TOPWL 147

At Yvonne’s repeated pleas, Ernel finally snapped.

“If you keep this up, I’ll toss you aside and take Beth instead.”

“What did you just say?”

“You think I won’t? So quit being a nuisance.”

Yvonne was at a loss for words in the face of his vulgarity. Ernel pulled her into his arms and said,

“It’s all for us. We survived that brutal winter, didn’t we? We have to keep surviving.”

All you have to do is pretend not to see anything.

That line was so sweet, and Beth’s screams were so distant, that Yvonne closed her eyes to what was happening. She sometimes snuck away food or medicine Ernel’s brother had brought and gave it to Beth, but even as she did so, she felt like a hypocrite. Still, she told herself she had no choice. Beth accepted what she gave her. She never once said thank you.

One day, Beth handed something to Yvonne.

“What’s this?”

“Contraceptive.”

“Where did you get something like this?”

“It grows wild in the back. It’s a toxic plant that causes stomach cramps. If you boil just the new sprouts and drink it for a year, it makes you infertile.”

Yvonne was a beta, and Ernel an alpha, so pregnancy wasn’t even a possibility. Still, instead of rejecting it, she held on to it. Two years passed like that.

One sunny afternoon, when even the tower was brushed with a gentle breeze and the flowers bloomed with hidden poison, two men died. Beth had done it. She ground down bricks from the tower to make a stone blade and stabbed them through the heart. It was so sharp they both died instantly. Just how many years had she spent sharpening that blade in secret? What had she been thinking all that time?

For the first time, Ernel showed anger—not at what the two men had done, but at Beth for daring to kill them.

“I’ve never killed a person. I only killed the monsters who were devouring me.”

Beth’s voice was calm. Yvonne envied her.

There was talk of holding a trial, but it fizzled out. The accused was already dying—of an STD.

Yvonne volunteered to care for Beth. She tended to her with great devotion, but they rarely spoke. Yvonne didn’t know what to say, and Beth seemed too worn to reflect on her dwindling life.

A week before she died, Beth gave Yvonne the stone blade.

“Use it when you need to.”

Yvonne didn’t refuse. She hid the blade, still stained with dried brown blood, under her bed. Every time she shifted in her sleep, she could feel it beneath the mattress. It made her back ache, but its presence was comforting.

“Now, tomorrow doesn’t have to come,”

Beth murmured one evening, her life flickering like a candle in the wind. Yvonne didn’t cry. She couldn’t. Who was she to cry? All she could do was sit by Beth’s bedside and listen. Beth, after a long pause, spoke again.

“That poison I told you about—the one I said was a contraceptive—if you grind the berries and roots together, it becomes a deadly toxin. It doesn’t kill instantly. You weaken slowly before dying, so no one will suspect.”

Hearing that, Yvonne suddenly wondered aloud,

“Then why didn’t you just use it sooner?”

“I wanted you to know. That I had something sharp, too—something I could use to strike.”

“You’re ridiculous. If you’d just killed them sooner, you wouldn’t be dying like this.”

At Yvonne’s bitter words, Beth only smiled. The next day, when Yvonne went to her, Beth was already dead. That time, Yvonne wept—loudly, wretchedly—at her bedside.

She dug the grave herself. It was winter. With no proper tools, digging into the frozen ground was grueling. Hans came and helped her. Ernel looked at her filthy hands and feet and scoffed. Yvonne didn’t respond. She simply tended quietly to the poisonous plants.

One day, Ernel stepped on a rusty nail. They thought it would heal, but his foot began to rot. It swelled, turned purple, and reeked. He needed a sharp enough blade to amputate it, but Yvonne wouldn’t give up the stone knife.

That blade had not been made to save a life. Using it to save Ernel would feel like betraying Beth. Fortunately, Ernel never realized Yvonne had it. He had others grind blades for him day and night. Hans finally cut off Ernel’s ankle with a well-sharpened knife.

