In my experience, hope was a dangerous thing. Hope made you linger a moment too long in a ruined corridor, or pause to help a stranger, or most perilously reach for someone else's hand when you should have clung only to your knife. I'd trained my whole life to be sharper than hope, colder than comfort. Yet tonight, as I dragged Elyzara through the smoke-choked underbelly of her own palace, I realized: I'd let hope creep back in. And it wore her face.
The air in the tunnels was thick with the ghosts of old magic. My senses sharpened, tracing every echo footsteps, distant shouts, the metallic clang of a sword hitting stone. I could taste the fear rolling off Elyzara in waves, but she ran at my side anyway, stumbling only when I pulled her too fast.
Above us, chaos. A kingdom tearing itself apart with every brick and oath and heartbreak. Below, the only order left was mine: get the princess to her siblings before the rebels realized just how powerless she'd become.
