“I’ve never been to an execution,” Gretchen announced, sounding ghoulishly excited.

Zelda’s stomach churned at her friend’s enthusiasm, a cold dread settling into her bones. The manicured lawn around them was incongruously sunny, laughter drifting through on the crisp fall breeze. All they needed was someone bobbing for apples, and it could’ve been a harvest festival. But instead of carts for a hay ride, a line of staff cars idled at the curb, their engines a low hum. August stood next to one, deep in conversation with Klaus. His ankle-length greatcoat, with its high collar and severe lines, contrasted sharply with the lighthearted atmosphere; it was a grim reminder of the power he served—that they all served.

His expression, however, wasn’t one of gravitas but of sour irritation, as though the day’s events were a mere inconvenience. Klaus must’ve asked him a question, because he shook his head. It was an almost imperceptible movement, but she knew him well enough to see the tension beneath the surface, the simmering frustration that only she could read. He probably wished he were anywhere but here—preferably somewhere that involved Klaus being run over by a tank. Describing those two as not getting along was like calling a hurricane a bit of wind.

As Gretchen babbled on, her thoughts drifted to her sister’s engagement. Charlotte was so happy and Klaus, she supposed, probably didn’t hate the idea. He’d undoubtedly said as much to August, adding insult to injury. Klaus was husband material, but August wasn’t? In August’s position, she’d be more than a little upset. Then again, she wasn’t sure she had the right to be anything; she wasn’t entirely sure that she wasn’t single. He certainly wasn’t acting like her boyfriend, not that he ever had. But since leaving the bathroom, he’d ignored her entirely.

Which was what she’d wanted, she reminded herself.

From the beginning.

Klaus spun toward the car and his driver sprang to attention, pulling the door smartly back. He got in first, as he had the lower rank. August followed, his lips pressed into a thin line, not waiting for his driver to shut the door. Nor did he acknowledge Zelda, his gaze cutting through her as though she were invisible. The car drove off a moment later, flags snapping in the breeze.

Zelda watched it go, the scent of exhaust mixing with the crisp autumn air. She’d made herself the victim in this scenario, and had absolutely no reason to complain. Doubtless, had she actually agreed to marry the father of her child—or admit to doing things that might produce a child, in the first place—this little interchange would’ve gone quite differently. He’d have escorted her out of the bathroom, for starters, instead of telling her to wait five minutes and then leaving her alone to wonder if she’d made a horrible mistake.

“Huh.” Gretchen’s face contorted in confusion. “I wonder what that was about.”

“Nothing,” Zelda muttered.

“Our boss is no Klaus,” Gretchen added musingly, “but I wouldn’t kick him out of bed.”

Snorting, Zelda shot her a sidelong glance. “You wouldn’t kick anyone out of bed.”

“Not in that uniform,” Gretchen agreed equably. “Black is so imposing, don’t you think?”

“It hides the blood.” Zelda’s tone was grim.

Gretchen’s gaze sharpened, her playful demeanor fading. “You’re acting bizarre, even for you. What’s wrong?”

Zelda crossed her arms tightly over her chest, a defensive barrier against the torrent of emotions raging inside. “Nothing,” she answered curtly, not trusting herself to reveal more.

Gretchen wasn’t deterred, putting an arm around her with what she no doubt imagined was a comforting smile. “Is it the execution?”

“No, genius,” Zelda snapped. “I love watching my fellow Americans get beheaded.”

Blinking, Gretchen tried to process Zelda’s sarcasm. “But you’re German.”

Zelda didn’t respond, the absurdity of this statement only heightening her sense of isolation. Without another word, she turned and strode off, leaving Gretchen to race along behind while complaining about her shoes. The girls from the typing pool were milling around on the sidewalk; their inane chatter and breathless giggles were like nails on a chalkboard, a cruel reminder of the chasm between what her life had been and what it’d somehow had become. To them, this was an excursion, a chance to feel important and ogle the powerful men who treated them like chess pieces.

