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Their eyes scanned her simple home with anger and shock.

There were three of them. One held her down while the other two began to destroy all of her precious jars. Her home. They started going through her small bookshelf and took her two spell books.

He held the books up, and her chest began to tighten. “This is enough evidence with Lady Marya’s accusation.”

Lady Marya was one of the midwives who had been helping with Alesia when she was giving birth.

She heard me chanting.

Fear tore through her as she tried to squirm away.

Tears fell before they had a chance to pool. She hadn’t known what the town guards wanted when she saw them coming up the small hill when she let Bala out, but this terrible feeling came over her the moment she saw them.

She checked the window to make sure the lizard was gone before they grabbed her by the back of the dress.

“Filthy Witch! How long have you been cursing our town?”

That’s when they started beating her with their fists, their boots. They hit her blindly in undeserving rage. She cried out and screamed against the cloth shoved against her mouth and tied around her head. Her own pain-filled grunts echoed their enraged ones.

When she was barely moving, they started dragging her away from her home with the backs of her bare feet scraping against the ground. They didn’t set it alight, but she was sure in the morning they would come back to. They would probably make a grand show of it with the townspeople to celebrate its destruction.

It was a small party of men, probably so she wouldn’t think much of it. Any other Witch may have attacked them, but Amalia didn’t have that kind of magic or the heart to.

All the townspeople had collected in the centre. They threw rocks and rotten food in her direction while she was dragged between an aisle of people, too hurt to be able to walk on her own.

One of the soldiers held up her books. “We found spell books!”

“And we found symbols burned into the floor of her house!”

“She is a Witch!” a person from the crowd yelled, making others shout it as well. Then they said the most terrifying words she’d ever heard. “Burn her!”

A wooden stake had been permanently placed in the centre of the town. It was always prepared in case they came across a Witch and needed to be rid of them as quick as possible.

They started placing straw around the bottom of it, and she squirmed against her bonds when they started dragging her to it.

“She killed Alesia!” a woman shouted. Amalia turned to the voice and found it was Lady Marya. “I heard her chanting. She stole her soul!”

I did not!She tried to plead against the cloth in her mouth.I tried everything to save her.

“There are symbols at the back of my home. I found them when Marya told me she was a Witch!” another townsperson yelled.

They are protection spells to ward off evil and sickness.

Amalia could tell there would be no trial for her, no way for her to plead her case. They looked determined. They had already made up their minds.

It was true. She was a Witch. They were right.

But I have never harmed another in my life.

A metal shackle was placed around her throat. They pulled on the chain connected to the back of it, hanging her up by it until the tips of her toes barely skimmed the straw under her feet. She struggled to breathe against it.

They attached it to a loop of metal to keep her against the wooden stake.

They had to. A calm Witch about to be burned could still fight back once the fire started. They’d learned long ago that fire could give them energy, but if they were struggling, unable to breathe, they couldn’t focus their magic.

I am going to die.She couldn’t help crying harder when the soldiers from before began to carry lit torches towards the straw at her feet.

They were going to make sure she suffered before she died.