Chapter 10 Aurora
Killed? Their execution ground?
I might be a century old, but even my mind had its breaking point.
Today, it reached its quota of hard truths and hidden secrets buried under decades of willful ignorance, so when Radu’s words finally pierced my denial, they detonated inside me with the force of a zeppelin crash.
A stupefying kind of dread fired my synapses and flooded my nervous system.
Disjointed fragments of thought ripped my mind apart, like shrapnel tearing through what remained of my faith in everything I’d been raised to believe. The air turned thick as molasses.
The outliers… they had chosen to fight to regain their families’ rights. But what about veterans like Harbinger and the Black Guild members who refused to return to Republic soil?
“What happened to the outliers before you?” I asked, though a part of me already knew the answer. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, hollow and distant. “Where are they?”
My lungs seized. The room tilted sideways, walls pressing inward. Choking me.
Gale’s hand touched my shoulder. “Breathe, Projector.”
I couldn’t. Each year, thousands of freshly Changed mixed-breeds marched off to the front lines. Where were their families if they hadn’t returned to the Republic? Surely not all had fallen to Souleaters?
Or bloodthirsty Purebloods? the cruel inner voice tormented me.
Unless—unless the Republic had found a more efficient method of disposal.
Bile surged up my throat. I doubled over, but nothing came out.
Had they been herding outliers into the Tenth Ward—the first line of defense—only to deny them reinforcements, effectively killing them under the guise of duty?
My gaze shot to Selena. “Did the Commander know?” The words scraped out between heaves. “Did he lie to us?”
I should have checked the returning outliers myself. Should have visited the lower wards instead of trusting Brother’s empty promises.
Her face went ashen, despite her head shaking in denial.
A strangled sound tore from my throat. “Impossible.”
Metal clanged against the table as Quakelord slammed his cup down.
His hazel eyes blazed with suppressed rage.
“Damn right it’s possible,” he said. “Those knife-ears never planned to honor jack shit. They dangle promises like treats for dogs, work us till we’re bones, then toss us into the meat grinder.
” He gestured broadly at the room. “Welcome to the Republic’s final solution to eradicate the vermin, Your Bloody Highness. ”
But the Council… they wouldn’t… they couldn’t…
“We’re not blaming you,” Hummingbird was quick to assure me. Like I needed him to soften the blow when I had done nothing to save them all these decades. “But have you ever seen a halfblood in the Seven Wards?”
I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped.
After a century of war, there should have been thousands, if not millions of them returning home. Families reunited. Rights restored. But I’d never seen one. Not a single one.
Surely our paths would have crossed at some point, even if the guards rarely let mixed-breeds pass through the gates of the First Ward.
How could I have been so blind? I squeezed my eyes, fighting off the burn of tears. All this time I’d clung to faith in the Republic’s infallibility like a desperate fool.
No more.
“Most outliers don’t survive their conscription, so the Republic weasels out of the deal clean,” Terraknight said, his deep voice resolute.
“The problem is stubborn bastards like us who refuse to die. Our survival makes us heroes to other halfbloods—enough to spark dissent in the camps. So, they shuffled us off to the Eighth and Ninth Wards’ first defensive guilds, expecting the Souleaters to finish what they started.
Most of the time, even the best don’t make it out.
” His massive shoulders rolled back, chin lifting with quiet pride.
“But we did, and we’ll keep doing it. This is our way of flipping them the finger.
We do our fucking best to stay alive and make them regret every day we draw breath. ”
“This is where it ends, though. The Tenth Ward’s first defensive guild.
” Quakelord leaned back in his chair, a contemplative look crossing his face.
“Think of it as the Republic’s elegant answer to an inconvenient problem.
They can’t openly execute us. That would look bad.
But they can send us somewhere we’ll die defending the kingdom.
” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Clean hands, clear conscience, and all the halfbloods conveniently buried in unmarked graves. If we’re lucky. ”
Betrayal and anger churned inside me. Everything I’d fought for, everything I’d believed in. All of it, built on lies. A systematic slaughter disguised as patriotic duty.
