*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Ash and smoke plume around a city of brick and flames.
Fae Urilong watches it in the twilight, tucked up in a high tower, buffered from the hot breath of flame by a fortress of rock and steel.
This is not the Solveigard City she remembers.
Down below her people are dying. And they're also killing, streaking red across their faces as they shriek and rage, all fury, no sense. They're killing each other.
She watches as the next unit of troops marches as a single block, shimmering tints of steel twinkling in moonlight, toward the gates. The hinges creak and groan as the huge doors open, and then they are off, out somewhere in this quagmire of chaos to try to enforce order.
There is only one person in this fortress not unsettled by the bedlam rioting on below and he is lounging in the chair behind her, legs stretched out and crossed. Languid, posing.
"Watching it won't change anything," he purrs, a slice of callous sense on this dreamy nightmare. "You're just putting yourself through unnecessary torture."
"I'd prefer to not live up to all the lies they're telling about me," she answers, not bothering to look back. "I won't give him the satisfaction."
"Darling, he's going to say that about you whether you stand there or not."
Fae turns back from the window to look at the thief. He cocks a dark eyebrow, head tilting to the side, giving that sly look, that subtle simmer of cleverness and smugness.
You know I am right, it says. You know it is pointless.
She ignores this, moving away from the window but away from him as well, toward the pitcher and cups tucked on a small end table. She remembers when they first met; now a couple of months ago, but several weeks after her return to Solveigard City.
She had asked the Paragon to arrange it before she left, asked in the egg-crack yellow-streaked sunlight of dawn, and the dark-eyed woman had watched, speculatively, a frown twitching across her mouth before she had answered: "I'll tell him. He'll come or he won't. We'll see."
At the time Fae thought this ridiculous—an insubordinate deciding whether or not to follow a direct order—but in the first few days back, amidst the turmoil of shrieking nobles, collapsing buildings, mutinying guards, and rioting commoners she began to understand. Rats don't climb onto a sinking ship.
And then, in the dark of the night, he showed up, slipping through all the defenses, all their precautions, creeping all the way up to her study. He had lounged in her chair, as handsome as the night she had spied on him in her father's study, but now with a drink in hand, waiting for her.
"This whiskey is excellent," had been the first words she'd heard from him, all white teeth glinting in his wide, artful mouth. "It's no porter but..."
