the watchtower is high and narrow, built of black stone that tastes of salt when the sea winds rush through the cracks. amira has counted the stairwells more times than she has slept, seventy-two steps to the top, seventy-two steps back down into captivity. she writes it on the inside of her wrist sometimes, in ink, in ash, in her own blood when nothing else is left. the world believes she is gone. she has seen it in the scraps of news renar brings, in the trembling voices of the soldiers who guard her, who whisper her name like a ghost. the martyr. the princess who died screaming. the flame that lit the war. renar comes at night. always at night, as though daylight might reveal what he has done. he kneels beside her as if she were an altar, his voice quiet, reverent. amira stares at him until her eyes burn, until her throat closes with the weight of the voices she has overheard through stone walls: the villages burned, the sons sent to slaughter, the women cloaked in mourning veils. all of it done for her, for a corpse that does not exist. ❝ you’ve built an empire on my absence, ❞ she says finally, each word like glass splintering. ❝ every river of blood runs in my name. and you sit here, like you're speaking as though you're a pilgrim at my grave. ❞ she pulls back, her voice breaking into fury, into desperation: ❝ if you will not give me life, then give me the world’s eyes, the center stage. let them see i am alive. let them see what you’ve done. please. what's the point of keeping me here? ❞ @saintsknight
