Jareth moved to stand beside his father, the crying Luis a living, wailing prop in the scene.
"This," Valerio spat, the word ugly and wet, "is all because of this filament. This grub from the gutter who forgot his place."
Something in Cassia broke. Not snapped—shattered. Dignity, terror, pride, it all burned up in a single, white-hot surge of desperation. She wrenched herself free from the soldier's slackened grip, not to run, but to crawl. She threw herself forward on the stones, her hands scrambling, clutching at the fine wool of Valerio's trousers, then at Jareth's boots.
"Father! Brother!" The words were a garbled mess, choked with snot and tears. Her body convulsed, each sob a physical punch to her own ribs. "I'm begging you! Please! Spare him! I'll do anything! I'll come home, I'll be obedient, I'll never say his name again, I swear it! Just please… don't kill him. Please, Father!" She turned her streaming face up to Jareth, her fingers digging into the leather of his boot. "Brother… please, talk to him… help me… please…"
Jareth looked down. He looked at her filthy hands on his boot. He looked at her blood-streaked face, her wild hair, the utter ruin of the sister he'd once known. A flicker of pure, unadulterated disgust crossed his features, sharp and clean as a razor cut.
"Look at you," he said. His voice was low, flat, devoid of any feeling at all. "Crawling in the dirt. You've made yourself into garbage." His lip curled back from his teeth. "Get your hands off me."
"Brother…" she whimpered, the sound barely there.
Valerio watched from the corner of his eye, a silent spectator to his daughter's obliteration.
Jareth's free hand moved. The one not holding the squalling baby. It held his flintlock pistol. In one swift, contemptuous motion, he reversed his grip. He didn't swing it. He simply raised it and brought the heavy, steel-capped pommel straight down onto the center of Cassia's forehead.
Thud.
The sound was dull. Solid. A sickening, meaty impact.
Cassia's eyes blew wide open. A silent, stunned 'O' of shock. Then the light in them guttered, like a candle in a draft. Her grip on his boot went slack. She collapsed sideways onto the stone, her body folding bonelessly. A thick, dark line of blood immediately welled from the split skin above her brow. It traced a slow, deliberate path down her temple, through the dust, and began to pool on the stone beneath her head.
She lay facing Emilio. Her vision swam, the world tilting and sliding. Through the thickening haze, she saw him. Saw his lips moving, shaping silent words. I'm sorry. Forgive me. A single tear escaped the corner of his eye, cutting a clean track through the dirt and blood on his face.
"I told you," Valerio's voice came, harsher now, stripped of all false patience. It was just hate. "A thousand times. Stay away from this sewer-vermin. This carrion."
He leaned over Emilio's body and spat. A glob of saliva landed on Emilio's cheek, mixing with the tear. The insult was as violent as the bullet.
"How did this low-born excrescence ever think he was your equal?" Valerio's voice rose, trembling with a fanatical fury. "How dare he put his filthy hands on a daughter of Montoya? And now… now his vile, common blood is mixed with ours. It pumps in that thing's veins." He jabbed a finger toward Luis, who still cried in Jareth's stiff arms. "That is a pollution. A stain on our lineage that can never be washed out!"
Cassia's tears started again, silent this time, welling from a place too deep for sound. They dripped from the tip of her nose. Plink. Plink. Tiny, pathetic sounds on the stone.
"His wretched father dared to look down on our house," Valerio ranted, his fury building. "He forgot his place too. Today, this worm dies like his father did. A blight, scrubbed from the earth." He drew back his boot and kicked Emilio in the side. Once. A sharp, brutal thump of leather on flesh. Emilio's body jerked, a wet gasp escaping him. Valerio kicked him again. And again. The sound was terrible—a dull, rhythmic punching of a man who was already broken. Blood frothed at Emilio's lips with each impact.
"You talk about love? My ass." Valerio sneered, looking from Emilio to Cassia's prone form. "There is no love. There is order. High and low. Clean and filthy. The filth must know its place. It must lick the boot that crushes it. It doesn't get to touch."
His rage peaked. With a look of utter contempt, he fumbled at the front of his tailored trousers. He undid them. A moment later, the shocking, yellow arc of his urine splashed onto Emilio's prone body. It hit his back, soaked his torn tunic, mingled with the blood, and pooled on the stones around him. It wasn't an act of passion. It was calculated. Meant to reduce a man to less than an animal. To waste.
"This," Valerio hissed, the stream tapering off, "is your place. Remember it."
He finished, stepped back, and fastened his trousers with fastidious care. He placed the sole of his left boot on the side of Emilio's head and pressed down, grinding his face into the stone and the filth. Cassia watched, helpless, a silent scream tearing her apart from the inside. Her body twitched with every suppressed sob.
Finally, Valerio stepped away. He accepted a clean white cloth from a subordinate, wiped his hands carefully, and tossed the soiled cloth onto Emilio's back.
"Cassia," he said, his voice now dripping with a sarcastic, paternal mockery. "My lovely daughter. It's too late for regrets. The play is over. You're coming home. Your opinion on the matter is as irrelevant as his." He nodded toward Emilio. "You'll walk, or you'll be dragged. It's all the same to me."
Cassia's blurry vision stayed locked on Emilio. He was looking back at her, his one visible eye holding a world of apology, a universe of silent goodbyes. His lips moved. Two soundless words. *I'm sorry.*
A whisper leaked from Cassia's bloody lips, a breath meant for him alone. "I'm sorry too… I'm so sorry…" It wasn't just for this moment, but for every broken promise, every path not taken, every secret that had led them here, to the filthy docks.
A beam of sharp, late afternoon sun broke through the forest of masts and rigging, illuminating them both—the fallen prince of her heart, and the broken princess in the dust. It was a cruel, beautiful spotlight on their tragedy, gilding the motes of dust swirling around them like misplaced glitter. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath, suspended in that golden, painful haze.
Then, abruptly, a second gunshot shattered the moment.
It came from the side. Sharp. Loud. Final.
The echo didn't just roll; it crashed across the docks, a physical wave that seemed to shake the very planks beneath her. It was a period at the end of a sentence written in blood.
But the sound itself was different. Softer, somehow. Wetter. A terrible, intimate punctuation. Cassia didn't see the source, her world having narrowed to Emilio's face. But she saw the effect. A fine spray, a mist that darkened the sunlit air between them for a fraction of a second before the light reclaimed its clarity. His head, which had been straining to hold her gaze, lolled to the side with a dreadful, final weight. The profound apology in his eye extinguished, replaced by the flat, distant sheen of nothing.
The stark silence that followed was louder than the shot. The ringing in her ears became the only sound in the universe, a high-pitched requiem. The golden beam of sun now felt like a mockery, highlighting the stillness of his hand, so close to hers yet suddenly continents away. The shared breath they had been holding, the shared future they had been desperately picturing, dissolved into the cold salt air. All that remained was the dust, the blood, and the echo, fading into a silence that promised to last forever.