Rumors had swirled since Bill’s arrest that the Führer himself might grace them with his presence; he wouldn’t, but they collectively consoled themselves that his deputy was nearly as thrilling. Zelda glared at them in silence; were these vacuous nitwits actually fangirling over a pair of monsters? Gretchen’s remark that Adolf was a total fox, for his age, brought another round of titters. Piling into the remaining cars, the group’s so-called conversation devolved into gossip about the single men in their office. Elsa, one of Gretchen’s vapid hangers-on, remarked hopefully that the Sturmbannführer was quite a catch; Gretchen stepped on her foot, hard.

As Elsa squeaked, Zelda gazed out the window. Back in the spring, even the simplest of chores at The Green Dragon had felt like acts of defiance; she’d been tending a beacon of hope, that normal life could somehow reassert itself. But the tavern had burned down and Marta was somewhere in the smoking rubble, a rotting testament to the freedom they’d all thrown away. When had doing what she needed to do to survive become more?

Had it?

Was choosing the least dreadful among horrors actually choosing? At no point had she felt like any of the decisions she’d made were truly hers, or that she had an overarching plan at all beyond surviving until morning. Instead of escaping, she’d ensnared herself in a role that sickened her, not once but a thousand times over. She’d deluded herself into believing she was special, but she was just one more casualty of the same relentless machine—and she, in her complicity, felt no less a prisoner than the man who was about to lose his head.

The golden dome of what’d once been the Massachusetts State House came into view, glittering in the sun. She remembered the last time she’d been here, on a school trip, bored and restless as the guide droned on about the Commonwealth’s glorious past. She hadn’t absorbed much—she never had liked school—but she did remember that the library supposedly contained over a million volumes. State and local histories, maps, the laws that’d once governed a free people. How much of that wealth had been lost to the Reich’s book burnings? And the mural inside, where Samuel Adams gazed down as he wrote the Massachusetts Constitution—had that been painted over? What did the new school groups see, and learn?

Out in the fresh air once again, she took a moment to collect herself. Fall had smelled like this to the Founding Fathers, too: crumbling leaves underlaid with the acrid tang of smoke. She half expected the outsized banners to dissolve with her latest round of nausea, but they kept rippling in the breeze, their garish red a jarring contrast with the building’s graceful architecture. The guillotine remained stubbornly real, too, squatting at the base of the massive granite staircase like some evil troll. Its newly sharpened blade seemed to absorb the morning’s thin warmth, and she swore that some part of her mind could hear laughter.

No one else had noticed; the stands that’d been erected to either side were already filling with eager spectators, most of them looking cheerful—or bored. Beacon Street buzzed with conversation, shot through with hawkers’ cries that theirs was the coldest beer and the freshest cotton candy. Someone wondered aloud if there was time to find a corn dog, and her face must have been a study, because Gretchen grabbed her again. “We’ve got really good seats.”

In response, Zelda faced the throngs.

Most of them were fellow government wonks, although she spotted a couple of Hitlerjugend troupes. The Reich liked its tame audiences, and no one here was about to get the wrong idea—or any ideas at all. Everyone kind of looked alike, too; either that, or brainwashing had endowed them all with a certain slack-jawed sameness. She’d been about to quip as much to Gretchen when Moritz materialized, fixing them with that dispassionate gaze. “Ladies.”

Gretchen simpered, while Zelda fought to keep her own neutral mask from slipping. Moritz was unfailingly polite; she’d never even heard him raise his voice, but something about him made her blood run cold. Their seats, she discovered, were next to his in the front row. Stealing a glance at him, she told herself for the thousandth time that Bill actually was guilty. Whatever plagued Moritz’s fractured mind, he operated out of neither anger nor vengeance; he did what he was told and was covered in medals that proved it. What was Bill’s excuse?

