It was close to one when Rani finally gave up on sleep. It has been a useless pursuit after she saw the note that Li left, but she had tried anyway. Some part of her had desperatly hoped that sleep would bring her clarity.
The room is too small for her thoughts. They seem to bounce against the walls, pressing in on her with each passing moment.
Going to the window, Rani slides up the pane. It had taken her a day to figure out the best way to leave her room undetected. There were no exist beside the main door. No false doors, no fireplace to climb, just the windows. Two stories above the ground. That drop was the best way out and besides she had survived a higher drop weeks ago.
Tumbling through the sky, branches snapping around her, sharp claws digging into her skin.
Rani is still not sure what happened that night when she and the King were thrown from the train, not sure how they had gotten so far from the track. That mystery, however, has been relegated to the back of her mind.
Swinging her legs out the window, Rani twists until her stomach is pressing against the sill. Her grip tightens on the edge as she slips back until she's hanging only by the tips of her fingers.
The ground still seems far, far below, but Rani doesn't give herself a moment for hesitation. She drops, knees bent, rolling back into the grass. The shock sends a lash of pain through the knife wound in her side. The last reminisce not yet healed.
Inflicted by Li, probably the same person who had directed that note to be placed in her room.
Rani moves aimlessly through the grounds, forcing her thoughts to order with each step.
Tara, Li, The King. Freedom and money and ideology all warring against one another inside her mind.
She is certain of one thing, even with the paths branching before her.
She won't kill the King.
Rani has known that since she read the letter. It is to spite Li as much as to honor Tara.
She could leave, escape now before the Tavgharad or Tamar decide she'll be less of a burden to them dead. She could say here, fight like Tara did, and probably die as she did. She could take her chances trying to turn the King in again, maybe to Fjerda this time. It would probably get them both killed and would leave the world in more wrecakge than before.
Or she could tell the King.
She would run the risk of him thinking she is in league with them. That this was some intricate ploy to kill him. Or perhaps she would gain his trust.
From the corner of her eye Rani sees a flicker, a dark shadow blotting out the moon.
Her stomach curtles. Holding her breath, Rani searches for another flicker of moment, a sound, anything. The air is still, suffocatingly heavy with heat. Even the drone of nighttime creatures has silenced, owls retreating back into the woods, the whole world holding it's breath.
Ranis footsteps are the only noise in the dense silence. The quick crunch of grass beneath her feet as she moves back toward the palace. Her nerves ache. The wrongness of the world thrumbing in her veins.
The quiet seems to scream.
She's running now, not bothering to find her way back to the open window. She's gone farther than she relized, curving around the edge of the lake. Her eyes snag on a small, abandoned dock. Somewhere to hide.
She can hear ir now. A sound that makes her blood run dry in her veins. Like the beating of giant wings.
Her feet pound over the boards. Her skin prickles. She lunges forward, twisting, ready to swing herself under the dock.
Rani plunges into the water, feeling talsons sink into her shoulder. She's pulled from the depths, up and up, her feet finding purchase on nothing, her hands scrabbling at the thing that holds her to no avail.
The world spins beneath her. A breathless moment of disorientation. Darkness and searing, simmering pain.
Rani's slambed back into a hard surface. Talons are still locked in her shoulder as she skitter down the slanted surface. The roof, its gold plated surface flashing behind that thing.
For the first time her eyes fasten on it, the monster from the train, the demon that's haunted her dreams for weeks, all coiling shadow and talons, wings and teeth.
Pure, undiluted terror rocks through her.
This is no creation of the Saints. This thing should not walk this world. It is made of terrors and darkness and pain. Monster seems too hollow a word.
Demon.
Nightmare.
Abomination.
Panic sets in. Rani jerks her arm. The skin at her shoulder tears, but she doesn't feel it. Without the haze of pain and death from before, it's all to real. She had wanted to know, wanted to assure herself it was more than a death addled haluicaintion. She had been mistaken, it was better left in the shadows. Better never known.
Nightmare.
Demon.
Monster.
Rani screams.
///
Nikoali awoke with blood on his hands.
Again.
The chains on his bed lay broken, stratched and warped until the metal yeilded under the demons claws. At some point during the night the banistar had snapped, gave way under the stress of that thing straining agians its chains. They had constantly to cycle in new beds as the monster tore through them, not to mention the number of sheets it had destroyed.
Stepping out of the wreckage, Nikolai moves toward the wash basin on unsteady legs. The blood it has to be his own this time.
It has to be.
Water sloshes over the edge of the basin as he scrubs at the red staining his hands. The cloth turns pink in his feavered grip, his knuckles white beneath the blood. It's on his hands, his chest, his face. He's drowning in it.
Drowning is the blood of so many.
A nock comes from the door. Nikolai curses, scrubbing the towel once more over his face and hands before calling for them to enter. Zoya flounces in. She takes in the wreckage of the room, the blood smeared around the washstand, with no reaction other than a single arched eyebrow.
"Your liability has proven herself again."
It takes a moment for Nikolai to remember who she's talking about. In that moment Zoya speaks again, "She's gotten herself on the roof of the place."
Rani.
"No one's gotten her down?"
"She's refusing to come down." Zoya casts a pointedly nonchalant look toward the wash stand and adds, "Apparently there's blood."
Fun fact, Tara was originally the name of the main character in this book but I thought it was too close to Kora/Korina so I changed it.
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heartless | nikolai lantsov
Fanfiction"You enjoy knowing someone in your palace would as soon have a knife to your throat as help you?" "Oh, I count on it, keeps my wits sharp." \\ Kidnapping the King of Ravka was easy. Until it wasn't. When her plan goes awry, Rani is given two choi...
