My stomach felt like the tips of a fire, burning and curling and falling over itself into tendrils of wispy smoke threatening to force their way from my mouth. I exhaled, blanketing the flames as best I could before pulling myself up the trellis rung by rung while the horses and their stable started shrinking under me and the night swallowed me whole. I slipped over the tiles, pulling myself like a cloak across the palace roof from the stables to the bedroom wing on the other side of the massive structure. My fingers were frigid in the seasonal cold of Oriole's winter winds, all ten seeming to snap like icycles with every minute movement.

Perhaps I should have turned around, gone back to the safety of my uncle's house and thrown the gleaming dagger into the sewers on my way. The wind whipped sense back into me, the skin of my cheeks turning rosy and shining pink under the moonlight. Slowly, my fingers wrapped around to the dagger adorning my thigh, gripping the handle and slipping it gently from the holster.

My footsteps were almost silent on the navy blue, moonlit tiled roof. The blade drew a thin trail of blood on my palm where it pressed into my skin. I wiped away the crimson liquid on the material covering my knees, gritting my teeth at the sting. I contined my hesitant walk to the other side of the palace.

Eventually, I hooked my fingers into the stone windowledge, barely feeling the icy chill through the numbness. I could only hope the queen was in her bedroom, that this was even the right room. My muscles screamed as I pulled myself up, hands then elbows and legs, forced through the open window frame into the fire lit warmth of the royal bedroom.

I walked over to the bed slowly, brushing away the canopy with my left hand while my right continued to clutch the dagger, shaking. The queen looked almost peaceful laying on those silk sheets, her dark black hair fanning over the piles of pillows and shining almost blue in the moonlight. There was no time to dwell over trivial things when the kingdom was slowly being squeezed to death.

I raised the dagger to ghost over her throat, barely and inch from pressing into her skin.

"Your magesty, I'm so sorry for th-"

The guard that had just come to stand in the doorway rushed towards me as I recoiled, the dagger falling softly onto the bedding. Queen Adalie awoke with start, amber eyes locking onto my cloaked figure with a shrill scream.

I darted back towards the window I had come from, heart trying desperately to escape my chest. The guard's fingers brushed my hood as I lept out the open window, my legs screaming at me when they vibrated upon landing on the tiles below. The guard had raised the alarm, if the constant tolling of the bell tower was any indication. My ears were ringing, every other sound drowned out by my fear.

I hoped, at least, that the others had suceeded, that the boatyard had burned down in an explosion so fiery I could see the smoke from the hideout.

My feet took a left at the edge of the blue tiles, up then right, down again, across the endless rooftops of a palace where one wrong step meant certain death. I could hear shouts from far below me, guards searching the perimiter, servants confused and gossiping. Then the trellis was in front of me and in front of it the hay of the stable. As long as I didn't plung five stories to my death, everything would be fine. It would be fine.

I stepped down onto the top rung of the trellis, hands shaking as I held on, boots struggling to grip the painted wood. A rose thron drew a single drop of blood to my fingertip. If I cried that I was in pain and that I had failed at my one job, the guards would catch me and I would hang with the sunrise. My mouth remained closed and quivering while I decended, all ten fingers white as I held onto the wood singlehandedly keeping me alive. One foot down, another, over and over and over as I almost held my beath for fear inhaling would get me caught and killed.

Then my feet his the damp hay belonging to the stable floors and I managaed to spare a tiny, shaking exhale before spinning around my face my getaway plan.

A horse with a golden mane of silk was stood in it's stall, head buried in a trough of crystal water and it's navy sadle slung over the gate. I put it on the best I knew how, the straps probably loose and lopsided but sturdy enough for me to sit on without falling sideways to the straw piles and cracking my skull in two.

My eyes scanned the stable frantically for any sembelance of a stepping stool. Eventually, after far too long given I was actively being searched for by an entire palace worth of royal trained guards, I found one and hoisted myself onto the massive horse. It was then that two things happened in syncronisity.

