Carrie's first breath in this world tasted of copper and hot dust.
Her lungs felt too small. She tried to move her hands to wipe the sweat from her eyes, but a metallic clink stopped her. Looking down, her heart jumped into her throat.
Her wrists were encased in iron shackles which were engraved into a wooden frame that forced her to kneel in the filth.
'These aren't my hands.' The thought screamed in her mind.
Her hands were supposed to be slightly calloused from typing, her knuckles looked a bit swollen from years of writing.
These hands were small. Slender. Glittering as moonlight and soft as silk, save for the dirt beneath the nails.
"What…" she croaked, catching her breath through the pain. "Where am I? What is happening?"
She began to thrash, making the wood of the panel groan under her weight.
She looked around the clearing—soldiers in obsidian armor, there were red banners fluttering in the wind, and the high dais where a woman in gold sat watching.
'This looks like... no. No, it's a dream.'
Suddenly, a woman crashed to her knees beside her. Unfortunately, Carrie's eyes were filled with tears, making the figure blur.
But the woman cupped Carrie's face in palms that were shaking violently.
"My sweet Li Lian," the woman wailed. "What are they doing to you? My daughter... my poor, sweet girl..."
Li Lian?
That was the name of the sacrificial lamb. But she doesn't exist.
Whispering, Carrie's eyes widened. "Li Lian?"
Her head suddenly felt heavy. Was she... was she inside the book? Was she the girl she had doomed to a life of tragedy?
The mother turned towards the dais, falling face flat as she wept. "Your highness!"
"Please! Please, have mercy on your own blood! What did my Li Lian do to suffer such cruelty from her grace?"
The Grand Empress Dowager closed her eyes as she gripped the arms of her throne. "Treason is a stain that must be burned away." she sighed, the sound echoing with a helpless weight.
"It is Commander Yan's law. I... I cannot intervene. The law must be served."
"Oh, Commander Yan, please!" Mú Zhao, Li Lian's mother, shifted face flat before the Commander. "Please, your highness, she is innocent! She was framed! She would never betray the pack!"
Carrie's airway felt like it was closing. Panic. It seemed like a physical wall. She couldn't be here.
She was supposed to be on her way to the hospital to see her father. She was supposed to be taking the bus.
The flogging stopped for a while. They were all waiting for the Commander and future Alpha to speak.
"Treason is not a matter of the heart, but of the law. My law."
She turned her head, her gaze landing on the man sitting beside the Grand Empress Dowager a few feet away.
Commander Yan Liang.
One leg bent, gloved fingers resting loosely over the hilt of a sword that did not need to be drawn to be threatening. His posture was unstrained and unhurried.
Untouched.
His armor was darker than the soldiers below the dais; matte black etched with faint silver lines that caught the light only when he moved. A wolf's crest rested over his shoulder. No ornament. No excess.
His face…
High cheekbones cut cleanly, as though carved by a careful blade. A straight nose. Lips neither thin nor soft, but held in a line that suggested permanent disinterest.
His skin held the cool tone of someone who rarely stood beneath the sun long enough to be warmed by it.
But it was his eyes that held her.
Dark.
Not merely in color, but in depth. Like the sun reflecting too thick into water. Anger did not flare in them. Neither did they burn cruelly either.
They assessed.
He looked exactly as she had imagined him. And far better.
Carrie's throat became constricted.
WHACK.
A hot, lingering whiplash tore through the air and landed squarely across her back.
"HRAAAAAA-GHK!"
"How dare you look at the Commander like that!" the guard, whose face was inches from hers, barked.
It felt as though her back was being split into two. The flogging resumed.
WHACK.
"Twenty-six!"
Each strike was a reminder that this wasn't paper anymore. 'I'm going to die,' she thought, her face hitting the mud. 'I'm going to die in a world I built to be cruel.'
The sudden whip paused, leaving behind silence and the smell of her own blood.
Every inch of her back–Li Lian's back–was a map of fire, the agony so absolute it deafened her to the world… until a polished boot broke the line of the dirt in her peripheral vision.
She wrenched her head around.
Though the sun was blinding and cruel, creating a halo behind him. He looked like a silhouette in the sky, but the cold aura of that presence was unmistakable.
It was the Commander. And he stood over her. "Shall we end this theatre? Will you confess now?"
However, Carrie–Li Lian–couldn't answer. She was too busy fighting for air through her burning lungs.
And each time she dragged in shallow gulps, the world around her seemed to spin, reminding her it was all real.
"Tell me," his murmuring tone sounded like a low vibration that seemed to rattle against her raw nerves. "Who did you leak the strategy to? Or is your loyalty so profound that you'd prefer to see how much more of this punishment your body can endure?"
Carrie remained silent because there were no words left.
If the script she'd written held true, Li Lian had already played her part; sobbing, trembling, swearing her innocence with a conviction that only the guilty or the truly desperate possess.
Yet he hadn't believed her.
She looked at the man standing over her and felt a sickening jolt of irony.
This was her creation. She had carved this vile character out of malice, never imagining she'd one day be the one bleeding under his gaze. She couldn't change his heart; she hadn't given him one to begin with.
And besides, he was right. That was the most bitter pill of all: it was the truth.
The Commander's eyes darkened at her continued defiance. He straightened, casting a terrifying shadow over her broken form.
"Since you find silence so comfortable. And since you have no desire to speak the truth here, you shall find it on the field. Pack your silence. You're coming to the war front with us."