{ "It's not dying that you need to be afraid of; it's never having lived in the first place."}
I turned from the stunned council and walked back to the high chair. His chair. Each step echoed louder than the last, a steady beat in the drumroll of this unravelling farce. My rage no longer flared; it simmered. Controlled. Focused. I sat down again, slow and deliberate, letting the chair creak beneath me as I leaned back like a monarch on judgment day.
The chamber felt colder now and then I heard it— The boots. The metal. The shift in the air. The guards were coming. No... surrounding. I didn't need to see them to know. I could feel it, the subtle ripple of power moving outside the council hall, like a net being drawn tight around a wild animal they thought they could contain.
