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There is an execution today. Luz is young and the Emperor is old, as he has always been. In all of the history books fourteen-year-old Luz is permitted access to (and some of the ones she isn’t), execution is gory and violent, heads flying and arms flailing and people demanding blood and retribution. Father is much more merciful than the rulers of those old, far-away kingdoms; the garish displays of cruelty can be saved for the Isles’ underground brawls. Instead, the execution is to be carried out by petrification.
Luz has never seen a petrification before. She’s read about it, and when she asked him, Hunter told her a story that Darius told him about a traitor to the empire who was petrified a decade or so ago. Luz doesn’t remember the specifics of the crime they committed, only the most haunting details that Hunter whispered to her before a subsequently sleepless night. They started screaming when their knees became stone, then started choking when their chest hardened to rock, and by the time their head was covered, their cries were only echoes. According to Darius, they’re still displayed in the Conformatorium as a warning to other traitors.
Luz wouldn’t know; she’s not allowed in the more grim areas of the castle. Belos doesn’t like it when she asks annoying questions about what people did to end up there, so Luz has had to learn how to keep her mouth shut while she earns back the right to be told the more gruesome things. Hunter tells her things sometimes, but other times he avoids a topic so hard and gets so nervous and flappy that she has to drop the subject. Hunter’s main job is to guard Luz, but his other job is to follow the Emperor around and do whatever else he’s told. Luz sits on the desk in her study and complains at him until he abandons his paperwork to entertain her in the evenings.
Luz is fourteen and Hunter is some number of years older than her. Hunter insists that it is at least three but Luz thinks it’s more like two. They argue about this infrequently but passionately. However, as her elder, and the Emperor’s most trusted guard, Hunter has certain privileges that Luz does not. One of these is the option to go to see executions when they are being carried out by the Emperor on special occasions.
A wild witch is going to be executed today. It gives Luz a bad feeling but Father told her that the witch committed grievous crimes against the empire and that she shouldn’t feel bad for it, so Luz widened her eyes and nodded seriously like this was Important Advice that she had to take to heart. Like Belos hasn’t told her a thousand times that wild witches are dangerous and an affront to the empire and going against everything the Titan stands for. The Titan wills it that wild witches be punished for their crimes. The Emperor is only his pious messenger, doing what he is told to please the Titan who gives them so much. There’s always been something about the sentiment that doesn’t sit quite right with Luz, but she’s never been able to figure it out. There isn’t really an option other than believing her father.
“Hunter. Hunter. Pleeeaasse,” Luz drags the word out to an irritating length. She can see Hunter’s ears twitching. “I’m begging. Do you want me to get down on my knees?” Luz drops to the ground and grabs Hunter’s hands in hers. “Please, oh Hunter, grant me this honour-”
“Get up!” Hunter tugs her upwards, but Luz lets her body sag to the ground so Hunter momentarily staggers at the sudden weight. “Stop it. Luz, come on, get off the ground-”
“Luz. Hunter.” The Emperor glides into the room, always the most graceful, especially when put next to Luz, the chaotic, uncontrolled mess that she often is and tries so hard not to be. “Luz, you will dirty your dress if Hunter keeps dragging you around like that.”
Luz scrambles to her feet. “My apologies, Father. The fault was mine. I was behaving childishly.” Belos surveys her openly, maskless but no more readable. Luz tries to go for regretful and deferring but thinks she comes out as more skittishly obedient.
“But Hunter should be far more mature in his position as the Golden Guard.” Belos stares at Hunter for a long moment while Hunter drops to his knee and keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. “Nothing to say?”
Hunter is as still as a dead tree. “My apologies, Emperor. I will be more serious in my duties. I will make sure Luz is safely in her room before the execution is to begin.”
“Good.” Belos pauses. “Twenty minutes until the speech. Will you be there?” He looks down his nose at Hunter, gaze appraising.
Hunter hesitates as though unsure what is the right answer. “I will make sure Luz is safe in her room during the execution. In case of an attack by the wild witches.”
“That’s good.” Belos turns away from them and Hunter relaxes his stance. He wipes some dust off the hem of Luz’s dress and rises. “I expect to see you tonight in the throne room as usual. Someone will send for you.”
“Thank you, Emperor.”
Belos leaves the room and Hunter takes Luz’s arm. “Come on.”
Luz immediately starts running her mouth. “I didn’t mean-”
“I know.” Hunter squeezes her elbow. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle it.”
Luz should feel comforted by this statement but instead she only feels vaguely nauseous. “Where are we going?”
Hunter glances at her, then back to the hallway he’s leading them down. “To watch.”
Those two words inspire a wave of emotion to swirl in Luz’s chest. And more nausea. “Wait, like. Really for reals?”
“Yes, really for reals.” Hunter’s mouth twitches. “There’s this little hidden balcony where some of the coven scouts take smoke breaks. It’ll be empty right now.”