One of the Hitlerjugend troupes was chatting and laughing high up in the stands opposite, next to Gretchen’s mother. With their matching outfits and even matching haircuts, they were learning early that no wasn’t a word men used. August had been raised amidst this madness, just like Moritz—and just like Gretchen’s father, who was glad-handing a bunch of people she didn’t recognize. The difference was that in her world, the world of her childhood, Fred would’ve been in the bread line and Moritz would’ve been in prison. But August wasn’t some post turtle, promoted past the point of competence, nor was he a thug with even less education than she’d managed to scrounge. He was a doctor, an educated man from a privileged background; he’d chosen this path, for all his protestations, and he would again.

Samuel Adams, a delegate to the Continental Congress from Massachusetts, once spoke on the steps of a different state house. He told supporters of the crown, if ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. His directive echoed in her mind, a ghostly reminder of a different timeline, a different Zelda. Adams might’ve been speaking directly to her, through the veil, calling her out for the coward she’d become. She’d started on his team, fighting for freedom…and now?

Her conscience still screamed, but into a void.

Gretchen tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re not upset about Elsa, are you?”

Because nothing, nothing could be wrong except that. “No,” she growled.

“You don’t really want an unpopular man,” Gretchen reminded her seriously.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

A slight quirk of Moritz’s lip was the only indication he’d heard.

“I want to go home,” Zelda sighed. “That’s all.”

We ask not your counsels or arms, Adams had finished. Crouch down and lick the hand which feeds you. Her choices, however limited, still defined her—not the excuses she made for them, or the difficulties she’d told herself were so impossible to overcome. The thousands of her fellow citizens who’d given their lives for democracy, then and now, hadn’t exactly had things easier. Morality wasn’t about what others did, or about taking the path of least resistance; it was about studying her reflection and being at peace with what she saw there, about deciding that that was what mattered, even if it meant giving up what she felt she deserved.

Even if it meant cutting her own life short.

She’d justified each compromise, each deception, with the guise of survival. But survival at what cost? She’d sacrificed her principles, her soul, on the altar of pragmatism. The person she’d seen staring back at her in the bathroom mirror earlier was a stranger, a hollow shell of the firebrand she’d been worn thin by the relentless tides of guilt and regret.

Bill’s actions were heinous, beyond heinous, but they were his own. Her complicity, her silence, her cooperation—those were her sins, and they stained her just as deeply. She’d crossed the line from resistance to collaboration, and there was no going back. Each step she’d taken further into this world had been a step away from the person she’d once aspired to be.

Glancing at Moritz again, she counted his medals. Most of them were from California, from when he’d fought in the Waffen-SS with Das Reich, but he’d also distinguished himself since joining the SD—if she could call it that. He was the natural product of this system, as much as she. She wondered if he missed who he’d been before, like she did. That she could ask herself that question was some small comfort, a sign that she hadn’t yet been entirely consumed by darkness. But it was also a cruel reminder of the person she’d lost, the person she might never find again.

And in front of them, the guillotine waited.

Most executions weren’t public; it was easier to hide their real numbers that way. Bill’s co-conspirators had already met this same machine in the basement of the Gestapo’s jail. The design was as ugly as it was well-constructed, brutally efficient like everything else within the Reich. The vertical guides for the blade gleamed with a harsh precision, and the low bench behind it looked almost clinical. Straps for the victim’s shoulders would hold him—or her—in place, while the neck was fitted between two pieces of wood. A bucket, bolted to the front, stood ready to catch the falling head. What she found even more upsetting, however, was the sluice beneath the bucket. That, along with the crank mechanism for the blade, was a purely German innovation.

Like the Aztec priests of old, America’s new overlords relished a dramatic sacrifice.

“This is gruesome,” Gretchen complained, her voice wavering.

“It’s painless and efficient,” Moritz stated. He sounded bored.

Gretchen turned, frowning up at him. “Are you sure?”

