So she announced a game. “I will walk through the capital, unarmed and unguarded,” she declared, her voice echoing through the brass tubes that snaked through every district. “Any subject may attempt to kill me. If you succeed, the empire is yours. If you fail, I will kill your entire family line—backward to your grandparents and forward to your unborn great-grandchildren.”
She had achieved absolute control. And it was dull .
She kept no lover, no friend, no pet. Her only companion was a clockwork nightingale that sang the same tinny note over and over. She said it reminded her of the sound of a single tear hitting a marble floor.
She passed the mother with the notched tongue. The woman pressed her child’s face into her skirts and turned away.
And Seraphine realized, with a cold plummet in her chest, that she had not created obedience. She had created a desert. There was no one left who wanted the empire. No one who wanted revenge. No one who wanted anything at all except the small, silent act of survival.
Loneliness.
No one moved.