*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...
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The black clouds rumble and spit above Thalassa City, grumbling their displeasure in the yellow-green flashes that illuminate darkened, slick paths and glow on the pale bodies, facedown and floating, bloating in seawater.
Allayria's hair is a black slop that clings to her forehead and cheeks as she pushes inside a shadowy hall—an atrium of a crumpling hotel.
Far nicer than where I stayed the last time, far finer than—
There's muck and mud on the tiles now; the walls are a ruin of neglect and abuse.
No fine things for a Jarles soldier.
But the people inside give no allegiance to Abadi Chaudri; even if one shares her blood. Some of it is tracking down the side of his face as he approaches, his narrow eyes scrutinizing.
"All well on your end?" she asks.
Lei nods.
"And yours?"
"Sufficiently," she answers, mouth pursing.
"The informant...?" But he stops when she looks at him.
Allayria opens her mouth, and then she glances around, gaze flitting to the soldiers gathered in pockets, the officers and General Jin conversing in the corners of the room.
"Later," she murmurs, a hand on his drenched shoulder, tensing at the electric thrill of his warmth. He's in plainclothes, which means the North side had finished breaching the city far sooner than Seaside had.
"You're alright?" he asks, his gaze flitting from her hand to her face, his voice dropping low, body shifting closer, shielding the sound from the surrounding party. He's watching her, and she looks back into his cool brown eyes.
She only nods this time.
Later, the first kiss is the slotting of mouths, seeking, in the dim light of a hidden stairwell. The noises of others has funneled down to a low murmur, buffered by these concrete walls and steel frames. There's the hard pressure of his forearm around her waist as she sinks into him, as they meld for a moment in this artificial twilight.
He asks it against her skin, words only meant for her, to be exchanged and then buried where no one else can see.
"He's dead then?"
The feeble bookkeeper, with his slow voice and gentle hands, his sharp, watching eyes. The bookkeeper with the spidery scrawl, living underneath the Jarles' noses, writing to the careful lieutenant who cracked his code, who wrote in the same language back, who knew what it felt like to hide under your own skin—
Her hand curls into a fist in his hair and she kisses him in answer, because Lei knows she would have brought the man to him, knows she would have tried if there had been hope.
Your sister skewered him like a pig.
She holds this back in the hard clutch on his shoulder, the rough way they tangle, all limbs and relief.
