Against the Wind

11.1 || Raya

In the wake of the night's revelations, Raya slept hard and long and woke far too late. Perhaps because her dreams were so doused in silver starlight, the morning sunshine startled her, beating in blinding yellow waves through her thin curtain and dripping onto her skin in the form of heated dewdrops. Rubbing at her stinging eyes and the ache behind them, she kicked off her sheet and rose from her makeshift sleeping spot on the floor beside her bed, stretching until her elbows cracked. Somehow, the ache in her limbs—courtesy of the hard floor—felt even worse.

The sun's glare fought her reluctance and probed for urgency. She fumbled to retie her nightdress, throw on her yellow cloak, run rough fingers through her copiously tangled hair, pausing only to check on Corvin. He hadn't stirred; the sight of his peaceful, expressionless face poking out from the sheets sent a wave of calm sliding through her, like a scooping breeze billowing up from her stomach. She still felt guilty for overexerting him, but he'd shown no sign of blame last night and was recovering quickly. All in all, what could've spelled disaster had truly been a success.

Stars still sprinkled the back of her thoughts, bright upon deep black, making her every step feel light. She couldn't help the smile that buoyed her lips as she slipped quietly from the room.

It vanished immediately as she skittered to a halt at the top of the stairs. Her house was full of people.

The clamour of overlapping voices seeped up the staircase like a steady flood. As Raya inched downward, she felt the phantom weight of water on her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her house was never this loud, not without reason. And if there was a reason, then...

Confusion laced the strangling feeling in her gut, hammered by her own tapping prayer, a repetitive please not today, please not today.

Please, not her.

She stepped into the main room and felt the words scatter as glass shards into the pit of her stomach. Her feet stopped moving and held her there, a statue glued to the edge of the doorway, as if pausing and waiting somehow defied reality, but there was very little way to deny both her eyes and her ears at once.

"—must hurry before we..." Her mother's brusque stampede of words trailed into silence as she whirled, gaze pinning Raya and squashing any last-ditch effort to hide. "Ah, Rayanah! Our sleeping beauty awakes." Her smile was clipped and trimmed any warmth from the term. "Good morning. You'll have to dress quickly."

Excuses tumbled over one another and left Raya's mouth empty and dry. She swallowed, trying to force her spine straighter and her heart to stop thundering. "Apologies," she managed, voice too quiet. "I—I wasn't expecting your return so soon."

Midway through turning her face away, her mother froze. Wearing a dark-lined frown, she snatched the lip gloss Yasmin had been offering out from the attendant's fussing hands, then strode forward, posture so rigid Raya could taste the stone-cold shadow she cast. "Did you truly think I would remain absent during such an important event?"

"Of course not." Raya barely heard her own hollow whisper. With every thudding second, she harder fought the urge to glance backward at the open staircase; it consumed so much of her focus that her confusion leapt out too readily and left her voice far too airly casual. "What's the occasion?"

Rana Kel-Jabir scoffed. "The trial of Zephyrine's new prodigy, of course." She pursed her lips to smother them with the indigo gloss, a twist that only emphasised her scowl.

Of course. Raya's back throbbed as if her spine were being dusted by a hot poker, so blazingly conscious of what she had to hide. If she'd been riding some kind of high since her dream-like night, it had been shockingly short, and was coming down all around her now with a resonating crash.