*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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The Tower doors open to a soft morning glow that spills, yolk-yellow and wavering, onto the cold stone tiles, tiles that become obscured as the arriving party walks across them.
Although she is cloaked in armor, fastened in surety of herself and her people, the heart in Fae Urilong's chest beats rapidly, painfully, like a stitch in her side, a hitch in her breath. It tattoos every doubt and every hope for what is walking toward her, every question swirling, dark and wonderingly, inside her head.
The light shimmers over the newcomers, a golden halo that casts their faces in shadow while throwing Fae, clothed in black and perched on her throne at the top of the white marble steps, in clear view. But she doesn't need to see their faces to know them, and her hand clutches at her armrest, white-knuckled and trembling, because although she has so much hope now, so much relief, she wonders at their silence. She wonders why they do not call to her.
When they approach close enough, when the light dims so that the woman in the lead falls into shadow and then those behind her, Fae glimpses her friends' faces.
Allayria. Tara. Lei. Hiran. And a familiar face, though she does not know its owner—Jin, she surmises with pleasure. Hin will be happy.
Fae stands from her throne, happiness sending her heart into her throat, blocking her voice, but still she wants nothing more than to run down to them, to Allayria, still so grave, so unsmiling, to Tara, to Hiran—
Then she sees Hiran's face.
Fae's heart falls straight to the pit of her stomach, hitting it like a stone.
What happened?
She looks around, sees the empty spaces in the party, and opens her mouth, tries to work her jaw to ask—
But Hiran, white-faced, ghostly gaunt Hiran, shakes his head just a little, just enough, his dark-rimmed gaze not leaving hers.
And for the first time since she drove the Cabal out of this city, Fae becomes afraid.
"Paragon," she says instead, her voice a croak, her hands quickly gathering behind her back where they can tremble unseen. "Welcome back."
Allayria takes the marble steps at a steady climb. At first Fae had thought she had only looked somber, strangely subdued, but as she approaches, her ashen face struck by errant sunbeams, Fae's hands seize into fists.
She looks like a corpse, Fae thinks in revulsion, in terror. Everything looks dead but the eyes, the eyes...
Those flat, black things latch onto Fae.
"Queen Urilong," Allayria says with a half-smile, as if this is a joke bantered between old friends, and it would be if only, if only... "I bring you back the spoils of war."
Fae glances behind her, to the silent cluster of forms lurking behind her friends she had not spied before. She can't hide the shiver now as she looks at their cold, white masks.
