Page 74 of A Time of Witches

The bones of her feet felt as if they were broken, her stomach snarled its outrage, and her throat was so dry, she could scarce speak her single word replies.

But this question was different.

“Answer, you slattern.” Someone shoved her shoulder, sending her sprawling. “Answer now.”

She fell to the floor, weighed down by the manacles at her wrists, too weak to even catch herself. Her skull cracked upon the floor sending stars dancing in her vision.

Darkness washed over her, and she welcomed it, desperate for the velvety embrace of nothing.

“Are you telling the truth?” a voice barked in her ear.

She startled awake, an automatic “no” sluggishly flipping to accommodate the question. “Yes. Yes, I am telling the truth.”

Rough hands hauled her upright, her knees buckling under her weight several times before straightening to fully support her.

“And did you love your husband?” Hopkins’s question transcended time, blurring with that of the magistrate as he asked the same question again and again.

Emotion knotted in Sybil’s throat, bone dry, but stubborn just the same. A sob creaked in her chest.

“Did you kill him?”

Then she saw it in her mind—Henry’s death.

Because it had been her fault.

A painful grip pinched her shoulders and shook her. “Did you kill your husband?”

The weight of her fatigue had her eyes slipping closed even as her teeth clacked with the force of her shaking.

Her thoughts faded to a memory, as visceral as the day when Henry’s eyes had shone bright with fever and his skin blazed. Immediately Sybil knew he was infected with plague seeds, the same as those many dying souls she’d tended in St. Peter’s Church.

But while she could avoid the pestilence after her mother survived with Sybil in her womb, Henry had no such resistance. In fact, he had been feeble, vulnerable.

He was no laborer with a body firm with muscle and vitality, but a scholar with elegantly tapered fingers and a brilliant mind.

If she had insisted Henry not come to the townhouse in Bury St. Edmunds with her, he would have lived.

If she had not put the deaths of many over the lives of her loved ones, he would have lived.

She had not cursed him with the Devil’s powers, nor plunged a knife into his aged chest. But she had killed him all the same.

“Is this your confession?” Hopkins’s triumphant voice made Sybil’s eyes snap open.

“No,” she said, now fully awake once more. “I did not kill my husband. I did not say that I did.”

Had she?

Oh God—had she?

Hopkins simply smirked and went to his desk, lifting his quill.

“I did not say I killed my husband,” Sybil protested.

“That will be all.” Hopkins waved his hand dismissively, lowering his head to his work.

“I did not kill my husband.” Sybil’s eyes stung with tears her body was too depleted to produce. “I would never say that I did.”

But had she?