*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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In a pale dawn, the streets outside the Tower simmer like a dying pyre—black but glowing underneath the ash, the dust. In the tall flute of the Tower hall an old woman arrives, coming in the way she always has, upright and diligent, but a little delayed. Her attendance to these morning breakfasts has been somewhat lacking as of late. A regretful consequence of the city being set ablaze.
She is here now though, in the ashes and the settling dust, marching down, back straight, chin high, only faltering just at the end of her journey. Just for a second.
And while her bow is as rigid and correct as ever, even good breeding cannot hide the slight widening of her eyes, the slackness of her jaw as she glances up.
"Lady Weitrou."
It's a gnarl of bloodied dressings that greets the dowager, obscuring half of the young woman's face, though the visible eye fixes steadily on her, unwavering as the dowager takes in the crownless head, the high collar, the reek of smoke, and the gleaming black armor.
And then the dowager's gaze drops, fixes on what lies on the table below.
Her gaze stays.
For once Lady Weitrou does not ask her usual question. She doesn't say anything at all.
The silence lays heavy, a palpable body hovering over them, and the fists Fae's hands have made are out on top of the table—held upright, on either side of Meg's bloody head, which gawps from its silver plate at the woman standing in front of it.
Outside of here the world is still dark, still smoky and tumultuous; the rumbling grumble of thunderclouds and cracked concrete still murmuring in the distance. But in here at this table, Fae doesn't feel its heavy burden. There's a small, fractured glint of light here now, in the ash, in the ruins. A small kernel of hope.
"Well," Fae, last of the Urilongs, Queen of Keesark, demands in the cold silence. "Have I killed the pretender?"
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