The Match
It is the smallest drawer, yet the one with the heaviest air.
Velin opens it like a man revealing the last card in a losing game—slow, deliberate, unblinking.
Inside, there’s only a matchbook.
Black.
The paper edges curling as if it had been too close to its own purpose.
Bunny’s handwriting is on the inside flap:
“For when you stop lying to yourself.”
There’s only one match left.
The rest? Used. Somewhere.
By someone.
She remembers the day the cloak was on her shoulders, heavy with decision.
She remembers the feel of ash coating her palms.
She remembers the lie she told herself—that it was someone else’s fire.
Velin doesn’t take it out. He doesn’t have to.
“Bunny lit it,” he says quietly.
“I handed it to you.”
And she knows this is where the old kingdom truly ended—
not in the fall, but in the burn.
The drawer closes without a sound.