---
The crowd was already gathering near the square when Elia reached the chapel's side door, her boots soaked and her breath clouding in the cold morning air.
Three guards stood out front, lanterns in hand, looking bored and half-asleep.
Perfect.
Elia circled to the rear.
She knew these halls better than most. Her grandmother once taught herbs in the chapel's cellar—back when healing wasn't considered heresy. Before fire became the village's favorite language.
She slipped inside through a forgotten hatch behind the woodshed and moved silently through the lower floor, past the altar room, and toward the holding chamber.
Thorne was there—chained, slumped, blood on his lip, but still alive.
"Elia," he rasped, eyes widening.
She dropped beside him, reaching for the chain lock at his wrist. "Shh. Hold still."
"How—"
"You think chains can stop me?" she whispered. "After last night?"
He let out a soft laugh that turned into a wince.
"You came back."
"I always do."
She pulled the lockpick from her boot—one of her grandmother's old tools, worn smooth by time and defiance.
"Can you stand?" she asked.
He nodded, just barely.
"Elia, if they catch you—"
"Then they catch me," she snapped. "But they don't get to take you."
The lock clicked. The cuff fell.
She worked quickly on the second.
He reached up and touched her face. His hand shook.
"You shouldn't have to save me."
"I don't want to," she said. " I'd rather die doing that than live knowing I didn't try."
The second cuff opened.
Footsteps echoed above. Heavy. Fast.
"Go," she whispered. "Out the hatch. I'll stall them."
"What?"
"I can't run with you. Not yet. I have proof. Real proof."
"Elia—"
She grabbed his collar, kissed him hard—short, fierce, like she was branding him with it.
"When you're safe, wait for me at the willow tree."
The one near the stream. Where they carved their initials years ago.
He hesitated. She shoved him toward the wall.
"Go."
He ran.
She turned toward the hallway, pulling the stolen ledger and Edith's documents from her cloak. Then she walked straight into the fire.
Moments later, Elia stepped into the main chapel as Reverend Halden addressed the council.
"Thorne Weller has fled custody," he was saying, face pinched with rage. "His disobedience confirms the guilt tied to his bloodline."
"Funny," Elia said loudly from the doorway. "You never cared about bloodlines when you were burying your own sins."
Heads turned.
Gasps.
Myles Ketter stood sharply. "Elia—"
She dropped the ledger on the center table.
"Council records. False votes. Secret condemnations. Names you erased from memory but not from paper."
Jonah Pike reached for it, and she slammed a hand on top.
"Touch it," she said, "and I'll scream that you bribed Wren for land under my grandmother's name."
The room went still.
Halden's voice was ice. "This is blasphemy."
"No," she said. "This is truth."
She turned to the room.
"I don't care if you hang me. I don't care if you torch my home. But know this—if you kill me now, you do it in front of everyone, with the truth laid bare."
"Let the town decide which one of us is the witch."
Halden's jaw twitched. But he didn't speak.
Behind her, the doors creaked open.
Villagers. Curious. Silent.
The tide was shifting—and he knew it.
Later, when they dragged her out, they didn't bind her.
They feared her too much to touch her now.
She walked with her head high, her heart thudding—not from fear, but from knowing Thorne had escaped.
And now it was her turn to survive.
---
Thorne ran until his lungs screamed and his legs went numb.
The cold stung his throat, and the bramble tore his arms, but he didn't stop—not until he reached the stream behind the southern ridge. The willow tree stood there like an old friend, hunched and tired, but still holding the memory of their names carved into its bark.
E + T A foolish thing they'd done years ago, when they thought love could stay a secret forever.
He collapsed at its base, chest heaving, cloak soaked with frost and sweat.
She told me to wait.
He looked over his shoulder. No one followed—not yet. That was the kind of mistake Eldhollow made: underestimating the girl they couldn't break.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to breathe, trying not to picture her in chains. Not to imagine the way she walked into danger to buy him another sunrise.
The stream beside him gurgled soft and slow. Spring would come soon. The melt would rise. The rivers would flood the roads, and the town would hide again behind superstition and ash.
But not if Elia's truth got out.
Not if someone remembered.
He didn't sleep, but time passed.
Birds chirped. Then stopped. Wind hissed. Then died.
And still she didn't come.
He stood and began pacing, hands clenched in fists. Guilt and rage churned together until they were indistinguishable.
I should've fought harder. I should've stayed. I should've—
The sound of hooves broke his spiral.
He dropped low behind the brush.
A horse. One rider. A cloak.
Not a soldier.
It was Agnes.
She dismounted and tied the reins to the tree.
"She sent me," she said quietly, without turning. "Said if she didn't come by nightfall, I was to find you."
"Where is she?"
"In custody again. Not bound. Not yet. The council's split. Myles Ketter and Edith are stalling a verdict. But Halden's calling for public judgment."
Thorne's heart sank.
"She gave them the ledger?"
Agnes nodded. "And more. Names. Proof of Annalise. Of every soul they buried with a lie."
"And they still might hang her."
Agnes met his eyes. "They hang what they fear. And they fear her now."
He paced again. Faster. Desperate.
"I need to get back in," he muttered. "There has to be a way to pull her out before the verdict."
