If the boy had really loved her, he could have refused. 

It would have been kinder. 

But Voltur grows old, now, and he knows what lurks behind pretty words, most of the time. What the boy really wanted was to impress; what he really mourns, now, and begs the archbishop to save, is the dream he had, that he could be important, be feared, be loved. 

The girl says she did not know what it was she did, and he even believes her. But he knows she is not as sorry as she should be. 

The Countess had not been pretty or graceful, like the old gods said a woman should be. She had not been fond of superstition. Voltur had known the woman's wife, a long time ago, when that was still a dangerous affair even in the heartlands - they'd tried to burn down that little village church where they had the wedding. She'd been a soldier, blunt and crude but one of a very small number of people you might think you could trust. Perhaps she had offended the old gods. Voltur certainly hopes she did. 

Ophel did not actually see the thing the Druids made of her. Voltur won't tell him, his queen doesn't need any more nightmares. 

There is a spell by which a man may be slain with but a word, on the instant; the old Queen had decreed it the only means by which a noble may die, as a mercy. Coincidentally, she was the only wizard in all the kingdom who could cast it. He, alas, has had to resort to other methods. But perhaps there was wisdom in what she did, so it is his sword now that spills noble blood. 

It was the smell he noticed first, when his thanes broke down the hill-fort and the cleansing wizard-fire burned back the twisted trees and ravening direwolves and good cold iron put down the archdruid. The things that had been the Countess, and her children - teeth ripped out, and fingernails (the old gods despised man for his weakness, they said, fangs and claws gone soft in the cities) - something blasphemous wrought upon their very skin (it was a sin to wrap oneself in cloth, they said, first sin of the first man) - something carved out of them, or into them, and now there was no recognition in those cataracted eyes, no prayers on those flayed lips even after his high priests healed their slit and ruined tongues, and no resistance when Blackthorn took their heads. 

Wizards are burned at death. He suspects he knows why. And so he ordered the same for them, and watched. Holes in their skulls, and strange patterns on the bones. 

She says she didn't know. She probably didn't. 

Ophel will listen and Ophel will cry and Ophel would want the both of them spared. He was a terribly foolish boy, you see, he didn't know why the Church was so strict about traffic with demons. And she only wanted to please her family, you see, it was how she was raised. 

He doesn't even have the heart to argue. 

The executioner's axe will be swifter and softer than the druids ascendant would be. Even now, he does those two children one last kindness.