Life stilled in the balance of the stuffy room.
She wondered if Duarb’s roots would reach into this territory since it was no longer their own.
There was no rumble of dirt as there should have been. No breakage of ground. Only the whisper of a breeze wrapped around her.
The world went silent.
And for the first time in her life, she was officially alone.
The realization should have sent her shredding her existence, hands blackening, and muscles shaking.
But her trembling body and screaming heart slowed with the full inhale she took. A silent tear found its way down her cheek, and she refused to acknowledge it.
Exhale the fire, sister.
Nyssa straightened herself stiff as the Noble looked around the room.
“Clean up the mess,” Bechman declared, his foot rolling Gail over to his back. He paused over him a moment, head tilting as he looked the Venari over. His gaze lifted to Nyssa’s.
“Are all of your people so stupid to think they can walk in here and demand a place in our court simply with the lure of a rare woman?” he asked her.
Nyssa didn’t blink.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t breathe.
The Noble stared at her a long moment, and then he looked to the guard at her left and gave him an upwards nod. “Have my trophy bathed and brought to me for inspection.”
She was taken to another part of the grand tent through a covered hallway to what looked to be servant's quarters. The dress she'd been wearing was cut off her. The women who bathed her scrubbed roughly. Nyssa tried to ignore them as they spoke in loud tones about her. Calling her people savages. Calling her freckles ugly. Pointing and staring at the eagle marking on her back. She swore she heard one say how they would have to cut it off her skin before being presented to the King.
She'd love to see them try.
Nyssa kept her mouth shut. Staring straight ahead of her and limp as dead weight as they bathed her. She noted every feature on the women's faces. Every scar, every shadow beneath their eyes, their scarred hands… Their bodies were frail and lifeless. Servants of Man, beaten and oppressed beneath someone's grasp.
She'd never seen such frailty and withered sadness in anyone before, and she was suddenly grateful for her own land. Even more thankful for the path her sister had made for her over the years: teaching her to push herself into a room and place herself at the table no matter what looks any person gave her. Her sister had struggled so that she would not have to as a woman in a room with Dreamers and within her own kingdom—the only realm of Haerland whose past was littered with treating women as though they were beneath the rest of them. The thought of any other race of Haerland thinking women were lesser was laughable.
One more lie the Chronicles had pressed upon her people to keep them in submission.
—“Leave it," came a new woman's voice.
Nyssa's eyes snapped up from the floor.
The cold of this woman's dark stare poured through her. She emerged from the shadows wearing a light blue dress that scooped at the neck, showing a great deal of skin, golden dangled necklace lying between her small breasts. The adornment signified her higher place in the court, perhaps a remnant of her life from across the seas where she'd once been bathed in jewels and gold.
Nearly as tall as Aydra but much thinner, this woman's firm features commanded attention. Curly pale blonde hair poured out around her shoulders. Her fair skin was of moons light against the wake of the fires lit around the small room.
A light brow raised on her face, and she gave Nyssa a deliberate once over.
The other women bent at the waist and bowed before her.
"Your Grace," one of them addressed her. "We were just bringing her to you."
The woman raised a finger. "Leave us."
"But your husband—“
"Leave," she affirmed.
