*COMPLETE* "People don't believe in us anymore. They don't believe that in the end we will do what is right. We can't let them down. We can't let Ben win."
Decisions made on top of the lonely, wind-swept cliff of Lethinor reverberate around the five...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Dawn breaks over the golden cityscape of Quersido, the morning mists drifting through the awakening streets and up, out toward the high reach of the tower.
He finds her there, amongst the tinkling of machines, the strange delicacy of thin metal and powder, the peculiar designs that come to fruition in the Dynast's lab. He comes for her, wandering around gadgets and gizmos, marveling at this strange, new world.
There's going to be a trial.
Ruben's mouth forms the words but she doesn't hear them, not really.
There's going to be a trial for the Cabal, and you need to lead it.
"I'm nineteen," is what tumbles out of her mouth, bland and blank in between all the whizzing and whirling because the idea of it is ridiculous. I'm only nineteen.
"You are the Paragon," Ruben reminds her. "You'll be the mediator—the one who allows and denies information, testimony. You don't have to— A jury would ultimately decide. You are the Paragon: you need to be there."
"You can do it," she whispers, beneath this other horrifying mantle, the one she had not foreseen.
Heavy hands settle on her shoulders, weighing them down.
"I once had a pupil," he says, and she knows where this is going, but he persists. "A young, bright pupil—talented and strong and angry. She reminded me of myself—of who I would have been if I had grown up on the streets and not in a boarding school. I thought, I thought with guidance, with training and coaching she could be my legacy."
"I don't—" Allayria begins, pulling back, but he holds her in place.
"I was too slow," he continues, urgent now. "Too quiet, and a louder voice came in. A stronger voice who talked of action now, of punishment and retribution when I only spoke of peace. A boy who talked of consequence when I talked of mediation."
His grip tightens.
"I knew there were wounds, but I failed to understand how deep they went. I failed to understand the world from her perspective. I failed to meet her halfway."
"I don't—" Allayria gasps again, voice quavering, caught between anger and tears, all these ugly things building up into mulish resistance.
"Meg doesn't deserve to die for my mistakes."
"That's not—!" Fury comes to her aid, firing up against this, against the assertion, the idea. "You know that's not why. You know what she's done—"
"And you know why she did it," he answers still. "This is about more than justice, Allayria. This is about what they stand for, and how we respond will shape everything. If we fail again—"
She shakes her head and his hands seize either side of her face. She hears Lei shift behind them, standing up now from his shadowed corner and hovering, stationary and sunlit in the morning light.
"Listen to me," Ruben says, holding her face level with his. "This has to be fair—no, no, it's not just because of Meg, Allayria, I swear it—listen to me:
"The kingdoms are being torn apart. The Jarles are at our door, stealing our children—murdering them, experimenting on them—and inside people are starving. The young and poor are shipped off to the front lines or sold by rich, callous men like Brezkin to the Imperator. And then there's the Cabal, this group of poor, young people who are doing things, who whisper about all these wrongs, all the terrible things to which we have all already become numb."
He swallows.
"People don't believe in us anymore. They don't believe that, in the end, we will course correct—that we will do what is right. We can't let them down." His gaze bores into hers, his jaw set and resolute. "We can't let Ben win."
She opens her mouth to say something but her throat is dry.
"You can't let Ben win," he presses on, beseeching, believing. "And killing him is confirming every single awful thing he's said."
But it will keep me safe, she thinks selfishly, a swell of something else, something that bites like shame and sears like grief. He can't kill me if he's dead. He can't—
"Me, Beinsho, the others, we are a part of this," he continues, a light dimming in his blue eyes. "The common people don't trust us, and maybe we wouldn't deserve it if they did. But you, you are someone new; you can be the shining light, the symbol Ben is trying so hard to create. But you don't have to take us down a path of hatred and destruction, you can choose something better."
"There are no more holes to hide in, no more shadows to slink inside,"the Dynast's words echo, and Allayria can feel it all collapsing in on her, the trap she did not see. "Death did not let you go for nothing."
"I don't—" her voice rasps and air can't seem to fill her lungs properly. "I can't—"
Ruben's thumb skims the top of her cheek, a fatherly gesture meant to sooth and even in all her damage, it almost does.
"Don't write your end before you see your beginning," he tells her.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A/N: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown (™ya boy, Shakespeare) as Allayria learns more about Meg and Ruben's connection and what being the Paragon really entails. But why stop with one Skill master? Let's throw in a few kings next chapter.
