Nala's Point of View

They had intercepted a message for the other rebellion and sent her there to read it. It was coded, and they were hoping that she might be able to share some insight. Apparently, it was a code from a while ago, long out of use but might have been known by her at some point.

They had theorised it had been sent by the elves, which was ridiculous. How would they know a code from four years ago? Well, there were multiple ways for them to know, but why would they bother?

Nala entered the seemingly abandoned building that was the headquarters of Tarua Teris. It was the place where the chancellor and his court had hidden thirty years ago when the city namesake of the rebels fell. She nodded at the fellow insurgents she spotted in the buildings. She had saved many from prison wagons, former members of the other rebellion. Apparently they couldn't translate the message, which wasn't surprising. They were almost exclusively Northern and Southern rebels, no message-bearing Midlands amongst them. She had been Midlands though.

"Chancellor," she said as she went to see the familiar man. His time as a rebel had wearied him: he looked ten years older than he was, with scars across his face, one eye blinded and the other requiring glasses.

"Nala," he smiled. "A relief to see you survived the failed rescue." A relief to find any of them retuned from missions these days.

"You hid the truth about my nephew from me." No accusation, no anger. Just the plain fact, as it had always been with the chancellor.

"I did," he replied. "I was afraid of what it would do to you. Afraid of you becoming distracted with vengeance, or mercy." The plain, simple, harsh truth. Neither vengeance nor mercy was allowed. Only justice.

As Tarua Teris had learned over two decades, there could be no exceptions. No favouritism. They did what was best for the rebellion, not for the rebels. Nala nodded. She could have expected nothing more.

"He saved me." She told the chancellor. "He is the reason I came back from the failed mission."

"Did he?" The chancellor asked. "Perhaps he does have potential after all."

"Where is the message?" She asked him. He led her towards it and she recognised the code immediately.

"Can you translate it?" He asked hopefully.

"Yes." Nala replied, and took a quill, ink and paper. When she had finished the first lines, she was hardly breathing. The chancellor, reading the translation over her shoulder, froze.

"My nephew is not a traitor," she muttered to herself. "My nephew is not a traitor." Not working for a third rebellion at all, but for a whole other kingdom.

"This is our opportunity," the chancellor said excitedly. "Tell everyone! Send the messages far and wide. Pass the valkyries' message onto the other rebellion. It is time."

"It is time," Nala smiled at his side. "And despite what the valkyries must surely believe, we will not be puppets."

"Never," the chancellor vowed. "We will not just cut off the supply trains, my dear. We will destroy them so completely not the Empress feels the explosions we detonate from her perfect Marble Palace."

Of course, they had to remember that victory was far from close. The valkyries and elves would always create pressure that a new nation could crumble from. And that was just if cutting off supplies could win them the war, if cutting off supplies was possible. But it was a whole lot more than they had had for a long while now, causing trouble and paying for it with lives.

This was the beloved firelight to guide their way, the light at the end of the tunnel. She just had to hold onto it.

--------------

Nala was waiting. Crouched in a forest, surrounded by her fellow rebels and her hand resting on her bow. The scene reminded her so much of the moment when her mission had gone wrong, when rebels around her lay dead and her nephew had returned from death and saved her. This time things would not go wrong.

They had found the spy and killed him, and besides, the only people who knew about this mission were the ones on it, who she trusted with her life and the fate of the rebellion, as much as it was possible to trust anyone anymore.

She cast a fleeting glance at the rebels hidden in the foliage, but her eyes lingered on Dona, who held explosives in her grip, waiting for the supplies to come past. Everything was in place.

The sound of hooves echoed through the forest, and her eyes darted to the beaten path that the supply train would travel through. Everything was poised and ready. Her world narrowed to the bow in her hand, the arrow waiting and the path that the supplies would go through. Her heart pounded but her breath was soft and quiet. Her hands trembled on the string as she watched.

At last, the train came into sight and she gave the signal. Five arrows came all at once, impaling the four guards and the driver. They backed away from the train as Dona threw the explosives through the air and the supplies went up in smoke, the path blown to pieces and the tree fallen on the track.

The beginning, Nala vowed.

This was just the beginning.

---------------

Lysandra

Destroying Aaron's alchemy could wait. In the meanwhile, Lysandra had other things to worry about. Like meeting Lucifer and truly letting her plans commence. Which was why she was annoyed by her mother inviting (read: demanding) her court to gather for lunch.

Lysandra waited at the dinner table as her mother sat at the head, Aaron besides her.

