I sat just outside the tent, letting the night breeze caress my face, its gentle touch a stark contrast to the shrill screams that tore through the fabric behind me. The air was crisp, sharp even, carrying with it the scent of wildflowers and ash. Above, a sea of stars scattered across the dark velvet sky, casting silver light over the rows of distant tents like a thousand watchful eyes. The camp, for once, looked almost serene.

  It was a rare moment of peace—temporary, and painfully fragile. If I ignored the agonized shrieking that crawled out of the tent behind me, I could almost convince myself the war was miles away. That I wasn’t sitting in the heart of something unspeakably cruel. That the world, just for a fleeting moment, was soft.

  The area around our tent was surprisingly void of movement. No idle chatter, no footsteps, no stray animals sniffing for scraps. Just the wind, the pale glow of moonlight, and the muffled screams—those wretched, wet howls of pain that slithered out every few seconds. The guards stood at a polite distance, dutifully deaf to it all, their eyes fixed on the horizon. Good men. Loyal. Or perhaps just cowardly.

  I glanced down at the ground. A few wildflowers had managed to bloom despite the trampled earth. Delicate things—white and violet blossoms unfurling under the moonlight, their petals reflecting a soft glow. They were beautiful, in a way purgatory never had been. No stench of blood. No endless grayness. No fire raining from the sky. Just stillness.

  I closed my eyes. Inhaled slowly. Exhaled.

  Perfect.

  Well—almost perfect.

  “Gods above,” I muttered, annoyed. “Can’t she scream a little quieter?”

  The woman’s wails clawed through the tent walls like nails on metal. It wasn’t even the pain itself that was irritating—it was the pitch. Like a wounded bird trying to sing. I rolled my eyes, a sigh escaping my lips. “Some of us are trying to relax, you selfish harpy.”

  Still, part of me was pleased. Thrilled, even. Her voice meant she was still alive. Still lucid enough to feel. And that meant the game wasn’t over yet.

  I rose to my feet with a casual stretch and stepped toward the entrance, ready to re-enter the theatre I had crafted with such care. What we were about to do wasn’t just torture—no. That was far too crude, too easily reduced to bone and blood. What I had in mind was far worse: a surgical dissection of the mind. Something more sinister. More delicate.

  As I reached for the cloth that separated the tent’s interior from the night, I paused. Closed my eyes. Centered myself.

  I needed to become someone else now. Not the twisted soul who relished cruelty. Not the shadow who made devils look kind. No—now I was Lady Griffin. A noblewoman of grace and purpose. The king’s envoy. A woman of justice and empathy. I shaped my face into the perfect expression of horrified innocence—wide eyes, parted lips, stiffened shoulders—and pulled the cloth aside with a dramatic gasp.

  The scene was just as we left it. The woman, lashed and broken, whimpered beneath leather bindings. Blood stained her thighs, her chest, her teeth. And Arthur—Arthur turned on cue, pivoting slowly toward me with just the right amount of startled guilt. I was proud of him. Even if his acting was about as subtle as a hammer to the face.

  “Arthur?!” I exclaimed, as though the very sight of him wounded me.

  His eyes gleamed with something darker than remorse. “Lady Griffin,” he said, voice gravelly, heavy with theatrical menace. “I didn’t expect you to be here at this hour.”

  His grin gave him away, but that was fine as he was behind her. He wasn’t meant to be the hero of this farce.

  I straightened, narrowed my eyes. “I am here on behalf of His Majesty the King,” I announced, letting every word drip with righteous fury. “Your heinous actions have not gone unnoticed. By royal decree, you are hereby sentenced to death for the torture and murder of innocent civilians.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply—good women didn’t. Instead, I stepped forward, kneeling beside the woman. Her wounds were grotesque, raw, but not unfamiliar. I examined her quietly, letting the expression on my face flicker with the appropriate shade of horror.

  I wanted to gag. Not from the gore, but from the saccharine falsehood I had to become. It wasn’t in my nature to be kind. It grated against every bone in my body. But still—I played my role.

  “The guards await you outside,” I said softly, not looking back at Arthur. “May the gods be merciful in the next life.”

