54. Matilda

I’ve never experienced such a swing of emotions. When Cillian is here everything is joy. Even though war is coming and the preparations are clear to see across the town centre if he is in my eyeline I am the happiest woman on earth.

Groups of men are being organised into battalions, put through drills and formations. I watched as the first batches were taken almost within an hour of us first arriving back alongside the pyre.

Alongside the still smoking heap of collapsed wood men were completing their circuits. Group after group of exhausted, sweating semi-naked men tumbled into the square, all timed with a stopwatch by a stone-faced Zeke and his clipboard.

Losing Franz has broken him inside. He’s hurting with nowhere to let it out. When I was fixing him up back at Tange’s he confessed to me how much he hated Zena.

“She just walked out, for the exact amount of time it took to kill Franz? I don’t buy it,” he had scoffed. “Just left him there!”

At the time I didn’t know what to say. I d