They were all talking about it—the breach in the northern wall.
The informants brought whispers in hushed voices and darting eyes. The Empire's mighty boundary, the wall that caged her people like animals, had been torn open by fire and ash. The nomads—her people—had cracked the unbreakable. And the Empire responded the only way it knew how.
It hung its slaves.
Those who had labored there—too weak to run, too forgotten to matter—were now sentenced to death. A warning. A spectacle.
Yshari learned of it in the dark, surrounded by hay and stink and eyes that always watched. One of the younger slaves, a boy who served wine to the nobles, had spilled the news with a kind of awe in his voice, not knowing what it meant to her. Not knowing that her blood had once run wild under the same stars as the ones who shattered the wall.
She had to go.
But only the worst were chosen—those who wouldn't be missed. The disobedient. The sick. The beautiful.
That was how she found him.
He didn't look like he belonged. Tall, pale-limbed, with a noble's poise and lips always half-curled like he knew something you didn't. Hair like spun silver, eyes too golden for this earth. They called him Lioren. Once a courtesan, or maybe a noble's bastard. It didn't matter. He was a slave now, and his beauty made him a target.
The overseer had tried to claim him. To break him. But Lioren hadn't bowed. He'd threatened to cut his own throat with a spoon if touched again. That earned him a place on the list.
Yshari made sure she was on it too.
But Kael… She hadn't told Kael.
He would've stopped her. He would've taken the punishment himself.
So she lied.
And when the overseer came drunk and leering to Lioren's room, she waited outside, bow in hand. One arrow through the thigh. Enough pain to drop him. Enough confusion to silence. Lioren finished it with a slash to the throat—quick, clean, beautiful.
Kael set the house on fire. Said it was an accident. Said nothing else.
And they were all sentenced.
Quote for Chapter End:
A hero will choose the world over you; a villain will kill the world for you.
And Kael, watching her with fire reflecting in his dark eyes, thought:
Then let me burn the world.