Moritz’s gaze, cool and detached, met hers. “It’s more painless than other methods.”

“How long does it take?” she asked, her voice a mixture of morbid curiosity and dread.

“Ten seconds,” he replied, neither pleased nor impressed with the information. “Less.”

Gretchen’s mouth dropped open. “So quick!”

Moritz shifted his attention to the crowd. “Death is always quick,” he commented, in that odd accent of his. “Only the buildup sometimes drags.”

Zelda wondered what the buildup had been like for Constance.

Adolf arrived.

Flanked by his guards, he walked up and down first one stand and then the other as eager supplicants greeted him and professed their devotion to the Reich. Most of them, Zelda noticed, were American. The sight made her stomach churn, a harsh reminder of how far her homeland had fallen. When he reached her, he kissed her on the cheek. She gawked at him, unable to summon a response, feeling as if she were suffocating under the weight of her own silence. Thankfully, he moved on to Moritz. “The Reich is grateful for your talents,” he enthused, clasping the Obersturmführer’s hand. “And for your dedication in putting them to good use.”

Moritz’s nod was the merest acknowledgement. “Thank you, Reichsminister.”

For bringing Bill to this dubious justice, Moritz had been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. He’d be formally presented with it in a different spectacle, but this one was about to start. Adolf approached the podium, the local leadership fanning out in a line behind him. August stood at parade rest, his face obscured by the shadow of his cap. Fred eased a finger inside his collar before remembering that he, too, was on display. He glanced at his wife, then at Adolf.

Both were ignoring him.

Zelda touched Moritz’s elbow. “How many people have been executed like this?”

He considered, as though she’d asked about the weather. “Well over one hundred thousand.”

What Moritz lacked in the desire to talk, Gretchen made up for in spades. “I still don’t understand how Bill could’ve done something so awful,” she declared, her words blending into the susurrus of the crowd. “I get that not everyone likes—everything, but murder is hardly the solution.”

Absorbing her words, the Obersturmführer fixed her with an unreadable look. Gretchen, remembering who she was talking to, faltered a little. If he cared that he was making her uncomfortable, however, he gave no sign. “So long as a soldier operates within whatever limits he’s imposed upon himself,” Moritz offered eventually, “that he considers necessary, he perceives his actions as legitimate. If he can’t, he doesn’t become a soldier.”

“He killed children,” Gretchen emphasized, although she sounded uncertain.

Zelda wondered if Moritz had.

Adolf stepped to the podium, his presence commanding immediate attention. The air seemed to still as his gaze swept across the crowd, taking in the sea of expectant faces. Zelda could feel the collective breath of the audience hitch as they waited for him to speak. But instead of launching into condemnation, he steepled his fingers and drew a deep breath. “The Reich has no intention of bowing to this threat,” he began, his voice steady and authoritative. “Rather, we will confront it in terms of complete and radical extermination.”

News crews from every major network aimed their cameras at him, capturing every word and gesture. The crowd’s anticipation was palpable, their eyes glued to the man of the hour. She could feel their admiration, their reverence for this leader who stood before them. It was chilling.

The Reichsminister was addressing the entire world, but he might’ve been a kindergarten teacher helping his students cope with the loss of their class hamster. “Are we not barbarians?” His brows knit together in artfully crafted concern. “Is executing a man the only path to peace?”

He touched his heart in a gesture that, had she not known the man personally, would’ve seemed completely genuine. “I’d encourage you to ask that question, instead, of those who’ve suffered at this madman’s hands. My heart is with them, and so is the Führer’s. He knows that our nation doesn’t live in monuments, however grand, but in our people. We are an organic union of souls, souls who cherish and protect one another, and he weeps for the lives lost as thereby we are all diminished. But children, above all, are precious to him and….”

