chapter 15: in our minds at war
There had been chaos. Disordered, panicked flight. There had been rows and rows of soldier trees and crossing vines and tree roots that rose and fell like ocean waves. Doku had felt sick, well aware of the arrow buried deep in her thigh as she chased after Elira's fleeting shadow.
There had been five, and now there were two.
Doku sat, cross-legged, on the forest floor, with Elira's dagger in one hand and a solid, heavy stick between her teeth. With a dry snap, she broke the arrow's shaft from the head, and carefully, very carefully, dug the tip of the knife under the stone buried in her leg. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and pried.
As a rule, Rotheliens never used weapons, and Doku never had. Knives, like the one she held, were fine for skinning or preparing meat, and weapons were acceptable in the hands of fairies and humans - who needed any help they could get in a fair fight – or Myr'l – who had an eerie fascination with sharp things anyway – but not for Rotheliens. Another one of those old traditions the Rotheliens clung to as a mark of distinction, difference.
The arrow head came free, and on this strange island, in the middle of a stranger sea, Doku pressed her palm against the red hole that marked the fleshy part of her right thigh and stifled the hiss of pain that rose in her throat.
Some days, tradition or no, she wanted to pick up a bow and arrow herself, just to make sure the bastards realized how much this hurt.
Nearby, Elira stood, still and silent, in the fading, fragmented orange light of late afternoon. Her ears were taut, and her eyes scanned the forest around her in quick, darting movements. Only the constant back-and-forth flicker of her tail gave Doku confidence that her sole companion hadn't suddenly been transmuted to stone.
'Sole companion' resounded in her ears, and Doku looked up into the tree branches, searching for something she didn't really believe existed. Teonanácatl, I swear, if you've let them die too then I will see you burn.
Elira moved, suddenly, and Doku nearly shot to her feet out of reflex alone, but the Myr'l seemed at content finally.
"Gonna live?" she asked, eyeing the cut as if she could assess Doku's strength of character from a single wound, reddening as more blood rushed to its mouth.
"Most likely yes," Doku snorted, tying the sash from her waist into a tight tourniquet.
Elira nodded. "Good. We've got ground to cover tonight. I'd like to be well out of R'lau territory before light tomorrow."
Which made sense. The R'lau could almost certainly hunt at night and in daylight, but it would be much easier to escape in shadows than under the full glare of the sun. There was no way to fault the logic, except...
"The others are lost in R'lau territory," Doku pointed out, and she watched the roll of Elira's eyes and the way the Myr'l slid bonelessly into a crouch.
"And if they die before we get to them then they weren't strong enough to deserve to live. It isn't a hard concept."
If Devon had been here, a fight would be beginning now. Quick, offended shouts of "murderer!" followed by Elira's eye roll and derisive flick of mane. Ria would settle back against a tree and watch tensely, afraid of what these strains could mean for her tiny party. Doku could see the scene in her mind, and every muscle in her body felt stretched thin.
"Everyone deserves to live. No one deserves to die."
At this, Elira snorted. "You bloody well sound like Devon. There's nothing we can do about it. They'll be alive, or they'll be dead." She swept back to her feet and stared at anything that wasn't Doku, adding roughly, "And it's their own damn fault. Come on. We have a lot of ground to cover."
The sky was almost red through the branches now that sunset was in full force. Doku ignored the way her skin prickled, and she got to her feet to follow as the promises she had made Ria pounded in her ears.
--
(Tancred is mighty even in ruin. Green and gold flags with Tyball's crest flicker in the wind even as an army pours in through the gates. The night is soundless, and the sky is growing red. Smoke pours out of windows, filling mouths and noses and tasting like blood. Flames dance high as the city burns.)
In the dark of his bedroom, the young man woke without a sound. He carded a hand through his dark hair, sticky with drying sweat, and concentrated on the sound of his breathing.
Somewhere in the fading images, Greggory thought he remembered a face.
--
"Another vision?" The blonde woman asked, her visible eye narrowing slightly at the captain to her right.
He shrugged, and his boots clicked sharply on the corridor stones as he matched her pace. "I couldn't say for sure, General. His highness wasn't exactly in a mood to share, with all due respect."
The woman raised the one, pale eyebrow not covered by her eyepatch but said nothing although her lips twisted tightly for a moment.
"At any rate," the captain continued, "he asks you to meet him in the council room shortly." He snapped out a quick salute and a respectful "General" before turning on his heel and fleeing down the hall.
