*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 real world has become a nightmare.
Fae watches the angry plumes in the city, feeling, for once, that she truly deserves this. The night is dark, vicious, and the rolls of thunder feel like some sort of personal deliverance marching toward her.
It's strange that, in this moment, all she can think about is Leo. What he would have said if he was here, what his face would look like if he had saw.
He talked of murderous Jarles; little did he know of what slumbered in the streets around him.
"Dinner, Your Grace?"
It's Helen, shrouded in black, lingering in the door. Fae shakes her head, and then she turns, surveying the woman for a moment. Helen knew him too, knew Leo and Fae long before all of this.
She almost asks Helen, but lets the moment slip, lets the former housekeeper turn away and evaporate into the dark hall outside because in her heart of hearts Fae knows Leo couldn't have survived this. Good people don't make it out of here.
She can hear the shuffle of the spymaster behind her, hear the way he cautiously moves toward her, but here, at last, there is nothing left to fear. Nothing worse can come to pass.
"How is he?" Keno asks, and for once there is no wryness in his tone.
Her shoulder gives a half shrug, a vague, pitiful thing that cannot fully convey what her clumped, aching throat cannot verbalize. This morning feels so far away.
"Toulonne has moved the other children," he tells her and he says it quickly, as if to rip off a bandage, to cauterize a wound. "I don't think they are a risk. But it's better now—"
He doesn't finish the sentence.
"You couldn't have seen it coming," he says, and it is the first lie he's ever told her. "Caj did what he was supposed to do."
The Smith-caller is asleep now, or at least in a druggy stupor, something less than conscious but not truly slumbering. She had given the pills to him, made him swallow them and then pulled him into the soft darkness of his blanket-strewn bed. His hair had still been wet, but there was a blank hollowness in his eyes, something worse than the pain and the tears. He seemed distant even before the drugs began to work but the arms that had wrapped around her waist had still been strong, still, even in this waking nightmare, protective. He had drifted off with his face buried in her stomach, her hands in his hair, and she knows that once this is done she will go back to that dim room because, in the end, she promised to stay.
"The body," she says now, and her voice is a broken rasp.
"It has been taken care of," the spymaster answers immediately. "Decently. I made sure it was done decently."
She nods, wanting to say thanks, but not knowing how to stutter the words out. Her fingers are shaking at her side and she flexes them, as if to shake this off, the way she has shaken off so much else.
She lets her chin lift, lets the old hat, the invisible crown fall into place, and turns back, meaning to fake it a little longer, but she makes the mistake of meeting Keno's eyes, and there's something worse than pity in them.
He throws a long arm around her shoulders; and the other wraps around her waist.
"I'm sorry, kid," he says into her ear, and this is when Fae breaks.
In a distant corner of her mind, she can feel him rocking her, his hand stroking her hair, but the fists she clutches on his coat seem more real, the stuttering, strangled gasps of air she takes against his neck more present than anything else.
It's only when there's a sharp rap on the door that they break apart, and the spymaster moves, unlatching it with one hand as something silver shimmers in his other. But it's only General Hin on the other side, ghostly pale and hollow-eyed.
Her wrinkled hand clutches tight to a crumpled piece of parchment and she holds it up, eyes wide, looking to Fae and saying:
"The Paragon is besieging Thalassa City."
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A/N: Welcome to the end of Part 1! I wasn't going to write anything here so to preserve the ~aesthetic~ but who am I kidding at this point? I can never stay serious. I just wanted to thank everyone who's made it here, especially those that comment. The past few weeks have been such a lovely influx of hilarious (and somewhat homicidal) commentary and I'm having so much fun with you guys. Which is good because man, have these last these chapters been a bum out. Hm, lets turn our eyes to brighter shores for Part 2, shall we?
*AHEM*
Oh, also I'm jetting off to Europe for a work trip next week so you'll be getting Part 2 early. :)
