flat and covered with dirt and splatters of quick-dry concrete that held in place triangular wooden scaffolds. From each scaffold protruded a long, pointed stake.

Six stakes.

My eyes darted between the towering horrors, noting every detail true to the vision in Maeve's dream. All except one thing. A figure slumped at the base of the last stake, tied from head to toe in thick rope. Blonde hair matted with blood plastered against her listless face.

Kelly.

Beside me, Maeve howled. It was a sound of such raw terror that it broke what little composure remained inside me. My muscles gave way, and I collapsed forward again. My captors let me fall, and my body slammed into the ground.

The vicar walked out to stand beside Daigh, and raised his own hand to the heavens. In his fingers he clutched a battered bible. "Tonight, we punish those who've brought Satan within our midst. We cleanse the village of Crookshollow and restore righteous justice to our land."

"No, no, no, no," Flynn kept saying. Arthur bellowed. I guess he'd come to again. Maeve begged Daigh to spare our lives, to spare Kelly's life.

But Corbin…where's Corbin?

"I told you I would never burn my only child at the stake," Daigh grinned. "Throw that one in first. He's already gone."

The men moved around me, trudging across the meadow toward the stakes, carrying a heavy shape between them. They dumped it down on the ground in front of one of the stakes, dragging it up so the moonlight caught a cold, pale face.

Corbin.

No.

Glassy eyes stared back at me, unseeing. His body hung limp, not responding to their cruel movements. Blood pooled around a knife sticking out of his abdomen.

Corbin was dead.

TO BE CONTINUED