I lowered my hand as the young princess crumpled to the marble floor, her body folding with the delicate inevitability of a falling petal.
There was no resistance. There never is, once the mind has been quieted.
I exhaled through my nose and brushed my palms together, faint traces of emerald magic dissolving into the air like dying embers.
“She caused quite the scene,” I said coolly.
Silence answered.
It pressed in from all sides—thick, suffocating. Even the wind beyond the balcony rail seemed to hesitate, as though the world itself were holding its breath.
Then-
A blur of platinum.
The world lurched.
My breath vanished as iron-hard fingers closed around my throat and wrenched me off the ground. My boots scraped uselessly against stone as my spine slammed into open air.
Burning.
Pressure.
Violet eyes locked onto mine—bloodshot, feral, stripped of restraint.
Zaeran.
“Zaeran—” her name tore itself from my throat as I clawed at her arm, fingers slipping against obsidian armor. My legs kicked on instinct as my airway collapsed beneath her grip.
She tightened her hold.
“We discussed,” she hissed, her voice low and shaking with a fury she had been trained her entire life to bury, “that I would be the one extracting her memories. Didn’t we?”
She slammed me back-first into the balcony railing. The impact rattled through my bones. I coughed violently, vision flashing white at the edges.
“You would have left fragments,” I rasped, forcing the words past crushed air. “You would have spared pieces of her. I’m not stupid, Zaeran.”
That—
That made her falter.
Just for a breath
Just long enough.
I drove my knee up into her abdomen with everything I had. The sound she made was sharp and involuntary, torn from her despite herself. Her grip loosened.
I fell.
My knees struck the stone hard as I collapsed forward, hands flying to my throat as I dragged air back into my lungs. Each breath burned like broken glass.
Behind me, I heard her scoff.
Armor shifted.
Footsteps turned away.
I lifted my head in time to see her kneel beside the unconscious princess, movements suddenly reverent. Careful. As though Atarae were something sacred rather than shattered.
Zaeran slipped one arm beneath the girl’s knees, the other behind her shoulders, lifting her with a tenderness she never allowed herself.
I straightened slowly, wiping the thin line of blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. A bitter smile tugged at my lips despite the ache blooming in my throat.
“You’re sentimental,” I said lightly. “For someone raised to rule.”
She did not answer.
She only turned her head enough for me to see the tremor in her jaw, the way her eyes refused to leave Atarae’s face.
“I won’t hesitate to suffocate you next time, General,” she said flatly.
There was no heat in it. No dramatics.
Only certainty.
A promise.
I laughed—low, rough, humorless—as I pushed myself fully upright.
“Noted,” I replied, my voice still raw.
She passed me without another glance, carrying the girl away from the balcony, away from the sky, away from everything she had just lost.
I remained long after they were gone.
The emerald magic lingered faintly in the air, humming with the echo of erased thoughts—of stolen years, of a childhood rewritten in the name of survival.
Zaeran would hate me for this.
Atarae would never remember me.
And Odessa—
Odessa would understand.
That was enough.
I turned toward the open night, resting my hands on the cold stone railing. Yellow eyes reflected a kingdom that would never thank me for what I had done.
History never does.
But history survives.
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