ADARA

"Gokseyr Adara?"

Gok-what? The new voice jolted her out of her storied daydreams by the window to her lonely tower which overlooked the palace courtyards and huge gardens. Snowroses bounced against the currents of wind, a monochrome wave of grays and speckled whites. Clouds darkened, and she long lost track of time without some sort of watch. People, bundled in heavy furs, pushed through the dark cobbled streets, taking stairways onto catwalks alongside the large buildings of high peaks. Out of her chair beside the small writing desk, where she left an unwritten note and the quill dipped into the inkwell, she hesitated when a woman with short blonde-hair sidled into the room with several hefty packages bound in her arms. Oh, this must be Kazmira, Hayvala's handmaiden... she said something about sending people to check on me, but I didn't think she'd actually do it. Adara got out of the handmaiden's way when she put the packages on the bed, which she found lacked a certain bounciness for comfort.

"Um?" Adara went to the spread. "What is this?"

Kazmira's feathers flicked and she turned her head to her. "Dresses for festival. Leru'zila Hayvala bids you try them on, find one you like." Her hesitant Common rang the frozen chimes, but Kazmira pushed forth all the same, "If none is to your liking, Hayvala has many more that she will offer to you."

"I..." Adara pushed her hands against her chest at the spread meant for a princess, not her. "I can't accept this, Lady Hayvala has already been so kind to me considering the situation." One dress flowed over her hands, feathered silk, a bird in a mirror. "I thought I was a prisoner, why am I being allowed at the festival? Wouldn't Keeper Blackwall and King Laucan want me kept in here." Questions drove across her tongue and broke apart the lock on the cage, but she dragged her fingers through the soft weave, awed at the shaped wings along the sides.

"Lady Hayvala does not want to keep you cooped up no matter what those two say, they haven't said anything concerning you quite yet, so Lady Hayvala wishes to take the chance," Kazmira said. "If you are concerned, she bid me tell you: take this as an opportunity to get a lay of the situation with your own two eyes. See as we see. It may help, she believes this. For it is a masquerade, and we all put on masks." The handmaiden curled her fingers against her stomach. "It will take time for her to solve this, she wants you to attend as her guest, but she will accept it if you do not wish to go to the festival." Kazmira closed the door with her heel, and Adara kept close to the window with no way to fly out of it when Kazmira sighed. "It coincides with the arrival of the Hanekan diplomats."

Hanekan— Adara gasped at Hayvala's intention. King Reyn!

Kazmira nodded at her sound of realization. "Yes. It is also an opportunity to find out information from the Hanekan diplomats, to send a message, or ancient's be good, steal you and Yuven Traye away," the handmaiden explained. "But you must act the part to not arouse suspicion."

"Hence the dresses," Adara murmured and returned to the spread. "Okay, do I have to try them all on?"

"Only if you think you'll like it." Kazmira smiled. "It takes some time to put on certain dresses, this is true. Pick. I shall stand for assistance." On cue, practiced a thousand times, she sat on the chair and gave her an expectant nod.

Adara shifted through her awkward discomfort and felt each of the textures, something soft and warm, without the rigidity, a gliding flow. One was too shaped for a body not her own, meant for Hayvala's wispy frame, whereas her leaner, stronger build prevented her from even getting her arm through the hole. Ears burning at the first failure due to the fact she once lifted sacks of flour and food for a living, she moved onto the next. Pearls embedded along the waist frame, creating diamond teeth crisscrossing her chest. Gods. I can't wear these... but Hayvala's being so kind. None fit her taste, of which she had no comparative one, having never worn a dress in her life in Tebora. "Some of these don't fit me," she admitted.

"If it pleases you, I would thank you much if you placed them in a pile off to the side, and I shall return them to her."

Adara folded them to the best of her ability and put them in a well-maintained pile for Kazmira's ease, who gave her a warm, grateful smile. A dance, a lone debutante invited to court, all eyes on her. Romanticism at its peak, where the young lady sought a mysterious stranger, to share a dance to enrapture the crowds. Gods, if only. Adara stifled a short laugh at her own predicament before returning to the flowing, warm, feathered silks of the one which caught her attention. Adara held it out in front of her, it held a looser shape. The feathers fell down along the sides, covered wings which followed the weave around her legs and to the floor, leaving enough room to avoid her steps in a dance. "I think this one is good."

Kazmira stood up and wandered over. "You have very good taste, my lady."

"Oh, you don't have to refer to me as my lady, I'm—I'm not nobility or anything..." Adara chewed on the half-lie, then said, "Are we trying it on here?"

