Page 27 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Another traveler shook his head. “Probably raiders.”

“No raider takes an entire village.”

“Witches, then.”

“Witches aren’t real,” the bartender said, offended.

“That sounds exactly like something a witch would say.” The table bubbled with drunken laughter again.

Aelira stared into her wine and for one strange moment, she almost felt normal. Just another traveler overhearing foolish stories. Just another woman passing through.

Then someone said, “The Butcher Princess would’ve known.”

The laughter died immediately. Interesting, and deeply inconvenient. Even now, after ten years, the air still changed with those words. Subtly, but unmistakably. Names had gravity—some pulled curiosity, others pulled fear. Hers, apparently, still knew how to silence a room.

The merchant lowered his voice, which of course ensured everyone heard him. “My grandfather fought in the revolution.”

Aelira resisted the urge to sigh.

Another leaned forward eagerly. “Did he see her?”

“Oh, he saw her.” The man nodded solemnly. “Terrifying woman.”

Naturally. Aelira took another drink.

“They say she drowned an entire city.”

“No,” said someone at the bar. “She burned it.”

“No, that was another one.”

“I thought she fed prisoners to monsters.”

“—Maybe she did all three.”

The table considered this and, with the intellectual rigor of drunk men everywhere, appeared satisfied. Aelira closed her eyes briefly. Remarkable, humans truly were creative.

“My father said she was a devil,” one merchant added.

Of course he did, she thought. Every story needed a devil.

“Said she’d kill ten people to save one.”

That almost made her laugh. The reality had always been the opposite. The arithmetic had simply never been pretty. Aelira stared into the dark surface of her wine, and the common room blurred. Suddenly she was not in a tavern. She was twenty-four years old, standing atop city walls while smoke rose into a violet evening sky. The city had been called Veylos. Most people had forgotten the name—Aelira never would.

Twenty-two thousand civilians had been trapped behind its walls. Three hundred rebel infiltrators hid among them. One plague ship sat anchored in the harbor, its crew already dead or dying. By the time they understood what had entered the city, it was too late. The plague spread slowly at first. That was how mercy deceived people—slowly. Politely. As if offering time. If the disease escaped Veylos, tens of thousands would die. The eastern provinces would collapse and trade routes would fail. Famine would follow. Everyone in that war room understood the mathematics.

No one wanted the answer. Generals argued, advisors hesitated, and every face searched desperately for a kinder solution, as though kindness were something one could summon by wanting hard enough. The problem with better solutions was that they often did not exist.

Someone had to choose.

Three hundred and seventeen deaths. She remembered every number. Three hundred and seventeen people killed to keep twenty-two thousand alive. That was the truth, ugly and exact. People remembered the smoke. They remembered locked gates. They remembered stories of the Butcher Princess standing above the city while the condemned screamed below. Nobody remembered the plague that never spread. History rarely celebrated disasters prevented—only disasters witnessed.

The tavern returned around her.

Aelira realized her grip had tightened around the cup and loosened it at once. The arithmetic remained unchanged and always would. Yet for the first time in years, she found herself wondering whether that thought comforted her as much as it once had.

Across the room, the customers continued debating her crimes. The list had expanded considerably. Apparently, she had poisoned a river, assassinated a king, and once transformed an army into trees. That last one was admittedly imaginative. Aelira almost admired it. At some point, she noticed something more fascinating than the stories themselves.