Pain soaked through my middle as tears followed down my cheeks. I turned toward the patio doors so they wouldn’t see.
They weren’t defending anything. They were cattle being led to slaughter, fighting with the knowledge that death was their only certainty. Not conscription—extermination.
I wiped the tears with the back of my hand. Crying wouldn’t help them.
“But what if you manage to survive?” I asked.
Quakelord’s laugh was sharp. “Survive? Sure, some of us are too pigheaded to die easily. But it’s like sitting in the executioner’s waiting room. You know the axe is coming, just not when.”
Sentenced to die. That’s all they’d ever been.
Rage erupted in my chest, white-hot. My homeland. How deep did the rot go? Memories crashed through me. Hummingbird complaining about boredom, Radu’s blank stare when I’d asked about his post-war plans. He’d never even considered surviving.
They’d never had futures. No dreams beyond the next battle because all they possessed was a death warrant with no execution date.
“You all knew?” I murmured.
Gale’s voice wavered. “We’re sorry. Harbinger, Terra, and I… we didn’t know how to tell you.” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “You looked at us like we mattered.”
“Since when?”
“We’ve known since the beginning.” Pearl, who’d been quiet until now, fixed her azure eyes on me.
They reflected years of accumulated pain.
“Ember’s sister, Quakelord’s parents, Captain’s brother…
They all marched to their deaths believing they could earn their families’ rights.
But the Republic never kept its promises.
” She paused, tracing the rim of her mug with her index finger.
“When you see the same pattern repeat over and over, it becomes impossible to ignore.”
“But if you knew…” my voice cracked, “why continue fighting? Why not run? Seek vengeance?”
Radu sighed, and a tired smile ghosted across his lips.
“Run where, princess? There’s a legion of Souleaters ahead of us whose numbers far outmatch all the hordes we’ve seen before.
Led by a Shepherd smart enough to coordinate.
We’re trapped between the Republic’s efforts to kill us off and becoming monsters.
” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Rebellion sounds appealing, but halfbloods are too busy dying to organize.”
“Our parents’ generation might have stood a chance,” Quakelord said, fingers steepled in front of him.
“But they chose survival over revolution. Can’t blame them.
They had families to protect, basic freedoms to secure.
They clung to the Republic’s honeyed lies because the alternative was watching their children starve.
” His expression grew distant. “When our parents died, our siblings fought to reclaim honor from a nation that had already written them off.”
“Bigoted pigs, the lot of them!” Ember spat, her earlier sorrow replaced by raw fury. “They should all burn.”
Their words carved chunks from my soul. The previous generations of outliers had bled for the Republic, sacrificed everything for a chance at a better life. They were more citizens than I’d ever be. But Radu and the others? They’d been stripped of even that bitter privilege.
They knew only wire fences and killing fields. The mixed-breeds had become natives of this wasteland; lived and died surrounded by monsters. They didn’t care about the Crowned Republic of Transylvania.
And for good reason.
Something fundamental shifted in my heart, like bones settling after a break. The na?ve princess, who’d believed in the Republic’s righteousness, cracked apart.
A visceral craving to go back and take my crown burned through me.
Not for power, but for justice. I wanted to drag every Council member from their ivory towers, force them to look at the faces of the people they’d condemned.
Make them explain to Quakelord why his sacrifice meant nothing.
Make them justify to Ember why her sister died for lies.
Or Hummingbird and Gale, why they’d been tormented in the internment camp.
My hands clenched into fists. For almost a century I’d been an unwitting executioner, every mission, every strategic decision—I’d been complicit in their genocide.
The taste of bile coated my tongue, but underneath it, a new purpose emerged. These people deserved a reckoning, and I was the only one positioned to deliver it.
The crown wasn’t just my birthright anymore. It was a weapon I could wield for them.
“I knew purebloods who sheltered halfbloods, hid them so they wouldn’t be conscripted,” Terraknight said.
I distanced myself from the noise in my head and focused on him.
“Cap’s parents were murdered, his brother shipped off to die.
You heard what happened to Quakelord’s projector.
” His warm eyes held no accusation. “We’ve seen the worst of both sides. ”