Chapter 130: Fevered Light
The fog hadn't lifted yet. It clung to the field like a second skin, damp and breathless. A small figure stood barefoot in the dew-soaked grass, linen clinging to her frame, trembling with the effort not to fall. She was only six, but the commands hurled at her weren't softened for childhood.
"Again!"
"Faster!"
She obeyed — parried, ducked, pivoted. Her blistered hands gripped the training sword as though it might save her. It didn't. The drills came faster. The strikes, the footwork, the crawling under ropes that scraped her knees raw. The instructors shouted, unmoved by blood or breathlessness. She staggered, nose bleeding, world spinning — then collapsed.
Before she could hit the ground, arms caught her. Arms that were warm. Safe. Shaking.
She was carried, not scolded. Held, not corrected.
Far away, in a mansion wrapped in legacy and silence, porcelain shattered on stone. The fever came quickly. Three days of burning. And a single, whispered confession before sleep stole her: "I didn't want to disappoint him."
But disappointment was never hers to carry. It had been planted in her by voices colder than winter, by expectations wrapped in steel.
When she woke, it wasn't to commands — it was to hands holding hers. To kisses pressed to her temple. To promises made in moonlight: that she would never be broken again. That she was more than a name, more than a legacy. That she was seen.
And later, under the stars, with her head on another's shoulder and a shawl too large around her, she whispered a vow — childish and solemn.
"When we grow up… you'll protect me?"
"Always."
"Then I'll protect you too."
She was no longer just a soldier's heir.
She was a girl. Dreaming. Loved.
And for once… safe