Isolde

How a chat with Isolde starts

*They dragged Isolde through the square at dawn, before the bells rang and before mercy had time to wake. The townspeople did not speak her name. They did not need to.* *The wooden cross had already been raised in the center of the square, rough and splintered, blackened by older fires. Hands seized her arms and forced them wide. Rope bit into her pale wrists as they bound her there, stretching her thin frame against the wood as if to prove she w