over the woman's head, face and neck. It soaked her hair until it dripped onto the stone floor below her in a thin red puddle. I snapped out of my shock when I realized what was coming.
His hand reached for a candle stub and I moved. "No! You can't! Please, m'sieur, I beg you…" I could already tell from the delight flooding his face that I'd given him exactly the reaction he'd wanted, and that he had no intention of stopping. He watched my face with something like glee as he held the candle to a nearby torch. It had almost guttered, but a tiny flame caught on the candlewick nonetheless. I didn't try to argue with him again, but launched myself forwards, grabbing for the burning candle. I wrestled it from his grip, but the two torturers grabbed my arms and dragged me off him. The man, who I assumed was the head jailer, turned eyes on me that had little humanity left in them; then he smiled. He bent and, very slowly, picked up the candle stub and relit it.
I looked at the woman as he approached; I couldn't help myself. There was a sheen of tears in her light brown eyes, and she blinked once, drops of wine falling from her lashes, before his body obscured my view. Part of my mind said that he would stop short, that he would not, could not, do this. A voice spoke in my head, saying that he wanted to terrorize me, that this scene had been staged to make me more pliable later, and that may have been true. But it didn't save her.
The scene before me wavered, and thoughts that I didn't recognize began to flood my mind. Scenes flashed before my eyes of other places, other people, like a film was being projected onto a transparent veil in front of me. Through it all, I could still see the woman and the torturer, frozen a second before the impossible occurred.
That voice in my head piped up again, gibbering about being brought up in captivity but never knowing true cruelty. I dressed in fine linen and handmade lace, it insisted; I had my books, my guitar and my paints with which to amuse myself; my jailors bowed low when they entered my room and did not sit in my presence unless I gave them permission. Royal blood flowed in my veins, and no one ever forgot that. Never had I seen brutality like this; never had I known such fear. And following quickly behind it was a red rush of pure rage. This was not justice, was not necessary to preserve peace or the stability of the land, or whatever high-sounding phrases they were currently using. It was the actions of a sadistic coward who kept his hands lily white at court, while such things were done behind closed doors in his name. And they called me the abomination.
I shook my head and tried to get the voice to shut up and to clear the cobwebs off my vision; after a second, it worked. But then I was back in the nightmare, with a clear view of that candle inching towards its destination. I watched in stunned incredulity as the torturer held the tiny flame to a few strands of the woman's wine-soaked hair. It caught with an audible whoosh and the blaze spread eagerly to the rest of her head and shoulders. Within seconds, the top part of her body was only a dark outline in a dancing curtain of fire. I screamed, since I couldn't do anything else. The other prisoners took up the cry until the room was filled with shrieks and the sound of chains beating uselessly against unyielding stone. We could do nothing else for her, so we made our cries almost shake the walls, but the woman herself made no sound as she burned.
"Mademoiselle Palmer, what is it? What is wrong?" Louis-César's face appeared in front of my eyes and I vaguely felt someone shaking me. The high-pitched, hopeless cry of the cell filled the room, and it took a minute to realize that it was coming from me.
"Mia stella, be calm, be calm!" Rafe pushed the Frenchman away and drew me against his chest. I ran my hands under the cashmere of his sweater, pulling him as close as I could, and buried my face in the soft silk of his shirt. I breathed deeply of the familiar scent of Rafe's