Traitorous Temptress, Loyal Rebel: A Mutual Redemption

I am seventeen. Tomorrow at dawn, I must personally turn my master into a human lantern. When I visited her in prison tonight, she bit open the waistband of my trousers and passed the Worm of Forgetting into my mouth, her tongue pressing against my Adam’s apple. The chains on her limbs clinked like a drum urging me on. If my blade strays a fraction, she lives and I am ruined. If it doesn’t, she dies and I become a loyal subject. Before the drum sounds, I must choose whose life to offer so she can be reborn.