Story:

But that was the apparent.

Because deep in her heart, under the whistling, Lysandra was not thoughtless at all—and had not been.

Sera was her only friend. Her true one. The girl she had grown up beside before history put a border between them, and Lances and crowns put a war between them, and a cell door finally put iron between them.

And Lysandra knew—as she had always known—that Sera's chains were never really the ones in the cellar. The real chains were the ones Sera had chosen: the blind, absolute, unbreakable loyalty to a dead kingdom and a fallen throne, the old oath her friend would sooner die than outgrow.

I gave her one last chance, Lysandra thought, walking down the corridor. But it wasn't really a last chance. It was the first move.

She could not argue Sera out of her loyalty with sermons, or buy it out with amnesty, or free it out with open cell doors. Blind loyalty was not an argument to be won;

It was a chain to be redeemed—broken by something stronger than the old oath, replaced by something worth believing in more than a dead crown.

It would take time. It would take the right moment, the right cause, the right war to make her friend see.