"Coward," she breathed.
--
"This is the blind leading, yes?" Doku asked as they halted for the third time in an hour. Scents crossed here, interwoven with the clinging smell of damp earth, and Doku could taste Damia in the air heading first east and then south.
"The actual saying is the blind leading the blind," Elira grumbled, "and be quiet."
Confident that Elira couldn't see her face, Doku crossed her eyes irritably and looked at her feet which were bare now, ripped cloth shoes having been shed in favour of the hard scales on the bottoms of her feet.
"They're running in circles," Elira sighed, rubbing her face.
"Yes," Doku agreed. "Are we?"
"Damned if I know. It would help if I had, you know, some idea of where we are."
"Bugger," Doku hazarded, hoping the word made sense in context. As Elira had been saying it, and many others, through the last few miles of jungle, she figured it probably did.
"Yeah," Elira said in a growl. "You can say that again."
Doku assumed that was probably sarcasm and watched as Elira turned in a circle. She seemed to be trying hard to latch onto a smell or a sound that would lead them in the right direction.
If there was a right direction.
If they haven't been eaten by a mob of violence-mad kittens, Doku thought desperately.
"Stop looking so depressed," Elira ordered, eyeing Doku sideways. "I promised I would see you kits through to the port, and I don't break promises."
A bird called in the distance, and Doku kicked at the ground, ignoring a flash of pain when her bare toes slammed against a hidden tree root. "Sometimes, it is not your choice to make," she said and then added, "They went left."
"I know," Elira frowned and shook her head as if to add "Rotheliens! I don't understand any of you!" Which was a sentiment Doku found herself heartily endorsing.
They turned left.
--
Greggory, the Prince of Tyball and last of the Traugott royal line, drummed his fingers on the table and waited with little show of patience.
"I think we all wish it were that easy, sire," General Claire Richtter was saying, her good eye narrowed in equal impatience. "But it's not. If we had taken Achryn by surprise, as I originally suggested, rather than stepping through this pantomime show of force, we could be marching on the capital this instant. As things are, however, I don't think it's best to go rushing in unprepared."
"Hardly unprepared," said the hooded man standing at the council room door. A slight lilt in his voice made the words resound, sing-song and silky, through the room. "Tyball is still by far the mightiest military force in all the kingdoms. What can Achryn do?"
Claire grimaced, every ounce of her dislike for the man etched on her face. "Not much on their own, but the mercenaries they have in their service–"
"Are not a match for our troops either," Greggory interrupted, straightening in his seat and giving her a look that forbade objections.
For a moment, she was angry but silent, caught up in some internal argument. Finally, she said, "We're not ready."
"Then you had better do something about that, general," he replied.
--
"Dammit," Doku hissed as her foot caught against a stone yet again. She'd taken to trying out curses to pass the time and so far 'dammit' was her favourite. It seemed to encapsulate this whole aggravating, terrifying scenario. Dammit.
Just ahead, Elira paused in pushing a clawing branch out of her face to glance over her shoulder. "If you pay more attention to where you're walking, you'll stop doing that."
"I can barely see the ground in daylight," Doku grumbled. "I am expected to see it at night?"
Elira might have grunted a reply, but a ripple shook the ground, making Doku pause and forget all else. No, not a ripple, she decided, as another vibration slid beneath her feet. That was a thump, a full tremor.
"Do you feel that?"
"No," Elira replied quietly, though her ears were twitching in tiny convulsions. "But I hear it."
Doku’s fingers tightened into fists, and she took a step closer to Elira. Somehow silently, Elira unsheathed her sword and stood, wary in the darkness.
"What is it?" asked Doku.
"Big," was all Elira could answer before something huge and furry exploded out of the brush.
--
She didn't even pretend not to slam the door as she stalked out of the council room. The guardsman at the entrance jumped and gave her a shy, slightly embarrassed look but, thankfully, said nothing.
Claire growled low. "Damn," she hissed, mostly to herself. "There are just– There are just days when I want to–" She made an abortive strangling motion with her hands and sighed wearily. "Run down to the barracks," she told the guardsman. "I want that idiot Gidall in my office, now."
Wide-eyed, maybe a little awed that she had even spoken to him, the guardsman saluted and scampered off to the barracks on the edge of the palace grounds. As she watched him go, Claire had the fleeting feeling that even as a child, she had never been that young.
