The sun was setting low in the sky, the colors of twilight starting to show themselves. A few scattered stars twinkled to life. In the quiet of dusk, Virelya understood the oath she had taken was killing her.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected as she sat on the stone wall of the highest tower, staring out at the wilderness beyond the city’s walls. She thought the breaking would be loud, that some catastrophic event would kill her. But it came quietly.

  She sat alone, her dagger on the stone beside her, the blade still dark with the blood of her last mark.

  Her hands hung slack at her side. An emptiness bloomed in her chest, the coppery smell of blood stuck in her nose, the chill of the late autumn wind a threat that winter was soon to arrive.

  When she had stepped from the shadows and buried the blade in her mark’s chest, he looked at her with a sadness that made her feel seen straight through her core.

  As he slid down the wall he had whispered and something made her lean closer, “They will never release you,” his breath a shudder. “Only you can set yourself free.”

  In the city below her the night life had awaked while she sat lost in her thoughts. Taverns filled, and voices drifted up to her as the sky had faded to inky darkness. Virelya had just had a thought that she never believed she would, one that felt like it made her world stop spinning and yet everything else carried on without noticing. The cold was seeping into her from the stones. She lifted her hands and stretched her fingers, noticing the slight tremble when she held them out. Below her in the tower she heard the sound of boots on the stone stairs. Over the years and through tough lessons she had learned the sound of Aethryn’s footsteps. How the sounded could tell her how the night would go.

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  Tonight they were light and uneven. Through the bond of the oath he would have felt that she had completed her task, and had likely been celebrating.

  She looked down at the ancient rune tattoo on the inside of her left wrist. Aethryn had told her she was special. That he cared for her and helped her become the weapon she was. Because of him, she could walk the streets at night knowing she could take care of anyone who tried to attack her.

  She felt a loyalty, a duty to stay. He had helped her build the life she did have but what kind of life was it really? She had lost friends, she didn’t know her family and she had the blood of a thousand strangers on her hands. While Aethryn could be cruel in his own ways, the blood was on her hands, she was the true villain.

  She swung her legs over the edge or the stone wall and landed lightly on the walkway below. She grabbed her dagger from the wall and sheathed it under her cloak. She took one last look at the dark forest that lay outside the city walls, a longing grew in her chest to live a life that was hers alone.

  A sharp sting came from the tattoo on her wrist a not so subtle reminder that her life did not belong to her.

  With a sigh she turned and headed into the small tower that held the rooms Aethryn so graciously shared with her.

  She walked through the wooden door and it shut behind her with a clink. Shutting out the open wildness of the forest and closing her in the walls that were her cage.