"She told me," Agnes said gently, "that if you showed up, she'd slap you herself. She said she can't win if you burn with her."
"I'm not trying to be noble," Thorne said. "I just—can't live with it. Not after what she gave me. What she gave up."
Agnes stared at him for a moment.
Then reached into her satchel.
A folded parchment.
"She wrote this. In case you made it out."
Thorne took it with trembling fingers.
Unfolded it.
My love, if you're reading this, you're free. Stay that way. Not because I don't want you beside me—but because I need you to remember me without a noose around my name. I'll come back to you. Or I'll become something bigger than what they tried to silence. Either way, you won't be alone.
– E
His chest ached.
He folded the letter carefully, like it was something sacred.
Then he looked at Agnes.
"I'm not staying hidden," he said. "Not while they put her on display."
"I figured you'd say that," she muttered. "Which is why I brought you something."
She untied a bundle from her saddle: a cloak, a dagger, and a hooded cowl.
"You want to get into the crowd unseen?" she said. "Then wear this. Stay low. And pray you don't get recognized."
As night approached, Thorne rode behind her through the trees, not as a fugitive, not as a martyr—but as a man in love with a girl the world wanted to destroy.
And he would be there—hidden in the crowd—when the council tried to decide what she was worth.
---
The square was full, but no one spoke.
It was the kind of silence Elia had only ever heard once before—on the day they buried her grandmother. The same quiet reverence. But this wasn't mourning.
This was a crowd waiting to watch something die.
She stood alone at the center platform—unbound, unhooded. Not yet a criminal. Not yet a corpse.
But they'd built the gallows anyway.
Two paces behind her, the noose swung in the breeze like a ticking clock.
Above, the sky was overcast and low, like the heavens had bent closer to see what the people below would do.
Across from her sat the council—Reverend Halden at the center, flanked by the others. Seven chairs. Six filled.
One, Myles Ketter's, stood empty.
Elia's heart hammered.
Please… be doing something that matters.
Halden's voice cut through the air.
"Elia Thornbrook," he said, "you have been brought before the people of Eldhollow not by force, but by judgment—by the weight of your actions and the shadow you've cast."
"I walked here," she replied. "Your chains can't hold truth."
A murmur. Low. Uneasy.
"Let the people hear," Halden said. "Let them see the corruption wrapped in charm and defiance."
He motioned to Jonah Pike, who rose with a stack of parchments.
"The accused was found in possession of falsified council documents—ledgers rewritten to smear the names of our dead and question the integrity of this council."
"They weren't rewritten," Elia said. "They were preserved."
Pike kept reading, louder now. "She has confessed to breaking into sacred grounds, aiding a known fugitive, and practicing forbidden rites."
"She boiled milk and root to calm a child's fever. If that's witchcraft, then your own wives are witches."
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
Halden stood.
He didn't shout. He didn't need to.
"The people of Eldhollow will now choose," he said, arms outstretched. "Do we tolerate rebellion disguised as mercy? Or do we cut it at the root?"
From beneath his cowl, Thorne watched it unfold.
He stood pressed against the rear of the crowd, heart in his throat, hands clenched around the dagger beneath his cloak. He had a clean shot to the front if he ran.
He could climb the platform. Pull her down. Get her to the woods. Maybe.
Maybe.
But that wasn't what Elia wanted. She hadn't walked to that stage to escape.
She'd walked up there to expose them.
Trust me, she had said in her letter.
But all he could do was burn from the inside out.
He scanned the council. Pike and Wren were smug. Halden, unreadable.
But Edith Corven… she was sweating.
And—
Thorne's eyes narrowed.
Myles Ketter stepped into the square from behind the chapel, holding a sealed parchment. People turned to watch as he made his way up the platform without speaking.
He walked straight to Halden and handed him the paper.
"Read it," he said. "Aloud."
Halden didn't move.
Ketter said again, louder: "Read it. Or I will."
The reverend broke the seal and scanned the document.
His expression flickered—for the first time.
Then he spoke:
"This document—witnessed by three members of this council and signed by Edith Corven—confirms that Annalise Thornbrook did not confess to witchcraft. Her death was not suicide."
Gasps can be heard from the crowd.
Halden kept reading, his voice stiffer now.
"It further names Reverend Halden and Councilman Wren as architects of falsified votes… used to condemn multiple villagers over the last two decades."
Now the murmurs weren't just uneasy.
They were angry.
Elia kept her eyes on the crowd—not the council, not the gallows.
People looked at her differently now. Not with awe. Not with pity.
But with doubt. And that was the beginning of truth.
Myles stepped forward.
"I vote to clear the charges," he said. "Elia Thornbrook is not guilty."
"I second," said Edith.
The other council members hesitated.
Pike said nothing. Wren turned pale.
Then Lena Amsel stood.
"Let the people decide," she said.
And Halden?
He didn't vote.
He turned and walked away.
Thorne didn't move until the noose stopped swaying.
Didn't breathe until he saw Elia step down from the platform, head held high, the ledger still in her hand.
She scanned the crowd.
Found him.
And for the first time in days, she smiled.
Small. Quiet. Just for him.
And that was enough.
For now.
---
To Be Continued...