“You're the best!” Luz leaps on him and smothers him in a hug.
Hunter holds his ground, probably having expected it, and lets her accost him for another moment before he gently pushes her off. “Let’s keep moving. We can’t be gone too long.”
Another few twists and turns and they’re at a curtained doorway. Hunter parts the curtain and fiddles with the door, then holds it open for Luz to step through. Outside, the roar of hot air hits Luz’s face, the heat almost as overwhelming as the noise. People are crying out, yelling, cheering, booing. Belos is yet to make an appearance, but it seems as though the wild witch has already been delivered to their deathbed.
There is a woman in a cage. She has long, spindly wings, almost skeletal, and her face is gaunt and bony. She looks malnourished. Her dress is torn and dark with blood in places. Some people throw things at her while others plead for the Titan’s mercy on her behalf. The witch herself shows no emotion, blank-faced and silent, hands gripping the bars of her cage. Will she take her death with grace or will she go out screaming? From what Luz has read, they always go out screaming, either for revenge or for forgiveness.
Luz feels worse than before. She feels very unwell. If she had any sense she would ask Hunter to take her back to her room so she could lie down. As it is, she just clutches onto his arm as tight as she can without risking hurting him. Hunter watches her silently.
A hush falls over the crowd as Belos emerges onto a dais set up a few feet away from the wild witch’s cage. His mask is on and his staff is glowing red. “Citizens of the Boiling Isles. You know how it pains me to do this. How it pains me to know that there is still wild magic in the world, roaming, injuring, destroying. The very magic that has hurt you again and again…”
Luz drowns him out. Her breathing is steady and her feet are still. The box obscures them from the sight of the people gathered below them. Hunter is still holding onto her arm. She is fine. She is fine. “…A petrification is a tradition, an improvement upon the barbaric methods of punishment from the Savage Ages. The wrongs done against the Titan will be immortalized in stone forevermore, as is his will. It is with a heavy but sure hand that I petrify this wild witch in accordance with the laws of this realm.”
With this, Belos makes a signal to the operator, the eyes of three statue of despairing wild witches begin to glow. The witch shakes the bars of the cage with palpable desperation. Suddenly, a stream of light shoots out of the foremost statue’s eyes, surrounding the wild witch’s feet. She starts to cry out.
A wild witch is being executed. Something feels wrong in Luz’s gut and she thinks she might be sick. Hunter is still eyeing her like he knows it was a bad idea to give in to her whims, but he won’t make fun of her shock. He stays a steady presence at her side, letting Luz squeeze the life out of his arm as the witch is slowly encapsulated in stone. He doesn’t look at her.
The crowd is silent as the witch cries and screams, writhing in place where her feet are fused to the ground of the cage. She batters at the cage, flapping her wings frantically in the tiny space. “Help me! Help me! Murderer! Murderer!” Luz could swear that the witch’s eyes land on her own for barely a second, but then they are fixed back on the emperor as the stone creeps up past her hips.
“You’ll pay!” She shrieks, anger overtaking panic. “Fucker, you’ll pay!” Her wings, twisted mid-flap, are frozen in grey. “You’ll die alone-” She coughs pathetically as the stone reaches her neck. Luz hangs on every last syllable. The crowd of onlookers has fallen silent. She can still feel Hunter’s gaze on her. “Murderer,” is the last word that leaves the witch’s lips before the stone swallows her whole.
Luz tilts back on her heels. Hunter steadies her with a hand on her back. “Have you seen enough?”
“Yes,” Luz whispers. “This was- stupid.”
Hunter delicately escorts her stumbling form out of the alcove and into the hallways. “It’s knowledge.”
“It’s murder.”
“That’s blasphemy,” Hunter corrects, “And you can’t say that here.”
“Okay,” Luz says, and just shuts up, like she should have done an hour ago. By the time they’re at her room she is finding it hard to breathe.
Hunter unlocks the door and shoves her inside, locking it behind them. “Luz. Chill out, okay? It’s just a part of the empire.”
“He- he- he killed her.” Luz can’t even look at him. “What were her crimes?”
“Treason.”
“Yeah, no wonder. I’d be pretty treasonous too.”
“You are being treasonous. Luz. Pull it together.” Hunter grabs her forearms so she is forced to look at him. “Luz. No one will ever petrify you. Over my dead body. Okay?”
“Okay,” Luz says, even though that’s not it at all, and she wasn’t even worried about herself being petrified, or Hunter, and now she’s thinking about Hunter’s stone body. She shuts the thoughts out. “Okay.”
And in a few hours Luz will go to dinner with her father and she will act like nothing is the matter, like she didn’t watch him kill someone without spilling a drop of blood. She’ll go to bed and she’ll keep her eyes open as long as she can so she doesn’t have to see the witch’s stiff, grey face when she closes them. And Hunter will keep protecting her forever.