"Hello, King Rufus," she said, her voice dripping with mockery, each word a dagger. "Dear father," she added with a cruel smile, stepping closer until she loomed over him, taking out a slender blade from her suit with a slow, deliberate motion. She trailed the cold edge lightly over his cheek, relishing the way his body tensed, the way his nostrils flared with helpless rage. "How does it feel," she whispered, her voice trembling with rage and bitter triumph, "to be at someone else’s mercy?"
She crouched closer, her face inches from his as her fury poured out unchecked, her voice low and venomous.
"I regret only one thing—that I don’t have more time to give you everything you deserve for the years of misery and torment, for the way you treated my mother, locking her in a dungeon like an
