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our subjects. And if you do not bend to her,
you will not exist at all.”
Manon took a breath. Another.
“We have known only bloodshed and
violence for five hundred years. We will know
it for another five hundred yet.”
“Liar,” someone shouted. “We fly to
glory.”
But Asterin moved, unbuttoning her leather
jacket, then hoisting up her white shirt. Rising
in the stirrups to bare her scarred, brutalized
abdomen. “She does not lie.”
UNCLEAN
There, the word remained stamped. Would
always be stamped.
“How many of you,” Asterin called out,
“have been similarly branded? By your
Matron, by your coven leader? How many of
you have had your stillborn witchlings burned
before you might hold them?”