[2] WEEPING MONK║you're not what I was looking for

63| Fathers Forgotten - 𝐈𝐈

Lancelot's attempt to help a friend brings them closer together. Ari confronts the power that she'd let slip through her fingers.

"Let's get this over with," Yeva huffed.

Ari and Adrian glanced to one another while Yeva descended from above them. The witch and the queen had never completely seen eye to eye, Yeva could turn rainfall to a snow storm with just one glare. But Ari had learned to tolerate her brashness.

Adrian took up a place at the edge of the valley, one arm folded across his chest as he stroked his shaven chin. Close enough to provide some moral support but far enough for Ari do this on her own.

She shifted on her feet, taking small steps left and right. Needing to move and quell some of her rising anxiousness.

Stood in front of her with all of the coarseness of a boulder, Yeva held out her hand, talons curling in towards her palm. "The Dagger," she said expectantly.

The blade sang like a breeze through reeds as Ari pulled it from her belt with a modicum of reluctance and handed it over. Its runes were dull— no golden glows— but the blade was sharp. Ari kept one eye on how Yeva turned the Dagger, balanced between one talon and a palm.

"You are right," Yeva said, her beady eyes down. "There is power."

Ari resisted the urge to say that she'd never been wrong about it.

The witch murmured, "It is strong."

"As am I." Ari felt the leather curling around her palms, her fists tightening. It was foreign to see the blade in another's hand and she wanted it back.

The pale gray beads of Yeva's eyes hardened, scorned. "You have control of your own powers but you have never been tested by another's."

"The Dagger tests me," Ari countered, itching to reclaim the blade. "It began as visions. Then a weight inside my chest and... a strange sense that I am not myself." She caught how her father stiffened. "It's gotten worse," she added with remorse. "In a blink I had killed a boy in the battle at Rea's. I fear the dagger took control that day."

She expected her words might come as something of a shock but the only thing to shift on Yeva were her lips.

"This is your excuse for your recent actions as well." None of what Yeva said was ever posed as a question.

Ari sat with her frustration, taking in breaths to the pits of her lungs. She did not like being put down when the witch had no idea of what it was like to succumb to this darkness.

"I had control of it, before."

"Until you weakened. And then you let it control you." A talon scratched along the blade in a grating screech, then it was pointed at her. "You sought out the power but were too weak to hold it," Yeva sneered.