The crowd below held its breath. Even the rats in the walls fell silent.
Lysandra’s body convulsed. She vomited a torrent of black roses—thorny, blood-streaked, impossible. The roses writhed on the marble like dying eels. Atrocious Empress BAD END -Final- -Sexecute-
“Refuse,” Kaelen said, “and we sew your eyes open and play the recordings of your victims’ final pleas for you, on loop, until your heart gives out from shame. It would take days.” The crowd below held its breath
Lysandra looked at the vial. Then at Kaelen’s face—so full of a calm, terrible love. He wasn’t doing this to be cruel. He was doing this to be just . ” Kaelen said