stay low go fast
kill first die last
kill first die last
The sun gleams overhead. Apolonia stands tall and screws up a dark eye against it, nevermind that the light still sinks in. What else is there to do when the world has gone to fire like this?
The crowd simmers and stirs. The tension is obvious, but it is impossible to tell how many of them are resisting in grief and how much of them have already given up: when she glances around, O does not recognize the expression on any familiar Solterran face. Even the air hisses and sizzles.
When Elif cries out, she is there, pressing a frown to the girl’s shoulder. But not a sound escapes her.
Instead she watches and watches and watches. The quicksilver of Raum’s skin. The bright black of his eyes under shadow. And that thing next to him, part bird, part snake, all monster, writhing and twisting and seething like it is a prisoner as much as she is, here. Her father’s brother Crow, desecrating her mother’s country: even from the grave he has a way of magicking things up the wrong way, of sinking his hands in where they don’t belong. (At least he is consistent in that.)
It will make Solterra powerful.
Amusement flits through O’s gaze, easy as a ghost. She presses the hurlbat deeper into her hip like a kiss and raises her head over the silent, wide-eyed crowd, and from her spot near the back it is as probable as not that Raum cannot hear her talking, much less make out the words, but still she taunts:"She is already more powerful than you can imagine."
And then, a moment later, mostly to herself, partially a request to God, she adds, "Die."
All three eyes seem to snarl in unison.
@| "speech" | notes:
