Tears of a Shadow

"Do you believe in heaven, General?" Blonde hair catches in the moonlight, pale skin nearly translucent beneath the silver gaze of the sky.
The soldier stares at the rows of empty bodies stuffed against the rows of cots. Air whips against his cheeks, striking his temples.
"Heaven?"
The knife clatters quietly against the stone.
"No, Your Highness." The soldier looks up. "I do not."

Nikolai was supposed to be dead.
But instead he stands in the Queen's shadow- a servant to a love that has dried and faded and crumbled to ash. He does not remember how to contain it. Selling it to others before she can taste it.

Queen Cyra wears blood on her hands like a pair of fresh gloves. A product of a system that has beaten and broken and breathed a living shackle around her neck- handing her a shattered throne at thirteen years old.

But in a world that survives upon the blood of fallen feelings and sold emotions, can you ever really learn to love? Can you learn to endure?