The Empress Who Balanced the Ledger
Chapter 13 · free to read
Obedience would have been easy and it would have been fatal. So I kept the fence, and I kept counting inside it, and I did the second thing in the dark.
Fourth shelf, third board from the wall, and the nail put back crooked so I would know if it were ever straightened. Everything I had proved lived in a hole in the floor.
He did not threaten me once. That was how I knew the offer was real.
Everything I did next depended on being the sort of woman who might. So I let him watch me want it, and I made him wait, because a thing bought too easily is never believed.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.