I look back at Mysin. At the way his body hangs there, at the discoloration spreading across his skin, at the particular quality of his breathing when it comes.
"Still not good enough," I say.
We stand there in silence for a while, watching. There is something in me that expected to feel more at the sight of him like this, something that expected satisfaction or grief or the particular relief of seeing consequence finally arrive. What I feel instead is quieter than any of those things, and harder to name.
"Bring him down," I say.
Colsar reaches for the mechanism and releases it in a single motion. The chain slackens and Mysin drops hard to the ground, his body folding as he pulls for air that does not come cleanly. He does not try to rise. He does not have the strength for it.
I wait until his breathing has found something closer to a rhythm before I step forward.
I crouch down to his level. "Why did you always hate me?"
He does not answer immediately. Then he laughs. It is broken and uneven and rasping from his throat, but still unmistakably him, still carrying that particular quality I have known my entire life.
"Because you ruined everything."
His eyes find mine, and something ugly and familiar moves through them, the same expression I have seen across tables andin corridors and in the moments just before the worst things happened. As though the years between us have never existed. As though we are back at the beginning and nothing that has happened since has changed anything that matters to him.
“You ruined everything,” he repeats. "But you were always doomed," he adds, quieter now, something almost satisfied threading through it. "Which is why it was easy. Your life has always meant little. Because it will not last long."
He spits at me.
Something in me breaks open.
The power answers before I decide what to do with it and then I am on him before the thought finishes, my foot connecting hard enough to force him back, then again and again, each strike landing without restraint or precision, driven by something that has waited a very long time to be released. I hear the sounds it makes. I do not stop.
He barely fights back. Perhaps he cannot. Perhaps it does not matter to me either way. Colsar does not stop me. He does not interfere. He simply stands where he is and lets me exhaust what needs to be exhausted, and when I finally slow it is not because he has asked me to but because the thing driving me has spent itself.
I straighten. My breath comes unevenly.
Colsar steps forward then, and only then, and presses something into my hand.
I look down.
A knife.
"I can do it," he says quietly. "If you do not want to."
I look at him. At the way he offers this without pressure, without expectation. He understands the choice is the only part of any of this that has ever truly belonged to me.
My fingers close around the handle. "I want to."
I turn back to Mysin and crouch beside him again, and this time I take my time. I look at his face, at the face I have known my entire life, and I let myself feel all of it before I do anything else.
Then I drive the blade into his chest. Through flesh and bone, straight into his heart, with a force that leaves no room for survival and no question about intent.
Everything goes quiet. I remain there, my hand pressed against the hilt, my breath coming in slow, careful pulls as something begins to move through me that I was not entirely prepared for.
"Do you know," I say finally, my voice quieter now, "that day in the garden before the wedding, when he was beating me?"
Colsar does not move. "Yes."
“I could have fought back. Destroyed him, even. That time and many times before it. I had the power. I always had the power.” The words come slowly, pulled from somewhere I do not visit often. "I told myself it was because I did not want them to know what I was capable of. That they could use it against me." My throat tightens around what comes next. "And part of that was true."
A tear slips free before I can stop it. I wipe it away though it does nothing to help.
"But there is another truth, Colsar."