--
"Can we eat it?" Doku asked, squatting and poking at the large, orange, and very dead, granthow. Devon, she had realized some time ago, had been carrying all the food stuffs, and while she wanted to find the others as quickly as possible, she doubted it would be possible at all if she died from starvation first.
Elira pulled out her dagger and tossed it Doku's way. "I wouldn't, but it's technically edible."
Doku sliced in, then carefully brushed wiry ginger hairs off the piece of meat. Warily, Doku touched her tongue to it and was rewarded for her caution because, honestly, she had never tasted anything more revolting.
"Told you," Elira said, clearly amused, as Doku spat out viciously.
"You did not tell me," she snapped. "You said you would not. You did not say it would taste like that." Under her breath, she added, "Satand’ass el sassyr’tl."
Stupid cats.
Elira smirked, a flashing dare. "What was that?"
"Nothing." Doku sat back on her heels. Her thigh was throbbing, but it wasn't so bad that she couldn't ignore it. She'd spent a week after...after it happened unable to move while her skin closed up and newly exposed scales hardened, and compared to that pain, this was nothing. Still, she rubbed her hand over the makeshift bandage and stared into the distance for a while.
"What are their chances?" she asked finally, and Elira didn't have to ask who 'they' were.
"Assuming they outran the R'lau with the fairy injured?" she said, one foot tapping restlessly on the ground. "Not good, and it's going to get worse the farther away from R'lau territory they get."
Doku swallowed and asked the question she'd been trying not to think. "What are our chances?"
Elira looked briefly grim. "At the moment? Good. If we're still here in the morning when they pick up our trail again?" Her grimace was answer enough, and they fell back into silence.
Blood was soaking through her pantleg, and condensation was soaking through her shirt, and sitting motionless on the forest floor, Doku thought about her promises.
She had promised Ria that she would see her to Tyball, and somewhere along the line, she had promised to keep Ria safe as well. But long, long ago, she had made another promise to herself, one that trumped the rest, and even if all the others had to be broken and everything else crumbled, she would see that one fulfilled.
There was a choice to make here, and while she could barely stand to speak it aloud, Doku chose to live.
She stood up shakily, her leg buckling once under her weight, and looked at Elira who was either very good at hiding concern or honestly uncaring. Either way, the Myr'l seemed more at ease than she had been for a while, tension and frustration pooling out into the surroundings. Doku could hazard no guess as to why she had left her home orginally, especially now when she looked as thoroughly in her element as she ever had.
Just as Doku opened her mouth to suggest they move on, they heard it. Or rather, Elira heard it, her neck muscles tightening, and her eyes widening just slightly. Doku felt it, syncopated beats in the ground like the pounding of many fists on tight drumskins.
"What is that?" she asked, although she could almost tell now, could almost pick the three sets of footsteps apart.
Elira's answering grin was sly and maybe, almost, genuinely happy.
"Incompetence," she said.
--
The knock was not unexpected. Claire took the time to plant her pen back in the well and steeple her fingers on the desktop before barking out a clipped "enter" to whoever was waiting on the other side.
The 'whoever,' however, was not whom she had been expecting. Namely, not Gidall but the young guardsman from before, his ears a bright, nervous red.
"General?"
"Yes, guardsman," Claire replied, and her voice was soft even though she hadn't meant it to be.
"I'm...I'm afraid I couldn't find Commander Gidall, sir."
"Is that so?"
The guardsman inclined his head a little, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, hard. "Yessir. It, uh, it appears he hasn't returned to the capital, sir. His ship isn't in the harbour, and I asked around, and no one's seen Theo, uh, that is, Lieutenant Amsel for weeks."
Claire bit down on the curses that rose to her tongue. The boy didn't need to deal with a pissed off commanding officer. Instead, she said, quite calmly, "Indeed. Thank you, guardsman."
He made a stilted little movement somewhere between a nod, a bow, and a salute and escaped out the door. When the latch clicked into place behind him, Claire very slowly picked up her ink well and hurled it at the window.
--
(Glass shatters. A girl screams, angry, incoherent. For a moment, Claire's pale hair is the only thing in view, then the floor rises up like an angry crowd, and the air sizzles. Blue eyes are black, and the world constricts. Claws and fangs dig deep into the city's foundation. The walls bleed in slow motion.)
