VERY DARK THEMES; READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
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The cry of a baby flailed in the closed room. Metal sang. Screams shredded the air. The city vomited itself into the streets with red.
She pressed her back to cool wall, hands white on the dagger at her waist. Her knees trembled. Her breath came in frantic, small pulls, as if the world might shove him into her chest and she would suffocate on the next heartbeat.
Once she had eaten from the finest plates and slept beneath the heaviest silks. Once she had walked where servants parted like reeds and men bowed like trees.
She had learned of the firmiest of love.
She had soared.
Now the wax melted and she fell.
The room had shrunk to the width of her terror. The child's cries clawed at her ribs; they sounded impossibly far away and too close, like a bell struck inside a tomb. Her heart beat its own language.
DAD—RUM.
I am going to die.
DAD—RUM.
Everything we were will die with me.
