“You can spend your life on your knees, Father, praying to a goddess that does not hear you. Or you can be an asset to your kingdom, for once in your life.” She spun for the door and there was a sense of satisfaction that pumped through her veins. That she was disobeying him. Disobeying the Order. Disobeying Celestria.
She would find Kamari and leave it all behind, cross the line, and never look back.
The door swung open and the satisfaction that drove her forward vanished. “General?”
The tall, thin woman who Aesira had only known to bring pain, discipline, order, stepped into the room like she owned it. Shoulders back, chiseled face stoic and cold. Her gray hair was tightly wrapped at the nape of her neck and the baton that Aesira knew too well hung from her hip. “Commander Zeliath,” she said. “Sit. Down.”
Sweat collected on the back of her neck, her temples, the palms of her hands.Pain, her body reminded her.The General means pain. You’re not safe.“No,” she ground out. “I’m done.” She sheathed her sword and unclasped her breastplate. The first breath of air without it felt weightless. Free. She tossed it to the General’s feet. “I resign,” she said, stepping forward. “Let me through.”
The woman stood firm, her arms tightly positioned behind her back. “You have disobeyed your orders.” She took a step forward. “Your station.” She pulled the baton from her side, sliding it through her hands. “Do you think you’re the first knight to try and leave?”
Her father scoffed from behind her. "You have my full permission but I'll tell you, General, not even the cruelest of punishments seems to get through to her. Unbreakable, this one."
A smile spread over the General’s face, grim and thin and amused. “I know better than to try and break her,” she said, slipping the baton back into its holster on her hip. “Pain has never been enough.”
Aesira’s heart sped, racing frantically in her chest. She knew what came next. Knew that if she didn’t leave right now, this would be it. Her sword was out of its sheath and in her hands before she could blink but still, it was not fast enough. The General was on her, one hand around her throat, and the other pressing something sharp and familiar into the side of her neck. “You are a disease, Aesira,” the General said. “Infecting everyone you love."
Fight.
Fight.
That she could do.
She thrashed, clawing at the General’s face but then her arms were restrained, pulled behind her back by two sentries. “I see not much has changed.” The needle pricked her skin, a drop of warmth running down her neck. There was no way out. The medicine would enter her blood, render her unconscious and then she’d be done. Lost.
“Mom,” she said, finding her mother’s face through blurred vision. “Please don’t let them do this again.”
Maybe it was aimless to believe her mother would finally find her voice and help her children, but her hands were tied and she had nothing left to cling to but to hope that the one person meant to love her most would finally help her.
The last thing she remembered before the needle pressed into her skin was a single nod from her mother and a grin from her father and the General's voice. "Everything you touch, turns to rot."
Thirty-Six
Aesira
The fog that came after a dose was heavy, like seeing through a dust storm, cloudy and blurred. The only bright side to being forced into submission was the others felt she was fine to be alone. Not a threat.
Her head pounded, her pulse beating in her ears. The place where the needle pricked her skin stung. She felt weightless without her sword. Useless without her knights.
Peeling back the curtains, her heart sank as the sun dipped lower into the horizon, casting the city in a rusty glow.
The door behind her creaked open.
“Aesira.” She spun around and Stone was there.
“How did youget in here?”
He met her across the room. “I have my ways.” He brushed her hair back and Aesira couldn’t help but lean into his touch.
“You’re supposed to be leaving,” she said. “It’s almost sunset.”
“Do you think I’d really leave without you?” He tilted her chin. “Rule number two, remember?”
A lump grew in Aesira’s throat, burning as she swallowed past it. “You have to go.”
You are a disease.
“Leave with me.” Stone swept the hair from her cheek. “Tonight. We have enoughastrato make it to the Isles. Maybe further. Nora was right when she said this isn’t your fight. You don’t know what else they’re hiding.”
