The soldiers filed out afterward, and Brenna's shoved her behind them. At first she tried to make as much trouble as she could but as they walked down the halls and stairs, heading for the front doors, her body seemed to go numb despite the frantic rushing of her mind, and she ended up walking in a daze down the grand steps of the palace and through the courtyard. The main gate loomed in front of them, the lights of lanterns and torches making it almost as bright as day and illuminating the faces of the Latterstill citizens staring at them in complete silence.
Robbin slumped between his guards, holding his side as best he could while they held him under the arms. She couldn't see his face, but she knew from the tension in his shoulders that he was just as frightened of the crowd as she was. And their fear only increased as the soldiers lifted the gate and they stepped into the masses. The silence broke in one fell swoop, suddenly replaced with jeers and screaming and shouting. Brenna couldn't even hear her own self think as they screamed right in her face, only barely held off from swallowing her whole by the soldiers who pushed them back. It didn't stop her from being roughly jostled, enough for her teeth to clack painfully together and her tongue to suffer a few bites in the process. She ended up huddling near her soldier's side, hoping to get a bit of protection, though she saw Robbin was hardly afforded any. Quite a few punches landed, and she winced every time she saw him sag under the strain.
They didn't go far. The Latterstill city market sat just outside the gates to the palace, a wide and empty agora with black and white tiles arranged in patterns that were delightful to look upon in the morning. At night, reflecting the fire light, they looked more like bloodstains that spiraled toward a large construction in the center of the market. Brenna nearly collapsed at the sight of the hulking form. The gallows.
Tears burst from her eyes, and she struggled once more, only making the crowd press in harder around her. She knew she was shouting back, trying to convince them that this was wrong, but she couldn't hear her voice as her brain focused solely on the swinging rope in the breeze.
The soldiers yanked her to the steps leading to the platform, but stopped there. Robbin was already set up above her, staring out at the crowd with eyes wider than she'd ever seen on a human. He shook violently, his hands now bound in front of him, while the soldiers talked amongst themselves. Brenna bit her lip, hard, unable to tear her gaze from his stricken face.
Who had built the thing here? Why hadn't they heard it? It was almost as if the gallows had sprung from the bowels of the earth, appearing whole and complete within a few seconds. The wood was dark and seemed to weep, which meant that it was freshly cut. The sap still seeping from its pores. Brenna never thought the smell of wood could make her gag, but it did. Her stomach heaved and she wondered if her legs would continue to know how to support her as the lead soldier marched up the steps and forcefully shoved Robbin into place in front of the looped rope.
There was a moment while the soldier talked to Robbin in a voice too low to be heard, but Brenna knew he must be reading off the list of charges they were bringing against him. Or perhaps he was merely giving him his Last Prayers. At any rate, Robbin quaked but stood tall, staring at the crowd through the noose. His wound had started to bleed through his shirt, and somehow Brenna could only focus on the fact that he wouldn't be able to have it sewn back up again. This seemed so important to her, so catastrophic, that she began to sob anew.
The soldier turned away from Robbin and held up a hand for the crowd to settle. They were never entirely quiet, but they lowered enough that his words carried across the air. "In the absence of a ruling body, the citizens of Latterstill and Anjeluund have come to the agreement that the heinous crimes of Robbin Glenfarrow, the false king, are honor and duty bound to be punished with the only sentence for such treasonous crimes." He then began the list of what they said Robbin did, some of which was fabricated, merely desperate minds trying to find someone to blame for the pain of the past war with Revours, but some of it so horrifyingly true. As the soldier came to Afton's name, Robbin's eyes fluttered shut.
"For these crimes, the citizens have found Robbin Glenfarrow guilty and held responsible! His penance is to forfeit his life in the presence of those he harmed by his actions." He stepped back immediately, raising his hand for a soldier to come forward with a white cloth. Brenna's strength left her as the soldier slipped the cloth over Robbin's head, obscuring his wide eyes and blanched face. Her knees slammed into the cobblestones, her arm still twisted in her guard's grasp, but she could not pull her eyes away from her husband as the noose was slipped around his neck. The soldiers all stood back and the crowd held their breath. Brenna's sobs rose in the quiet, her pleas ignored.
The thunk of the trap door made her start, and her mouth fell open at the speed of Robbin's drop. One moment he stood, shivering and real, and the next he dangled a few feet above the ground, his neck at an awkward angle.
Brenna threw up, splattering the boots of those around her, and earned a few kicks before the soldier hauled her to her feet and shoved her into the relative protection of the small group of his fellow soldiers by the gallows steps. As she bumped against the wood, she wondered if it was her turn, the time when she would follow Robbin... Oh, she couldn't even begin to think of the vast new reality that surrounded her. Robbin was gone, dead, finished. His body still hung there, within reaching distance, yet he was somehow not in it anymore. She choked back another upheaval, as she was jostled toward the steps. Her eyes blurred, her body rejecting the thought of climbing them and walking to the middle.
A soldier grabbed her arm again, and she tried to reach deep inside her for some semblance of calm and dignity she might wear to her grave. But then the soldiers steered her away from the gallows, headed back toward the gates. Her mind took a while to catch up, still thinking she was about to be hanged, and when she finally realized that she was going back into the castle, the soldiers had peeled off and left her only with the two men keeping her from running off.
She tried to ask what was going on, but her voice wouldn't work. Her mouth moved, but no words escaped. The tears blocked her, her sour stomach making it hard not to constantly retch as she thought of her hanging husband.
Surprisingly, they took her back to her room, tossing her in with no ceremony. She came to a skidding stop against the hard post of the bed, the cool wood feeling strange beneath her hands. She stared in confused silence at Robbin's tossed blankets and sheets, how his pillow still bore the imprint of his head.
"The door will be guarded and locked. The window's watched from the outside." With that the soldier slammed the door shut and she heard the locks click into place.
Brenna sank to the floor, the hard stone pressing into her knees and palms, but she didn't process the pain. She just stared at that empty side of the bed, knowing that it would still be warm, but unable to bring herself to touch it.
Within moments her life was gone. A few minutes, a few words from a man with no power, and she was sitting in this empty room with nothing to her name. She was not a sister, she was not a queen, and now she was not even a wife. She'd risen so far and yet she now found herself beyond the touch of light.
Her head tilted forward, resting against the sheets that still smelled faintly of Robbin and that promise he'd given her. To be queen, to be someone. She'd had all that, yes, but now it only served to taunt her with the splendor she could never touch again. An embrace she'd never feel again. Instead, all she had left was the cold floor, and she gave into it with a whimper.