The back door burst open.
Cassia stood in the frame, daylight bleeding in around her, but it was the wrong kind of light—harsh, exposing. Her brown hair, half-secured by a teal ribbon, had been torn loose by the violence of her movement. Strands whipped across her face, catching on her lips and eyelashes. The ribbon hung limply, a pointless decoration on the chaos. Her hair was a storm around her head.
Her eyes were the worst part. Wide, impossibly wide, cool steel-gray irises washed with a pale, terrified violet sheen. They weren't looking at anything in the room; they were scanning, darting, consuming nothing and everything—the table, the hearth, the crib—seeing only threat patterns. Her skin was taut and bloodless, every freckle standing out in stark relief. Her breath wasn't breathing; it was a ragged, mechanical sawing in her throat.
"Emilio—!"
The name wasn't a call. It was a fracture. A crack in the foundation of the world they'd built in this little house. The sound of it, raw and gasping, shattered the afternoon's peace like a brick through glass.
The cozy atmosphere didn't just evaporate; it was murdered.
Emilio was moving before the sound finished. His chair shrieked backwards against the floor. He crossed the space in two long strides, his body between her and the open door before his mind had fully processed the danger. He caught her as she listed forward, her legs giving out. She collided with his chest, and he felt it—the fine, constant tremor running through her, like a plucked wire about to snap. She wasn't just scared. She was preemptively shattered.
Freda froze, a chipped plate forgotten in her hand. "Señora? Cassia, breathe!"
"Cassia." Emilio's voice was low, a forced calm he didn't feel. He cupped her face, his thumbs on her cold cheeks, forcing her wild eyes to focus on his silver-blue ones. "Look at me. What happened?"
Her fingers, cold and strong, clawed into the fabric of his simple tunic, twisting it. Her gaze finally locked onto his, and the terror in them was a physical blow. "I… I saw them," she choked, the words bubbling up through sheer panic. "On the main road. Knights. Soldiers. A whole column. Coming this way. On horses." A sob hitched, breaking her voice. "They're here. What do we do?"
A cold, familiar fist clenched around Emilio's heart. It wasn't fear. It was colder: recognition. The years of quiet, the stolen happiness, the fragile peace—it had always been a loan, and the debt was now due. No. Not here. Not today. Not with Luis.
He didn't get to finish the thought.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The sound at the front door wasn't a knock. It was an assault. Three massive, concussive blows that made the timbers of the small house groan and dust shiver loose from the ceiling. The very air in the room vibrated.
Then the voice. It cut through wood and plaster and fear like a shard of ice.
"CASSIA! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! COME OUT NOW!"
Count Valerio Montoya.
The voice was absolute zero. It extinguished the last ember of hope in the room.
Panic, acrid and metallic, flooded Emilio's mouth. Cassia made a small, wounded animal sound in her throat, her knees buckling completely. He held her up, his own strength leaching away.
"You must go! Now!" Freda's whisper was a hiss of pure urgency. All the gentle warmth was gone from her wrinkled face, replaced by a fierce, grim determination. "Take the baby! Out the back!"
"We can't leave you here!" Emilio's protest was instinct, a reflex of decency in an indecent moment.
"Don't be a fool! Go!" She shoved him, a surprising strength in her old frame, pushing him toward the wooden crib in the corner. "I will buy you time! Now move!"
The pounding became a continuous, thunderous roar. "OPEN THIS DOOR!" A different voice, rougher. Then more fists joined in. The door shivered in its frame.
Action. There was no more room for thought. Thought was a luxury for the safe. Emilio moved.
He lunged to the crib. Luis was stirring, fussing at the sudden noise. Emilio's hands, usually so gentle, moved with swift efficiency. He scooped his son up, the warm, small weight a devastating counterpoint to the cold dread. He snatched the thickest blanket—the one Freda had knit—and swaddled him tightly, creating a cocoon, a barrier against the world that was breaking in.
Cassia was already moving, a cloak of drab wool flying from a hook and over her shoulders. Her movements were jerky, driven by pure adrenaline.
"The docks," Emilio whispered, pulling her close, his lips against her temple. The plan was not a plan; it was the only option. "The western docks. The Mynah. It's our only chance."
He pressed the bundled child into her waiting arms. Her tear-filled eyes met his. In that glance was a lifetime condensed: every stolen kiss, every whispered dream, every fear, all the love, and a naked, screaming plea. Don't let this be the end.
Freda gave them one last, sharp nod. Then she turned her back on them. She faced the shuddering front door, squaring her thin shoulders, a frail old woman preparing to face an army.
Emilio flung open the back door. The sunlight in the small garden wasn't serene anymore. It was a spotlight.
He turned for one last look back, a mistake he would remember forever.
Freda, with a deep, steadying breath that lifted her bony shoulders, slid the bolt back and pulled the door open.
The scene imprinted itself on Emilio's soul in a single, horrifying freeze-frame.
The narrow lane was a canyon of menace. It was packed, wall-to-wall, with uniformed men. Not just a few soldiers. A small, brutal army. Men on horseback, their faces hard under polished sunlight. Men on foot, their long flintlock rifles leveled, a hedge of deadly metal. The afternoon sun glinted off every buckle, every bayonet, every polished barrel, turning the scene into a glittering, evil constellation.
And at the center, flanked by his son Jareth—a pale, silent statue—stood Count Valerio Montoya. He wore a nobleman's military clothes, impeccably tailored, dark as a raven's wing. In his hand, held loosely at his side, was a small ample, elegant flintlock pistol. Jareth held an identical one. They didn't look like weapons; they looked like extensions of their will.
Freda, a tiny figure of defiance in the doorway, trembled. "My lord, what is the meaning of this?"
"Where is Lady Cassia?!" Lieutenant Sebastián barked from beside Valerio's horse, his voice harsh.
But Valerio's eyes—dark sapphire, chillingly calm—never left Freda's face. They looked past her, through the dim interior of her home, and out through the open back door. They locked directly onto Emilio's eyes across the distance.
A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched Valerio's scarred mouth. Not a smile. The precursor to one.
Freda followed his gaze. Understanding dawned, and with it, a desperate courage. "My lord, they are just children, they've done no—"
Valerio's arm moved.
It wasn't a dramatic sweep. It was an economical, practiced rise. The pistol came up as if drawn by a string, an extension of his arm, his will, his absolute authority. He did not shout a warning. He did not tense. His expression didn't change.
He simply fired.
The report was a monstrous, flat CRACK that ripped the afternoon in two. A puff of white smoke plumed from the pistol's muzzle.
Freda's words stopped.
A small, perfectly round, dark hole appeared in the center of her forehead. For a fraction of a second, her eyes widened in simple surprise. Then the light in them vanished, utterly and completely. Her body folded, knees buckling first, then collapsing sideways across her own threshold like a sack of empty bones. A dark pool, shockingly fast and red, began to spread on the sun-warmed stones beneath her head.
From the back garden, Emilio flinched as if the bullet had torn through his own flesh. The sound echoed off the surrounding houses, a final punctuation.
He turned.
Cassia, clutching their child, turned too.
Her eyes took in the scene at the door: the small, still form of the woman who had shown them kindness, the dark, growing stain on the stone, and beyond it, Count Valerio calmly lowering his smoking pistol.
His glacial sapphire gaze shifted from the corpse at his feet. It traveled past Emilio. It settled directly, irrevocably, on her.
In that moment, Cassia's world didn't break. It was dismantled. The mosaic of her life—the love, the hope, the fragile safety—shattered into a thousand silent, screaming pieces, leaving only the image of Valerio cold eyes, the smell of gunpowder on the warm air, and the spreading blood of the only friend they had left