Page 237 of Vasmora

Boots pounded down the hallway, and I jerked back, my heart keeping in time with their swift steps.

“Oh, no, oh, no.” My twin pressed the palms of her hands to her ears. “They’re coming. They’re coming for me! Please, you have to leave! You have to leave Caligorya!”

“What can I do?” I squeezed my eyes shut, attempting to summon another memory from my past. Anything to keep this from happening.

Lilliven. The girl who’d been trampled by horses. “Show me Lilliven!”

A thunderous boom echoed through the cell, raining dust from the ceiling, and I snapped my eyes open to the entrance of Sacton Crain, flanked by two Vonkovyan soldiers.

“You will be burned at the stake!” He pointed into the room, his attention focused beyond me to the girl who sat cowering from them.

“No! Please! Don’t do this!” She kicked herself back from the men who stormed toward her, flattening herself against the wall. “I’m innocent, I swear it!”

“You can’t do this.” I lifted my gaze toward what should’ve been the ceiling of the dungeon. Instead, open sky showed the two moons that hadn’t yet fully merged. “They’ve not merged! I still have time. You can’t do this!” I hounded after the men as they accosted my twin. “Stop!”

The two soldiers hoisted her upright with a bruising grip of her thin arms.

Her scream bounced off the walls of the cell, as they lugged her out of it. “Please! No! Help me! Zevander! Zevander, help me!”

Heart pounding in my throat, I trailed after them, and once close enough, I grabbed my twin’s feet that dragged behind them.

She slipped through my hands as if they were liquid.

“Stop! Don’t do this!” Up the staircase and out into the courtyard, I chased after them, my voice seemingly unheard, my presence unseen.

A crowd had gathered, and I slipped through the spectators like a ghost.

I strode up to a woman holding a child. “Help her! Please help her!” Even as I stood a few inches from her face, she peered past me, pointing as though she didn’t see me at all.

A villager threw a rock that struck my twin’s head. Another threw rotted beets that spattered over her white dress like blossoms of red blood.

“Whore!” someone shouted.

“Witch!” a man cried out. “Burn her!”

My twin’s screams drowned in their derisive curses as she passed through, and I followed, helpless to stop it.

Panic drummed in my chest when they hauled her up the wooden stairs of the platform and placed her on the square plate of metal, on which charred footprints marked the executions before hers.

“Please! I’m so scared! Don’t do this!” She sagged against the post the men tied her to.

I wedged myself between them, hands trembling as I fought to unravel their knots, but my fingertips wouldn’t catch in the folds of the rope as I grappled for it.

She turned her head toward me, her cheeks wet with tears. “Please! Release me! I’m begging you!”

Air burned in my lungs, my hands shaking over the knots as I struggled to untie her. “I’m trying, I swear it!”

“Don’t let them burn me. I don’t want to die!”

Tears welled in my eyes, and I let out a frustrated scream, glancing around for anyone who might’ve had a blade, or something I could use to cut the rope.

“Witch! Witch! Witch!” they all chanted in unison. Men, women and children joining in the celebration of her death. If only I could call upon a glyph, I’d show them a witch. By turning every one of them into a pile of guts and broken bones.

I caught a whiff of that smell. That gagging, suffocating smell, and spun around to see one of the Vonkovyan soldiers backing away from her, the torch he’d tossed catching on the kindling at her feet.

A deep, terrified scream rose from her throat, and I leapt for that torch, attempting to toss it away. It caught quickly, the heat lashing across my skin, and I jumped back as a wall of flames separated the two of us.

“Please! I don’t want to burn! I don’t want to burn!” My twin wriggled and jerked against her binds.