Time dilates as the world narrows to the space between us. I see the intricate embroidery on his stole, the individual grey hairs at his temples. I hear the sharp intake of breath from the Lord closest to me.
Then, the knife finds its home.
I drive it forward with all the strength of my body, all the fury of my broken vows. There is a resistance, a sickening, wet pop as the blade parts fabric, flesh, and gristle, seeking the frantic engine of his life beneath. The sound is obscenely loud in the holy silence.
His body jerks. A small, almost polite sound escapes his lips, a faint ‘oof’ of expelled air. The winter in his eyes clouds with shock, then with a profound, final understanding.
He falls backward, not with a dramatic crash but with a heavy, graceless thud against the base of the white marble altar. The red of his vestments is now a deeper, wetter crimson, spreading like a blooming rose from the hilt of the knife that stands upright in his chest.
For one heartbeat there is utter, deafening silence, as though the world holds its breath.
Then, chaos screams to life.
A woman’s shriek shreds the air, followed by a roar of fury from a hundred throats. The scene erupts. From behind pillars, from shadowed alcoves the guards spring forward, their own masks cast aside. Their eyes are wild, fixed on me - the blasphemer, the assassin.
But just as they surge toward the altar, other figures move. Men who moments before were kneeling in worship now spin, drawing concealed blades of their own.
My unlikely, unnamed allies.
They throw themselves at the guards, and the cathedral floor becomes a butcher’s yard. The chant of priests is replaced by the clash of steel, the guttural cries of combat, and the wet, meaty sounds of blades finding their mark.
A guard lunges at me. I sidestep his wild thrust, grab the arm that holds his sword, and use his momentum to slam him face-first into the corner of the altar. I feel the crush of bone, see him go limp, but don’t check if he’s dead. There is no time for mercy, for quarter. My vow of measured violence is ash, along with everything else. I am a creature of pure instinct now.
I rip a dagger from the belt of a fallen Lord and now I am armed with steel in both hands. I become a whirlwind of survival. Another Lord charges me; I duck under his swing and open his throat with a backward swipe.
The blood is warm on my hands, but I don’t feel it. Another guard falls to a punch-dodge-stab combination so ingrained in me that it feels like breathing. I am a machine built for this, stripped of hesitation, of thought.
All I can think about is her.
It is a mantra, a lighthouse in the storm of my violence. Each parry is for her, each lethal thrust is for her. The blood I spill, the sacred peace I have completely and utterly obliterated, and the eternal damnation I have surely earned is all for a woman who almost certainly still fucking hates me.
I fight my way toward the great oak doors of the cathedral in a slow, brutal progression. I am not a hero in a saga; I am a rat in a trap, chewing its own leg off to get free. I use the chaos as my shield, letting the Esau fighters engage the bulk of the guards while I move along the periphery.
I see an Esau man, his mask torn away, take a sword through the gut. As he falls, his eyes meet mine. There is no camaraderie there, only a bleak acknowledgement of a shared, desperate purpose. He bought me two seconds, so I’ll use them.
I reach the immense doors, and they’re barred from the inside by a heavy wooden beam. With a strength born of pure adrenaline, I heave it aside. The sound of it crashing to the stone floor is louder than any death cry.
I wrench one door open. The cold night air hits me after the incense-thick atmosphere of the tomb I’ve just escaped.
I don’t look back.
I plunge on into the darkness of the adjoining alleyway, the sounds of the slaughter fading behind me, replaced by the beating of my own heart and the ragged saw of my breath.
And I run. I run until the muscles in my legs scream and my lungs burn.
It is done. Konstantine is dead. I killed him. I, the pragmatic man, the calculator, the survivor, the fucking Kingmaker has seemingly committed the most gloriously impractical act of rebellion imaginable.
And all for a woman who hates me.
The world is a symphony of pain. It’s the only music I know now. A low, constant thrumming from the raw, bloody ruins where my ears used to be, a percussive ache in every bone from the cold stone floor, a sharp, string-pluck of agony deep inside me every time I shift. The iron cuffs around my wrists and ankles are ice and fire, chafing skin that is more bruise and cut than flesh now.
The chains are short, cruel things with just enough length to allow me to curl into a ball, to bring my hands to my face. But not enough to stand, to stretch, to ever forget I am an animal in a cage.
The air is thick with the smell of me. Of blood, both old and new, a coppery tang that has seeped into the stone. Of sweat, fear and the lingering, sour stench of the men who raped me.
I am a thing of filth.
I try to disappear inside myself, to retreat to a corner of my mind they haven’t found yet but the pain is a relentless warden, dragging me back to this hell.
