“Yes. Are you?” Ceres said.
He nodded, a tear in his eye.
She could feel him quivering beneath her touch, or was it her hand that was trembling so?
The pregnant woman looked at Ceres with alarm in her eyes when the faint sound of footsteps came from the hallway. The distant noise came closer and closer until Ceres could hear nothing but the drum of marching men, and before she knew it, the warden stood before the cell, unlocking it.
“Apollo, Trinity, Ceres, and Ichabod, come with me,” he said, several other Empire soldiers waiting behind him.
With hands that barely would move like she commanded them to, Ceres helped Apollo stand up. Fully erect, the boy reached only to just above her waist, Ceres noticed, and she thought it an awful shame that he would never get to grow up to be the man he might have become.
When she let go of him, his legs gave out from under him and he collapsed to the floor.
“Sorry,” Apollo said with doleful eyes.
Crouching beside the boy, tears burning at the back of her eyes, Ceres shot the warden an ugly glare and helped Apollo to his feet again. Careful not to touch the wounds on his back, she supported him as they went into the dim, torch-lit hallway, the other two prisoners following behind them.
The warden jerked Apollo to the front, a soldier on each side holding the boy’s arms so he wouldn’t collapse. Ceres, trying to calm her shuddering legs, was next, and behind her, Trinity, and the old man Ichabod. The chains rattled when the Empire soldiers shackled Ceres’s and the others’ ankles and wrists, and once the prisoners had been chained, two Empire soldiers guarded each of them, one on either side. Trinity rocked back and forth, holding her belly, and then Ceres heard that she started to sing an old lullaby – the exact one Ceres used to sing to Sartes to make him fall asleep.
Ceres could no longer hold back the tears, and at the thought of her brothers, of Rexus, it was as if her heart broke in two. Never would she see them again, never would she joke with them, break bread with them, spar with them. Those had been such happy times, she remembered, even though they had been tainted by her mother’s cruelty. But she loved them, and she wondered if they truly knew that.
Down the hallway Ceres walked, her feet feeling like blocks of stone as chains dragged on the floor, the beautiful tune of the pregnant woman guiding her steps. Climbing the stairs out of the dungeon, Ceres saw that it was slightly dark out, a few stars still twinkling above, refusing to give up their light in the pre-dawn heavens. An open horse-pulled wagon stood in the courtyard, and Ceres was shoved into the cart with the other prisoners, the Empire soldiers’ whips causing her to cower, causing her to hate the Empire even more.
When Apollo was unable to climb into the wagon by himself, an Empire soldier picked the boy up and flung him into the cart so he hit his head against the side of the wagon, a yelp escaping his lips as his head was thrust backwards with a cracking sound.
“How could you be so cruel?” Ceres yelled at the Empire soldier, before turning her attention to Apollo.
She scooted closer to the boy, staring helplessly at the unnatural bend in his neck, and ever so carefully, she lifted his bleeding head into her lap.
“Apollo?” she croaked, dread filling her chest when she felt how lifeless his body had suddenly become.
“I can’t see…” Apollo whispered with a hoarse voice, his eyes glazed with tears. “I…can’t…I can’t feel my legs.”
She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, and seeing he was struggling to breathe, she wanted to help him. But all she could do was to take his small, cold hand in hers.
“I’m here,” Ceres said, the words almost getting caught in her throat, tears dripping down onto his filthy, torn tunic.
“Promise to hold my hand…until I am…dead,” Apollo stammered.
Ceres, unable to speak a word, just nodded and squeezed his hand in her own, gently stroking the blond hairs off his sweaty forehead.
His eyes fluttered before they shut, and then she noticed that his chest stopped rising and falling as his face yielded to the mask of death.
She sobbed once and brought his hand to her lips before placing it carefully on his chest. Now, at least, he wouldn’t have to face decapitation, she thought. He was free.
As they rode through the crowd, she couldn’t stop looking at the poor boy, his small lips, his eyelashes, the freckles on his nose. She wanted him to know she was still thinking of him and that she wouldn’t leave him alone in the cart, at the mercy of the Empire soldiers that stole his freedom and his life. Perhaps she needed him in some small way, too, to remind her that there weren’t only cruel people in this world, and that innocence and kindness were still more beautiful than any power on earth.
The wagon bumped past a blur of hateful words and angry faces, but she kept her eyes on Apollo’s peaceful expression. Not even when a rotten tomato hit Ceres in the cheek did she tear her gaze from him.
The cart slowed to a stop in front of the wooden scaffold, and the prisoners were commanded to leave the wagon. However, Ceres refused to leave Apollo, clinging to him.
An Empire soldier, the one who had thrown him, grabbed Apollo by his legs and jerked him out of the wagon from Ceres’s arms.
“Murderer!” she cried at the top of her lungs, tears spilling out of her eyes.
The soldier tossed Apollo onto a stack of hay, and then started toward Ceres, but she scuttled into the wagon’s corner, refusing to get out.
Following after her, the Empire soldier that had just had his appalling hands on Apollo stepped into the wagon. She would not allow him to get away with murdering such an innocent boy. Seeing the other Empire soldiers were busy forcing the other prisoners up the stairs to the scaffold, she saw a chance to avenge him. She might die trying – but she was about to die anyway.
When the soldier leaned forward to haul her out of the cart, Ceres looped the shackles bound to her wrists around his neck and pulled with all her might.
On his back, the soldier croaked and kicked arms and legs, his filthy fingers tugging at the chain, his face turning red.
But Ceres refused to let the killer go, pulling harder until his face turned purple.
In what seemed like a last-ditch effort to save his life, the soldier’s hands strained toward Ceres’s neck. She blocked with her elbows, and just as she heard other Empire soldiers clamoring, scurrying toward the wagon, the man in her arms went limp.
Even after she knew he was dead, she kept the chain taut for as long as she could, until two Empire soldiers tore her out of the wagon and forced her to the bottom of the stairwell leading up to the scaffold.
One of the soldiers pulled out a dagger and pressed the tip to her back, the blade piercing her skin a little. She took a step. And then one more.
Her feet in a disoriented march, Ceres climbed the stairs after the others, the clamors of the crowd a distant tempest, and just as she arrived at the top, she was released from her chains.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, she vaguely noticed, and her throat was dry, her eyes wet. Had the crowd grown silent? she wondered, unable to tell above the roar of her trepidation.
An Empire soldier pulled her hands behind her back, tying them. She didn’t resist. There was nothing more to resist now, she knew. She might as well let death take her.
The soldier shoved her in the direction of a man wearing a white hooded cloak, holding an axe – her executioner.
She was ordered to kneel before a wooden block, but when she didn’t respond right away, the soldier pushed her to her knees, her head falling forward. With blurred vision, she looked up and out into the crowd, her entire body trembling, her stomach churning with nausea.
“Do you have any last words?” the executioner asked.
She remained frozen, trying to grasp this really was it. Her life, was it over? No. It couldn’t be. It had gone so fast, too fast, and suddenly, there was no more time.