SemperIntrepida

You keep me close to you now. When you work in your study, when you eat in your dining room, when you survey your city from your balcony, I kneel beside you. At night, I sleep on the floor, and I'm only locked in the cage when you

Winter comes to Athens, and with it, plague. I see funeral pyres burning across the city. I see the empty streets below your palace. I see your soldiers accompanied by slaves, distributing wagonloads of food to the people trapped in their homes. But the plague is not an army defeated

It took you five months to break me. I lasted far longer than anyone else. Judging by the triumphant way you dragged me from your torture chamber to your bedchamber, I might be the only one who's ever left that place with enough sanity intact to serve you.

On the day Kyra was supposed to be executed, the guards who came for her didn't have to drag her from her cell. She'd already accepted that she was going to die screaming in front of a crowd. The torturers would have their way with her,