Kazmira answered her question by unfolding a white partition from the corner of the room. Adara went around it and undid the buttons and strings of her clothes until she was left in her undergarments. Cold tickled her skin, but the lit fireplace kept the cruel teeth of frost at bay outside the window. Kazmira came around the other side, though kept her own gaze locked on a spot over her shoulder as Adara found herself puppeteered by the handmaiden to a princess, who worked with deft, practiced fingers. Soft lute strings played outside, over the canopy of stone and tiles as Kazmira tied the back with ribbons around her shoulder blades, forming a temporary silk hood. Adara counted the moments until Kazmira clucked at her, and she faced the handmaiden when she held up a small mirror.

Adara traced the soft furs across the neckline and around the sleeves, down to her hips where the feathers bloomed across the silhouette. Wings, ready to take flight out of a cage. She winced at her figure and tugged at her the messy strands of her wavy brown hair, tucking it behind both ears. "At least it fits me," she commented and patted the chest area.

"Is it warm?"

"Yes."

"Good." Kazmira handed her the mirror, and Adara prodded her own cheeks as the other woman went around her in respectful, but focused examination. "Yes. Good fit, I am glad, and Lady Hayvala will be as well. As for a mask and other ornaments, that can wait for the main festivities. Allow me." Kazmira unclasped each button and string across the dress, and free from a world so far beyond her, she dove into her clothes and Kazmira returned the dress to the packages of others.

"Tell Hayvala I said thank you," Adara whispered.

Kazmira nodded, and left the room with her pile of fancy fabrics.

Adara sat on the bed once more and flopped across the mattress with a soft groan, resting her forearm against her brow, all to lose herself in further sleep during her entrapment. Wooden wolf cupped in both her palms, she curled closer to the fireplace embers, shielded by a runed gate which glowed orange in the pale light of snow.

"I will follow you," Fenrer insisted, moments before his death.

"I'll try," Adara whispered into the wooden fur.

"You will."

Would you still be here if I had just listened? But then Yuven would be left behind, and I can't keep doing this. Adara pocketed the wolf and rested her cheek against the fluffed pillow. Tara, I wish I knew what happened to you. I don't want to think that maybe I did leave you behind, that somewhere you needed me and I wasn't there. Tears overflowed from the dam she built since her arrival. If I hadn't let myself get caught, Yuven wouldn't have had to choose between his best friend, his Oathbound, and me. Adara shut herself to the sound of spitting embers. It flowed through her bloodstream, and she opened her palm to let it ignite.

A single, silver spark.

"Let it ignite, don't stifle it for anything."

It bounced in the well of her palm, and she lifted her head when a thin shimmer of a glyph coursed across her fingertips. Inside the fireplace, it let out a whispering whistle, and the flames expanded into the runes within the fireplace. The glyph curled on its own focal points. Auroras across a cloudy sky. It glowed against her skin, and she sat up further at the heat.

It dissipated into smoke at the sound of a different set of footsteps, smaller, before hesitating outside the door.

"Who's there?" she asked.

Keeper Blackwall? No...

"Adara Sazaka, can I talk to you?"

King Laucan.

Rage burned at her fingertips, but she opened the door for the king who created the mess they were in. Adara kept distance from him when he slipped into the room, hands in his fur cuffs and head lowered, zoned in on her shoes. "What do you want?" she bit. "Are you finally here to do to me what you're doing to Yuven? What was this for? Why are we here?"

Was it worth it?

His multitudes of downy feathers puffed at her words, and she relished in the power she left in her wake. Let the world burn. Adara clenched her fists, and came closer with King Laucan at the mercy of her without his knights, though she suspected they were at the bottom of the staircase, ready to jump to his defense. "Here I thought Yuven might've gone too far at the Summit, you know? But now I see why he did," she snapped, and Laucan remained there. "I hope you're happy with yourself, King Laucan." But why do I keep giving these types credit? King Brian murdered magickae on a needless basis of his own creation.

King Laucan raised his eyes to hers. "It has to be worth it," he whispered. "I didn't bring you here to hurt you. We need your help — my people need help." He frowned. "You're an Anima."

"Yeah, and now I realise you and Keeper Blackwall want to use it, I'm not inclined to help. You had me captured. You ordered for a Storm Warden to be killed—"

"Fenrer Pyren's fate was not what I wanted," he said with a low, shivering hiss.

"Then why did it happen?" Adara threw her hand to the side. "Who else could make that choice but you? You're a king! Worlds and people bend at your word!" Pain ripped her lips into a scowl. "How can you stand there and make that excuse when I'm not stupid? Why did this all happen? Are you here to assuage something? Newsflash, it's my magick, and I get to decide what to do with it. You don't dictate that."

