Now when I move it's not the silent stomps of the guards that have my attention, instead my mind is far away, trying to figure out a way to save her. Trying to figure out a way to banish her to the Unowned instead of being tortured.

The Unowned is the land outside of where we live, where everyone lives really. Our land is organized by power. We fight for our land. But there are some spots of land that don't fall under anyone's rein. This is where I want to banish her.

The Unowned is dangerous, or is supposed to be, but it'll be a lot better than torture, she might even do well out there with her power. Might even be able to survive longer than she would here. So I spend the rest of the time it takes to make it to the board room, thinking about how I’ll propose this.

My father is an inventive sort of person, always looking for new ways to do things, better ways, more efficient ways. Torturing and killing people randomly, believe it or not, sometimes causes more problems than it was intended to fix. Rumors start, they spread to the people we rule. They no longer want to work for us, or under us anymore. They leave, and keep other people from coming. It messes us up. Our once thriving land of over five thousand, reduced to just five hundred. It may be difficult to switch territory, but arrangements can be made if you know the right people.

But just throwing someone into the Unowned might fix that problem. It could be seen as us giving them a second chance. We saved their life, and gave them a chance at a new one somewhere else. Somewhere where they will die no doubt, but somewhere where there is hope, and people seem fond of that. They need something to believe in after all. Especially those too weak to change anything.

They want to believe things can change. What they fail to see is what will happen if things do change. They fail to see how delicate this balance of good and evil is. And they fail to see that if things change, we might ignite that tightrope holding all of us up. We might plumet so far on the side of evil we may never be able to tilt back to good again. And isn’t it better to tilt slightly to the evil side than to do that?