83. Cyara

She dispatched Percival and Diana to the kitchens to help prepare the evening meal. The kitchen servants and the priestess were the only terrestrials in Eilean Gayl who did not look at the two humans as if they were calculating how they would taste. But at that moment, anywhere was safer than near Veyka. The queen might finally decide to rip out Percival's throat, just to calm the roaring pain inside of her.

She even sent away Osheen and Lyrena, encouraging them to join Maisri for the communal meal. But Cyara herself lingered in the corridor, ears alert, wings tucked in tight in the narrow space. The guard at the stairs ignored her. She returned the favor. Most of her attention was focused inside the sitting room. Even her sharp ears could not make out the words; she would not have wanted to. That would be an intrusion.

But as soon as the voices died, she moved.

Cyara was through the door into the queen's bedchamber, door closed, before Arran opened the one into the corridor and disappeared, his gait even heavier than usual. The bedroom was empty.

Veyka had taken to the void. Either to find some other place of solace, or to lose herself in that endless in between. She had done that more and more, used the void not as a means of transportation, but as an escape.

How long would it be before that was her true home, and Annwyn the mere stopover?

Cyara picked the first garment from the never-ending pile of clothing in need of mending and settled in to wait.

Dinner came and went. Veyka had lost weight from missing meals. Had anyone else noticed? Cyara set aside a loaf of crusty bread and kept the rich stew warm with her flames. Damn the cost. Her wrists could ache every minute from now until she was five hundred years old, and she would consider the price justly paid.

The sun was peeking over the horizon when Veyka appeared. Right in the center of the room, white hair a tangle around her shoulders, blue eyes turned sapphire dark. Cyara ached to reach for her, to hold her close the way she had done for her younger sisters. Simple days, those had been, when she could soothe a slight or scrape with a bit of chocolate and gentle caresses of their copper hair.

There was nothing simple about the tempest that had encircled Veyka.

Cyara set aside her long-forgotten sewing and stood, palms out. "What can I do?" she asked quietly.

Veyka sighed and dragged a hand through her hair, fingers catching on the tangles. She pulled on the snarls mercilessly, her face hardly showing any reaction other than exhaustion. "Pack."

Cyara nodded. "Where are we going?"

Veyka's hand dropped.

But it was her eyes that gave her away. Those miraculous blue eyes that could soften with kindness or darken with ire. Sharp as ice when she was angry, bright as the sky when they sparkled with mischievousness. Now, they were the blue of a sea that Cyara had only seen in her mind, in her father's stories. Unmoored and shifting.

Veyka did not know where they were going—not yet.

It did not matter, Cyara told herself. They would take all of their possessions, regardless. "I see." She nodded, matter-of-factly. "Are we bringing Percival and Diana?"

For a second, the queen's eyes flashed with gratitude. Then she walked to the bed, back to Cyara, unstrapping her weapons as she went.

"Yes. Lyrena, Isolde, everyone. Ask Osheen." Veyka pulled her weapons from her belt, arranging them on the bed. Her two curved rapiers, her daggers, and then she opened the drawer beside the bed and added a few small but wicked knives. She did not plan on sleeping anytime soon, then.

Her brother's mighty sword was conspicuously absent.

Cyara still had not found where Veyka had stashed it, despite combing over their chambers multiple times over the past month and a half.

But that was a question for another day. Now, there was only one that mattered. "What about Arran?"

This time, Veyka gave the answer in words. "I don't know."

She kept her back to Cyara.

But that sort of pain could not be contained. Cyara could feel it in the air they shared, the current of a kingdom. A friendship forged in pain and the light at the end of a long darkness.

Yet in that moment, Cyara knew the light in her friend had dimmed.

"I see," she said softly.

Veyka's voice cracked. "Do you?"

Cyara closed the steps between them. So slowly, gentle as if she were reaching for a scared animal, she took hold of Veyka's shoulder and eased her around. She expected tears, but they were none. Veyka had left them in the void, along with the last shreds of her hope.

"I see a female who is stronger than she knows," Cyara said softly. Her grip on Veyka's shoulder was anything but. "A friend who has made me laugh, and cry, and forced me to reconcile the parts of myself that I once feared. I see a queen who has risen from darkness again and again. A queen who will keep rising, every day, no matter how her enemies try to keep her down. My queen."

Veyka closed her eyes. Cyara did not speak again, tracking the bob of Veyka's throat, and the slight sway of her shoulders as she tried to get command of herself. When she did open her eyes, they were clearer than before, if only by a tiny fraction.

"I must ask you one last thing, and you are going to hate it."

Cyara's wings twitched. "Go on, then."

"There is something I must do before we leave Eilean Gayl."

Cyara stepped back enough that she could cross her arms. "Something dangerous," she guessed. "That you do not plan on telling Arran about."

Veyka laughed softly, and the sound was only slightly hollow. "How do you always know what is on my mind?"

"If I told you, I would be giving up my advantage."

"An elemental to your core." Veyka's small smile faded. She turned back to assessing her weapons. "I will be back in a few days."

Cyara watched as she unsheathed the rapiers, examining the blades. "I can manage Percival and Diana without Lyrena. Though if it will make you feel better, I shall ask Osheen to look in periodically."

"I am not taking Lyrena with me."

Despite what her queen thought, Cyara was not actually able to predict her every move. "Veyka—"

"If I have not returned in three days, you can send Arran and Lyrena and the rest of them to retrieve me from the Spine. But until then, tell no one where I have gone." Veyka began repacking her blades. She would not linger long, then.

Cyara knew it was a useless appeal, but she made it anyway. "Please, do not do this."

"Cyara," Veyka paused, offering a grim smile over her shoulder. "You know better than most that sometimes, the darkness must be faced alone."

The harpy.

Yes, Cyara had been alone when that dark monster inside of her awakened for the first time. She had carried the secret of what she was—what Gawayn had made her by slaughtering her sisters—as a lone burden for as long as she could. Until Maisri was in danger, when the harpy had clawed her way out.

"Be careful, Veyka," Cyara finally said.

Veyka's smile was nowhere in sight as she nodded sharply. "Be ready to leave when I return."