Her throat burned with the words she wanted to say. She wanted to apologise until the walls shook with it, to tell him she was sorry for what she was about to do — for the pain he would endure, for the scars he might carry, for being the mother who handed him over to suffer. She wanted to beg him to forgive her, to understand that this choice was made with love, not malice. And yet, in the same heartbeat, she wanted to plead with him not as her child, but as the boy who would one day sit on a throne. She wanted him to endure. To come out of the breaking not just alive, but transformed — the strongest king Blood City had ever seen.
The weight of those thoughts pressed her down until she moved without thinking. She lowered herself to her knees beside the bed, the rough stone floor biting into her skin. Her son lay there.
