"He believes I am dead." The words echoed in her mind, louder and louder, until they drowned out the silence of the cell. Her fingers trembled, the locket slipping from her grasp. For years, she had clung to the thought of his love, his unwavering devotion. And now… it was gone. Not stolen by the Dahmenions, but surrendered by the one man she thought could never give up on her.
Siana’s breath came in shallow gasps, the weight of the revelation pressing down on her chest. She wanted to scream, to cry, to rage against the walls of her prison. But no sound came, no tears fell. Her body felt too weak, her mind too fractured to give voice to the storm inside her.
He wasn’t coming. Not because he couldn’t, but because he wouldn’t. The thought was a dagger twisting in her heart, sharper than any physical pain the Dahmenions had inflicted.
Her father had let her go.
The locket gleamed faintly on the cold stone floor, its presence a cruel mockery of the bond she thought could never break. She reached for it with trembling fingers, clutching it tightly, as if holding it might somehow restore the connection she had lost.
“No,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and raw. “No, he wouldn’t… he couldn’t.”
But the images from the memory sphere were burned into her mind. The tears on his face, the grief in his eyes—it had been real. He had mourned her. And then he had moved on.
Her hands curled into fists around the locket, her knuckles white. Anger flared within her, cutting through the despair like a spark in the darkness. But it wasn’t directed at him—not entirely. She wasn’t ready to blame her father, not yet. The Dahmenions had done this. They had taken everything from her—her freedom, her family, her magic—and now, they had taken her hope.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Her teeth clenched as a new thought took shape, one that ignited a fire deep within her. If he believes I’m dead, then I’ll make him see that I’m not.
Siana forced herself to her feet, her legs trembling under her weight. The years of confinement had left her weak, her muscles atrophied, but the resolve in her heart made her stand taller than she had in years.
She stared at the orb on the floor, its dark surface still pulsing faintly. It was a tool of the Dahmenions, a weapon meant to crush her spirit. But they had miscalculated. They didn’t realize that in showing her the truth, they had given her something more powerful than hope: a reason to fight.
Her grip on the locket tightened as she stepped toward the sphere. Her reflection wavered on its surface, but she didn’t look away. “You think you’ve won,” she said softly, her voice steady now, laced with quiet fury. “But you haven’t. You never will.”
She had spent a decade waiting for her father to save her. Now, she would save herself.
With that thought, she reached out and crushed the orb under her heel. The sphere shattered with a brilliant flash of light, sending a shockwave through the cell. For a moment, the air shimmered, and Siana thought she felt a faint flicker of something—an echo of the mana she had once wielded.
The prison might have stolen her magic, but it hadn’t taken her will. And that, she realized, was something they would never be able to break.
She didn’t know how she would escape, or what lay beyond the walls of her cell. But she knew one thing with absolute certainty: she would fight. For her freedom. For her father. For herself.
Siana turned to the cold stone walls, her resolve hardening like tempered steel. “You’ll know my name,” she murmured, a fierce light burning in her eyes. “And you’ll regret the day you tried to erase it.”