The Caged Canary

In my dream, there was a canary locked in a cage without light.

It threw itself against the iron bars until its wings bled.

It sang until its throat tore.

Outside the cage stood a man in black, hands clasped behind his back, watching coldly as the bird ruined itself trying to be free.

He did not open the door.

He did not look away.

I woke on the dungeon floor, drenched in sweat.

Again.

The same dream.

The same bird.

The same silent man.

I had been imprisoned beneath the palace for several months. Down here, the sun did not rise. Snow did not fall. Time was measured only by footsteps, chains, and the bowls of food pushed through the bars.

Above me, drums and horns shook the earth.

A wedding.

His wedding, I guessed.

Cyren Vale was getting married today.

Once he took a proper bride, perhaps he would finally forget the disgraced general he had locked beneath his feet.

Perhaps he would stop hating the love I once gave him.

The thought made me laugh.

It came out dry and broken.

I was Aeron Greyvale, commander of the Scarlet Wolf Legion.

I inherited my father’s army and spent my life defending the crown that now pretended not to know my name.

I had broken enemy capitals.

Carried dead soldiers home on my own back.

Bled for king, country, and every border village that had ever whispered Greyvale as if it meant safety.

And how did my story end?

Not in battle.

Not beneath a banner.

Not with a sword in my hand.

I would die in a cage, betrayed by the king I served and the foster brother I loved.

No.

I would not.

A Greyvale could lose a war.

A Greyvale could be buried under enemy spears.

But a Greyvale did not rot in chains like a songbird bought for amusement.

The black iron shackles around my wrists rattled when I moved. Their sound echoed through the cell, hollow and pitiful.

I hated that sound.

This morning, the boy who brought my food dropped a bowl.

He gathered the larger pieces quickly, terrified I might use one.

But he missed a shard.

I had hidden it between my thighs before the guards noticed.

Now I took it out.

The edge was jagged.

Sharp enough.

Above, the drums stopped.

For a strange moment, the world became quiet.

I pressed the shard to my wrist.

Pain flared.

Blood followed.

Warm.

Free.

As my body slid sideways onto the filthy stone floor, my vision blurred.

In the spreading darkness, I saw a memory.

A boy standing under falling crabapple petals, waving at me beneath a sky full of stars.

Cyren at fourteen.

Soft-faced.

Bright-eyed.

My little white rabbit.

Back then, he looked at me as if I were the sun.

When had we become strangers?

My soul lifted before I finished dying.

The weight of the chains fell away.

For the first time in months, my wrists felt light.

I looked down.

My body lay in a pool of blood.

Thin.

Pale.

Unrecognizable.

One hand still clutched a folded paper against my chest.

The bonding contract.

Cyren had written it himself.

Date: First Month, Twenty-Eighth Day.

Today.

His wedding day.

I laughed again, though no sound came.

Even at the end, I had held the proof of my own humiliation.

Cyren Vale had always looked harmless.

A white rabbit raised in a wolf’s den.

But I knew better now.

He was no rabbit.

He was a tiger with clean hands.

He could not wield a sword. He could barely lift one as a boy. Yet men had died by his words, cities had fallen by his ink, and I—

I had fallen because of his mouth.

The world first turned on me after my final victory.

I returned from breaking the northern empire expecting horns, banners, perhaps even the king’s reluctant praise.

Instead, I found rumors.

Whispers.

Songs in taverns.

Pamphlets nailed to temple doors.

Aeron Greyvale desired his own foster brother.

Aeron Greyvale had corrupted the king’s strategist.

Aeron Greyvale hid filth beneath military glory.

I went to Cyren and asked why.

Why reveal something I had confessed only to him?

Why let them twist it into something vile?

Why make our love a weapon?

He stood above me on the palace steps, face calm, eyes cold.

“You saw what you wanted to see,” he said. “Whatever affection you imagined between us was your delusion.”

I still remembered those words.

Every one.

“Your love was always a knife, Aeron. I merely let you hold it correctly.”

After that, everything collapsed.

The king removed my command.

The court condemned me.

Cyren disappeared behind palace walls.

And when I had nothing left, he had me taken underground.

He caged me.

Now, as a ghost, I looked at my dead body and thought,

At least the cage is open.