Once upon a time, there were two moons, who were sisters.
Nitid was the goddess of tears and life, and the sky was hers.
No one worshipped Ellai but secret lovers.
47
EVANESCENCE
Madrigal ascended the scaffold. Her hands were tied behind her, her wings pinioned so she couldn’t fly away. It was an unnecessary precaution: Overhead arched the iron bars of the Cage. The bars were there to keep seraphim out, not chimaera in, but today they would have served that purpose. Madrigal was not going anywhere but to her death.
“That is unnecessary,” Brimstone had objected when Thiago ordered the pinion. His voice had come out as a scraping almost too low to hear, like something being dragged across the ground.
Thiago, the White Wolf, the general, the Warlord’s son and right hand, had ignored him. He knew it was unnecessary. He wanted to humiliate her.
Madrigal’s death wasn’t enough for him. He wanted her abject, penitent. He wanted her on her knees.
He would be disappointed. He could bind her hands and wings, he could force her to her knees, and he could watch her die, but it was not in his power to make her repent.
She was not sorry for what she had done.
On the palace balcony, the Warlord sat in state. He had the head of a stag, his antlers tipped in gold. Thiago was in his place at his father’s side. The seat at the Warlord’s left hand belonged to Brimstone, and was empty.
A thousand-thousand eyes were on Madrigal, and the cacophony of the crowd was sharpening to something dark, the voices cresting to jeers. Feet stamped, thunderous. There had not been an execution in the plaza in living memory, but those gathered knew what to do, as if hate were an atavism just
waiting to resurface.
A shrieked accusation: “Angel-lover!”
Some in the crowd were stricken, uncertain. Madrigal was a beauty, a joy —could she really have done this unthinkable thing?
And then Akiva was brought out. It was Thiago’s order that he be forced to watch. The guards knocked him to his knees on a platform opposite hers, from which his view would be unobscured. Even bloodied and shackled and weak from torture, he was glorious. His wings flared radiant; his eyes were fire, and they were fierce, and fixed on her, and Madrigal was filled with a warmth of memories and tenderness, and with sharp regret that her body
