She sat in her room, leaning against the cold windowsill, staring out at the night-wrapped Rome, drowned in fog and golden lights. Everything outside remained the same—the domes, the bridges, the eternal whisper of wind over the Tiber. Only inside her, everything was different. Everything was collapsing.
Not with an explosion, not with screams. But quietly. Like an old wall crumbling stone by stone because no one cared enough to hold it up. Hope by hope.
“So this is my choice?” she wondered, studying her reflection in the glass. “A formal union with a man who considers me too insignificant to even despise. A blood-bound peace built on lies. And me—right in the center of it, not as a heroine, but as a sacrifice.”
She brushed her fingers over the bracelet on her wrist. That one. Strength
