IN A SENSE, I'M THE ONE WHO RUINED ME:
i did it myself.

"Open the gates."

The guard's mouth twisted lengthwise in hesitation. A ridged scar ran from the base of his left ear diagonally down his face, coming to a rest just above the dip of his whiskery chin. It bestowed him with a permanent, lopsided scowl. 

His chrome helmet, freshly polished, had a line of white soap scud sunken into its seam.

"Lord Hajakha—" he began, foolishly, before a silken purr plucked him from the reach of Senna's matchstick-length ire. (Unwittingly, of course. Lady Marianna Hajakha dined on favors like caviar; naturally, she never bothered herself in giving them.)

"By Solis, Senna. What are you doing?" Drifting out from the hallway like a perfumed storm came the Lady and her feathered bouffant. Neither of them—the Lady nor the Bouffant—wasted any time in slinking bodily up to Senna's shoulder.

Raising a brow in lieu of a curtsy, Lady Marianna, Zofia's first cousin, peered dismissively at the guard before twisting her painted lips down just enough for their corners to crease. "Do you mean to invite the king and his monstrosity to our doorstep?"

To Senna, she might not have even spoken. Instead, menace rolled across his tongue like a lozenge as he flicked his eyes towards the guard. "Do not make me repeat myself."

The scowl-faced guard (truthfully a man tender of heart) acquiesced. Nodding sharply, he ran to the edge of the balcony overlooking the mansion's main entryway to signal to the troop of sentinels lining the hall like stone artifacts. "Open the gates!" Stirring to life, the sentinels shook the dust off their heads and marched like ants out the carven doors.

"Lord Senna!" hissed Marianna, aghast. Her features, deceptively demure, stretched taut over her cheekbones like a lambskin stiffening over a tailor's mold. 

He allowed himself a moment of weighty silence before jerking his chin slantwise and meeting her with a cool frown. "Do you intend to go against my orders, Marianna?" The chandelier above their heads shivered when the heavy iron gates enclosing the Hajakhan estate burst outwards with a shriek of rusted hinges.

"I wouldn't dare," the Lady sneered, jabbing her gold-tipped antlers towards Senna's plated collar. "Though I know what you seek to accomplish. Do correct me if I am wrong. You plan to endanger us all by allowing the peasants to take shelter within our gates."

He said nothing. She took his silence as a nod of confirmation. 

The trailing hem of the noblewoman's silk-lined robe hissed over the floor like snakeskin when she drew nearer. Her reflection peered out at her from the polished surface of a display cabinet, and she pursed her lips as she stared into it, admiring its icy smile. "How noble of you."

"Coming from you, 'noble' sounds like an insult."

Marianna's powder blue eyes narrowed into glass shard slits. "I do not know what new scheme you plot, Senna," she said with tremulous disdain, "but we owe nothing to them! Or—" She paused to flick open a scarlet fan he hadn't seen her carrying. Drew it coyly over her mouth, like a courtesan, as she welled her eyes with tears. "Have you forgotten what happened the last time they let them inside?" she whispered, softly. 

"Have you forgotten... what they did to my cousin?"

Cousin. Sparse and singular. By unspoken agreement, no living Hajakha recognized Zolin as kin after he had singlehandedly toppled the dynasty from both power and public favor.

Senna tore his head away in disgust from Marianna's teary face, fury seeping through his mind like slow-killing poison. "And when," he hissed, something like agony seeping through the monotone of his voice, "have you ever mourned her?" She gazed at him, stricken. He imagined her mouth opening and closing, torn between varying degrees of affront, behind her fan. "How dare—" He cut her off with a derisive chuckle.

"I beg of you, Marianna, do not start now. Doing this," he gestured to her fan, to her silks, to her shining crocodile tears, "now. The whole damn lot of you—" Marianna and her consort Glaston. Preening Niah and bullheaded Cassander. From the beginning of Raum's reign they had entombed themselves in the estate like golden geese, dining and dancing like kings and foreign queens. Believing the Hajakhan coffers as bottomless as the rumors sang. 

He supposed it was his fault. His fault for failing to rouse them from their revelries, with a knife to the heart. For the one who sets the pieces, every loss is his to bear, Solovey had said. Senna realized then, in curdling pain, how long it had taken him to see his nightingale brother's wisdom. 

Solovey was dead. Felled in battle, the letter had said, laughing.

"Do you not see it? What this House has become?" What we have become? His scimitar sang as he drew it from its ivory scabbard. Marianna flinched, but she need not have; for Senna simply hovered the curved blade close to his jutting breastbone. "They are our own people." 

He made for the edge of the fenceless balcony and snapped out his wings like unfurling a cloak. A gust of wind blew in from the open door to cradle his descent. From the bottom of the landing, he let his voice carry up towards the robed woman standing white-lipped at the top of the stairs, her shadow pouring like spilled ink down the steps. 

"And on days like this, I begin to understand them." 

His blade gleamed like a shard of moonlight when Senna nodded towards the lone guard, and swept out through the open door. His father's bitter inscription sparked off the metal: The crow does not roost with the phoenix. 

He had finally fulfilled it.


☾