He didn’t fight. He didn’t even try. He waited for me to do what had to be done. My hands had trembled so violently that it took longer than it should have. Longer than I could forgive.
Then there was Cindrissian or a young female fae, her blonde hair matted with dirt, her face streaked with tears, her hands clasped together as she pleaded.
“Please,” she sobbed, her pleas tumbling over each other. “My family—they’re waiting for me. My daughter—she’s a child. She needs me. Please…”
I had stopped looking them in the eyes by then.
The others whispered when they thought I wasn’t listening. I knew they watched me, glancing at me when they thought I wouldn’t notice. The concern was always there, it stuck to the air like humidity.
Varyth was furious.
He paced the cell, his hands clenched into fists so tightly that his nails cut into his palms. He was angry at Xyliria, at Ashterion, at the guards who dragged me away each day.
But more than anything, he was angry at himself. I saw it in the way his hands twitched with the urge to tear the walls apart.
I had stopped arguing. Slipped into that space where the pain couldn’t reach me, where nothing could. And that was what drove him mad. Not my suffering. Not my choices. But the emptiness of me.
Because Xyliria had known. She had known that my breaking wouldn’t come from one unbearable moment, from one devastating wound. It would come from the slow unravelling.
It was working.
For the first time, I considered it.
Xyliria’s offer.
Trulyconsideredit.
If I said yes—if I agreed to stay, to serve, to become her weapon—then maybe it would stop. Maybe I wouldn’t have to choose again.
I wouldn’t have to look into their eyes as they begged. As theyunderstood. As they waited for me to decide who lived and who died with blood already on my hands.
I knew what Xyliria wanted. What she would make of me.
She would use me to kill. She would point me at her enemies, her threats, and I would burn them to ash without thought, without mercy. She would take every drop of my power and twist it into something cruel and obedient.
But at least…
At leasttheywouldn’t have to see me become the monster.
Varyth wouldn’t have to watch me return from another decision I couldn’t take back and pretend he didn’t see the cracks growing in me. At least Darian wouldn’t have to mask the way he flinched when I entered. At least Cindrissian wouldn’t have to meet my eyes andknow.
If I accepted, I could stop pretending.
I could let the last of myself slip beneath the surface, and no one would have to witness it.
No more pleading voices. No more blood on my hands that belonged to strangers with families. With names I couldn’t afford to remember. No morechoices.
Just orders.
Just silence.
And gods, I wassotired.
Tired of fighting. Tired of hoping. Tired of clinging to a morality that Xyliria had burned out of me one name at a time.
Maybe this was what she meant by mercy.
The stone of the cell was cold against my skin, the weight of exhaustion pinning me in place. The others were asleep, their breathing steady, their bodies curled against the chill ofour prison. Varyth’s arm was draped around me, heavy with protective instinct even in sleep. His warmth was the only real comfort in this place, a grounding presence amid the horrors that had become our existence.
