Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 598: The End of Her Dream

Roland told them everything the following morning.

Ashes broke the silence first, before Tilly could speak. “She used witches as payment to those nobles—” She was already on her feet.

Andrea’s hand on her arm stopped her.

Tilly waited. “Did Nightingale verify the testimony?”

“She confessed after a few preliminary questions.” Roland walked them through the interrogation — the false starts, the offers Heidi had made, the moment she had understood that her lies were detectable and shifted to the truth. “I had expected it to take longer. She’s tougher than she looks, but she had no leverage. She knew it.” He paused. “Because I hadn’t removed the God’s Stone of Retaliation, she didn’t realize that Nightingale’s ability works through magic power rather than voice or behavior. She thought she was being read differently than she was. That probably shortened things.”

Tilly nodded slowly. “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t be foolish about it. I’m your brother.” Roland took the opening, knowing it was slightly calculated and finding he didn’t mind. “Beyond that, Heidi Morgan is in some sense under Sleeping Island’s authority. She should properly be returned to you.”

A long silence. Tilly looked at him with grey eyes that held more cold anger than grief.

She had already decided.

“What would you do,” she said, “if this had happened in Neverwinter?”

Roland held her gaze. “The same thing.”

That settled it. Heidi Morgan’s fate was determined in a quiet office in a castle in Neverwinter, without ceremony and without record. Tilly leaned toward Ashes and said something low. Ashes nodded and left.

“I’ll leave you, brother.”

Roland could see the weight she was carrying, visible in the line of her shoulders, and he could not find the right words — there were no right words for this kind of thing, the death of someone who had once been on the same side. He was about to say something anyway when the Sigil of Listening in Nightingale’s chest flared:

“It’s Lightning — copy — it’s Lightning — Summer found out when the incident happened!”

The exhilaration in the girl’s voice reached across any distance.

“Understood,” Roland said. “What did she see?”

“Two monsters — big mouth, tentacles — I don’t know how to describe them, it was—” A breath. “You need to come see it yourself, Your Majesty. I can’t put it into words.”

“What are these monsters?” Tilly looked between Roland and Nightingale.

“They’ve been surveying Devil’s Town — the demon encampment behind the snowcapped mountains.” Roland folded the Northern Region map. “The Red Mist there vanished completely about a week ago. I meant to tell you this morning.”

Tilly processed this with the particular efficiency of someone who has long practice separating what she feels from what requires a decision. “I nearly forgot about the demons.” She drew a breath. “Fill me in on the way.”

“On the way?”

“May I not go with you?”

She was already looking at the maps on his wall with an expression that was professionally curious and completely resolved. Roland thought about it. If Tilly went, Ashes and Andrea went — which meant the expedition gained an Extraordinary and a marksman with a flintlock, and he lost exactly nothing.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

Heidi had been waiting since morning.

She was not a woman who admitted fear to herself, but the cell was very quiet and the silence was the kind that pressed against the ears. She kept returning to the same calculation: Roland had promised to spare her life. He was Tilly’s brother, which meant he needed to offer Tilly an explanation for the witches who had disappeared — that was why Tilly had brought her here in the first place. The interrogation had discharged that debt. What remained was negotiation.

Half of Wolfheart. The land west of Blackstone Cliff. Enormous territory, enormous resources, more than enough to make any king’s political position stronger. No noble she had ever met could resist territory combined with the right framing.

She was not afraid.

She was the last of the Morgan bloodline. She was the future Queen of Wolfheart. Those were facts, not ambitions — and facts could not be taken from her by being locked in a cell.

When she seized the throne, she would hang the traitors above the city gate. She had decided this when she was fifteen and had not changed her mind since.

The dungeon gate swung open. The sound of iron on iron rang flat in the low space.

Heidi stood.

It was not Roland Wimbledon who appeared at the end of the hallway. It was Ashes, moving with the unhurried deliberateness of someone who is not in a hurry because hurry is irrelevant.

The cold went down Heidi’s spine in a single instant.

“Where’s His Majesty? You have no authority—”

“You know why I’m here.” Ashes stopped at the bars. “You should have expected this. The moment you handed those witches over, you made a choice about what you were.”

“Roland promised me clemency! He gave me his word — you can’t override a king’s order!”

Ashes gripped the bars and pulled them apart. Not a wrench — a slow, steady separation, iron yielding to her hands the way wood might yield to a saw. She entered the cell without rushing.

“They came to the Bloodfang Association for help,” she said. Her voice was quiet, almost conversational. “They wanted rest, food, safety. They trusted you. You sent them to men who would use them and discard them. They survived the church only to be destroyed by their own kind.” She paused. “Roland may have forgiven you. I can’t.”

Heidi’s hand went to the God’s Stone locket at her throat, fingers working at the iron ring it was embedded in. The ring was solid. She could not reach the clasp.

“Let me help you.”

Ashes took hold of the ring. Not the locket — the ring. She tightened her grip.

Heidi felt the iron close. She twisted, scrabbling for any surface beneath her feet, finding none. The pressure was measured and remorseless. Her vision greyed at the edges and Ashes’ face became distant, a dark shape against the torchlight, moving further away.

The Throne of Tusk.

She could see it the way she had seen it since childhood — the carved ivory, the weight of it, the vindication of everything that had been taken from her father. She could hear the laughter of nobles who had thought her family would disappear quietly.

She was going to answer that laughter. She was still going to answer it.

I don’t want to die here—

The iron ring gave one final sound.

Then it was quiet.

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