Zabina
I'm sitting in the library with my mother's gem pressed against my chest.
I'm still trembling. I don't know if it's rage, pain, or both mixed in a way that can't find an outlet.
Vacul sets a cup on the table in front of me without a word.
"Drink it. It will do you good."
I look at the cup. Then I look at him.
I stand up.
"I don't want anything from you," I growl. "You have a cemetery of dragons in this temple."
"At least their souls rest in peace here."
"In peace?" My voice rises on its own, louder than I intended. "Do you have any idea of the hatred they carry? The thirst for revenge? Did you ever hear what those gems scream when someone capable of hearing them enters that chamber?"
He stands still.
"Could you hear them?" he asks quietly, as if that's interesting rather than devastating.
"I'm leaving."
I turn my back and walk toward the door.
"The breach to Galgoth will end up opening."
I stop abruptly.
"The silver demons will end up coming out," he continues with that obscene calm of his. "This world will be consumed. Dragons, humans, everything."
I turn slowly.
"So many dead dragons," I say through gritted teeth, with all the indignation I've been carrying since I stepped into that chamber. "Hundreds of gems in that place. Entire lives extinguished. And you dare to tell me that their extermination was in vain? That after killing us, the damn breach is still open?!"
He stands.
"No gem has been powerful enough to keep the door sealed," he says, taking a step toward me. "The most powerful of all was the one you're holding in your hands. It kept the breach closed for ten years. Ten years of peace bought with a single life." He pauses. "Until a few weeks ago. Since then, the breach has been opening slowly because your gem…"
"Shut up!"
"Zabina."
"I said shut up!"
"The prince must understand that it's the right thing to do," he says without raising his voice, unshaken, as if my screams are just wind. "You could save Anwar. You could save thousands of innocent lives who have nothing to do with what was done to your mother or your people."
I take a step back.
My stomach twists.
Because I understand what he's saying. I understand exactly what he's implying, even if he doesn't say it in those words. And the image of Abisai as a child, dagger in hand, overlays his face, this room, everything.
"You can prevent a tragedy," he insists. "What's coming from Galgoth is beyond anything you've ever seen. What was done to your race would be a fond memory compared to what the silver demons will do when they come out."
"I don't care," I say.
My voice comes out cold. Colder than I expected.
"Zabina, if you don't listen—"
"I. Don't. Care."
I turn my back.
"If you leave now without understanding what's at stake," he says behind me, and for the first time there's something different in his voice — something that isn't calm but accusation, "you'll make the biggest mistake of your life. And there will be no way to undo it."
I don't stop.
I leave the library with my mother's gem clenched in my fist and Vacul's footsteps echoing behind me like a warning I don't want to hear.
Because if I listen, I'll have to consider what it implies.
And I'm not ready for that.
Not yet.

I lock myself in the room and press my back against the door.
The silence lasts exactly three breaths.
"Zabina."
Vacul's voice comes through the wood. Calm. Patient. Like someone who has all the time in the world because he knows that, sooner or later, he'll get what he wants.
"You must listen to me."
I don't respond.
"What's coming from Galgoth is beyond anything you've ever seen. The silver demons don't forgive. They don't negotiate. They don't stop. They'll raze everything. Dragons, humans, creatures, forests, kingdoms. Everything." A pause, too long. "But you can prevent it. One life in exchange for thousands. It's simple math, Zabina. It's the right thing to do."
I cover my mouth when a sob escapes my throat.
Simple math?
Is my life simple math?
"I know you're suffering," he continues from the other side, and the worst part is that his voice doesn't change — it stays just as serene, as if my suffering is just another piece of data in his calculation. "I know what you saw in the chamber. What you discovered about the white dragons. But you must understand that what was done was done for the good of the kingdom. For the good of all."
I clench the gem between my hands until my knuckles turn white.
For the good of all.
They killed my mother for the good of all.
They exterminated my entire race for the good of all.
They tore gems from living chests, extinguished lives, filled a chamber with the remains of hundreds of white dragons, and they called it necessary. They called it right. They called it simple math.
And it didn't work.
That's what's eating me alive.
It didn't work.
Not one gem. Not a hundred. Not two hundred years of hunting. The breach is still there. The demons are still there. All the horror they committed was for nothing, and now this man is on the other side of my door telling me that my turn has come. That I'm next in that chamber. The next extinguished gem in that stone cemetery.
"Sacrificing one life to save thousands is the most noble thing a living being can do," Vacul says. "Your mother understood that in the end. Maybe you can come to understand it too."
The sob that escapes me this time, I can't hold back.
My mother.
He dares to talk to me about my mother.
He dares to tell me that she understood, as if that's a comfort, as if that justifies anything, as if the fact that she died resigned makes her death any less a murder.
"The prince will make the right decision when the time comes," he continues. "It's his duty as emperor. And you, if you truly love him, should make that burden easier for him rather than complicate it."
I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the cold marble floor.
Knees to my chest. My mother's gem clenched between my hands. Tears falling, unstoppable.
Because he just told me that Abisai considers it too.
That the man who told me he would protect me, who asked me to trust him — that man is already thinking about when the right time will be to use me.
To sacrifice me.
Just like they did with my mother.
Just like they've always done.
"If you don't act in time," Vacul says, and now there is something different in his voice — something that isn't urgency but accusation, "what comes after will be your responsibility. Remember that."
The silence that follows is the heaviest I've ever known.
I stay there, on the cold floor, unmoving, unanswering, digesting that it was Abisai who stabbed my mother. That Vacul knows and doesn't care. That this temple, which presents itself as a sacred place, is nothing more than another instrument of the same horror as always.
And that Higmer told me from the beginning.
In the end, he'll do to you what he did to her.
He was right.
He was right about everything.
I look at my mother's gem between my trembling hands.
Am I a traitor, Mom?
Do you think that of me too?
What should I do?
The gem doesn't answer.
Of course it doesn't answer.
Because they extinguished it thirteen years ago in this very temple.
And the man who did it sleeps in my bed every night.