*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...
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The Paragon looks like she could faint.
Or maybe throw up. Either way, she's paler than a ghost, strapped up in restrictive bits of livery and pomp that clearly cause her skin to crawl, scrawling a look of trapped horror that the careful slackness of her face can't manage to hide.
This is not her strong suit.
Hiran had suspected it on the ride through the city, suspected it in the sharpening of her jawline in the sunset, the fixed way she looked above everyone else, as if she didn't want to be there, as if she didn't want to be anywhere.
She'll need practice if she wants ease, lessons if she angles for charm, but Hiran thinks this could work for her—not the vague look of nausea of course, but the steeliness. The coldness.
Now that crowd looms again just beyond these double doors and Hiran steps forward because her cowl is askew and the Gods know that Lei Chaudri, with all his militant obliviousness, won't know how to fix it.
"Just remember," he tells her as he adjusts the fabric, "they're far more terrified of you than you are of them."
She glares at him, eyes narrowing in instantaneous suspicion.
Are you laughing at me? they seem to ask. Are you mocking me?
The Paragon is not a trusting person.
Hiran winks because he knows it will annoy her, because he knows it's expected. He's the charmer, the pig-headed, white-toothed blowhard more interested in glory than sense, looking for a thrill, not a purpose. It used to bother him, but he's coming to find this narrow viewing lens useful.
"You've got the words if you need them," he reminds her, tilting his chin toward the slip clutched between her fingers, the paper blotched with Ruben's words.
"Dynast Wren has ensured the three members of the Cabal will receive fair trial," it reads, the words she will have to form, speak out to the sprawling masses below. "I accept my part as mediator. I will do my best to uphold..."
Spelling out everything she has to say... everything he wants her to say, he muses, the High King's request still lingering in the back of his mind.
"I don't know why some announcer can't say them instead," she blurts out, tone clipped, knuckles white against the parchment.
"People need to be reassured," he answers. "They want to know what you are made of, what kind of person you are."
Her jaw clicks and tightens, and he sets a hand on her shoulder.
"They just want a show," he tells her.
He joins Tara and Finn on the side balcony, noting how they hover stiffly there, wearing identical, strangled expressions. Their arms are set slightly apart from their bodies, as if this will somehow free them from the livery they have been stuffed into. Hiran approaches the railing and feels the familiar turn of attention, the shift of eyes in the crowd toward their box, and he flashes a smile at the masses below.
