Five hundred and sixteen

I managed to get Father's body down from the tower. He deserved better than to be left as food for the birds, swinging in the breeze like a forgotten warning. The iron hooks clanged as I pulled him free, and every sound felt like a scream. His skin was cold. His limbs didn't bend the right way. And I tried not to look at his face. Because it wasn't his anymore.

I told Lucia to leave and inform the Pyraquartz Hold of what happened to Paradise. She didn't argue. She didn't beg me to come with her. She only stood still, trembling, her arms stiff at her sides, as if moving would let the sorrow spill out. She knew.

I couldn't leave with her. Not when so many still lay in the streets, faceless and burned, their names etched in my memory. I couldn't abandon them. Not when I was the only one left who remembered who they were.

So I stayed.

And I buried them.

Some were small. Too small. I had to dig shallow graves just to keep their little shoes above the mud. Others were too burned to recognize, and I had to guess from height, from hair color, from what few scraps of clothing hadn't turned to ash.

Each body I lifted felt heavier than the last. Not in weight, but in memory. Every time I dropped to my knees to dig, my arms screamed. Not because they were sore. But because they didn't want to stop. As if digging was the only thing keeping me from falling apart.

I prayed for each of them. I didn't know how, really. Just words. Hushed words. A few lines Father once told me. And silence. That was the most important part. The silence afterward.

By the time I finished, there were five hundred sixteen graves.

Five hundred sixteen souls.

My people.

The last grave I dug was the deepest. I laid Father there myself. I took his crown, cracked and dirty, and placed it over his heart before covering him with earth. I carved his name into a slab of stone using the edge of a broken sword.

Then I curled up in the remains of one of the burned stables. There wasn't much left. The rafters were scorched. The roof was mostly gone. But it was quiet, and it was close to the graves. That was enough.

I didn't eat.

I didn't drink.

My lips cracked. My hands were black with soot and dry blood. My skin felt too tight for my body. But still, I didn't move. I just curled in the hay, hugging my father's cloak like it could still hold his warmth. The smell of smoke clung to everything.

I closed my eyes and tried hard to force myself to rest.

The night was still. That dead, tired kind of still where the wind barely stirred and the stars didn't blink. I lay inside the remains of the old stable, wrapped in a blanket of soot and silence. The hay beneath me was brittle, burned at the edges, but it was softer than the stone. The last of my Hibiscus flower sat beside me. Bent. Charred. I held it in my arms like a child might hold a toy that no longer worked.

Sleep never truly came, only something like it. A floating weightlessness. Like falling without ever hitting the ground.

I didn't expect to wake. Not to the sound of whispers and footsteps crunching over ash.

At first I thought maybe it was Lucia. Maybe she had returned to check on me. Maybe she had second-guessed leaving me behind. But the voices weren't hers. They were lower. Rougher. Men. At least three of them, judging by the spacing in their footsteps. They didn't call out. They didn't shout orders. They moved quietly, like they were used to it. Like they had done this before.

I didn't move. I didn't reach for the dagger by my side. It wasn't fear that stopped me, or even caution. It was emptiness. The same kind of emptiness I felt when I touched my father's ruined skin. I heard them walk past the pile of collapsed beams near the stable entrance. One of them stopped.

"This one's breathing," he muttered.

A pause.

"Looks young," said another. "No collar. Could fetch something. Looks valuable. Bet some would pay a good price for it."

Rough hands pulled me up by the arm. I didn't fight. I didn't even look at them. My limbs were cold and stiff. My legs gave out the moment I stood, and they dragged me instead. My Hibiscus laid on the ground. Stomped on by the men's feet. Dead.

They didn't ask for my name. Didn't question who I was or what I was doing there. That was the worst part. I wasn't Joselyn Alveretta anymore. Not to them. Just a body. Just another orphan left in the wake of ruin. Someone small enough to sell.

They shoved me onto a horse-drawn cage wagon. Inside were five others. All older than me. One was a girl, probably sixteen, with bruises down her arms and dirt in her matted hair. Another was a man with torn robes and a swollen lip. Two of them sat close together like they'd known each other before whatever hell led them here.

The fifth was a boy my age. His wrists were chained. He looked like he had been crying, though his eyes were dry now. When the cage door slammed shut behind me, he flinched.

The wagon started moving, the wheels crunching over debris and loose stone. I leaned back against the bars, head tilted to the smoke-stained sky. The world passed in grays and reds. Burned fields. Gutted homes. A broken garden where some of the flowers still tried to bloom, despite the ash.

I didn't speak. The others barely breathed. Somewhere up front, one of the slave drivers coughed a lungful of phlegm into the wind and spat.

"How many days till we hit Ferrow's Edge?" one of them asked.

"Three if the roads are good. Longer if we stop for more."

"We stopping?"

A pause.

"Only if we find fresh ones."

The girl in the cage beside me buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. She was trying not to let the sound come out, but the trembling gave her away.

The boy across from me glanced at me once. Just once. His lips parted as if he was going to speak, then he looked away.

They were afraid. All of them.

I wasn't.

There was nothing left in me to be afraid with. I had seen Paradise burn. I had pulled my father's body down from a tower. I had buried five hundred and sixteen people with my bare hands. These men, these cages, this road… it didn't feel real. Not compared to that.

So I sat there, cradling my broken crown in my lap, and watched the world roll past us like it didn't care.

And maybe it didn't.

Eventually the trees grew thicker. The smoke behind us thinned, hidden by distance and time. But the stench of death lingered on our clothes. On our skin. The drivers didn't care.

The man with the swollen lip whispered to himself every few minutes. Something about his daughter. That he had to get back to her. That she was still waiting.

The older boy tried to pick the lock with a jagged stone he'd kept hidden, but his fingers were shaking too hard.

The girl threw up in the corner.

No one cleaned it.

No one said anything.

We were nothing more than cargo.

As the sun dipped below the trees, the wagon slowed. One of the men hopped down and walked alongside it for a while. I heard the clinking of coin, and laughter. More voices now. We had reached a camp. Another group of slave traders, it seemed. Maybe a checkpoint. Maybe a temporary rest.

They would drink, then talk business. Then drink again. I'd seen enough to know how it worked.

I didn't care.

I curled up at the edge of the cage, the metal bars pressing cold into my cheek. I watched the firelight flicker in the distance as more cages were brought out, more slaves hauled in. Some cried. Others didn't have the strength to.

One of the traders passed by and glanced in at me. He squinted. Maybe he was trying to figure out where I came from. What kind of work I'd be good for. I didn't meet his eyes.

They didn't see me as a prince.

They didn't see me at all.

And in some quiet, dark way, maybe I was grateful for that.

The world had moved on.

And so had I.