The drumbeats marked his final steps, each hollow thud echoing across the square like the heartbeat of some dying beast. I stood motionless among the crowd, my face concealed beneath the deep shadow of my hood, as Lord Edmund Aubrey walked toward his death. A death I had orchestrated with careful precision. "Traitor," someone whispered nearby, the word carried on the chill February wind. "They say he plotted against the king himself."