HAYVALA

People filled the streets with their beautiful, individual songs. School children danced underneath the gentle lights hanging off the peaks of the roof trellis'. Each one slipped a single seed of a snowrose, a representation of life underneath dunes of windsheared ice. A piece of good luck and good health for whoever dwelled within. Atop her balcony, she swaddled herself in furs and protected her own little garden of tiny roses. Ones she planted over the course of her life, with the newest one nothing more than a bump in the tough dirt. Yokonei's final bloom. The city of Volaris glowed in a cold rainbow, with the opera house the main attraction of the festival. Carriages rolled into the front, but the palace kept her from viewing the legendary tales of their people's birth from the collection of the wyverns and the old fae.

She pulled over the cover for her snowroses, a flimsy protection from the harshest blizzard winds slipping through the massive barrier Laucan put all of his magick into. His aura, a sphere extended outwards not from the palace's heart, but from his. Hayvala sighed and bustled into her room, where Kazmira lit the fireplace and placed warm sheets between her mattresses. Beside her partition, her chosen dresses for the festivities hooked onto the hangars. From silks to heavy furs for outside use. Each one, woven in spindle fire. On her desk, a list of all attendees, who came with who, who feuded with who, and she hoped Laucan took a look at his copy. It's important to remember every name, and greet them in turn. Acknowledge them.

On a pedestal, she left her room, where her Sentinel stood at attention and kept their gaze locked on somewhere far away. Unbeholden to tradition, Ser Yokonei faced her head-on. I should go see how Miss Adara is faring, and then check on Yuven Traye. Hayvala motioned at her Sentinel, accepting their relentless proprietary and led them through the palace. Their white scaled mail shimmered underneath the chandelier's glow. Voices echoed throughout the palace corridors, with guest rooms fashioned for the entire nobility, with care taken to keep from conflict, when the dance had barely yet begun. Hayvala stopped, then turned to her Sentinel, who hid his face behind a wyvern-shaped helmet. "You need not look somewhere else, Ser. All of us are children of Naveera."

Their feathers flicked through the small, finely shaped slits at the sides of their helmets, with their ears protected in full. Hesitation fluttered through their aura, but the young Ice Knight switched his attention at the not so spectacular banner to her. Hayvala smiled at him. "I don't believe I've caught your name. You were recently dubbed as a Sentinel, were you not? What is your name?"

His fingers brushed the shaft of his glaive. "Alekai, m'lady, and yes, the Knight Valiant decided I was ready and put me in your service after what... happened to..." His feathers thinned against the protective metal. "I am sorry, Your Grace, for the shameful broach of what must be a delicate topic. It is improper of me. I am your silent Sentinel."

Ser Yokonei... if you were still alive, you would have the first dance above all else. I wish you were here. Hayvala sighed. "Ser Alekai. You have nothing to apologise for. Let us continue, and be sure to watch where you're walking. I do not want you to trip because you're so focused on my shoes." She smiled at him, though he winced. "It is a jest, though I genuinely don't want you to trip. People talk, I would spare anyone in my service from that." Her steps took her into the old palace wing, but she slammed to a stop at Laucan's rushing shape, scrambling along and towards the dungeons.

Now, why are you in a hurry, and why are you coming from the tower you put Miss Adara in? Destination changed, Hayvala sped up after him when he disappeared around the corner. Auric blues frazzled with despairing horror, a trail her little brother walked. It salted the carpets in front of her and shoved a knife of his pain into her heart and mind. She traced the migraine around her temple, but pushed on for an answer through a sad refrain.

On the stone permafrost leading into the palace horrors, she waved off Ser Alekai's offer of his arm and hoisted the front of her dress for freer movement down the steps Laucan had slid on a slope of ice and disappeared into the darkness of their forebear's creation. Concern fluttered on the petals of her voice, and she winced at the curling crimson lightning shocking the air and auras. Darkness ebbed, but she held onto the wall and steadied herself and regained her sensory bearings.

"My lady, are you well?" Ser Alekai whispered.

"There is something wrong," she hissed through the tangle of burning thorns before chasing after Laucan, the too young wyvern king. Around the bend, past the Ice Gaol, her heart cooled into the harshest winters of Naveera at the sound of wet choking and Laucan pushing open the door. Hayvala raced to him and stepped over the threshold of pain.