Like every night since his childhood, Greggory woke to silence. Like every night since this vision began, he clutched his skull and buried his face in his knees.
"I won't let it," he promised. "I won't let it. I won't let it. I won't."
There had been five, and now there were two.
Doku sat, cross-legged, on the forest floor, with Elira's dagger in one hand and a solid, heavy stick between her teeth. With a dry snap, she broke the arrow's shaft from the head, and carefully, very carefully, dug the tip of the knife under the stone buried in her leg. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and pried.
As a rule, Rotheliens never used weapons, and Doku never had. Knives, like the one she held, were fine for skinning or preparing meat, and weapons were acceptable in the hands of fairies and humans - who needed any help they could get in a fair fight – or Myr'l – who had an eerie fascination with sharp things anyway – but not for Rotheliens. Another one of those old traditions the Rotheliens clung to as a mark of distinction, difference.
The arrow head came free, and on this strange island, in the middle of a stranger sea, Doku pressed her palm against the red hole that marked the fleshy part of her right thigh and stifled the hiss of pain that rose in her throat.
Some days, tradition or no, she wanted to pick up a bow and arrow herself, just to make sure the bastards realized how much this hurt.
Nearby, Elira stood, still and silent, in the fading, fragmented orange light of late afternoon. Her ears were taut, and her eyes scanned the forest around her in quick, darting movements. Only the constant back-and-forth flicker of her tail gave Doku confidence that her sole companion hadn't suddenly been transmuted to stone.
'Sole companion' resounded in her ears, and Doku looked up into the tree branches, searching for something she didn't really believe existed. Teonanácatl, I swear, if you've let them die too then I will see you burn.
Elira moved, suddenly, and Doku nearly shot to her feet out of reflex alone, but the Myr'l seemed at content finally.
"Gonna live?" she asked, eyeing the cut as if she could assess Doku's strength of character from a single wound, reddening as more blood rushed to its mouth.
"Most likely yes," Doku snorted, tying the sash from her waist into a tight tourniquet.
Elira nodded. "Good. We've got ground to cover tonight. I'd like to be well out of R'lau territory before light tomorrow."
Which made sense. The R'lau could almost certainly hunt at night and in daylight, but it would be much easier to escape in shadows than under the full glare of the sun. There was no way to fault the logic, except...
"The others are lost in R'lau territory," Doku pointed out, and she watched the roll of Elira's eyes and the way the Myr'l slid bonelessly into a crouch.
"And if they die before we get to them then they weren't strong enough to deserve to live. It isn't a hard concept."
If Devon had been here, a fight would be beginning now. Quick, offended shouts of "murderer!" followed by Elira's eye roll and derisive flick of mane. Ria would settle back against a tree and watch tensely, afraid of what these strains could mean for her tiny party. Doku could see the scene in her mind, and every muscle in her body felt stretched thin.
"Everyone deserves to live. No one deserves to die."
At this, Elira snorted. "You bloody well sound like Devon. There's nothing we can do about it. They'll be alive, or they'll be dead." She swept back to her feet and stared at anything that wasn't Doku, adding roughly, "And it's their own damn fault. Come on. We have a lot of ground to cover."
The sky was almost red through the branches now that sunset was in full force. Doku ignored the way her skin prickled, and she got to her feet to follow as the promises she had made Ria pounded in her ears.
--
(Tancred is mighty even in ruin. Green and gold flags with Tyball's crest flicker in the wind even as an army pours in through the gates. The night is soundless, and the sky is growing red. Smoke pours out of windows, filling mouths and noses and tasting like blood. Flames dance high as the city burns.)
In the dark of his bedroom, the young man woke without a sound. He carded a hand through his dark hair, sticky with drying sweat, and concentrated on the sound of his breathing.
Somewhere in the fading images, Greggory thought he remembered a face.
--
"Another vision?" The blonde woman asked, her visible eye narrowing slightly at the captain to her right.
He shrugged, and his boots clicked sharply on the corridor stones as he matched her pace. "I couldn't say for sure, General. His highness wasn't exactly in a mood to share, with all due respect."
The woman raised the one, pale eyebrow not covered by her eyepatch but said nothing although her lips twisted tightly for a moment.
"At any rate," the captain continued, "he asks you to meet him in the council room shortly." He snapped out a quick salute and a respectful "General" before turning on his heel and fleeing down the hall.
"Coward," she breathed.
