*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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Silence hangs heavy in the air after Ruben says the words. It holds them captive, a hulking, looming thing that stretches on too long to disrupt, too aggressively for anyone to look up.
Allayria can't look at Fae. She can't look at anyone.
Dead. All dead.
Hiran breaks the silence first, his elbows thudding down onto the table as he sets his head in his hands. Beside him, Fae's fingers are white as they clutch senselessly at the table. Allayria can't look at her face.
"All?" Lei asks quietly.
"Yes," Ruben murmurs. "They were meeting before Sofo deployed them. All the heads of the Keesark houses... and their sons."
A feast for Ben, Allayria thinks, unbidden, a strangling mix of grief and rage pulling tautly along her jaw. A little present, wrapped in a bow, opened in a single, swift movement. I should have seen this. I should have known. I should have warned them—
"Commander Sinfui?"
Ruben's eyes close.
"He was there as well."
He was in the sewers, Allayria thinks, looking up to see how Lei's expression hardens into a mask. He was one of those who found Lei.
"Thank you for watching out for my sister," Leo had said, and that easy smile is gone now, buried somewhere beneath dirt and stone.
Dead. All dead.
Tara moves, lurching up from her seat, and they all watch, wondering if she means to flee, but she walks over to a cabinet and yanks it open.
The clear bottle hits the table with a clank, the cork coming off with a loud pop. She hauls it up, clutching the thin neck in a white-knuckled hand as she raises it above her head.
"Sofo," she says, and she drinks.
They pass it around and when it comes back she raises it again.
"Sinfui," she says.
She looks at Fae when the bottle comes back.
"Lord Urilong," she murmurs.
And then she looks at Allayria the last time because Fae can't look at anyone, and there's the threat of tears in Tara's eyes when she finds Allaryia's.
"Leo."
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A/N: Leo! We knew you too briefly. And we are now down a ruler, and thus (for now) down a kingdom. Things are going so well.
Chapter notes: Leo thanks Allayria in Partisan's "Arrival" chapter and Allayria hears about Sinfui finding Lei in the "The Boy in the Sewer" chapter.
