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Everything – all the choices she’d made, the path she’d chosen, every step she took had led her to this moment. The sharp tip of her sword grazed the soft skin of his neck and with one swift movement; she would acquire the vengeance she seeks. However, the shattered and betrayed look in his eyes brings forth the hesitation within her.  

Vengeance had brought her to him. He – his people, his family – destroyed everything she held dear and she despised him for it. However, he was a crucial part of her plan. Get close and destroy them from within. Getting into their inner circle was a simple task. She once was one of them, but that was before they razed her world and covered it in ruins and blood of her people. 

Getting close to him was the true challenge. Unlike so many people of high birth, she had come across he was selfless, humble and kind to his people. He seeks inner sustenance rather than the external substance. She had painted him as a monster – like his father, but if his father was the darkness he was the light. They were nothing alike.

However, because of that she knew how to entice him into her trap, not with honey, but intelligence, not with arrogance but with modesty – be everything he doesn’t expect from a princess from a faraway land. It was a perfect game of pushed and pulled. She believed herself to be above it all. Unaffected by his charms, but there rests her miscalculation. 

She didn’t know when her repulsion for his touch turned into attraction, her false interest turned into actual interest and worse of all – when did she give her heart to him. When she recognized her feeling for what it was, it was too late. She couldn’t turn back. All the pieces were in place and her army that she had built in secret was ready to take back what was owed to them.

She looked at him now and the guilt rose up like bile in . He held his sword in a loose grip by his side, she knew that he could disarm her at any moment if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t – not until she answered the questions she could see brewing inside of him.

“Why,” he asked.

She tightens her grip on her sword and the action pierced his skin. The crimson blood slowly trickled down his muscled, but slender neck.

“Your family – your father destroyed everything,” she forced herself to look into his eyes. “I watched as your father brought his sword down and severed my father’s head from his body and I watched again as he did the same to my mother and then to my brothers.”

She saw the pain in his eyes and forced herself to continue.

“I vowed that I would avenge them by doing the same to your family.”

He moved closer to her, causing the sword to penetrate deeper into his skin. She shook her head. She would not move, for if she moved he would see how much this was hurting her. He can’t see all of this was affecting her.

He reluctantly stepped back, “What we shared … was any of it real?”

Yes, as real as the setting and rising of the sun. So real I believed I was dreaming, for this wrenched soul does not deserve to be loved by someone like you.

That was what she wanted to say, but she replied with a curt, “No.”

“I don’t believe you.” He said it with such surety. “I know you better than you think.”

She sighed and stepped slightly to the side, sword still held to his neck, but she allowed him a better view behind her, “I made him pay for the debt he owed me and my people.”

His eyes went wide as he saw his father lying in a pool of his own blood, his head completely separated from his body.

Hate me now, my love – for everything will be much easier with your wrath upon me.

“You …” he stuttered. She saw a glimpsed of anger in his eyes. “Killed him?”

Yes,” she replied, trying to put as much vehemence and poison in her voice as she could. “You are surrounded. Tell your men to stand down and their life would be spare.”

“They will not stand down with your sword at my throat,” he glanced at his father again. “Will that be my fate as well, Amber?”

The tears that she had held in for so long burned her eyes, threatening to escape down her face, but she forced it back, “I wished there could be another outcome, Christian.”

She moved, swinging the sword back in an arc, but before she could bring it back down she felt a sharp pain in between her shoulders. The pain brought her to her knees and the sword slipped out of her hands. Christian moved so quickly and caught her in his arms before she fell backward.

“I guess I deserve this,” she coughed up blood as she spoke. She knew she was dying and everything she fought for was lost. There was no more need for these charades. “Vengeance brought me to you, Christian Yu and I’m grateful for it, but when vengeance gives it also take away. I must pay for my sins. All the death in the name of my vengeance will never bring my family, but now I will finally be with them.”

“Amber.”

He sounded so far away from her. The warmth that she felt from his embrace was slowing ebbing away. There was no turning back from this. She might have not taken her kingdom back, but in Christian’s hand it will flourish. She had done what she could and she was ready for the next step of her life.

With her remaining strength and her last breath, she said what needed to be said the most, “A word of sorry would not right the wrong I’ve done, but know that I am. And … I will … love you … in this life and the next.”

She exhaled her final breath as the darkness took her.