Climbing Towards the Light

She slits the man’s throat in the dark, cutting short his labored breathing. Her eyes are dispassionate as blood pools around him and soaks into his silken sheets - a house fallen and a legacy unraveled in a matter of seconds, just underneath her fingers. As mercies go this is a substantial one; the people, she knows, would see him suffer.

The crown is strewn carelessly on a cushion near the cooling body, evidence of the man’s reckless security in his own wealth. Her lip curls. She remembers past winters, watching her father leave bloodied footprints on the snow because he couldn't afford shoes for both himself and his child. Tyrant, she thinks. Death was too kind a fate for you.

But she takes the crown - the symbol of years’ worth of suffering - in hand and steps around the four-poster bed without sparing him another glance. There is nothing to be gained from resenting the dead.

The doors from the room’s east wall open up to a grand balcony where just days prior the king had condescended to look down upon his citizens. She steps out onto it now. It glistens with gold and it demands attention, and that extravagance suits her purposes.

From the vantage point, she looks out above the city. So many buildings are dilapidated, crumbling, as they have been for too long, but now she sees them for what they could be.

In the distance, the sound of gunfire comes to a halt, and over a faraway mountain the sun begins to rise. She sets the crown on the floor and leans over the square below and waits for the people to come. They will come.

“The king is dead,” she whispers to herself. Even for her it is difficult to believe. “Long live the republic.”