He laughed. Then slapped her. Once. Twice.
She didn't cry. She didn't scream.
She looked him dead in the eye — and then drove the sharpened hairpin through the soft of his throat.
He gurgled.
She watched.
She didn't blink.
She ran barefoot through the halls, blood on her hands, rage dripping from her mouth like prayer. The guards chased her. But she had grown up in this city. She knew every alley. Every tunnel. Every crack in the wall meant for mice and ghosts.
She escaped.
And for weeks, people whispered about the "ghost bride" who had slit her husband's throat and disappeared like smoke.
Some said she died in the river.
Some said she was captured and tortured, her tongue cut out, her body thrown to the dogs.
But some — the women — told their daughters a different story.
They said she crossed into the mountains.
They said she changed her name.
They said she carved her own home in the stone and lived alone, answering to no man, no god, no law but her own.
And whenever a girl stood too straight, or bit her tongue too late, or laughed too loudly in a room full of men, someone would whisper:
"Elira walks again."