First, the stable door burst open to reveal five guards all holding very sharp looking swords.
Second, I shouted at the horse I was sitting on, and galloped out between them.
I only had one rule for myself as I wove on a horse I wasn't controling between soldiers and guards and servants through the courtyard and towards my hopeful freedom; don't look back.

The forest swallowed me long before the palace bells stopped ringing.

Branches clawed at my cloak like skeletal fingers, snagging threads and scraping my already raw skin. The horse beneath me--gods, I never even learned its name--snorted clouds of silver mist into the night as we tore through the underbrush. My lungs burned, my ribs ached, and every hoofbeat felt like a countdown to the moment the queen’s soldiers would burst from the trees behind me.

But no one came.

Not yet.

By the time the rebel outpost’s lanterns came into view through the pines, my hands were shaking so violently I nearly slid off the saddle. The outpost was little more than a cluster of rundown cabins and tents stitched together with rope and rotted wood. Smoke curled from a single chimney. A guard on the lookout tower raised a lantern, squinting down at me.

“Password?” he called.

My throat was too tight to speak. I managed to rasp, “By our arm the sparrow flies.”

The lantern dipped twice in acknowledgment. The gates creaked open. I slid off the horse and nearly collapsed, legs trembling like reeds in a storm. Someone grabbed my arm before I hit the ground.

“Took you long enough,” a familiar voice muttered.

I looked up into the sharp, foxlike face of Lysa. Her braid was frayed, her eyes rimmed with sleeplessness. She scanned me quickly, my torn gloves, the blood on my palm, the wild look in my eyes.

“You failed,” she said quietly.

The words hit harder than the wind on the palace roof.

“I--she woke up,” I whispered. “A guard came in. I didn’t even touch her.”

Lysa’s jaw tightened. She didn’t say I told you so, but the words hung between us like frost. She led me toward the main cabin, where the others were waiting. The door swung open before we reached it, spilling warm firelight onto the snow‑dusted ground. Inside, the air was thick with smoke, sweat, and tension. Maps were pinned to every wall: Oriole’s borders, its trade routes, its shrinking farmlands. Red ink bled across them like wounds. My uncle stood at the center of the room, hunched over a table. His broad shoulders were rigid, his hands braced against the wood. When he looked up, the firelight carved deep shadows into the lines of his face.

“You’re alive,” he said. Relief flickered across his features, quickly smothered by disappointment. “But the queen is not dead.”

I swallowed hard. “I tried.”

“Trying doesn’t feed the poor,” he snapped. “Trying doesn’t stop the queen’s taxes from bleeding your brothers and sisters dry.”

I flinched. The room felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in.

“She doubled the grain levy again,” Lysa said, stepping beside me. “Villages are burning their own fields rather than let the crown take them.”

“And the conscriptions,” the boy beside her muttered. “Boys of fourteen dragged from their homes to fight in her pointless border wars.”

I knew all of this. I had grown up with it. I had watched my mother waste away because we couldn’t afford the queen’s healer tax. I had watched my father break his back in the mines until the day the tunnels collapsed and the crown refused to compensate us.

I knew why the queen had to die.

But knowing didn’t make the dagger any lighter in my hand.

My uncle stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You were chosen because you can move where others can’t. Because you’re small, quiet, forgettable. Because you can climb walls no grown soldier could dream of scaling.” He paused. “And because you hate her enough.”

I wasn’t sure that was true anymore. Hate was easy from a distance. Harder when the target was a sleeping woman with moonlight in her hair.

“I’ll go back,” I said, though my voice trembled. “I’ll finish it.”

“No,” Lysa said sharply. “They’ll be expecting you now. The palace will be crawling with guards.”

My uncle nodded. “You can’t return. Not yet.”

A cold weight settled in my stomach. “Then what do you want me to do?”

He turned to the map, tapping a spot near the southern coast. “Brineharbor,” he said. “The queen is traveling there in three days for a political summit. She’ll be sailing down the river on her private vessel.”