  Arthur sighed dramatically, letting his shoulders slump as he trudged toward the entrance, feigning defeat. Not a single word in protest. A brilliant choice—silent surrender always sold better than bombastic denial.

  I stayed behind, alone with her. The woman lifted her head weakly. Her eyes met mine, and in them, I saw it: hope. Pure, unfiltered, naive hope.

  Exactly what we were betting on.

  She didn’t realize that I was the second blade in this operation. The quieter one. The dagger that didn’t shine in the sunlight, but sank deep into the back, unseen and merciless. She believed in me. In the lie I wore like silk. And because of that, she would break even more beautifully.

  I gazed into her eyes—not out of pity, nor pleasure, but curiosity. There was something there. A flicker of resistance, maybe. A whisper of strength that hadn’t been crushed yet.

  No, it wasn’t exactly in her eyes—it was something deeper than that. Something behind them.

  A strange green hue shimmered faintly, almost alive, writhing behind the calm blue of her irises like liquid light trapped beneath glass. It was faint at first—just a flicker—but the longer I stared, the more it twisted and pulsed, like a slow flame dancing in defiance of its prison.

  It made no sense.

  Her eyes were blue. I saw that clearly. But beneath that sapphire facade lay a living green—an unnatural glow that refused to belong. I had never seen such a thing before—not consciously. Maybe I’d glimpsed it in passing, lost in the noise of battle or buried beneath centuries of half-forgotten lifetimes. But never like this. Never with this proximity.

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  I couldn’t look away. I stared longer than I should have, my own breath caught in my throat as I tried—uselessly—to decipher what I was seeing.

  And then I caught myself.

  “Oh…” I murmured, blinking once. “I’m deeply sorry.”

  With careful fingers, I reached out and unfastened the leather straps that bound her wrists and ankles to the table. The skin beneath was raw, marked by bruises and the deep red impressions of restraint. She didn’t resist—only sagged forward as I gently helped her sit upright.

  “You’re safe now,” I said, voice dipped in a kindness I didn’t truly feel.

  Her eyes welled with tears—real ones. They shimmered down her dirt-smudged cheeks, and with them, the green behind her gaze flared softly once again. It glowed. Only slightly, like a bioluminescent thread swimming in deep water. Familiar and yet unplaceable. It tickled at the edges of my memory like a name I couldn’t quite recall.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice cracking beneath the weight of pain and cautious relief.

  I stared again, transfixed. Where had I seen that color? That flickering, unnatural green? It wasn’t just strange—it felt wrong, like something that shouldn’t exist.

  But there was no time to ponder. Not yet.

  “He should have some medicine in one of these chests,” I muttered, rising quickly. “Don’t move, alright? Stay still.”

  I crossed the tent in swift strides, tore open one of Arthur’s storage chests, and rummaged through its contents. Bottles clinked. Scrolls, bandages, trinkets. Finally, I found what I needed—a small glass vial filled with an amber-hued liquid. A tincture, likely antiseptic, possibly laced with something stronger. Either way, it would look like I was helping.

  I returned to her side. Her eyes tracked me now, cautious but full of hope—an emotion I found endlessly useful.

  “By the gods,” I breathed as I knelt beside her again, cradling the bottle. “It’s a wonder you’re still alive. Here… let me help…”

  But I had no cloth. No gauze. No clean rags, and pouring the tincture straight into her wounds would only worsen the pain. I looked around the tent—nothing. Just bloodstained tools, rough wooden crates, and that damn screaming silence pressing against the canvas walls.

  I smiled helplessly.

  And then, with the kind of false nobility only I could perform so well, I began to undress.

  Yes, what a delightful development—performing a striptease in front of a barely-conscious, half-dead woman. Certainly not the outcome I had envisioned for the evening. But needs must. I would pester Arthur for a new dress later. Preferably one without dried blood woven into its seams.

  As I pulled the dress over my head, I noticed her eyes widen. Shock washed across her face—and with it, the green vanished.

  Just like that.