"This happened because my people are dying," Laucan broke, and Adara flinched. "My people are dying and I'm not enough for them. That is why I brought you here before you were too far out of reach on Euros. You might be enough. Was it cruel? Was it the right choice? Every choice I make leads to this, every choice I make came from a stupid child's mouth, to them, even to my own sister." He pointed out the window. "They have never seen the sun, I was told your magick could pierce the heavens!" Her anger ebbed and flowed at the hint of desperation in his hopeless voice. "You, and Yuven Traye, are the only clues I have to this!" His eyes widened, and he drew his attention back to the floor. "All I wanted... was for them to see the sun, wonder about the world—"

"—there's more to this world than Prunal, Addie—"

Laucan took in a breath, and echoed the words, "If these things I have done created discord, is it not better than the absolute fatalism of this blizzard?" he questioned. "I need you to use your magick."

Adara tasted the past, and forced through her teeth, "How old are you?"

Laucan straightened himself out, then narrowed his eyes at her. "I am... sixteen."

Adara tasted her rage, but heard her own voice coming from his mouth, pressured with the glint of a headsman axe. "I don't know what Keeper Blackwall told you," she said, gathering her strength. "King Laucan... I can't." I couldn't save all those people in Prunal. Adara drew in a shuddered breath through her chest. "I can barely control my magick. I was going to Euros with Yuven and Fenrer so I could learn. Your Grace... I can't help you, not because I don't want to, not because I think your people deserve to die for something you've done — but because I don't know how."

I don't know how to leave to see that world, Jisa.

"You'll find a way to fly," Jisa said, with hope in her voice.

Laucan fell quiet, then shook his head through broken hope. "It might come to you once you unlock the world sphere. Keeper Blackwall said it was your magick that could reach out and touch the center through the fog within it," he said, no, begged, and Adara came closer to the fireplace for warmth from the cold despair spreading outside. "I know it might seem difficult, but all I've ever heard is that Anima magick could do what was once impossible. Yes, I have given you no reason to help me, but I'm not asking for me alone." He winced, then said, "I need these choices to mean something, I want her to see it."

Adara frowned and chewed on inability. "See what? You mean Hayvala?"

"The sun," Laucan insisted. "I need her to see it, and for that I need her to not fall into the Sleep. I want my people to see it, see that we don't have to live this way with these thoughts of eternal isolation, buried underneath ice and wind-sheared snow," his voice wavered, and Adara frowned at the heaviness within it. "Miss Sazaka, your magick can do it, I know this, because I'm not enough for them."

You're pleading with me. Gods.

"You have to fly away, Addie," Jisa said at the edge of the crystal.

Fly unto the future untold.

Rage turned into pity for a young soul with the weight of the world on their shoulders. Adara sighed out the rest of the embers, then asked, "Why didn't you just bring it up at the Summit if you needed my help? What was all this for?" she asked once more, not to a cruel king, but to a child who thought his inexperienced way was the right course. "Why did it have to happen this way?"

Laucan shrank, and the truth dawned on her. "You were scared."

He frowned. "I... I am sorry for what happened to Fenrer Pyren," he whispered. "Can you tell me something?"

"Maybe, but I want you to do something for me first."

Laucan raised his head.

"I'd like a book," she said. "Not that I understand a word of Navei, mind you, but I'm sure you have something in Common."

"What... sort of book?" he asked.

"Stories."

Laucan hesitated, then nodded.

"What do you want to ask me?" she pushed him.

Laucan drew out Yuven's medication, and she flinched at the full phial of night sky Yuven continuously complained that it tasted like compost, but gave him relief from the Corruption — relief and extended time. "What is this? Do you know? No one's told me."

"Have you been giving him that?" Adara whispered. "Every day since we came here?"

"What? To Traye? No?"

Adara lunged at him, and he flinched. "You have to! Your Grace, that's his medication! He needs it! He needs it or else his flashes are going to get worse! How could you not know? Or figure it out?"

He stared at her, blank-faced. "What?"

"Get the air out of your ears," Adara bit. "If you haven't been giving it to him all this time he's—"

King Laucan switched his attention to the phial, and enclosed it into his fingers. "Why didn't he tell me?"

"Who cares?" Adara swung her arms out. "He needs it either way, so you have to go give it to him!"

Because without Fenrer, those doses are all he has left. Her heart leaped into her throat when Laucan's eyes widened in dawning terror and destroyed hope when he slipped out of the room, and took with it her chance of escape, but she found herself bound to her own self-imposed duty. Her and Yuven Traye's freedom, with Keeper Blackwall manipulating a child king to his own agenda.

And I don't know what's more dangerous in a monarch. One who knows the cruelty he's creating, or one who is following a road of blood-soaked good intentions.