The draft from the window bit into my skin, but the cold spreading through my veins was far worse. I stood frozen, a puppet with its strings cut, enduring the slow death of everything I believed.
Five years of devotion, sliced away layer by layer. Each cut drew blood.
Xavier Fox, my uncle's comrade, sighed heavily. "If you ask me, you're ruthless, Sebastian. That's the child you raised with your own hands. The youngest ace sniper in Fort Valor. She quit the moment you asked. She's barely twenty, yet she's worked herself to the bone. Just days ago, to scrape together cash for your imported medicine, she was short eight hundred dollars. She came to me, begging."
Sebastian's face darkened. "Did you lend it to her?"
Xavier shook his head. "You gave a direct order—how would I dare? That girl stood outside my quarters all afternoon. She collapsed from hypoglycemia, and I didn't even dare help her up. She eventually woke and staggered away, using the wall for support."
What Xavier didn't say was that on that day, I had pressed my service pistol to my temple.
Uncle Xavier, I had whispered through the door, there's one bullet left. If you don't help him, I'll pull the trigger.
My uncle's medicine had been cut off for seven days. When he coughed, his lungs rattled with what I thought was bloody foam.
But Xavier had only reddened his eyes, gritted his teeth, disarmed me, and shoved me out the door.
It turned out he didn't refuse because he wanted to—he refused because he had to.
Sebastian sneered, voice cutting through the room. "Listen well. Until Stella returns from the Capital, no one helps Savannah Simmons. I don't care if she kneels, begs, or dies at your feet—you do not look at her. Not once."
"Stella's depression has only just improved. Savannah's five-year punishment cannot be shortened by a single day. Anyone who upsets Stella answers to me."
Dead silence suffocated the room.
Finally, someone murmured, "General, aren't you afraid Savannah will find out the truth and her heart will turn cold?"
Sebastian let out a bark of laughter.
"Her heart turn cold? I raised her. I gave her life—what is this minor grievance compared to that? Stella is different. She has no family, no one to rely on but us. She's suffered enough. It's only right I prioritize her."