My breath caught. “She’s leaving the palace?”

“For the first time in months,” Lysa said. “And with a smaller guard than usual. She will think the attempt on her life was a lone act of desperation.”

My uncle’s eyes hardened. “This is our chance. The water can be darker than shadow in the right concealment.”

Lysa stepped closer to the map, her finger tracing the river route. “We’ll intercept her at the docks. Slip aboard before departure. Hide in the cargo hold until nightfall.”

“And then?” I asked, though I already knew.

“Then we finish what you started,” she said.

My heart thudded painfully. The room felt colder despite the fire.

“You won’t be alone this time,” Lysa added. “I’m going with you.”

I looked at her then: the determination in her eyes, the exhaustion and fear she was trying so hard to hide.

I nodded slowly. “All right.”

My uncle exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “Good. You leave before sunrise. The queen’s ship departs at midday on the third day. If you miss it, we lose our only opening.”

I stepped outside, letting the cold night air bite at my cheeks. The forest loomed dark and endless beyond the outpost walls. Somewhere out there, the queen’s soldiers were searching for me.

Somewhere beyond them, the queen herself was preparing for a journey she didn’t yet know would be her last.

We arrived at the docks the next afternoon, scouting out the Queen's vessel. I watched as deckhands and porters scurried around the gaudy ship, making sure it was watertight, making sure the gilded details on the prow hadn't faded since its last outing. With the gold and the bustling activity, it reminded me of veins of honey in a beehive.

Lysa's fist clenched. The two of us observed the ship from the second-floor window of a waterfront tavern, and the smell of sailor sweat clogged my nose. I winced.

"Wasn't Jackdaw supposed to set a fire here last night?" I asked idly. "I looked for the smoke as I escaped on that horse, but I saw nothing."

Her eyes were fiery as she turned to me. "He had to improvise. Change targets. Don't worry, he didn't get caught. He's with Uncle now."

I nodded. Crystal clear, she didn't want me to know more. And why should I know more? After all, the rebels had given me one task, and I had failed. I couldn't be trusted to handle a sensitive situation myself anymore.

As I watched the swirling golden designs on the boat, they morphed into golden embroidery on the canopy of Queen Adalie's bed. The ship's white sails, impractical for a river voyage, suddenly reminded me of the silken sheets. Her scream echoed in the back of my mind: the feral sound of someone who's about to die and knows it. When it comes to primal terror, everyone screams the same way. I wonder if she knew I was terrified too.

Maybe I didn't flee that room because I was scared of the queen's guards. Maybe I fled because I was scared of what she saw in me--a cold blade at her throat, holding her life hostage. Maybe I knew that if I killed her, some part of me would always be a skulking thing in the night made of blood, steel, and cold indifference. A bogeyman from a grown woman's last nightmare.

The queen should fear me, I told myself.

"Look," Lysa said, pointing to the dark water. "There's the door to the cargo hold. The gangplank is long, but they're not paying it much attention most of the time. Look how low to the water it is. We could swim out there this evening, when the shadows are to our advantage."

"And spend two whole days locked in the cargo hold? With no water to drink?"

"Perhaps tomorrow evening, then. In the meantime, we can try to get disguises and observe the patterns of the ship's crew."

I caught my breath. "This could work. If we're undetected until nightfall, we can sneak up to the deck dressed as crew. No one will notice as we make our way to the queen's cabin."

"Then we kill her quick and escape to the water." I didn't notice myself flinch at that, but Lysa did. "I know you're nervous, but you're too clever to be caught again. Think of our father, and your mother, and every little child who will never know a parent's touch because of her greed. Think of the villages in the Whisperdells, laying waste to their own fields rather than submitting to her. We're not assassins, we're saviors of Oriole."

"Saviors," I repeated. The word felt dry and sour in my mouth, although that was probably because I hadn't had anything to drink all day.

She nodded, a look of pride on her face. "Saviors."

With that, she grinned and retreated into the crowd of sailors and traders, motioning for me to follow.