*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
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She watches them from a balcony in the egg-white dawn, five figures that walk down whispering, frosted paths out amongst the dew-fog of bleary hours, their black cloaks trailing the ghostly mist. Around them, four steeds snort steam, pawing at the ground and tossing against their reins. The one crowned figure, the one they will leave behind, walks amongst them still, a pale hand set on the final man's shoulder. The Queen of Keesark descends from her castle to bid her all friends farewell.
They stop and the tallest leaves them, his golden halo of hair glinting in the trace daylight as he moves out, toward the stables. Allayria knows where he is going. She knows what he is retrieving.
When he returns, he brings it drawn in its own rickety wagon by a small, pale horse. There is tension in the Nature-caller, tension building along the broad bridge of his shoulders. Allayria can feel it, along with the familiar, deep fissure of pain, crusted over but still there, still pulsing.
And the queen, the queen is nervous. She had made Hiran promise, Allayria senses, promise something with this, but as the wagon draws nearer, as that dark box approaches, Fae Urilong wishes she hadn't. Her hand goes, Allayria can see—not from her own two eyes, but from those of her watchers—and grips the Protector's tightly, and there's a notion there, just on the surface of her, a need to feel the reassuring pulse of his blood.
A foolish impulse, Allayria thinks, has the phantom urge to explain. Reliance on others won't keep you alive.
Allayria will leave one of the creatures with her.
The will-be Imperator of the Jarles squeezes the queen's hand back but his face and all easily read aspects of him are nothing but frozen granite, glittering hard in the pale morning light.
A cypher, Allayria thinks without much concern, asalways.
She'll send one with him too.
It's Hiran who pulls the lid of the coffin up, Hiran who handles it with gentle care, and the queen gasps, clutches a white-knuckled fist to her lips, when she sees the prone, small form inside.
It wasn't real until now, Allayria surmises, watching the pain bloom over Urilong, like a flower, spreading wide, with long, poisonous petals. Not really.
At the queen's other side, Tara Leaft steps forward, placing something inside the box, but it's not her Allayria concentrates on. The Paragon's gaze drifts purposefully to the outskirts of the circle, where one of their company hangs back, faltering on stiff, uncertain feet. He is afraid, though this is not the first time he has seen this body.
He is a whirlstorm, this man of hers, a quiet hurricane of confusion and hurt, torn by all these things borne upon tired shoulders. There's something in this that inspires a strange regret, quite at odds with what she feels compelled to tell Fae Urilong, a regret she should feel more keenly, feel about other things too.
