Panic had possessed him. It left his shaking and weak. It stole the words from his tongue and made his eyes wide, wide, wide. Florentine watches him gently, her breath slow, her eyes slower as she looks to the paper in his grasp. It trembles like a leaf, rattling in the wind like a sail loosened on a ship.
Auru shakes his head, defiant determined, afraid. “It’s okay Auru.” The flower girl breathes. She thinks just how she is no longer the girl who lay in the mud waiting for him to relax. How long had it been since she made a joke? How long had it been since they stood together in the swamp and ate fruit together? Long enough for her heart to be broken, for Lysander to lie bleeding in their infirmary…
He talks of pranks, his tongue stumbling but his heart stumbling faster still. Maybe it was nothing to worry about, but his fear was a palpable thing and it worked its way in to the flower girl’s heart too.
Eventually he holds out the letter, bent and bruised and worn by the wind as it is. Carefully, as if he were a hummingbird she longs not to scare, the Dusk girl takes the paper from him. The ink upon it is simple but fierce. There is a poison in its words, a warning. Flora knows the paper, it was Terrastella’s own. “It came from the Swamp?” Florentine asks Auru, even though she knows what his answer will be. The Winter’s End Festival was supposed to have been a time to leave mischievous notes, love notes. But nothing about this festival had gone to plan for Florentine. Nothing.
The queen calls for Cyrene and reads the words again.
‘Once tainted,
a nation dies;
once betrayed,
revenge survives.’
Her eyes lift from the words. “You did well Auru. I am not sure this is a prank, even if so, we cannot treat it as such.” She takes a breath. “Cyrene and I should work out what to do with this…” Softly her amethyst gaze returns to Auru, “I do not suppose you saw who left this?”
@Auru @Cyrene - for you to join us Rallidae <3
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
