*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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"What have you done?"
Ruben's words echo in her mind, but it's the pain in his expression that she pushes away.
"Why? Allayria, why—?"
She remembers it, remembers standing out there, looking at this sea of people, this sea of strangers she is suddenly responsible for, strangers who demand the right to know her, the right to a show, and she thought of Isati's face, of Wey's fracturing expression.
"They would just toss the ones that didn't do anything—" he had said, so bland and so forthright, not knowing he'd be dead in a matter of days, dead at the hands of the people around him...
"Yes, I like you a lot," Isati had hissed, all fire and madness, teeth bared in triumph. She's somewhere now, tinkering with some other ploy, some dark contraption...
"You can be the shining light, the symbol Ben is trying so hard to create—" Ruben had pressed too, desperate and pleading. "You can't let Ben win."
"If it couldn't be the pretty boy, I'm glad it's you."
"The soldiers would use them as target practice—"
"Why? Allayria, why—?"
"You can't let Ben win."
"We're going to have fun, the two of us..."
You can't let Ben win.
She sinks her head into the palms of her hands, elbows pressing on the cold table.
She had stood there on the balcony, looking at it all, and the script died in her mouth as the words she had thought climbing the steps to this tower came back, stronger, clearer than before:
I can't let them control me.
Now they know, she thinks, remembering how the rulers had stared, how they had gaped as she turned, back straight, face set, and walked off of the balcony. Now they know I won't just do what I am told.
In the twinkling twilight of that first night the Dynast had told her she was a fox that needs to be a warhound. Warhounds do not sit in judgment. Warhounds go into battle.
There is a soft knock on the door and she raises her head.
She does not know the man who enters. He is scraggly and sharp-eyed and he bows, giving the ill-fitting servant's garb an awkward tug as he slips a folded bit of paper out of his sleeve.
"Y-Your Excellence," he says, his eyes darting and watching not like a servant, but a thief as he inches forward, extending the letter toward her with one tremulous hand.
She watches him for a moment but then takes it, sliding a bit of thin metal under its clasp so the letter unfurls in her fingers.
Your Supreme Excellence of the Brightest of Lights, the note reads, and Allayria can hear the sardonic drawl of its author, see the sly smile on the wide mouth and the glitter of a pair of black eyes.
