Chapter 214 The Tortures of Lady Ravensworth
POV: Callum | Parliament steps
The silver chains are Parliamentary issue, which means they are made for exactly this purpose, which is containing a werewolf who does not want to be contained, and they are good at their purpose in the specific way that things made by people who understand what they are making are good at their purpose, which is to say they are very good.
I have been in silver before. The burn is something I have catalogued and accepted as a variable in the work of the past three years, a cost that comes with operating in a world where Parliament has silver and uses it. The burn from these chains is different from the burn of incidental silver contact because these chains are designed to maximize coverage and minimize the body's ability to adapt, and what that means in practice is that every time I move the burn intensifies rather than becoming familiar, the specific punishment of a restraint designed to make movement cost more than stillness.
I am not being still.
The guards on either side of me are large and they are trained specifically for werewolf restraint and they are doing their jobs well, which means I am being held, which means I am watching from thirty feet away as the charges are read and as Valentina stands on the Parliament steps in the midday light and listens to the list of what she is accused of.
Mordaunt is on the raised platform to the left of the executioner. He is watching me rather than watching Valentina, which is the specific cruelty of a person who understands that the psychological component of this is as important to him as the legal component, who wants me to see him watching me watch this.
"This is the price of rebellion," he says, and he says it quietly enough that only I can hear it, positioned as he is above and to my left, saying it with the specific precision of someone who has planned what they would say and is delivering it correctly. "Every choice has a consequence. You built this coalition and it cost her. Remember that."
I do not answer him because answering him is what he wants and because the part of me that is still functioning in the operational sense understands that the only thing I can do right now is watch Valentina and let her know I am watching and that she is not alone in this room, even in chains, even from thirty feet, even like this.
She finds me immediately. I knew she would.
She looks at me with the expression that is her expression, the one underneath all the others, the one that does not perform anything because it does not need to, and she is not crying and she is not afraid in the way that fear usually presents and she is the most Valentina she has ever been in this moment, which is fully herself, without compromise, without adjustment for the audience.
She says something to the official about her statement. I hear what she says. The crowd hears what she says. The cheering from the back of the crowd and the silence from the front of it tell me which parts of the crowd understand what she is saying and which parts are receiving it differently.
I regret nothing.
The silver chains burn every time I pull against them and I pull against them constantly because the alternative is standing still while the executioner positions themselves and I cannot stand still, I am not built for standing still in this situation, and the guards are struggling with the specific difficulty of a werewolf who has been using pack territory for three years and who has a physical strength that silver does not entirely suppress, only interferes with.
I am breaking my own wrists. This is not a figure of speech. The bones of my right wrist are fracturing against the chain because I am pulling with the full force of everything I have and the chain is not giving and the weakest point in the system is the bone rather than the metal and I understand this and I keep pulling anyway because the alternative is what is happening on the steps.
Valentina looks at me one last time and I read what she is saying across thirty feet of crowd noise and London midday light, and the words land with the full weight of everything they carry, which is everything.
The stake goes through her heart.
The sound she makes and then does not make is the line between before and after, and I am on the after side of it and the world on this side is a different shape from the world on the before side, and the difference is the shape of her, which was in it and is not now, and the crowd noise and the London midday and the silver chains and Mordaunt on the platform all continue exactly as they were and the world continues exactly as it was and none of it accounts for the difference, none of it registers the thing that has just been removed from it.
I stop pulling.
The guards are still holding me and I have stopped requiring holding and the silver is still burning and I am not registering the burn.