She has not slept for several days now. It is too dangerous to sleep, when there is a ghost holding the crown and his guards patrolling the Oasis, seeking out any excuse to use the weapons at their side. Worse still, she knows the danger of being trapped here -- knows what a madman will see when he looks upon her, whether as his own weapon or as a vehicle to bear soldiers, and she knows how the ropes would burn against her limbs and the chains would chafe against her jaws as he tried to break her to his will. Her father would not be here to save her this time -- indeed, there are few who know she exists here, in this aquatic prison, and still fewer she would trust to help. Truthfully? There are none now who should would trust to be able to help without being harmed themselves. The silver queen lay dead atop the Steppe, after all -- and oh, how her heart had clenched when she’d heard the news, unable to reconcile the idea of the always-too-serious queen in life with the imagery of one in death. She hadn’t surfaced for several days, after she’d heard, except for a few gulps of air -- her mourning had been a rage, deep down in the still waters where even the guards could not hear her scream. She has lost so many, already -- and she had, foolishly, thought that the silver queen might just have been a constant, a weekly occurrence she could look forward to, a monarchy with a foundation strong enough to stand the test of time. Seraphina had, at least, the heart and the grit to take care of her Court. She should have known better -- once upon a time, she had been the Queen standing upon what she had thought was a sure thing, and yet-- That had ended only in broken bones and heartache, in the first of Ker’s many disappearances, and she should have known that this would only end in tragedy. The worst is that she thinks she might have been able to help, were she not stuck here in this thrice-damned prison. Once upon a time, she’d been a healer, the skill passed down from her father, the knowledge learned in a gilded tower. So she lurks beneath the water with something close to rage and something close to loathing in her veins, as patient as the crocodile waiting for the prey to venture close, and she dreams of all the ways she will drag Raum into the water and drown him, should he come near to her -- of how the blood will billow in the water and how the fish would flee before her, and her smile is full of waiting knives. A disturbance near the waterfall catches her attention, a slender arrow slicing through the water -- and she fears discovery by the guards, for a moment, before it suddenly hooks around and returns to the land. Intrigued, the hippocampus slides from the rock she had been resting upon, relying on the cover of night and the deep waters to conceal her -- she is entirely silent as she approaches the land, ears pinned back and lips curled in a snarl, ready to bite whichever foolhardy guard had decided to invade her territory. She breaks the surface of the water in an instant, the breath hissing from her lungs and her lips still curled into a fierce snarl, but there is nothing aggressive about the way the top of her head collides with Sera’s knees when she realizes there is a ghost staring back at her. Instead, it’s an almost reverent sort of affectionate, leaning into the limbs as though to reassure herself that they are solid beneath her touch, and she stares up at the silver queen with all six pairs of eyes shining in the moonlight. I thought you were dead, She wants to say, but she’s sure Sera has heard it before already -- she is sure she’s not the first that the queen has come to visit. “I’m glad you’re not dead.” She says instead, folding her knees so that she might stay anchored onto the land, her cheek still pressed against Sera’s knee and unwilling to move away. |
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