“Bellina Corso,” the Inquisitor stated flatly.

Heart pounding, Cora met his gaze and tried to channel some of Audrina’s dignity and repose. Wait. Just wait. Give them nothing at all unless they ask for it.

“Have you ever gone by the name Bellina Corso?”

“No.” That, at least, was the truth.

“Have you ever been to Italy?”

“No.”

“A village named Valle Piola?”

“No.”

“Do you have family in Italy?”

“No.”

“Where is your family?”

“Here. And in Skye.”

“Who is your family?”

“Maeve MacClaran is my cousin. My parents are Fiona and Albert Wilcox.”

They asked a series of probing questions about her family, her childhood and her upbringing in Skye. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to know too much about the island or its various villages — the little information she gave them seemed to satisfy their curiosity. Thank God for Margaret, who had prepared her well with all kinds of useful details that only a true story could possibly have.

“Who taught you witchcraft?” the second Inquisitor asked suddenly, and she blinked, thrown off a little by the suddenness of the question.

“N-nobody,” she stammered, just a little, and the look of triumph that flickered through his eyes sent a chill through her.

“Who taught you witchcraft?”

“Nobody.”

“What was the nature of the spell that saved you from burning alive?”

“I have never been burned,” she replied.

He barked another question, his inflection unchanged — this one in Italian. She looked from him to his compatriot, who gazed back at her impassively, and spread her hands in a gesture of confusion. He swapped back to English.

“How were you saved from burning alive?”

“I wasn’t,” she tried, confused.

He leaned closer. “Then how are you here now?”

“You have me confused with another woman,” she tried desperately. “I have never done witchcraft, never been set alight—”

“Why have you forsaken God?”

“I haven’t!” she cried, voice rising despite her determination to stay calm.

“Liar. Why have you forsaken God?”

Her heart was pounding and she was starting to feel dizzy under the onslaught of interrogation. They’d been in the room for what felt like hours — she missed the sunlight, missed the breeze on her skin, just wanted to go outside for a minute…her eyes fell to the floor, to the cold stone that made up the floor, and for a moment it merged with Bellina’s memory of the cell she’d been tortured in and tears welled up in her eyes.

The second Inquisitor was questioning her in Italian, over and over again. With a sick lurch of her stomach, she realized that the questions he was asking — though she couldn’t understand them now — were exactly the same questions as had been asked of Bellina in her dream. Over and over again, the same question, with a blow to the jaw every time an incorrect answer was given — she could almost feel the sharp, sickly pain of her fractured skull throbbing in tandem with the angry syllables of Italian.

“Please,” she whispered, but the Inquisitor only raised his voice, questioning her over and over. He was standing, now, looming over her, and she shrank down into her chair despite her determination to be brave. Were her hands on her knees, or tied behind her back? Were those tears running down her face, or blood from the wounds they’d inflicted to try to draw the truth from her? They’d never stop — they wouldn’t stop until her spirit was broken along with all her fingers, until they’d cut her tongue right out of her mouth and flayed the skin from her body — one hand clutched desperately at her throat, looking for a necklace that wasn’t there, and instead found the brooch. The brooch that Margaret had given to her, with a blessing. The brooch that would keep her safe. But could anything keep her safe from these men, men with their sticks and knives, men who were lighting a bonfire to set her ablaze?

“Pater noster,” she whispered, barely audible, waiting for the pang of pain from an injury that had been done to another body, in another place and time. “Qui es in caelis. Sanctificetur nomen tuum...”

By the time she had finished the prayer, the Inquisitors had fallen silent — and when she murmured ‘amen’, she looked up and saw the first man mouth it along with her. The second one, still standing, looked dumbfounded. She took a deep, steadying breath and straightened her back again, beginning to come back to her senses. The Inquisitors were conferring, now, speaking to one another in low quiet voices.

“The interview is over,” the first one said tersely.

Cora let out the breath she’d been holding.

“Confine her to the dungeons.”