The first sound of death landed like a snowstorm. Like the stone pillars slowly chipped by the cold. Like the sound of a dog running with a broken lease towards a carriage at full speed. Everybody knew it was going to happen. Everybody except for the dog. Everybody but us. 

"Do you accept your crimes?" The sword of damocles, the judgment that finally swings down.  

My own father- the general of the Creon empire, kneeling at the mercy of some unnamed royal enforcer. I watch him, his armor that has accompanied him on the battlefields, where he slayed hundreds and hundreds of Askans soldiers, that dark silver armor that has rusted with the blood of our enemies struggle to flatten against the ground as the enforcer kicked his back to the ground. 

'Why are you not resisting?' 

My voice gets stuck in my throat. The warmth of my mother's hands as she pulls me back behind the skirt, the only thing keeping me from breaking down. There is no fear in her eyes. To be exact, there was no fear... until she looks at me straight in the eyes. The same way you would a dying dog. That unhidden pity. That unhidden guilt. 

"Is this our empire's way of greeting their hardworking general?" Father attempts to keep an air of dignity, "Barely a day home from the battlefields, and your first act is to barge into my home?"

The eyes of the royal enforcer remain unfeeling. I could tell, the storm had already seeped too deep. There is no way out of this. I must run, one way or the other. My eyes stay on the sight of my father, the sword held so close to his neck. To the hands of my mother, so protective around my neck. 

Nobody bothered to help. All the servants had run away. Some with stolen possessions, some with stolen jewelry, some with nothing but their lives. These men, they had no interest in such small fish. No interest in the not "guilty". 'We are going to die. We are going to die. And no one cares.' My eyes sway to gazebo out in the open, the stone pillars clad in the purple of entwining wisteria. 'Will they seize this dwelling?' I find myself thinking. 

"Silence." The royal enforcer kicks father's back once more, it is a surprise the one reeling remains to be my father. The enforcer's shoes must be made of special material, otherwise, the armor would have caused him some pain. He continues to speak, "Camillus Tettius Amor, for the crime of inciting a rebellion against the emperor, you are to be beheaded alongside three generations of your family. Be grateful of the emperor's mercy."

As though finishing with his chore, the royal enforcer, takes out his sword and swings down, a hand covers my all too young eyes. But it is too late. I know what happened. The sight of my own father's head falling off his neck. The sound of it falling on the marble grounds. 

“Take them all to the execution block.” His voice falls unfeelingly, and I buckle to my knees.

‘This is it?’

All those years of being abandoned by my parents who altogether devoted their lives to the battlefield, all those years, watching them return with one more scar and another, all of it, for it to crash by one line, “Take them all to the execution block.”?

My mother yells something, I can’t focus on what she is saying. By the time I return to reality it is too late, the soldiers have separated us apart. The scent of my mother’s lavender perfume now replaced by the sweaty odor of overworked soldiers. I hate this feeling. Of being incapable of doing anything. Of being unable to say anything. 

“Let me go..! I can walk by myself.” I speak, as though spitting on their faces. 

An attempt that is not welcomed by many. Especially, not by the soldier dragging me into the rectangular mobile prison that is being driven by two horses. Without paying me any more attention, he throws me into the humiliating cage, no words except for the condemning, “You expect me to trust the daughter of a traitor?”

The rhythmic sound of the cage driven through the bumpy road hits my ears. Mother is not in this cage. I see some of my father's friends. People that frequented the manor but never stuck long enough to greet me. Are we all going to die?

“Where are we headed to?” I speak a bit too loud in the still atmosphere of the prison only to receive hateful glares. These men who were once filled with nothing but the gentlest of gazes, with nothing but the friendliest of smiles are now watching me as though I am their executioner. 

Ah, right, I am now, a “Daughter of a traitor.”

Perhaps, even father’s companions do not trust him. Perhaps, they think he is the reason they are caught. 

Our ride ends in front of a grand structure. I do not recognize this building. No time enough to appreciate its majestic structure before I am whisked deep underground, where the sound of desperate men trying to fling off the chains tying their limbs to the ground is heard. It is dark here, no light except for the flicker of the torch held by the enforcer in charge and the ones on the walls every two to three cells.

“Reflect on your crimes.” The man says, throwing me into the dirty cell. 

My feet hit something rough. On closer attention, it seems to be straws strewn across the prison floors. I am sure my legs were scraped by the impact. Out in the side, I see something moving. It is a mouse. A foul odor lingers in the air. Someone’s devacation. I attempt to hold in my puke. 

Reflect on your crimes.

All my life, I did nothing wrong. Is it a crime to be born who I am? Is it a crime to be born the daughter of two proud generals? Of two people who were accused of treason? Judged before any fair trial?

Two streams fall down my eyes, into my cheeks and into the straw beneath my knees. I hate how powerless I feel. How utterly out of control everything is. The sound of my father’s head falling into the ground fills my head. “Lillai Amor, my daughter, you take after me the most.” His warm voice fills my head and the pain, the loss suddenly crashes down like a wave.

How could this be?

That, before his hair had even grayed, the man who upheld the kingdom’s borders, was killed by the people he protected? That, the father I never got to know, died just like that? In front of his daughter’s eyes? In front of her inability to prevent? 

Kindled, my rage sought out everything and anyone to blame. Treason. I had heard bits of discussions on the way here. It is the emperor they say. Father’s fame has risen a bit too high up. Suspicions were aroused. And that fame that he had always been so shy about, became his downfall.

“Postumius Asinius Suilius..” I brazenly say the name of the emperor, my tongue hating every syllable, “By tooth or bone, I will avenge… this injustice.”

Silence breaks into the prison cell where we are all about to die. I suppose even with a death sentence, all of the inmates are afraid of dying. Just as the air freezes, someone begins to clap. A slow, repetitive clap. I stare ahead to see a silhouette come into existence, a figure walking in front of the cell and illuminated by the dim torch light. 

“Excellent, I decided you are the one.” A voice not much older than my own, appearing to be 18, around 3 years older.

Braided black hair and striking amber eyes. Sand toned skin and an uncanny mantle red as blood. Earrings the color of cochineal bugs. That stare, a snowstorm forming. Domineering and tall, he stares me down with a gentle yet aloof smile. 

“Die for me… If you do, I will teach you how to survive instead of waiting like a pig to the slaughter house.”

There is no coherence in his speech. No sense of logic, no detail nor explanation. But, there is something about his eyes, something convincing, something like the sound of my own hatred. Like a mirror to my own soul. 

So, I clench down my fist on my clothes and wring out the word, “...Alright.”