I did not care how it looked.

I did not care what a single person in that room thought of me.

I stood.

The chair legs screamed across the floor, and the sound cracked through the vaulted chapel like a gunshot, and hundreds of heads turned toward me at once.

I took Veronica’s hand.

“Come on, sweetheart,” I said.

My voice was shaking, but there was iron underneath it, iron I did not know I still had.

“He is not burning her today.”