The entire room bathed in auric flames.

Yuven Traye convulsed on the floor, with Blackwall gazing down at him in thought and the tiniest shred of confused interest. Blood slipped and expulsed in thick rivers past Yuven's lips and down his chin, slabbering the floor. "What is the meaning of this?" she hissed through her throat and shoved Laucan out of the way, who held something close to his chest. Hayvala swatted the black auric spheres with gathered memories out of the air with her own, then forced herself through the current. Time stretched on when she knelt behind Yuven, who shivered and choked. His snow-white hair turned blood red and left streaks of pale crimson across his face. "What have you done?"

Laucan's aura dimmed into horror, and he twisted to Keeper Blackwall, who relaxed his stance.

"It is an expulsion flash, Lady Hayvala," Keeper Blackwall said.

"I know what it is, Keeper Blackwall," she hissed as Ser Alekai knelt beside her, fair features ashen. "You. How much force did you put into that extraction? What did you pull out of him?"

Keeper Blackwall stood taller than an icewall. "Only what I was looking for, what His Grace wished for me to find," he explained, unwavering even with the damage path at his feet. "An escape for your people, which is buried within the world sphere, the same one you merged your aura with." He twisted to Laucan, who pressed himself against the wall. "He is your prisoner, I require nothing else from him." He stepped out of the chamber as the convulsions released Yuven Traye.

"Hayvala—"

Hayvala shook her head and drew a finger over Yuven's brow. Auric pain slashed through her chest, but it was nothing compared to the electric suffering overcoming his aura. Off the floor, she stood out of the puddle which stained her dress red with the blood of another Naveeran. Arms outstretched, she cursed her weakness, and the cycle she helped perpetuate with her fervent, rage-filled desire. "What have you done?" she asked the entirety of Naveera, and the person who wore its crown. "Why did you let Keeper Blackwall do this?" Hayvala lunged at him. "Why did you leave him here? Tell me! Or were you content on watching undue suffering on one of our people?"

"Our people?" Laucan said with his own guttural, fear-filled hiss. "He—"

"Is an innocent man!" Hayvala screeched and broke apart his argument. "Is it worth this, Laucan? Is our people's suffering not enough? How many times must we walk this cycle?"

"I was doing this for Naveera," Laucan argued, but his voice, his song grew fainter with Yuven's pained wheezing against the floor.

"No you weren't. You were doing this because someone said it was the right course!" Hayvala growled. "You are a child who can't make his own decisions without having his hand held!"

Laucan's downy feathers dropped against his ears, and Hayvala shoved him. "What was so important for you to leave his side? You couldn't even give him the decency of looking upon the damage you're creating?"

He loosened his fist, and Hayvala swiped it from him. A phial, full of a beautiful night sky. "What is this? Is this from Keeper Blackwall?" Disgust ripped through her nails, but she hesitated from shattering the phial between them when Laucan shook his head.

"Adara told me it was his medication," he rasped. "He had maybe... a week's worth of it with his belongings?" Tears pricked in the sky blues of their mother's eyes. "He wouldn't tell me it was his medication. Neither of them told me. She did." Laucan hugged the wall, shrinking. A little hatchling, barely escaped from the egg, only to be crushed underneath larger claws. "I didn't know. I didn't want this to happen. I just wanted an answer."

"And what answer were you expecting?" Hayvala drowned in the shared misery of Naveera. "What were you hoping to accomplish? Was it worth it?"

His lack of a reply tore her apart.

"You have a choice to make, Laucan," she growled. "And no matter how hard the choice, you must stick to that single conviction. For if you waver... the path will crumble before you and all the agony you wrought will truly be for nothing." Hayvala whipped around to Yuven when he groaned and rolled onto his stomach, coughing up one last glob of red. Back at his side, she held his shoulder, then stopped when Laucan sighed.

"I'm reinstating you back on the council."

"Now is not the time for that conversation."

"I'm not having a conversation. I am stating. Do what you will, Hayvala." In the absence of a choice, her baby brother's aura disappeared in a cold gloom. He slipped out of the chamber, and rushed on his own tears, soaked with the same blood splattered across her dress.

