Curling about you like lost souls, tendrils of smoke drift up from beneath the door.
Fear pounds in your veins like a deadly poison, weakening your knees, setting your heart a-thump, making cold sweat drip down your temples like blood on armor.
The Varden come, no, came, marching on like a group of ants, swarming over the walls like locusts bent on destruction. They made it in, somehow, through your waterworks, your much-lauded waterworks.
How? you scream mentally. How?
Or, rather, why?
You haven't done anything wrong. You've never harmed anyone. "The Flower of Aroughs," the people call you. They love you, coo as they see you walk the streets, talking to the peddlers, singing in the square, dancing with the children, holding your big brother's hand.
You don't know why.
The Varden were supposed to help the helpless, care for the innocent, bind up the wounds of the hurt, clothe the naked. Was this a lie?
You smooth your lavender dress, your lovely lavender dress. It was Tharos' favorite. Smiling, you remember how the gardener had said he couldn't tell you from his posies when you wore this dress. Though the gardener had always told her such things. He had dandled her upon his knee when she had been a child.
Absently, you wonder if he'll cry when he learns of your death-no! You aren't going to die…the Varden don't kill innocents…do they? You don't know. You don't know, and it scares you.
I don't want to die! I'm only fourteen…so young, so innocent. I'll die without ever being kissed!
For some reason, that last thought makes you chuckle, a morbid, reflective chuckle, totally devoid of humor.
The smoke seemed to have a malicious mind of its own, wrapping itself around you in thick, choking smothering waves, almost trying to get down your throat. Your eyes sting, tears run down your face. You cough wildly. "Father?" you croak, looking over where a slumped form lay. "Father?"
Your father would never call you his little blossom again.
This time, the tears aren't all from the smoke.
And then you realize it: you are going to die.
Already the room danced with black spots. Already you feel dizzy and light-headed.
You lean against the wall, trying to breathe. If sheer willpower could force air into your lungs, they would have been bursting. But it couldn't.
Dropping to your knees, you crawl over to your father's still form, curling up next to him and taking his large hand into your own small one.
Smoke filling your lungs, you cough, then gasp. Closing your eyes, you let the merest ghost of a smile flit over your face.
You will die even as you have lived.
Pure.
Virginal.
Innocence.
And so the curtain falls for Lady Galiana of Aroughs.