--
"This is the blind leading, yes?" Doku asked as they halted for the third time in an hour. Scents crossed here, interwoven with the clinging smell of damp earth, and Doku could taste Damia in the air heading first east and then south.
"The actual saying is the blind leading the blind," Elira grumbled, "and be quiet."
Confident that Elira couldn't see her face, Doku crossed her eyes irritably and looked at her feet which were bare now, ripped cloth shoes having been shed in favour of the hard scales on the bottoms of her feet.
"They're running in circles," Elira sighed, rubbing her face.
"Yes," Doku agreed. "Are we?"
"Damned if I know. It would help if I had, you know, some idea of where we are."
"Bugger," Doku hazarded, hoping the word made sense in context. As Elira had been saying it, and many others, through the last few miles of jungle, she figured it probably did.
"Yeah," Elira said in a growl. "You can say that again."
Doku assumed that was probably sarcasm and watched as Elira turned in a circle. She seemed to be trying hard to latch onto a smell or a sound that would lead them in the right direction.
If there was a right direction.
If they haven't been eaten by a mob of violence-mad kittens, Doku thought desperately.
"Stop looking so depressed," Elira ordered, eyeing Doku sideways. "I promised I would see you kits through to the port, and I don't break promises."
A bird called in the distance, and Doku kicked at the ground, ignoring a flash of pain when her bare toes slammed against a hidden tree root. "Sometimes, it is not your choice to make," she said and then added, "They went left."
"I know," Elira frowned and shook her head as if to add "Rotheliens! I don't understand any of you!" Which was a sentiment Doku found herself heartily endorsing.
They turned left.
--
Greggory, the Prince of Tyball and last of the Traugott royal line, drummed his fingers on the table and waited with little show of patience.
"I think we all wish it were that easy, sire," General Claire Richtter was saying, her good eye narrowed in equal impatience. "But it's not. If we had taken Achryn by surprise, as I originally suggested, rather than stepping through this pantomime show of force, we could be marching on the capital this instant. As things are, however, I don't think it's best to go rushing in unprepared."
"Hardly unprepared," said the hooded man standing at the council room door. A slight lilt in his voice made the words resound, sing-song and silky, through the room. "Tyball is still by far the mightiest military force in all the kingdoms. What can Achryn do?"
Claire grimaced, every ounce of her dislike for the man etched on her face. "Not much on their own, but the mercenaries they have in their service–"
"Are not a match for our troops either," Greggory interrupted, straightening in his seat and giving her a look that forbade objections.
For a moment, she was angry but silent, caught up in some internal argument. Finally, she said, "We're not ready."
"Then you had better do something about that, general," he replied.
--
"Dammit," Doku hissed as her foot caught against a stone yet again. She'd taken to trying out curses to pass the time and so far 'dammit' was her favourite. It seemed to encapsulate this whole aggravating, terrifying scenario. Dammit.
Just ahead, Elira paused in pushing a clawing branch out of her face to glance over her shoulder. "If you pay more attention to where you're walking, you'll stop doing that."
"I can barely see the ground in daylight," Doku grumbled. "I am expected to see it at night?"
Elira might have grunted a reply, but a ripple shook the ground, making Doku pause and forget all else. No, not a ripple, she decided, as another vibration slid beneath her feet. That was a thump, a full tremor.
"Do you feel that?"
"No," Elira replied quietly, though her ears were twitching in tiny convulsions. "But I hear it."
Doku’s fingers tightened into fists, and she took a step closer to Elira. Somehow silently, Elira unsheathed her sword and stood, wary in the darkness.
"What is it?" asked Doku.
"Big," was all Elira could answer before something huge and furry exploded out of the brush.
--
She didn't even pretend not to slam the door as she stalked out of the council room. The guardsman at the entrance jumped and gave her a shy, slightly embarrassed look but, thankfully, said nothing.
Claire growled low. "Damn," she hissed, mostly to herself. "There are just– There are just days when I want to–" She made an abortive strangling motion with her hands and sighed wearily. "Run down to the barracks," she told the guardsman. "I want that idiot Gidall in my office, now."
Wide-eyed, maybe a little awed that she had even spoken to him, the guardsman saluted and scampered off to the barracks on the edge of the palace grounds. As she watched him go, Claire had the fleeting feeling that even as a child, she had never been that young.