Oh, Laucan... you foolish boy. Hayvala winced in Yuven's pain when he lifted himself with his elbows. "Ser Traye."

"Don't call me that." He choked and wheezed air through his lips. "I'm not a Ser. I am a Storm Warden." He punched the ground, and a shiver ran up his entire arm from the lackluster force of his fist. "I will be referred to as such, whether you are a monarch or not." A gurgly hiss left his flared nostrils, and blood oozed out of them. "If you think I am so weak — I shall show all of you."

"My lady, he is delirious..." Ser Alekai whispered.

"Clam up, you inflated, plate-wearing punching bag." Yuven lowered himself back to the ground, into the puddle of blood smeared with black. He arched forward, and Hayvala shuddered when he lowered his head into his hands with a tearing shriek of a broken song. "Molvisaliz! How could you be so gods damned cruel to me!? Was my apologies not enough?" His Irimount dialect tore through her ears, and she rested her hands on his quivering back with the tremor of his sobs. "Solise'qen... Maria... Miesero..." He muttered other names on his bloodsoaked lips.

"Traye, please let me help you."

"I don't want your sympathy or ulterior charity. Take me back to my cell so I can finally die."

He is delirious from the flash... "Can you get him to his feet? We're going to take him to the bathhouses." Ser Alekai wandered to his other side with cautious steps, and Yuven zoned in on him, though when he outstretched his hand closer to his face, Yuven bit on the chainmail instead, his fangs bared with huffing might. Her Sentinel drew his hand back with firm force out of Yuven's weakened jaw, who spit one last time onto the stones before hauling himself up on his knees and hands. "You cannot stand as you are, Traye," Hayvala insisted. "I mean you no harm."

"Words."

"Then let me show you," Hayvala pleaded.

Yuven tore his hands through his feathers, and dragged clumps of them out from behind his ears. His arms hung limp at his sides when he sat on his knees. He pointed a loose finger at her Sentinel, who flinched from the mere motion of indication. "You are to have one minute to haul me to wherever you intend on bringing me. Any longer, and I'll bite you harder than that demonstration I just gave. And if you don't know how to tell time in this godsforsaken frozen hells, then I guess that's unfortunate. Hope you didn't need that hand." He choked, and held his chest when Alekai cupped his elbow. Hayvala took his other side, and strained against the pressure when his knees buckled with his irritated, weak hiss, feathers heavy from the splatter of red dots across the barbs.

Hayvala guided their floppy party around the main area of the palace, through the servant's quarters. Kazmira leaped up from her table. "Gods, my lady, what—?"

"Please get the kitchens to brew up some hot tea," Hayvala said, with Yuven swaying between her and Alekai with a hungry gleam in his eye at the closest armored hand to him. "Then join me in the crystal bathhouses."

"Bathhouse?" Yuven gurgled, and the servants around them grimaced when blood slipped down his front and stained his prisoner garb.

"I do not think you want to sit in your own blood, Traye," she whispered, with Yokonei's splattering her boots, and his nephew's on her dress. "Come. There is no strength to be found while drowning in your own pride. You are sickly."

"From what I've heard, so are you," he bit.

"Don't talk to Her Highness that way," Ser Alekai growled in a misguided defense of her character. "She is showing you a kindness not many would."

"Ser, he is free to state it," Hayvala chided, and Ser Alekai folded his lips inward and frowned. "He can speak to me however he wishes. After all, it is my family that put him in this position." Hayvala examined him. "Isn't that right, Warden?"

In an instant, the icy, crimson-cracked maelstrom withdrew closer to him. Left in silence, she guided them into the crystal bathhouses with Kazmira dashing for the kitchens. Into the initial changing rooms, Yuven collapsed onto the floor with a harder wheeze, resting his head against the bench. "This place will be empty for a while," she explained when he pressed his cheek against the support and his eyes closed. "Take time to rest while my handmaiden returns with some assistance." Hayvala crept closer to Ser Alekai, who straightened out his back. "Make sure no one comes in. Tell them I have need of this place and I was beset by an Auric Trance, leaving me temporarily infirm and that I need space from auras. If it is my brother, I assure you he'll turn around quite quickly, but I doubt he's going to come down here."

