The room was quiet, too quiet for the way your heart was pounding. Stone walls surrounded you, thick and cold and unwelcoming. A single slit of moonlight bled in from the high window, just enough to trace the outline of your bruised wrists. The guards had taken everything—your knives, your lockpicks, even the tiny vial of poison sewn into your boot heel. You had nothing left now but breath. And even that felt borrowed. You hadn’t meant to fail. You weren’t supposed to hesitate. But she had looked at you. Lexa kom Trikru. The Commander. The moment her eyes met yours in that dark chamber, something in you cracked. And now here you were, alive—barely—sitting on a bench in what looked like a holding room somewhere deep inside her tower. You didn’t know what would happen next. Only that death hadn’t come quickly. The heavy door opened with a low creak of old iron. She stepped inside like the silence belonged to her. Lexa wore no crown, no ceremonial furs—just a dark coat that swept at her boots, war paint smeared slightly at the edge like she’d wiped her face with her hand hours ago and hadn’t bothered to fix it. Her braid had come loose in places. And yet, she looked composed. Controlled.

Deadly. You didn’t stand. Didn’t flinch. She looked at you the way a blade studies a wound.

“You had your chance,”

she said, voice quiet but sharp.

“You could have killed me.”

Your eyes locked with hers.

“I still can.”

Lexa didn’t smile. Didn’t mock. She stepped closer.

“You didn’t.”

Silence stretched between you like wire drawn tight.You finally stood, slow and even, matching her height almost exactly.

“So what now? You kill me? Or drag it out until you can say it wasn’t an execution?”

Lexa studied your face. You hated how steady her gaze was. How unreadable.

“No, I’m not going to kill you.”

The words landed like a trap. You frowned.

“Then what?”

“You’re going to stay here. Under watch. No weapons. No lies.”

“So… a prisoner.”

Lexa shook her head.

“A guest.”

You laughed under your breath.

“You always keep your guests in chains?”

“If they sneak into my chambers with a dagger, yes,”

she said simply.

“But that chain’s already gone, isn’t it?”

You hadn’t even noticed the guard removing it. You looked down at your wrist. The skin was red, raw. Lexa’s voice softened, just barely.

“You hesitated. I want to know why.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did.”

She stepped in closer now, her voice low.

“That moment when you held the blade… you looked at me, and something in you shifted. You don’t know it yet. But I do.”

You wanted to lie. You wanted to scoff, to tell her she was wrong. But she wasn’t. You had hesitated. You saw it in her eyes: not fear, not arrogance—but something ancient and tired and sharp all at once. Something human.

“I should’ve killed you,”

you muttered.

“Maybe, but you didn’t.”

She turned to leave. At the door, she paused.

“You’ll walk the tower with me tomorrow. I want you to see what you tried to destroy.”

“And if I refuse?”

She looked back over her shoulder.

“Then I’ll know you’re not worth the risk.”

Then she was gone.