They threw me into a cold, dark cell beneath the earth. No one brought me blankets, even though I was shivering and carrying Silas's child. The guards whispered that I was "cursed." They said that like my mother, I deserved the fire. When I shouted, "I am not a witch!" it only made them angry, and they beat me until I lost consciousness.
When I finally woke up, Angelin was cleaning my wounds. The floor was covered in my blood. She whispered, "They set you up, Carla." Then she gave me the most painful news: my baby was gone. I had been in a coma for two days, bleeding in the dark. The doctor had already come and gone. I felt as if I might faint from the grief.
For a long time, I stayed curled in a ball, unable to move. They gave me only bread and water. In that darkness, I lost all track of time. Then, one day, they put heavy chains on me and dragged me to the center of the city. They piled logs around me to build a fire. In the crowd, I saw Victor—well and alive. I couldn't even open my mouth to scream. Silas was there too.
The guards lit the fire. As I began to scream in agony, the sky suddenly tore open.I looked at the crowd, searching for mercy, but I saw only the cold eyes of Victor and Silas.They were going to let me burn. The bright, sunny sky vanished, replaced by clouds so black they looked like ink. A wind ripped through the city square, scattering the logs and throwing the fire in every direction. Then came the rain. It didn't just fall; it crashed down like a waterfall.
In seconds, the fire was nothing but hissing steam and grey smoke. I hung there in my chains, shivering and gasping, my body half-burnt and raw. The people in the crowd screamed in terror. They didn't see a miracle; they saw "witchcraft." They shouted that I had summoned the storm to save myself.
Panicked, everyone ran for cover—even the guards. Silas and Victor disappeared into the grey mist of the storm. I was left entirely alone in the freezing rain, chained to a blackened post, a broken woman in a world that had turned its back on me.
Then, I heard the soft splash of footsteps in the mud.
Angelin appeared like a shadow. She didn't say a word at first; she simply threw a thick, wool blanket over my shivering shoulders. Her hands trembled as she used a stolen key to click the heavy chains open. As the iron fell away, my legs gave out. I collapsed into the mud, and the scream I let out was muffled by the wind.
"Where can I go?" I sobbed into the wet earth. "Look at me, Angelin. What can I do with a body that is broken and a heart that is dead?"
Angelin knelt beside me, her face pale. "You must go, Carla. If you stay until morning, they will finish what they started." She leaned in closer, her voice a painful whisper. "Did Silas really love you? While you were in that cell, he didn't fight for you. He didn't even look back when he ran from the rain today."
She told me about the weddings—how Victor and Silas had moved on as if I never existed. As she spoke, the physical pain of the burns began to turn into a cold, hard knot of anger in my chest. Angelin helped me stand, putting my arm over her shoulder. Every step was like walking through fire, but I forced myself to move.
We slowly left the town behind, heading toward the deep, dark line of the forest. With every step away from the manor, the "Carla" who loved Silas was dying, and someone new—someone dangerous—was taking her place.