She felt blessed, like the Stars themselves had granted her this. There was no limit, no rules or constraints. She was boundless; she was home, safe and secure in his unbreakable embrace.
~
Shackled in an abrupt and demanding upbringing, Althera is...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The halls were already dark when Althera returned from the dungeons empty-handed. She'd only went with a skin of water and a pouch of some biscuits she'd swiped from the tray Kartella had brought for her to her rooms. The guards had still been slightly opposing when she asked them to move aside so she could enter - she didn't actually say that, though it had been thoroughly implied.
Zephyra was still the same as before - sporadically asking personal questions about her and watching Althera intently like she could see past the mask she was sure no one would be able to penetrate. She couldn't blame Zephyra, for she was in a foreign land and didn't know of anything or anyone around her. But then she hadn't exactly been too cold toward her either. Sometimes when she felt like it, she would even indulge herself in a conversation with Althera, and spend some time silently sharing the small pouch of water between them. A start for both of them.
Althera didn't really know in particular why she was doing it, but when she was alone in that room with the woman, everything just felt so right. Like everything she'd ever committed in the castle was explicitly wrong and being next to Zephyra in the dungeon cell was the only correct thing she had done so far.
She was talking nonsense, she groaned out as she made a turn, heading for her rooms. The moonlight was weak tonight, which meant she would have to be careful and watch where she was going in case she bumped into something or someone she didn't want to come across - Dasher, for that matter. His impassiveness always made her shudder, though she tried to hide it when in the presence of Valentine or anytime she was exposed to the public. And that secret, bitter amusement she'd seen on his face when he escorted her to Valentine's office was deeply exasperating, too. There was an entire list of things she could write about that captain and all the other nobles at court. Especially Rhaye - the majority of those things would be on the good side.
The first time she went to visit, he had helped her immensely and she hadn't been completely humiliated in front of the two guards. When she actually entered the cell with the girl - reluctantly, of course, for it still gave a frightening thoughts about what lived in the darkness - she'd thought he would just walk away and leave her there with a powerless rebel and two guards she was sure would be snickering behind her back when she wasn't paying attention to their antics. But he had stayed in the end and accompanied her in one way or another, and it was heartening knowing that he hadn't departed without a word of farewell.
It was good, Althera supposed, that she was dividing her time so that she could see both the rebel woman, who she greatly admired for her strong spirit, and Rhaye. It was natural for her before (when neither of them had perfectly appeared in her life yet) to be bored out of her mind and end up crawling into bed - not in exhaustion, but because she really had nothing else to do. But now she found herself waking up to the early morning sun actually wondering what to wear, knowing that Rhaye would be at her door and offering to take her to the dungeons for her drop-in on Zephyra.
