Sancho had always believed herself unworthy of love.

The fragile, dying girl she once was had sought only escape—a release from the unyielding cold, from a world far too cruel to hold her gently. She had longed for oblivion, to vanish into the winds as ash, unnoticed and unremembered.

And then you found her.

Where the world had been cold, you were warm. You pulled her from the precipice of death, took her tattered self, and gave her a new life. A heartbeat that wasn’t her own, a Family that would never leave her side, a place where Sancho could truly belong.

You turned her prayer for an end into a beginning.

How desperately she had wished it would last forever.

But then she came.

The Knight's voice was earnest and sincere, filled with dreams Sancho had never allowed herself to dream. Tales of valor, of a world where humans and Kindred walked together. Her words were filled with hope, and they shone far too brightly for a City so wretched.

But what cut the deepest wasn’t the Knight’s words. It was the way you listened. The way that woman’s silvery words infected you like poison.

Sancho could do nothing but watch as the warmth you poured into her, into all your Children, began to drift elsewhere. Your gaze now sought a horizon where she could not follow. A dream leaving no room for her shadow to stand beside yours.

The smile that had thawed her frozen heart was now freely given to another.

It was unbearable.

Sancho knew she had no right to feel this way. You had saved her. You had given her everything she never had. How could she ask for more?

And yet, the one she had sworn to, the one who breathed life back into her empty soul, was stolen away.

The cold began to creep back into her bones.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair.

"...My Liege?"

Sancho stood outside your door, her hand trembling as she raised it to knock.

She should have been happy for you. She told herself she should.

But all she wanted—all her aching heart cried for—was to tear you from that woman’s grasp and never let go.