Collaterals

Soft, Smooth, New

For a moment no one moved, everyone staring at the shut door. And so, when the Captain finally cleared his throat, it was as though they'd all been broken out of a trance. He looked to Ali with both hands seated comfortably by the hilt of his sword, "The Honorable Hand is not to remove her iron silencers. By order of the Imperial Crown."

Leila looked down, and for a moment, her vision blurred, the feel of her chest's rise and fall suddenly at the forefront of her mind.

"And it is by the Aradian Crown's order that she remove them. Do we not have sovereignty over internal qualms?"

"The Honorable Hand is not an internal qualm."

"The Honorable Hand is also a princess of Aradia—"

"A title that comes second to her duties as obligations as Hand—"

"It, in fact, comes only alongside her title as Prince—"

"And even still I cannot overstep direct orders—"

Had Leila looked up, she would have seen the hand Ali put up, and the frown twisting the Captain's mouth downward as his lips sealed, his grip tightened into a fist.

"Then as Hand," Ali spoke slower, now, with the type of restraint that did not seem to come naturally to the future monarch, "is it not in the Empire's interest she be healed?"

Leila focused on her breaths. In, out. In, out. Calm. She looked to the iron on her skin, spanning the area from her wrist to just shy of her elbow. It felt larger, now. It felt...that reverberating pain, the kind she'd grown accustomed to, the kind always in the back burner of her mind. It resurfaced, now, albeit in gentler echoes, as though summoned by their conversation. Off. All the sudden she wanted them off.

Perhaps the Captain had seen that, when his eyes had finally left Ali, looking over to where she sat atop her bed, hunched over, eyes pinned on her forearms, splayed as they were atop her blanket. He sighed, looking away, "I will...need to write to the Empire. Inform them."

"I'm sure you will," Ali straightened, stepping aside.

The Captain took an almost frustrated breath, moving to Leila. She did not know when Zarqa had placed a stabilizing hand on her shoulder, but she felt it withdraw, and the movement sent a shiver through her as she looked up.

For the first time since he'd...confessed, Liela looked Captain Gawaine in the eye. It was slowly he pulled, out of a pocket in his jacket, a cloth with his family sigil, just like the Key to her box had been, the key to her box that had contained— Leila grit her teeth. The Captain unfolded the cloth, revealing what seamed to be a small cylinder, made of the same metal that bound her. Lela looked down to the cuffs.

She'd never seen it done. She knew only that the Empress had once smelt that awful odor emitting from her forearms, turned her nose and tisked. A month later, the smell was gone, and the discomfort her skin had faced was considerably lessened. She'd never once since needed to worry that below the iron, her skin had ulcerated, thickened, or scaled as she suspected it had that first month she'd donned the cuffs, as a child. Or these past few months, here, in Aradia. Leila had wondered how, naturally, at first, and even chalked it all up to a trick of magic, an enchantment from the very same mages who'd secured the cuffs on her. That was until one night: she'd been asleep alone in her room, Aasemah having left her perhaps a few weeks prior. And, as she had every week since Aasemah's departure, she'd awoken in the depths of the night. Only this time, when she awoke, it was to the pull of a heavy drowsiness, to a consciousness so murky she may as well have been asleep. And then she felt it, hands, on her bare forearms, a wet cloth washing the skin, applying salve to it. It'd sent waves of panic through her, enough that she'd managed to croak a fearful moan.