The wicker basket.

I didn’t want to think about what its contents would be.

He placed it on the other side of the wooden block.

My heart jack-hammered, thudding faster and faster until lightheadedness made me sick.

My lungs demanded more oxygen. My brain demanded more time. And my heart…it demanded more hope, more life, more love.

I’m not ready.

Not like this.

“Cut—”

“No. No more talking. Not after everything you’ve done. My son. My mother. You think you’ve stolen everything I care about, but I’m going to steal so much more from you. From Jethro. And when I find out where Kestrel is, I’ll steal from him, too.” Ripping a black hood from his pocket, he didn’t hesitate. No fanfare. No pauses.

“No!” I cried out as the scratchy blackness engulfed my face, tightening by a cord around my throat.

The Weaver Wailer chilled me. The diamond collar that’d seen what I’d seen and whispered with phantoms of my slain family prepared to revoke its claim and detach from around my neck.

This was it.

The Final Debt.

Cut pushed my shoulders forward.

I struggled, willing my wrists to unlock, to find a weakness in the rope to get free.

A heavy yoke settled over the top of my spine.

No. This can’t be it. This can’t be!

“Goodbye, Nila.”

The breeze of Cut moving to the side sent goosebumps over my nape. My breath clouded the hood. My eyelashes jewelled with unshed tears.

I hunched, tensing against the painful conclusion.

I couldn’t get free.

I couldn’t save myself.

I hadn’t won.

Cut’s boots crunched on the platform, the gentle clink of rope and pulley signalling he’d reached for the release of the blade.

I waited for his last history lesson.

Surely, I should have a history lesson.

All the debts did. He couldn’t have forgotten the theatrics of the debt. His story would extend my life just a little longer.

But no words fell.

Only my breathing…

My heart beating…

My tears falling…

My body living its final seconds…

I’m dead.

I curled inside, waiting to perish.

A loud bang rang in my ears.

For a moment, I thought I’d died.

In my mind, I saw the jerk of the rope. I felt the slice of sharpness. I suffered the untethering severance.

I waited for some mystical deliverance where my soul flew free, growing wings to hover over my decapitated body.

I hung in limbo waiting for pain or freedom.

But neither came.

What was death?

How would it feel?

What should I expect?

Would the blade slice through and turn me from alive to dead? Would I know once it had happened? Would I witness the end and feel the agony as my soul snipped free?

Or would it be over so fast I wouldn’t even know he’d stripped my life away?

I tensed.

Nothingness…

Am I dead?

Nothing happened.

Then every sense rushed into liveliness. The hood still covered my head. The yoke still crushed my shoulders. And the burning break in my arm still throbbed.

All my discomforts returned along with noise.

So, so much noise.

Deafening noise.

Gunfire slaughtered the air as footsteps pounded the hardwood floor of the ballroom. Men hollered. Things banged and clanged and a cacophony replaced the empty silence.

Curses. Words. Promises. They were all cut short as fighting broke out all around me.

I couldn’t see, but I could feel.

The whoosh of wind as bodies flew past. The flinch of bullets flying too close to my skin. And Cut’s hand on my head as he bellowed for it all to stop. “Black Diamonds! Attack!”

More boots. More curses. More bullets.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

My final hopes had been answered, my prayers delivered.

Help had arrived at the last second.

Who was out there?

Who fought on my behalf?

My eyes begged to see. My body twisted to know. But Cut’s fingers dug into the hood, pressing my throat against the wood and the yoke tight over my shoulders.

Instead of dying, I’d entered a warzone where my vision couldn’t tell me a story.

I huddled at Cut’s feet, my spine curled and knees bruised beneath a guillotine just waiting for the sharp edge to plummet.

My heart lodged in my throat, terrified a rogue bullet would slice the rope and drop the blade to butcher my tender flesh.

I was alive, but for how much longer?

How reckless was the fighting?

How could they prevent an unforeseen event from killing me all while they tried to save me?

“Fuck.” Cut never stopped touching me, his fingers digging into my scalp as anarchy rained. “Over there, get him!” His orders fell on the raucous, delivered to an unseen fighter.

I had no way to judge time, but the war only increased in ferocity. More gunfire, more thuds as bodies fell and fists connected with flesh.

My ears rang with gunshots. My thoughts suffocated with violence and mayhem.

Grunts and curses bounced off portraits and velvet, changing the destiny of the ballroom from dancing frivolity to carnage brutality.

Stop.

Don’t stop.

Save me.

Don’t kill me.

Slowly, curses switched to moans and stampeding footsteps gave way to limping.

The fight could’ve lasted hours or seconds. The only thing I knew with certainty was I clung to this life—the one I didn’t want to leave—and the break in my arm cemented me firmly into being.