The day began like all the others—chains rattling, the sun bleeding across the sky, Rourke's voice cutting through the air like a whip before the lash even landed.
But today, Tomas collapsed.
Halfway through hauling a sack of grain, the boy's knees buckled. He hit the dirt, chest heaving, face pale as ash. The overseer's eyes lit with cruel delight.
"Lazy vermin," Rourke sneered, raising the whip.
Kael froze. His heart thundered inside me, louder than the whip's crack as it sliced through the air.
The rope. The pistol. The rooftop. All the same temptation, all the same voice whispering: End it. It's the only way.
Kael's despair surged, but so did his fury. He couldn't take another day. He couldn't watch another child suffer.
I felt the choice looming—suicide or rebellion. Death by rope, or death by lash. Either way, death.
Unless—unless—he chose something else.