The stairs down to the lower dungeons were old and narrow, carved from cold grey stone that had never once felt the sun. Derek went first, one hand hovering near Nana’s elbow, ready to catch her if she so much as wobbled.
"Nana, are you sure about this?" he asked for what felt like the hundredth time. "You don’t have to see him. I can handle it alone."
Nana kept walking. "Derek Wolfe, if you ask me that one more time, I will give you a very heavy knock. Maybe that way it would get into your skull."
Derek nodded, though doubt still lingered in his mind.
"I’m old, my boy, not made of glass." She paused on the landing to catch her breath, one hand pressed to the wall. "Though I’ll admit these stairs are trying their best to finish me off before I get there."
The deeper they went, the worse the air became, thick and sour, with the stench of damp stone, old blood, and rot. The two gammas stationed at the bottom snapped to attention the moment they saw who was coming.
"Your Grace. Lady Genevieve." They bowed low.
"Open it," Derek said.
One of them fumbled with the ring of heavy iron keys, and the cell door groaned open on rusted hinges. The stench hit them like a brick wall.
Crane hung suspended from the ceiling, his wrists bound in silver chains that had eaten raw, weeping rings into his skin. He was a shadow of the proud, sneering man he had once been.
His clothes hung off him in filthy tatters. Whip marks crisscrossed every inch of his exposed body, some fresh and glistening, others crusted dark where the blood had clotted and dried. His ribs pressed sharp against his skin. He smelled of everything a man should never smell of.
The moment Crane heard footsteps, his head lifted weakly.
"Derek..." he rasped, his voice barely more than a wheeze. His cracked lips pulled into something that might once have been a smile, though now it just looked like a wound. "Come to gloat again, have you?"
Derek stepped inside without a word, his face cold and inscrutable.
Crane’s chest heaved with the effort of speaking. "Just kill me. I’m begging you." A tear slid down through the grime on his cheek. "Please. Whatever twisted satisfaction you’re getting from this, you’ve had enough of it. End it. Have some mercy and put me out of my misery."
"Mercy," Derek repeated flatly, "is a funny word coming from you."
"Derek—"
But his words died when Nana stepped through the doorway. Crane’s eyes widened in horror. Then he broke completely.
"Mother," he choked out, and the word cracked as it left him. His whole frame began to shake, the chains rattling above him. "Mother, no. No, no, you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t see me like this."
Nana stood very still just inside the cell, both hands folded in front of her. She looked at the thing hanging before her, the son she had carried and birthed and raised, and her face gave away nothing at all.
"Please," Crane sobbed, and now the tears came in earnest, carving pale tracks down his filthy face. "Mother, please, have mercy on me. Tell him to kill me. Or give me a proper punishment. I can’t bear it anymore, I can’t—"
"Be quiet," Nana said.
She did not shout it. The two soft words landed harder than any scream, and Crane’s pleading died in his throat with a wet gurgle.
For a long moment she simply looked at him. Derek watched her closely, his whole body tense, waiting for her to crumble, to weep, to reach for the wall. She had just recovered, and she was staring at her own child strung up like meat in a butcher’s shop.
But Nana did not crumble.
"You think what you need is death," she said at last. "You’ve got it all wrong, Crane. Death would be a kindness. And you have not earned a single kindness from me or from anyone in this world."
Crane stared at her, his lips trembling.
"I have thought a great deal about this," she went on. "I lay awake many nights, wondering what an old woman is supposed to do with a son like you. Whether I should beg Derek to spare you. Whether some small, foolish part of me still owed you that, simply because you came out of my body."
Her chin lifted. "And then I remembered the faces at that table. Your kind and gentle brother Maurice, Natalie, that sweet girl, who never harmed a soul in her life. I remember all the good people who lost their lives fighting for us. I remembered the darkness everyone in this pack went through, and I found I owed you nothing at all."
"Mother," Crane whispered.
"Don’t call me that." Her voice rang out like a gunshot. "You lost the right to that word the night you murdered my family. So no, I will not ask Derek to kill you. I have come to pass my own judgement instead."
The cell went silent but for Crane’s ragged breathing.
"I disown you," Nana said. "From this moment, you are no son of mine. And I curse the very day I brought you howling into this world, Crane. I curse the hour, and the pain of it, and every soft and hopeful thing I ever felt while I held you." Her voice did not so much as tremble. "That is the first part of your punishment."
Crane was weeping openly now, his whole body shuddering against the chains.
"And here is the second," she continued. "You will not rot quietly down here in the dark, where no one has to look at you. That’s far too comfortable a fate for a coward. You will be taken up into the daylight. You will be dragged through the pack, from one end to the other, and whipped the entire way. And every single soul in this kingdom will be there to watch it happen."
"No," Crane breathed. "No, please—"
"They will see you," Nana said, relentless now. "They will see exactly what you are. The man who butchered his own brother at his own table. The man who let half his pack believe a lie for eight long years. Every family you wronged, every child who grew up without a parent because of you, every person who ever wept over a grave you dug, they all deserve their justice, Crane. And they shall have it."
She turned to Derek. "See that it’s done."
"It will be," Derek said quietly.
Nana gave a single small nod. Then she turned and walked out of the cell without once looking back.
"MOTHER!" Crane’s scream tore through the dungeon, raw and desperate. "MOTHER, PLEASE! Have mercy on me! Please, I’m begging you, don’t do this! MOTHER!"
She did not slow or turn. She simply disappeared from view.
Derek lingered a moment longer, looking at the broken creature swinging from the ceiling.
"I told you," he said coldly. "I told you that even the goddess herself would punish you. She won’t let you die so easily, Crane. That would be letting you off. You’ll suffer every single thing that’s coming to you, and you’ll suffer it wide awake."
He stepped back toward the door. "You’ve earned every second of it."
Then he too walked out, and the cell door groaned shut behind him.
"I’ve suffered enough," he sobbed to no one, to the damp walls and the dripping water and the empty black. "I’ve suffered enough. I deserve to be laid to rest. Please. Just let me rest."