Page 65 of Queen
His head rests against my shoulder, but his eyes remain open, staring at nothing. He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t look at anyone.
I carry him out into the gray dawn. The air tastes of rust and ruin, but I don’t stop moving until we reach the waiting cars. Behind me, boots crunch and orders snap—sharp, efficient, a machine grinding forward—but I don’t hear them. I hear only the silence in my son’s throat. The silence where his laughter should be.
At the car door, I turn. Emiliano is watching, his gaze unreadable in the half-light. For a moment, it looks like he might speak. Instead, he waits.
“Burn it,” I say. My voice is low but sharp enough to split the morning in half.
His brow lifts. “The building?”
“The memory,” I answer, tightening my hold on Guido. “Let no child remember this place.”
There’s no hesitation. Emiliano lifts his hand, and his men move as one. Containers of accelerant are hauled inside, torches prepared. Flames roar to life, greedy and merciless, climbing the orphanage walls until the skeleton glows orange against the rising sky.
I watch until the roof collapses, until the screams of wood and stone echo like a funeral dirge. My son doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t blink. He only stares at his hands in his lap. And when I finally see it, my chest caves.
He’s holding my ring.
The same ring Giovanni once forced onto my finger, heavy with his name. The same ring Emiliano kissed with blood still wet on his mouth. Now it rests between Guido’s trembling fingers, his knuckles white, as if he’s holding the last piece of me that hasn’t been stripped away.
I slide into the car beside him. Emiliano takes the front seat, silent, while the others pile in behind. As the flames shrink in the distance, I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror.
The woman staring back isn’t the mother who once read bedtime stories in this child’s nursery. She isn’t the girl who once dreamed of escape. Her eyes are darker now, harder, sharper.
I lean closer to the glass, my voice no louder than a whisper, but enough to carve itself into the marrow of my bones. “I am no longer just his mother,” I breathe, eyes locked on the stranger I’ve become. “I am his sword.”
The vow settles over me like armor.
The car drives on. The fire burns behind us. And the war I promised has only just begun.
The Next Move
The house is silent when we return—too silent. No guards barking orders. No footsteps echoing through marble halls. Just the heavy, oppressive hush of a place holding its breath.
I take Guido straight to the bath. His little body is stiff in my arms, but he doesn’t fight me when I undress him. His clothes are stiff with dirt and smoke, and when the fabric peels away, the bruises stand out like stains. None fresh enough to kill. None deep enough to cripple. Whoever did this wanted him alive. Wanted him intact.
It makes me sick.
The tub fills with warm water, steam curling up like ghosts. I lower him in slowly, my hands supporting him until his knees bend, until he settles into the heat. His eyes stay wide, unblinking, but the water ripples around him, carrying flecks of ash and dried blood away.
I take a cloth and run it over his hair, over the sticky patches matted at his temple. My throat burns with every pass—every reminder that someone else’s hands touched him, even if they didn’t leave a mark.
Emiliano lingers in the doorway, a dark figure against the hall light. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just watches.
I ignore him. All my focus is on Guido. My boy. My baby.
“Shhh,” I whisper, smoothing his hair back. “You’re safe now. Mama’s here.”
For a long time, there’s nothing. Just the sound of water dripping, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and the suffocating silence that’s followed us since the orphanage.
Then, as I lean down and press a kiss to his forehead, I hear it.
One word. Small. Fragile. Barely there.
“Knight.”
My breath stops. My hands freeze.
“What did you say?” My voice cracks, sharper than I mean it to be.