The limping king believed it was his crippled foot that cost him his authority. In his growing fear, Ernel sought a way to reclaim his dominance. The solution was simple: find a scapegoat.

And the easiest scapegoat was right beside him—Yvonne.

He humiliated her in front of everyone, then acted kind when they were alone, whispering that she was all he had. But the kindness grew infrequent, while the beatings came more often. One day, after being struck so hard she couldn’t see for two days, Yvonne lay in bed and thought,

I have to kill Ernel.

A tyrant could only be dealt with by revolution.

As soon as her vision returned and she could move again, Yvonne ground up the berries and roots of the poisonous plant and mixed them into Ernel’s food. Within a week, Ernel had grown too weak to raise a hand against her. Because Yvonne cared for him with such sincerity and devotion, Ernel never once suspected her. Instead, he grew suspicious of Hans and Pabron.

To think he suspected others right in front of the one who poisoned him!

It was harder to suppress her laughter than to clean up his filth.

In the end, Ernel died.

Yvonne stared blankly at the flies buzzing above his tear ducts.

In that moment, she understood Beth.

Why she’d chosen the knife over poison.

Ernel’s death had been far too easy.

He had beaten her—targeting the vulnerable parts of her body without killing her—and forced himself on her without even the pretense of foreplay. That kind of man deserved to suffer the same torment. He should’ve been killed not with poison, but with a blade.

Yvonne was burning with rage.

She ran out, threw open the door, and fetched the knife. Then, she drove it into Ernel’s already lifeless belly.

There was no reaction from him—his soul had long since fled. Only the startled flies buzzed away.

With a wild scream, Yvonne hacked his body apart. She knew the stone blade was shredding her own hands too, but she couldn’t stop. A bestial wail echoed through the tower—it no longer sounded human.

***

“…Yudit. Are you alright?”

He felt the warmth of someone’s hand on his arm.

Yudit jolted awake.

Khalid was sitting at him bedside, gazing down at him.

“Drink this.”

He handed him a cup of strongly brewed black tea.

Even as he clutched the steaming cup, his body trembled.

It had been such a cold, dreadful dream.

Khalid added more logs to the fireplace and stirred it with a fire iron. Then he returned and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“No fever.”

“I’m alright now.”

It wasn’t the tea that warmed him, but Khalid’s concern.

In truth, Yudit’s room was more than warm—it was stifling.

Logs in the fireplace during early summer—Yudit couldn’t stand the heat and opened the window.

Soft, round sunlight tumbled into the room.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw vast plains and a majestic mountain range.

The rain that had fallen for days as if it would drown the world had disappeared, leaving behind trees and grasses heavy with its memory.

It had been two days since Yudit arrived at Khalid’s estate.

He had spent the entire carriage ride reading Yvonne’s writings.

Beyond the prison memoirs, there was a wealth of other pieces—essays, poetry, and fiction.

She had given one of her bank accounts to a guard in exchange for the notebooks.

Each page was written so tightly, crammed to save space, that reading it made his eyes ache—but Yudit read every word. He couldn’t put it down, even to the point that Khalid started nagging.

There were quite a few romance stories.

The earlier ones were about a woman struggling to survive on her own, but later, most stories featured a protagonist with a tragic past who found a savior, defeated her enemies, and found happiness.

Even in writing those tales, Yvonne must’ve suffered deeply.

The pages she once treated so preciously bore not just ink, but heavy black lines, even tears—pages ripped apart.

And yet, every sentence pulsed with power.

Reading Yvonne’s writing felt like brushing your fingers over a lonely kingdom forged of gold.

Yudit was certain: these writings held the power to change the world.

“Are you going to the publishing house again today?”

“In the morning, yes. Then in the afternoon, I’ll stop by the school. What about you?”

“I need to make some repairs. It’s about time I started getting ready for deployment.”

At the word deployment, Yudit’s expression hardened.