life's but a walking shadow
Indra cannot say, exactly, how she came to feel so inexplicably responsible for Florentine—so determined to see the flower girl safe and whole and well, no matter the cost. She had been scarred to witness the young filly’s death, of course, but there is more to it than that. Indra has watched others die, and there were others who watched as Flora fell, and still Indra has the feeling that she alone has been marked in some way by the encounter.
Perhaps it is just one last trick of the rift, sending Indra as unwitting envoy of her sire: Dominik, who could not master his wild impulses enough to stand and rule, even for love of his people; Dominik, who allowed himself to be consumed with guilt over the heavy crown that he left Gabriel to bear. Maybe Indra’s presence in Novus now is the magic’s claiming of a debt, from one bloodline to another. Maybe she has been summoned here to serve as the Dusk queen’s sword and shield, as Indra’s father failed to do for Florentine’s.
Or perhaps it is simply the rebound of the bond, the rubber band stretched tight and then snapped back, between Indra and Florentine themselves: sisters in time, twin stars orbiting one another across the ages, passing close and then flinging apart again.
Now, as Flora jests, Indra allows the corner of her mouth to twist in the barest admission of a smile. If Florentine is golden light, then Indra is a shadow, sleek and cool, her humor a wry, private thing beside the other mare’s ebullience. “How you managed to keep from being thrown out on your ear in the first week—” She shakes her head, her scarlet mane glossy and gleaming in the twilight. “But I suppose I’m not surprised. You never do anything halfway, do you?” No, Flora had always lived her life full-force. It was something Indra had often envied, even as she knew it was at odds with her own disposition.
As the flower queen turns her own questions on the unicorn, Indra shoots the other mare a sly, sidelong look. “A certain handsome antlered stallion, for starters,” she drawls, watching her friend’s expression. The mention of scars and stories reminds Indra of the stories which she herself had exchanged with that stallion on their journey north, and the unicorn’s brows draw together, her mind tickling with unease at the coincidence. “He’s from the riftlands, too, isn’t he.” It’s a guess, but one she’s suddenly quite certain of. Surely it can be no accident that they three are here—and surely they cannot be the only ones. “Are there others, who came through?”
And now Indra is thinking of her parents, and of Florentine’s, and of all the others that they knew when they walked the riftlands. Indra’s breath hitches in her throat, and she does not know if it is for terror or for longing. Not all of the horses in the rift were friends. Not all of the horses in the rift were even horses, anymore.
Looking at Florentine’s faint smile, her creamy feathers ruffled by the breeze, her violet eyes glinting in the evening light, Indra feels a pang of remorse for the darkness she has brought, and the difficulty. For a moment she thinks that maybe she should just smile, too, and sample the pretty refreshments, and enjoy the night. But there is a line of blood dripping down the flower child’s cheek, and there is a question Indra cannot keep herself from asking. “And what of the disease? Has it followed you here, too?”
For if it has, there is no place and no time in which any of them can be truly safe.
i n d r a
@
