The world was a constellation of crimson stars painted on my chest. Each red laser dot was a promise of an ending, a final, full stop to the bleeding sentence of my life. Trapped. The bulletproof glass of Elara’s new kingdom at my back, the barrels of Isabella’s ambition before me. The rain fell, a silver curtain on the final act of a tragedy I had written myself.
I closed my eyes, a bitter laugh dying in my throat. Of course, it would end like this. A king brought down not by a rival’s strength, but by the ghosts of his own choices, cornered in the no-man’s-land between the woman I’d discarded and the woman I’d chosen.
Then, something shifted. It wasn’t a sound from the street, but a series of soft, almost imperceptible *thwips* from above. The red dots on my chest vanished. One by one,