"There is a traitor here." The empress growled. A silence fell upon the room, fearful. "There is a traitor," she went on. "A traitor walking amongst us."

She stood again, and paced the room, eyes catching unlucky nobles. "Eating our own food, drinking our own wine. Plotting. Wondering, as they speak with the person besides them, if their blood will spill soon enough." A hoarse laugh.

"Perhaps they care. Perhaps they do not. And I do not care that you have raised me up to empress, served me loyally. If you've given your children, your wives and husbands, for this kingdom to rise. If there is a traitor here, I will strike."

She picked up the nearest duke's glass of red wine and shattered it, the wine like blood spilling on the floor. The liquid swirled, turning darker and darker until they realised it was now made of shadow.

It sent a thrill through her. Like her mother and older brothers, shadow magic had corrupted the human love for fire and turned it into a witch love for darkness.

"A noble has been donating anonymously to the rebellion." The words shattered through the room, and Lysandra let shock and anger flash across her face along with the others. "A huge sum of money-" her mother rattled off the numbers.  "And they gave this to them, too." She took a card out of her pocket, the same one Lysandra had given the rebels in a note. She lifted it in the air, and showed them it. On one side, a jack of spades, on the other the secret symbol of her mother's court.

The Empress paused, and in one rapid movement, she ripped the card into pieces and let it fall to the floor.

Medea let the threat hang in the air. Lysandra was not afraid.

Perhaps the empress would be proud of her daughter-if she knew who her daughter truly was. Lysandra had been pretending to be a mouse for a long, long time-and at last, she could play the wolf.

At last she could meet with Lucifer, too, because her mother released (read:banished) them from the room after her surprise threat\lunch. Lucifer was looking worse for wear today, and bearing a new set of bright red scars on his face.

"I need help." He told her when she went to see him.

"Clearly," she said before she could correct herself. The meeting had made her slip out of character. "I just meant that-"

"I look half-dead?"

"Well, no. More like dead two weeks ago."

"Well that's a relief. We need to stop the supply lines to the army and quickly."

"Why? This isn't your war. You should be striking elsewhere-right at Medea's heart, when she's weak and fighting another."

"If the valkyries and elves win their war, we win ours too." Lucifer said eagerly. "We get our kingdom, our freedom. The God-Born get Medea's head." Lysandra watched him, considering. This could potentially turn to her advantage. If her mother lost this war, then she could find safety with the rebels and their new reign.

If only she could warn her mother. But she was helpless-warn her and she would want to know how Lysandra knew.

"You want me to help you destroy the supply trains to the army." Lysandra repeated slowly.

"Yes." Lucifer confirmed. "We need this. It's our only real chance. Please." Lysandra had no choice: refuse and they would be certain she was a spy. Why else would she pass up an opportunity to destroy the Empress at last?

On the other hand, do this without informing Medea of the rebels' intentions, and her loyalties would be undoubtable. If a spy got their hands on this sort of information, then they would go straight to Medea. No other secrets would be worth half as much.

"I'll see what I can do," she said at last. "But if this is truly an opportunity to win at last-"

"Yes," Lucifer smiled. "All we need is your help."

By the morning she had sent him just enough for her mother to notice and get very, very angry indeed.

Honestly, she was angry, too. Everything in her Plan had been carefully organised. She knew the what that she wanted, knew how to execute it. She'd gone over everything with such care, examining every pitfall and covering them up, spending long hours analysing everything. But she supposed this was the game: you had to take risks, have a leap of faith.

Lysandra did not like leaps of faith. She went back to her other pressing concern: the Shadow-Breathers, as Aaron had nicknamed them. The way of making them sounded so simple that even if she destroyed all his experiments, all his note-taking, he could just replicate it. Destroying every fossil of a living creature was impossible. Destroying shadow magic equally difficult.

She wanted to scream at Aaron for doing this, but there was no way he'd listen to reason. He was just as determined as he always was to impress their mother, proving again and again that he was worthy of a place at her side, that he was important even if he was the seventh child. He was blind, and willingly blind.

She spent hours agonising over it: how to undo the discovery that Aaron had made. The witch would only seek to use his discovery. She would never destroy it.

In the end, it all boiled down to one thing. One dreadful, unavoidable fate. She had thought that the price of destroying this was to be secretly suffering guilt for ruining her brother's chances to impress their mother yet again.

She would be silently suffering guilt. But it would be far greater. She had always known that she would betray Aaron when she broke his heart by killing their mother.

But even that did not compare to how deeply and irrevocably she would have to betray him this time.