A/N: This would be a prologue, and it's not finished yet. But my laptop's dying, and it's almost one in the morning….so I gotta go to bed. I'll finish and edit it later, but if you like it, great! If you hate it…. At least let me finish it and edit it before you judge. Or not…oh well…

Despite what most people think, being an executioner isn't easy. Especially when you're a woman.

I mean, it's bad enough that you actually have to kill them. You have to confine yourself to the fact that you're taking away their life and that you may be killing an innocent. Maybe they were framed, or they're covering for someone else? Maybe they were just too caught up in what they were doing to realize the consequences? Maybe it was a mere mistake?

However, the things I loathe dealing with are all the blubbering and the crying. If you're seconds from being executed, isn't it a little late to beg for your life? Shouldn't you have begged earlier, perhaps in your jail cell? If I was executed, I would rather either go out with a bang or at least attempt to look brave; I wouldn't want to turn into a sniveling slime ball.

But, orders are orders, and who am I to deny whom the Prince wants killed? Then again, he is blackmailing me. If anyone finds out I'm a woman, it'll be my neck under my own axe.

I've lived in the Veilen Kingdom all of my seventeen years. And in the Veilen Kingdom, women are not permitted to take part in professions as… gruesome as my own.

I have performed 70 executions in my two years as serving as an executioner. And when two escaped, so did I.