Time didn't slow. It didn't bend. It fractured.
Valerio's arm extended. There was no wind-up, no dramatic flourish. It was a seamless, effortless motion, like lifting a glass of wine. The pistol was already level. His face showed nothing—no grimace of effort, no snarl of rage. It was the dispassionate adjustment of a man pruning an unwanted branch from a tree in his garden. A minor chore.
The gunshot was a monstrous, flat CRACK. It wasn't just loud; it was a physical blow to the air itself, a punch that shoved silence aside. From every rope, every mast, every piling on the pier, birds erupted. A panicked cloud of feathers and shrieking tore into the sky, leaving behind a ringing, hollow quiet that was worse than noise.
Emilio's forward motion jerked. Stopped. The expression on his face—that heartbreaking mix of love, fear, and desperate determination—didn't have time to change. It just froze. A perfect portrait of hope, interrupted.
A small, dark star bloomed on the fine linen of his tunic, just below his ribs. For one heartbeat, it was just a strange mark. Then the red seeped through, spreading fast, a wet, vicious inkblot staining the fabric of his life.
The force of the close-range shot twisted him. He looked down, brow furrowed, as if puzzled by this sudden flaw in his body. His legs, the same legs that had carried him to her, that had run for their future, simply vanished from under him. He fell forward. There was no cry. Just the heavy, final sound of a sack of grain hitting stone. The impact kicked up a small ghost of dust and ancient salt, glittering for a second in the harsh light before settling on his back.
A vacuum of silence followed. The world held its breath.
Then chaos rushed in to fill the void.
The frantic cries of gulls shredded the quiet, a sound like a thousand sheets being torn. And from within the blanket crushed against Cassia's chest, a new sound erupted. Luis's cry. Raw, instinctual, a pure sonic shard of terror. The sound of violence imprinting itself on a soul too new to understand anything else.
Cassia didn't hear the birds. She didn't hear her son.
Her universe had collapsed to a single point: Emilio. Emilio falling. Emilio lying on the stone, so still, that dark flower blooming on his side.
A sound was torn from the bedrock of her. It started as a punctured gasp, shattered into a scream with no bottom, no end. A raw, open conduit for a heart being ripped out while still beating.
"EMILIO!!!"
It wasn't a name. It was the death rattle of her world. The shriek of a universe folding inward, leaving only cold stone, a spreading stain, and a ringing silence where his heartbeat should have been.
Luis's cries became a constant, agonizing background noise to her screams. A tiny, terrified echo in a canyon of ruin.
"Emilio! Emilio!" Her voice was a broken thing, scraping her throat raw. She thrashed against the iron-band arms of the soldier holding her, her body a single, desperate arch toward the fallen shape on the ground. Tears were a hot deluge, blurring everything into a watery nightmare.
On the stones, Emilio stirred. A faint, wet tremor. His head lolled. His silver-blue eyes, clouded with shock and a bottomless agony, found hers across the short, impossible distance. His vision swam. The ships, the guns, Cassia's beautiful, broken face—all blurred into a watery haze. A ragged, wet sound escaped his lips. More bubble than word. "Cah… Cass…ia…"
Cassia. My love. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't get us there.
He was drowning on dry land. Every breath was a knife-twist low in his gut. Every heartbeat pushed more of his life out onto the filthy stones of the dock that was supposed to mean freedom.
Cassia saw his lips form her name. A fresh, frenzied strength, born of pure despair, surged through her. "Let me go! Let me go to him!" She clawed at the arms restraining her, her nails scraping over the dark blue wool of the uniform, leaving thin, red lines. Her struggles were wild, uncoordinated. The pure instinct of an animal caught in a trap, willing to chew its own leg off.
Then, a new shadow fell over her.
Jareth Montoya walked forward. His movements were economical, precise. He halted in front of her, looking down. The afternoon sun cut across him, casting one half of his face in sharp, angular shadow. The other half was pale and impassive. His cool violet-grey eyes weren't cold. They were empty. A predator's eyes, observing the final, pointless jerks of captured prey.
