The white lion sat on the pillow, its blue button eyes staring into the dark, silent room. In the pale moonlight filtering through the ivy-covered windows of The River's Rest, the plushie looked like a tiny, wool-bound sentinel—the only innocent thing left in a world that was rapidly turning to ash.
Vera stared at it for a long time. She reached out, her fingers grazing the silver thread of its mane. For a brief hour in the Plaza of Games, she had allowed herself to believe she was just a girl at a festival. She had allowed herself to believe that an Emperor could win her a toy and that the shadows of the Grey District couldn't reach across a continent to find her.
She had been a fool.
