After their decisive victory over Orinovo, Lys-Akkaria's army crosses the border to take back territory that used to be theirs. With the combined forces of a lightweaver and shadowforger, Orinovo doesn't stand a chance.
In spite of their newfound a...
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Yarima had meant to start putting together her plan to be rid of her mother and the entire court. However, her brother had been worrying her, which kept distracting her. And if she couldn't be there for him now that she was back, what kind of sister would she be?
The only problem was that he seemed hesitant to share what was bothering him. Aside from everything wrong with their country, of course. Yarima was more or less convinced it had something to do with his newly demoted boyfriend, but she'd not seen Oretski since the incident.
But now she would have Denir cornered because she'd managed to get some semblance of Denir's schedule from one of the servants after a rather long stretch of charming conversation. The man probably thought she was interested in him now. The fool.
She walked down the long palace corridors, eager to intercept Denir in his quarters. He never seemed to be there when she'd tried to visit him, and apparently the reason for that was that their mother kept him rather busy, meeting with random royals and generals.
Yarima wasn't one for overt theorizing and conspiracies, but she was fairly certain the reason for all of this wasn't that he—until now—had been the heir to the throne. No, Yarima was certain their mother just wanted to keep Denir as busy as possible so even when Oretski was in Diramisk, like he was right now, they could barely spend any time together.
Though that certainly hadn't stopped rumors. It made Yarima grind her teeth. She would have a lot of work to do once she took over the throne.
Finally getting to her brother's door, she looked around to make sure no one was near before knocking softly.
She waited for a moment, wondering if perhaps Denir either wasn't in his quarters after all or if he was ignoring her. But before she could raise her hand to try to knock again, the door opened a crack.
Denir's face appeared in the crack, the one eyes Yarima could see growing more relaxed as he opened the door up more.
"Yari," he said, waving her in as he stepped aside, rubbing the back of neck in the most jerky, nervous way possible.
"Is something wrong?" she asked as she walked in, closing the door behind her. Denir's quarters looked almost nothing like she remembered, but that made sense. They had both been much younger when she'd run away those years ago.
But with that said, she was not at all surprised by the fact that all the walls of Denir's bedrooms were lined with full bookcases. She was sure that his study, which was through the door on the far wall in the next room was even more so.
"No, I suppose not," Denir sighed as he led her to the table on the other side of the room, right by the window. But the sun pouring in through it did little to brighten the gloomy atmosphere.
"Come on, something must be," Yarima tried to gently prod again. "You look miserable."
And he truly did. His usually big, bright eyes dull and downcast, his shoulders sinking as he sat down and put his hands around the mug of what seemed to be hot chocolate, pulling it close to himself.
