"What does it have to do with me?" Madeleine snapped back. "I did not kill her child. I did not place grief in her hands and tell her to tear at my skin with it. Her sorrow does not make my blood less royal."
"No," Henry said, his patience thinning. "But it should make you less eager to see her head on a spike."
"I asked for justice."
"You asked for execution."
"After she attacked me!"
"And I apologised for that."
"Your apology does not mend the insult."
"No, but her death will not mend your pride either."
Madeleine's eyes flashed with hurt before anger quickly swallowed it. "Is this because she is your favourite?"
He knew she had been wronged. He knew it. But something in him recoiled from the cruelty she wanted, from the neatness of turning Bella's madness into a sentence. "I would think as a woman," Henry said, voice rising despite himself, "you would empathise with her situation. But I am guessing you have no idea what it means to lose a child."