Cassia's frantic movements stilled. Her gaze, wide and swimming, locked onto his. Her pupils were pinpricks of pure animal fear. A violent, helpless tremor ran through her body.
Without a word, Jareth's hands moved. One closed over the blanket-swaddled bundle in her arms. The other gripped her forearm. Not with brutality, but with an unyielding, practiced force that was somehow worse. It was the grip of absolute ownership.
No. No, no, no, no—
"Don't… please…" The plea was a whimper, lost under Luis's cries. She instinctively tightened her arms, a last, spasmodic clutch. But her strength was gone, siphoned away by terror and grief. Jareth pulled. A smooth, relentless motion.
The weight left her arms. The warmth. The soft, breathing heart of her world was lifted away.
The void it left was colder than anything death could offer.
"Give him back!" Her scream was hoarse, shattered. "Don't take my child! Please! Why are you doing this?!" The soldier behind her wrenched her arms back, holding her immobile as she bucked and strained against him. "He's just a baby! He's done nothing! Please… I'm begging you… give me back my son…"
She was reduced to a raw, chanting thing. "Please… please…"
Jareth held the crying infant slightly away from his body. He looked down at the red, squalling face with an expression of detached scrutiny, like a man examining an unfamiliar, noisy tool. His own features were a mask of undisturbed ice.
Meanwhile, Valerio had closed the distance to the main event. His boots, polished to a murderous shine, stopped beside Emilio's shuddering form. He looked down, not with mercy, but with the cold appraisal of a sculptor looking at a flawed block of marble. Something to be corrected.
"I told you, Cassia," Valerio said. His voice cut through her sobs, conversational, almost bored. "You should have listened. This… this mess… is the fruit of your insolence." He nudged Emilio's leg with the toe of his boot. A casual, contemptuous gesture. "The wages of defiance are always written in blood. I taught you that. You just refused to learn."
What did I do? The thought spiraled in the broken attic of Cassia's mind. I loved someone. I had a child. I wanted to live without fear. Is that a crime? Is wanting a life such a sin?
Valerio's face, usually a study in controlled composure, darkened. A genuine, seething fury tightened the skin around his scar. This wasn't about policy anymore. This was personal. He raised his flintlock again. This time, the muzzle aimed directly at the back of Emilio's head. The circle of uniformed men tightened subtly. This was the Count's personal kill. Their job was just to watch the perimeter.
Jareth shifted his grip on the baby. He glanced at his father, then back at the child. His finger wasn't on the trigger of his own pistol. It was beside it. Waiting.
"This filth," Valerio spat, the word sharp and ugly, "dared to touch you. He dared to think his common blood was equal to yours. He thought his seed could mix with Montoya lineage." He shook his head, a mockery of disbelief. "That mistake ends now. And you will watch. You will understand the cost of your… poor judgment."
Cassia stopped struggling. Her breath hitched. A terrible, cold clarity cut through the panic. She saw the sequence about to unfold. The pistol at Emilio's head. Luis in Jareth's arms. Her mind, fractured as it was, put the pieces together.
"No," she whispered. Then louder. "No! Father, please!"
Valerio's finger tightened on the trigger. His dark sapphire eyes were fixed on the back of Emilio's skull, calculating the angle.
"Please! I'll do anything!" Cassia screamed, the words tearing out of her. "I'll come back! I'll be what you want! Just let them go! Please, just let them go!"
Valerio didn't even look at her. His focus was absolute. "It's too late for deals, daughter. The lesson must be permanent."
Emilio, on the ground, heard her screams. Through the fog of pain and fading light, he heard her bargaining for his life. A final, weak tremor went through him. His hand, lying palm-up on the stone, twitched. He was trying to say no. Trying to tell her not to beg. Not for him.
Jareth watched his father, his own posture relaxed. He adjusted his hold on the crying Luis, as if getting a better grip on a package. His thumb stroked the curve of the flintlock's hammer idly.
The moment stretched, thin and taut as a wire. The only sounds were Luis's cries, Cassia's ragged breathing, and the distant, indifferent lap of water against the pilings.
Valerio's knuckle whitened. The final increment of pressure.
This was it. The pruning.