The palace was quiet at midnight, the usual bustling sounds of the day now replaced with an eerie stillness. Raya moved through the palace's corridors like a shadow, her footsteps soft against the cold stone floors. Her mind was a whirl of thoughts—about the rogue, about the kingdom, about the poison that still coursed through their land. But above all, it was him—the rogue—who lingered at the forefront of her thoughts.
She had given the order to lock him away, but something inside her—something that she couldn’t quite name—drove her back to the dungeon that night. She needed to know if he was still alive, if he was still as defiant as he had been earlier, or if he had somehow changed.
She reached the door to his cell and paused momentarily, her hand resting on the cold metal. The rogue’
