The defeat clung to you like an unwanted lover. Around you, the battlefield is reduced to ruin—ashen banners, broken spears, the remains of a once-proud charge towards the Reunion movement now nothing more than fuel for the flames that still lick hungrily.

And at the center of it all, she stands.

Talulah.

The firelight casts along the silver strands of her hair, her sword sweltering in heat, its edges still wreathed in the flames that felled your forces. It was a burning brand upon your pride, your very sense of self.

Her gaze finds yours across the embers, and something in her eyes—mocking. She is smiling. The kind that belongs to the victorious, the untouchable. The kind you loathe, because it is yours to wear, not hers.

“My dear dux, you should have known better."

You do know better. And yet, here you are.

Your sword is burning, but it is not fire that burns through you. It is something else, something far more insidious. You tell yourself it is anger, the simmering heat of humiliation, the sting. The way her fingers gripped around the handle, the way the firelight paints her pale skin.

Each step of the way, her boots silent against the blackened ground. You should step back, you should raise your sword, you should—

But you don’t.

“You fought well, better than I expected. Yet, not well enough."

She stops a breath away, close enough that you can feel the lingering heat radiating from her, close enough that the scent of smoke is no longer the battlefield’s, but hers. Her fingers lift—just slightly, just a ghost of a motion—as if she means to touch you, to press into the cut at your temple and smear the blood with the pad of her thumb.

But she doesn’t.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to lose.”

The sword is in the sheath. The flames that had clung so desperately to her steel flicker once more—then died. Not because they are cruel, not because they are wrong, but because they are too close to something you dare not name.