Throne of Power: Ascendance

5. Trust

Cresselya

Sweat ran down her face, filling her eyes and making them sting like saltwater. Her boots splashed inside the mud as she ran and ran through the endless forest that surrounded the city of Sanc Tuary. She could see nothing but the shadows of trees and the giants casting them. She couldn't stop, she couldn't hide and worst of all, she couldn't stop crying. She knew she wasn't crying because of pain and that she was crying because of what she saw.

Along with the splashing of her boots the young lady could hear the screams of a woman. Screams of pain. Screams of suffering as her flesh was melting off her body. Screams of fear, not for her, but her children and all the people she loved. Screams of resistance, resistance to the strength of the King and to the flame in the eyes of her executioner. Cresselya couldn't see that, but she knew. The seven-year-old lady Pourrait-Marteu knew everything she needed to know.

She could feel her elder brother's tight grip around her wrist, pulling her through the bushes and the shadows. His eyes were now scars of the endless torment that had filled the past few moments, scars she knew would never go away. Scars of endless the pain. Scars of the suffering. Scars that reflected her own pain.

Her younger brother was back with the screams crying in his father's arms. He was but a year older than her, yet her father had decided that it would be the right thing for him to watch. Since he was their mother's favourite. 

But Aesther wouldn't do that. Aesther didn't seem willing to sit with their father and cry. No, he seemed prepared to flip the world over just because of the leatherbound journal that was in his left hand. It was a slim brown thing, in which their mother wrote her thoughts every single day. Aesther seemed to be hoping for an answer. One he wasn't going to get.

She couldn't see his face very well, for her watery eyes didn't allow it. But she could see his sparkling eyes. And she would never forget them.

Eyes blue or green, depending on the shadows on his face. Eyes that never shone until that moment, until the moment when he felt truly lost. The more she looked at him, the colder she felt the air around her to be. The number her senses became. The more she felt like her brother would never love her again.

Why would they do this? Why would they burn her mother? The girl couldn't understand. All she could understand was the whispers of the approaching Winter. And all she would remember was the banner of the man who executed her mother. The Spider eating a king in front of a dark shade of blue.

The air bruised her again and again, colder and colder until her world had turned to ice. Ice that froze her heart. Ice that seemed to make time stop. Ice that froze her tears as they fell down her face. Ice that would never leave her. 

It took her a few minutes to realise that she was on the ship, with her "bed" rocking left and right in the wind. The snores of shield maidens filled the entirety of the cabin as they slept on in the icy wind. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the snoring, instead of that dream.

Ever since the Rebels had occupied the city of Darlan she had dreamt the same dream, over and over. She dreamt of the ice and the darkness. The fire and the screams. The cold and the woods. And it all ended with a pair of blue eyes.

She dreamt of the day the screams of her mother filled the shadowy woods. A mother that had nurtured her and helped her through every second of the life she could remember. A mother who had fought for the future of this world. A mother who had been betrayed by a father she resented.