The sun beat down with the heat of a forge, and it felt so much like Solterra that Cyrene hurried to seek solace under the leaves of a weeping willow tree. Bark grazed her back as she slid softly to the blessedly cool grass underfoot. Crimson wings splayed out around her like a canopy, the heat sinking so fully into her bones that she was too drowsy to tuck them properly in.

Idly, she watched as dappled sunlight streamed through her scars in a desolate impression of a cathedral’s stained glass. Feathers stretched and folded as Cyrene marveled at the pinpricks of golden light shining like tiny stars on the grass, and she would’ve kept the little game up for the entire afternoon if her gaze had not traveled higher.  

The constellation of Cygnus glimmered from her wing joint like fireflies, and Cyrene snapped her wings shut at the sight of it.

A glass of sparkling water floated haphazardly above her head, and she brought it to her parched lips with a fleeting sigh. The cup, drained, sat besides her in the grass, as empty and alone as she.

The Davke attack had split the cracks of her heart wide open, a crevice running through it that would never heal.

She had never told Florentine what she had done, nor would she ever; the secret would accompany her until death. Her actions had been certain betrayal, to Seraphina as well as to her own Queen — it should’ve ate at her to no end. And it had. But only because she knew she would not hesitate to do it again, and again, and again.

Where did her loyalty lie? She had always been so sure. So sure of herself, so sure in her own devotion to goodness and healing and light. Yet she had wavered, she had fallen, and a seed of corruption had bloomed like oleander in her heart.

All along, it had only been a matter of time.

She had not been able to find Florentine nor Asterion; though if she’d managed to find one, then the other could not have been far behind. The half-siblings shared a bond that was so deep, so full, that Cyrene could feel only pain when she encountered them together. Pain, and the terrible, terrible claws of jealousy. And so the Emissary had buried herself in her work, spending more time in the newly-built hospital than her own bedchambers.

Drifting leonine eyes scanned the milling crowd for someone she recognized, her heart stilling every time she caught a flash of gold or chrome. She was not a fool — she knew he would never come.

But when a sound rang out from behind her, the slip of a hoof against grass, hope still sang like a phoenix in her chest.

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