It was ironic that with the city around him in burning up in flames, her hand was, for once, cold.

Her fingers were so childlike, so delicate that it seemed like they would break at any moment. They were weaved through his own callused knuckles and cracked nails, and if he didn’t know better, he would never have guessed which set of fingers belonged to a murderer.

He wanted desperately - so desperately - to believe that he was wrong, that everyone had been wrong. He wanted to believe that it had all been a mistake.

As their eyes connected though, he knew without any uncertainty that it hadn’t been a mistake. Her irises were focused on his, the same vivid blue that once coloured the sky. But from horizon to horizon now, there was nothing but the dark gray of smoke billowing up from what remained of the city in the aftermath of their battle. Cobblestone streets were lined with the ghosts of buildings that had once teemed with life, and the wrought iron gates of the prince’s palace barely hung on their hinges. He knew that past those gates, there would be no survivors. She hadn’t been concerned for the living, just that the prince would be dead.

“You’ll be okay,” he whispered, his voice scratched and abused by the dust and smoke continuing to pour into his lungs.

She tried to smile, but it looked more to him like an exhausted grimace. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Instead, a series of coughs shook her already weak body. His arms tightened around her shoulders, a simmering lump of guilt boiling its way up into his throat. How could I do this to her? he thought, but the idea that there had been an alternative quickly died. He had had no choice but to stop her from killing more people.

Sweet, quiet, shy Thisbe had had to be stopped. Even the thought of it, in his own head, was repulsive. Kneeling in the still-settling dust, he wondered where everything had gone wrong.

The first sign he remembered had been a fleeting exchange of whispered words. They had been soft and hesitant, as gentle as he remembered her always being. But they had held the smallest sliver of white-hot anger and perhaps, as he thought back on it now, they had been the spark that started it all, hissing through the dank air as the two of them hid between rusting grates in the tunnel that divided their world from the one above. The prince and his court, with their glass palaces and their grand thrones and their self-righteousness would crush everything with the weight of their excess, she had told him. What right did they have to snuff out the flame of the witches’ reign? What right did they have to banish the magic that ran through his blood and hers? They would ruin this world, burning innocents until nothing remained standing.

That night had been the first in their many years together that he’d seen her cry. He’d gathered her up and shared a threadbare blanket with her and hadn’t asked questions when she crawled in towards his warmth and took his hand the next night, and the night after that. He’d promised to protect her. Still, it had been too late. It had been much too late.

What disturbed him the most was that she had been right. As hard as he’d tried to, he couldn’t ignore the number of people he had seen burned and beheaded and left to rot in the dungeons. The scene that surrounded him suddenly became startlingly similar to the aftermath of a successful witch hunt. The prince had paid to see that hunters, after knocking down the doors of the accused and setting torch to the houses of their families, were hailed as heroes. Thisbe could never stand to watch it happen. Suddenly, the times he’d awoken to her empty bed made sense.

It was years later, and only days ago that the second sign came. They had taken him by surprise when they showed up at the pawn shop with shackles and an arrest warrant signed by the prince himself. He had shown little resistance, knowing it would do little good, but Thisbe… She had become frightfully close to losing her own life that day, clinging onto his hand, tears unrestrained as the guards dragged him through the street. There had been an impassioned, deeply stricken look on her face that had accompanied her gasp of “Don’t leave me,” as their fingers came apart. It should have come as a warning to him.

But all he had done that night was think about how beautiful she was, and how badly he wanted to see her once more before his death sentence was to be carried out. He hadn’t even considered that she had been a ticking time bomb, the seconds counting down to the moment she brought the heavens down on the rest of them.

The next time he did see her though, on execution day, was when his last warning sign came. It only lasted a split second, was the briefest of glimpses before he knelt down on both knees, prostrating himself in front of the executioner and a jeering crowd. Then in the next moment, everything was on fire.

He remembered the executioner falling to the ground next to him, a charred corpse not unlike the ones of her family when the prince had taken everything from her. He remembered Thisbe, finally losing control of her fury and unleashing the firestorm. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the look of terror in the prince’s eyes when the flames reached the throne, lips opening to form the word ‘witch’ moments before the storm consumed him.

He remembered himself, letting go of his own magic and tearing her fire apart.

He took a long look at her soot-covered, weary face and then at the world that had treated her so roughly. “Thisbe,” he asked, “why?”

Her eyes turned to the rubble and the ruin. She whispered, “We don’t have to be afraid anymore.”