Zelda’s mind wandered. She didn’t even have to listen, to know that he was a brilliant orator; all she had to do was watch the rapt faces of the crowd. Most of them appeared to be having some sort of religious experience; even Gretchen looked like she might swoon, mesmerized by the spell of his evolving narrative. This was how the Reich had won, Zelda realized with a sinking heart, leading people like lemmings to a cliff and making them feel good about jumping.

The tension in the air was electric, a current that seemed to hum just beneath the surface. She could feel it thrumming through her veins, pulling her in, obliterating her reasoning mind. Enduring dinner after dinner with Adolf, pushing her peas around while he droned on about his latest pet project, she’d thought of him as ludicrous—not dangerous. But in this moment, there was no sign of the bloviating blowhard who flirted outrageously with his wife, and sang off-key in the shower. Instead, he’d transformed into a suave and compelling figure, a man who could command attention and manipulate minds with terrifying ease…and who was now part of her family.

“I nearly lost my own firstborn son to this tragic and unnecessary war,” Adolf continued. “He came home a hero, where he should have been able to enjoy the peace that one out of every three men in his regiment bought with their lives. A peace they bought for you, as their fellow citizens.” His voice carried the weight of sorrow and pride, each word meticulously chosen to draw the crowd in, binding them to the tragic image he’d created in their minds. “But some men, men like Ted Hood and Bill Smith and others, would return us to these times of terror. Instead of accepting National Socialism and the gifts it offers, gifts that mean a brighter future for us all regardless of national origin, he sent his thugs after my son’s fiancée.”

Flash bulbs went off, capturing this moment of pathos.

Adolf’s fist slammed onto the podium, shattering the veneer of calm. “How many of you warn your daughters not to leave your homes for fear of the same thing happening? Does Bill Smith not deserve to face justice? Do children like Thomas Müller not deserve whatever justice can be offered, in their names? Do we not owe it to our surviving children, yours and mine, ensuring that this never happens again? I know that what I want for my family is what you want for yours: to live peacefully, loving who they choose, without fear of retribution and I….”

Zelda pressed a hand to her stomach.

“Traitors and cowards!” Adolf’s eyes blazed with fervor. “I stand with those who share my pain! Because I, too, am a father and husband and citizen of the Reich but, even more, because rejecting your neighbor’s plight as somehow alien to your own is treason to the Führer! We are one people and we must stand together if we are to survive!” He raised his arm in a salute. “Heil Hitler!”

The stands erupted into thunderous applause, the atmosphere thick with the frenzied energy of the crowd.

Bill was brought out, then.

He had to be half carried, half dragged toward the guillotine. His face was a grotesque mask of bruises and cuts, one eye swollen shut, the other bloodshot and wild. His head was bandaged, seeping a mix of blood and some other unidentifiable fluid. His clothes hung off him in tatters, stained with grime and more blood. He stopped, forcing himself to stand upright, every movement a visible struggle, then waved his fist at his tormentors. “Remember the Founding Fathers!”

“He’s not supposed to talk,” Gretchen whispered, her voice tinged with shock. “But there’s nothing they can do,” she added, pointing at the Channel 5 crew. “This is a live broadcast.”

“This is my turn!” Bill cried, his voice hoarse and defiant as his jailers pulled him back and forced him into the device. “You’re next! You don’t believe it, you think you’re safe, but you’re next!”

The neck brace was fitted, the shoulder strap tightened.

The executioner stepped forward, pulled the lever, and the blade slammed home with a sickening finality. Blood spread on the stone below, both far too little and far too much to represent an entire human being, as the executioner’s assistant reached into the basket and held Bill’s head aloft.

“I hope he meets whatever God he believes in,” Moritz murmured, with a rare note of some unnamed emotion, “and that he wishes himself back into our hands.”

The edges of Zelda’s vision grayed, a cold sweat breaking out across her skin.

“Zelda!” Gretchen’s exclamation, filled with alarm, seemed to come from a great distance. “What’s wrong?”

She tried to answer but the world was spinning too fast, pulling her down into its dark and unrelenting whirlpool.