--
"Can we eat it?" Doku asked, squatting and poking at the large, orange, and very dead, granthow. Devon, she had realized some time ago, had been carrying all the food stuffs, and while she wanted to find the others as quickly as possible, she doubted it would be possible at all if she died from starvation first.
Elira pulled out her dagger and tossed it Doku's way. "I wouldn't, but it's technically edible."
Doku sliced in, then carefully brushed wiry ginger hairs off the piece of meat. Warily, Doku touched her tongue to it and was rewarded for her caution because, honestly, she had never tasted anything more revolting.
"Told you," Elira said, clearly amused, as Doku spat out viciously.
"You did not tell me," she snapped. "You said you would not. You did not say it would taste like that." Under her breath, she added, "Satand’ass el sassyr’tl."
Stupid cats.
Elira smirked, a flashing dare. "What was that?"
"Nothing." Doku sat back on her heels. Her thigh was throbbing, but it wasn't so bad that she couldn't ignore it. She'd spent a week after...after it happened unable to move while her skin closed up and newly exposed scales hardened, and compared to that pain, this was nothing. Still, she rubbed her hand over the makeshift bandage and stared into the distance for a while.
"What are their chances?" she asked finally, and Elira didn't have to ask who 'they' were.
"Assuming they outran the R'lau with the fairy injured?" she said, one foot tapping restlessly on the ground. "Not good, and it's going to get worse the farther away from R'lau territory they get."
Doku swallowed and asked the question she'd been trying not to think. "What are our chances?"
Elira looked briefly grim. "At the moment? Good. If we're still here in the morning when they pick up our trail again?" Her grimace was answer enough, and they fell back into silence.
Blood was soaking through her pantleg, and condensation was soaking through her shirt, and sitting motionless on the forest floor, Doku thought about her promises.
She had promised Ria that she would see her to Tyball, and somewhere along the line, she had promised to keep Ria safe as well. But long, long ago, she had made another promise to herself, one that trumped the rest, and even if all the others had to be broken and everything else crumbled, she would see that one fulfilled.
There was a choice to make here, and while she could barely stand to speak it aloud, Doku chose to live.
She stood up shakily, her leg buckling once under her weight, and looked at Elira who was either very good at hiding concern or honestly uncaring. Either way, the Myr'l seemed more at ease than she had been for a while, tension and frustration pooling out into the surroundings. Doku could hazard no guess as to why she had left her home orginally, especially now when she looked as thoroughly in her element as she ever had.
Just as Doku opened her mouth to suggest they move on, they heard it. Or rather, Elira heard it, her neck muscles tightening, and her eyes widening just slightly. Doku felt it, syncopated beats in the ground like the pounding of many fists on tight drumskins.
"What is that?" she asked, although she could almost tell now, could almost pick the three sets of footsteps apart.
Elira's answering grin was sly and maybe, almost, genuinely happy.
"Incompetence," she said.
--
The knock was not unexpected. Claire took the time to plant her pen back in the well and steeple her fingers on the desktop before barking out a clipped "enter" to whoever was waiting on the other side.
The 'whoever,' however, was not whom she had been expecting. Namely, not Gidall but the young guardsman from before, his ears a bright, nervous red.
"General?"
"Yes, guardsman," Claire replied, and her voice was soft even though she hadn't meant it to be.
"I'm...I'm afraid I couldn't find Commander Gidall, sir."
"Is that so?"
The guardsman inclined his head a little, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, hard. "Yessir. It, uh, it appears he hasn't returned to the capital, sir. His ship isn't in the harbour, and I asked around, and no one's seen Theo, uh, that is, Lieutenant Amsel for weeks."
Claire bit down on the curses that rose to her tongue. The boy didn't need to deal with a pissed off commanding officer. Instead, she said, quite calmly, "Indeed. Thank you, guardsman."
He made a stilted little movement somewhere between a nod, a bow, and a salute and escaped out the door. When the latch clicked into place behind him, Claire very slowly picked up her ink well and hurled it at the window.
--
(Glass shatters. A girl screams, angry, incoherent. For a moment, Claire's pale hair is the only thing in view, then the floor rises up like an angry crowd, and the air sizzles. Blue eyes are black, and the world constricts. Claws and fangs dig deep into the city's foundation. The walls bleed in slow motion.)
Like every night since his childhood, Greggory woke to silence. Like every night since this vision began, he clutched his skull and buried his face in his knees.
"I won't let it," he promised. "I won't let it. I won't let it. I won't."