The Last Trick

When Sera was eleven years old, the king's soldiers rode through her village and left smoke behind them.

The king is dead now.

But his son sits on the throne, and someone has to answer for what was done.

Sera has spent twelve years being patient. Learning. Practicing in cold rooms before anyone else was awake. Building a plan so careful and so quiet that by the time she walks into Prince Davan's great hall on a Tuesday evening with lights drifting above her open palm, she already knows exactly how it ends.

What she doesn't plan for is him.

Not the monster she built in her head from rumor and grief and twelve years of righteous anger. The real one, guarded, complicated, and more aware of what he is than she expected. As weeks become months and the evenings in his library become something she doesn't have a clean word for, Sera finds herself doing something that was never part of the plan.

Making him feel the weight of other lives.
And somewhere between the forests she builds in the air between them and the mornings they walk in the garden saying small things that are actually large things in disguise, the ending she has been walking toward starts to look different than it did.
She came here knowing exactly what she was going to do.

She isn't sure anymore that she can.

Written by: SarahzlilWorld