The trees are bright tonight, bright enough that the light slips beneath doors and into corners. From where I sit, I can hear the celebration as a living thing: the scrape of chairs on wood, a burst of singing that cannot find its tune, the clatter of cups, the sudden roar of laughter when someone says something sharp and everyone pretends it is only wit.

It is strange to listen to joy while waiting to die.

Time feels unreliable now. A moment stretches, then collapses. I keep thinking I hear footsteps meant for me; then it is only another guest, another errand, another pair of hands carrying a tray. My mouth will not hold moisture. My fingers slip on the page as though my body is already forgetting how to belong to itself.

If this becomes a will, let it leave no coins and no keepsakes, only the last honest shape of a woman who has been handled too often.

Tu'eras, my son, you may be among them still, holding yourself so carefully. You may have been ushered away with a kind word that is not kindness at all.

Or you may be asleep.

That is my doing.

I have put sleep into you without your permission, and I am ashamed of the theft even as I cling to the reason for it. I imagine the flare of anger when you realise, the cut of betrayal, the sick understanding that your own mother chose to make your body unreliable. If you can forgive me, forgive me. If you cannot, then let the truth sit plainly between us.

I did not do it to weaken you. I did it because there are people who do not merely punish, they curate. They turn consequence into performance, and performance into a feast, until the victim cannot tell where the pain ends and the audience begins.

So I have tried to steal you one small mercy, purchased with the only currency I have left.

The draught is not meant to spare you. It is meant to narrow what comes, to deny them the pleasure of variety. If an image must be planted in your sleep, let it be one image, returned to until it grows dull at the edges. Let them have their single pointed instruction and be forced to swallow it whole.

I cannot protect you from everything. I never could. Still, I can choose where I place myself at the end. I can decide what is taken, and what is not offered.

That is what I have done tonight.

I am frightened, Tu'eras. Frightened of the Red Square, of death and metal and hot breath, frightened of my own voice and what it might do if I am pressed hard enough. I am frightened that my courage will turn out to be only silence, and that silence will be mistaken for consent.

I am frightened, and I am still going.

Because I have been made into a lesson before, in a thousand small ways that never earned a witness. I have been told, in every language power speaks, that my body exists to prove someone else's point.

Not tonight.

Tonight, I choose the point.

Remember me, if you do, as a woman who was cornered and still found one direction that belonged to her, who did not become fearless, but refused to let fear be the only author left in the room.

To the Tsol'aa of the Aalen: I leave you no blessing, only a warning: look closely at what we call normal. We have lived inside cages so long we name the bars after virtues. We call obedience discipline. We call numbness strength. We call the absence of protest wisdom. We say that this is simply how it is, until our children believe pain is not merely common, it is rightful.

Let my death not become another story told to keep you in line. Let it be remembered as refusal.

Tu'eras, my son: live.

Do not live as penance. Do not let my name become a chain around your throat. If grief comes, let it come. If rage comes, give it a spine and a direction. If tenderness shows its face, do not kill it out of spite. You are allowed to be more than what they demand of you.

The party swells again, a chorus of voices rising and breaking, the stamp of feet as though joy can be hammered into place. Someone is shouting for another song. Someone is calling a name that is not mine, yet.

The ink is still wet. My hands are still shaking. The candles in the tree are burning down into thick tears of wax.

I will stand up now, and I will walk towards Mhaldor on my own feet, if for no other reason than because I have spent too long kneeling.

~~~

Summary: Despite rituals from Sjeng, the Gaian Knights, Adrey, and Ramilies, Sevet's curse for the Aalen Tsol'aa proved too carefully crafted. After drugging her son during his going-away party, Celaabi, the Tsol'aa Queen Mother, struck a deal with Tyrannus Tabethys Aristata that saw her take Tu'eras' place in the Red Square forevermore, lifting the curse placed on the Tsol'aa by the City of Evil.

Penned by My hand on the 7th of Aeguary, in the year 993 AF.