  The faint glow receded into the blue, as if it had never been there at all. But I saw it. It had been pulsing—watching—reacting. Now, with her surprise came its retreat, swallowed by the sea of her natural gaze.

  Interesting.

  “Milady?” she asked, confused and half-dazed.

  I placed the bottle beside me and offered her a warm smile. “It’s the least I can do after what you’ve endured.”

  Clad only in my undergarments, I poured a few drops of the tincture onto the shoulder of the now-discarded dress and gently pressed the damp fabric against a deep laceration along her arm. She flinched, inhaling sharply, and a small cry escaped her lips—but she didn’t pull away.

  “There,” I said softly, holding the cloth in place as if it would magically close her wounds. Of course, it wouldn’t. The fabric was ordinary, the tincture little more than a token gesture. This wasn’t healing—it was theatre. She suffered for a comfort that didn’t exist.

  But still, she let me continue. Because she believed.

  And belief was a powerful thing.

  I wasn’t sure what I had stumbled upon in that woman—the green behind her eyes, the way it shifted with her emotions—but something told me she wasn’t just another broken plaything from the wrong side of the war.

  And I had no intention of letting that mystery slip away.

  “I have never heard of such a kind noble,” she said, her voice faint but honest, trembling slightly with disbelief. The sincerity in her tone nearly broke me.

  I had to fight the laughter bubbling up in my chest.

  Oh, the irony. It was rich—delicious, even. But I bit down hard on it, forcing my lips into a sympathetic smile. If she only knew how far from kindness I truly was.

  “We’re like vegans who eat meat,” I said lightly, unable to stop myself from slipping in a joke that made no sense in this world. “We exist as the broad majority, but we’re just not very vocal about it.”

  Predictably, her brows furrowed in confusion. I could practically hear the cogs grinding in her blood-starved brain. Vegan? This world didn’t have such a concept, but I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes the nonsense was funnier than anything else.

  “I… understand,” she replied hesitantly, though the look in her eyes told me she clearly didn’t. Still, she was trying. Sweet, naive thing.

  I gave her a warm, gentle smile—one I had worn countless times before, always when preparing for the next move. Carefully, I helped her slide off the table and guided her down to sit on the canvas-covered ground, cradling her gently as if she were something fragile. She was, of course. But not in the way she thought.

  Once she was seated, I returned to dabbing at her wounds. I pressed the sullied shoulder of my dress against an angry gash on her side, ignoring the sticky, half-dried blood that clung to my fingers. The fabric squelched faintly—gods, it was thrilling to hurt her—but the act had to look genuine. Tender. Healing.

  I knelt behind her, letting my knees sink into the dirt as I supported her slumping form. From this angle, I couldn’t look into her eyes—not directly. A pity, really. I had so wanted to study them further. That strange green. That flickering pulse of something ancient, hiding just behind her gaze.

  But the performance had to go on. Not for her sake, but mine.

  Slowly, deliberately, I leaned closer. My head drifted towards her shoulder, and my breath stirred strands of her matted hair. She tensed—just slightly—sensing the shift, but not yet panicking. I let the warmth of my breath brush her skin. Intimate. Disarming.

  “You’re a strong woman,” I murmured, my voice quieter now, brushing against her ear. “Surviving this amount of sloppy torture… that’s not common.”

  She flinched at my words, and I felt her pulse spike beneath her skin.

  “Thank you?” she responded, unsure whether it was a compliment or a threat. It was both. And neither.

  There was a new hesitance in her tone. A pause between syllables. She had noticed it—the change in my behaviour. My shift in tone. The quiet edge laced with something colder, darker. But not enough to pull away. Not enough to shatter the illusion of safety I had crafted.

  Yet.

  I dipped a corner of the dress in the amber liquid again and gently swept it along her neck, avoiding the shoulder parts deliberately. The fabric rubbed gently at the dried blood there, leaving faint, clean streaks across her pallid skin. She didn’t move. She barely breathed.

  “You know,” I whispered near her ear, voice smooth as satin but laced with something far more dangerous, “you should be careful who you put your trust in.”

  She didn’t reply. Not right away. I felt her go still—completely still—as though the sudden tension might make her invisible.