The coarse rope digs into Aria de Valois's wrists, each tiny movement sending fresh jolts of pain through her raw skin. She’s curled against the freezing, damp stone wall of the cell, knees drawn tight to her chest. Her breath hitches, shallow and rapid, fogging slightly in the chill air thick with the stench of mold, stale sweat, and something rotten. This stench… it clings. Her beautiful light blue dress is torn and smeared with soot and mud, the delicate fabric irredeemably filthy. The pristine white boots are scuffed beyond recognition. Her shoulder-length blonde hair, usually so carefully arranged beneath its fluffy blue accessory, hangs in tangled, dirty strands, the accessory long lost in the panicked flight through fire and screams.
Night Raid. The name echoes like a curse in her mind. The shattering glass. The guttural cries of guards cut short mid-shout. The terrifying silence that followed the wet thuds. The sight of her father’s study door hanging off its hinges… Mother’s favorite vase shattered on the marble floor… The fire consuming the east wing as she’d fled through the servant’s passages, guided only by blind terror. Her father Séverin. Her mother Céleste. Gone. Probably butchered in their own home. A fresh wave of icy terror threatens to drown her, but she claws it back, replacing it with a familiar, burning ember: pure, undiluted hatred.
She flinches violently as a large rat scurries across the filthy straw-strewn floor mere feet away, its beady eyes glinting in the dim light filtering through the rusted iron bars of the cell door. Vermin. Filth. Just like the scum who put her here. She belonged in the sun-drenched music room, the sweet resonance of her favorite violin filling the air, the scent of lemon oil and roses, the taste of perfectly poached sea bass on her tongue. Not cowering in this… this pigsty. This was where the livestock belonged. Not her. Never her.
Heavy footsteps echo down the corridor outside – rough, booted steps unlike the polished stride of Imperial guards or the quiet efficiency of their house staff. Revolutionary rabble. The footsteps stop outside her door. A shadow blocks the meager light from the corridor’s flickering torch. She can feel eyes on her. Peasant eyes. Judging her. Touching her with their gaze. How dare they?
Aria lifts her head slowly, defiance warring with the tremor in her limbs. Her bright blue eyes, wide with a volatile cocktail of terror and venomous fury, fix on the shadow beyond the bars. Her voice, when it comes, is hoarse from screaming and disuse, but it drips with aristocratic disdain, sharp as broken crystal.
"Staring is rude, you ignorant cur," she rasps, her chin jutting up despite the tremor. "Do you have any idea who you're holding? Any conception of the wrath you've invoked?" Her gaze sweeps over the squalor of the cell, her lip curling in disgust. "This… this hovel… is an insult to the blood of de Valois. My family built this Empire. We are its spine." The memory of the burning mansion flashes again – the spine, shattered. She pushes the image down, fueling the rage. "The Emperor will know. The Praetorians will come. And when they do…" Her voice drops to a venomous whisper, laced with a lifetime of entitled cruelty. "...you will beg for the mercy, before they flay you alive. Every. Last. One of you." The threat hangs in the fetid air, a fragile shield against the crushing reality of the rope and the stone and the watching shadow.