I can only hope he isn't doing what I think he's doing...

Ser Alekai left as Kazmira and a couple of her palace staff arrived. Every one of them stared at Yuven Traye in disbelief and terror.

"Is this... the Traye—"

"Do not finish that sentence," he said through a wheezy groan.

Hayvala raised her hand at them to affirm his demand, and they fell silent, loyal to her. Loyalty undeserved, Hayvala said, "Warden Traye, you're going to have to take off those garments. We have something warmer for you."

Yuven rolled his heavy-lidded eyes and dragged his face off the bench. He hooked his fingers into his shirt, and pulled it up. He hesitated when one of the servants gasped out loud, and pushed their hands into their face. "Do they lack manners in the sunlands? Gods! It's shameful to undress in front of the princess of Naveera!"

"If she has a problem she can say it herself, she doesn't need you as her mouthpiece," Yuven mumbled without care or the weight of his words against the traditions of an entire kingdom. He drew his shirt over his head with a struggling wriggle of his arms, revealing his lanky frame, smaller from his time spent in the Ice Gaol with meager rations, and the servant slid a bundle of towels in front of him, diving out of the way when he snapped his hand out. Hayvala lifted her gaze up to the sky when he moved down to his pants. Her staff followed her lead with sucked in cheeks and chitters of disapproval. Under his breath, Yuven echoed their chirps of chittering with a wiggle of his head and jutted lips. Hayvala took her chance when the towels disappeared from her peripheral while she gave a Storm Warden his privacy and dignity, the things no one deserved taken away from them. Her staff hid in her shadow when Yuven tightened the towel around his waist, then slumped forward with another around his shoulders and draped down his back. "You know what's shameful, that I have been reduced to this."

"Can you stand?" Hayvala whispered.

"I can crawl, is that enough for you..." Yuven tipped his head with a snarl. "Your Highness?"

"I don't want you to crawl, if you can't stand—" Hayvala approached, but stopped when Yuven waved his hand at her. Glyphs sparked at his fingertips, but scattered into fallen snow on his lap. "Do you want something to help you?"

He continued to bring up misty glyphs, ignoring her.

Kazmira raised her hand through the dampness, and an ice pole grew from her curling golden glyphs. It fell into her hands, though when she went to hand the end of it to Yuven, he swatted it out of the way and returned to his attempts at magick. "Yuven Traye," Hayvala said.

"What?"

"You are exhausted and burnt out, forcing your magick through the flow won't help you." Hayvala stepped forward with firm authority. "If you do not accept it, I will be forced to bring back the Sentinel to carry you into the bathhouses."

Yuven bared his fangs at her, but took the end of the pole from Kazmira, who drew her hand back. "You know, a dull blade can still cut you," he whispered, but drew up to his legs with his arm around the hasty pole. One of the servants rushed past him to open the door, but kept their distance from his bloodied aura.

Crystals danced in the sconces and reflected frozen flames. Faucets lined with runes prevented the permafrost from affecting the piping system throughout the palace, and the city itself. Kazmira went to the drainers, and released the flow of water. It pushed out of the faucets and filled the huge basins. Steam hissed from the runes built into the porcelain. Yuven sniffed at the servants and their attempts to help, and some of them cringed when he dropped the towel from around his waist to climb into the bath and sauna. He sat there, gaze unfocused as bubbles grew on the surface of the water.

"Yuven?" Hayvala asked and knelt close to him.

He ignored her and swiped a bottle of cleanser from the hands of her staff.

Tears drained into his aura when he scoffed into a pained grimace. Blood swept down the strands of snow white when he raised his wet hands to his hair and scrubbed with minimal strength and motivation. Hayvala held out the phial to him, but he continued to stare at the bubbles. "Curse my life," he mumbled. "One expulsion flash and everything is unclear now." He blinked a couple times. "My own body fails me at every turn." He drove his fingers into the small dip meant for draining out dampness from hair. "Having to rely on a monarch, what a twisted joke. I might as well be dead for how weak I am. I was dead the moment that Husk buried itself in me." He grabbed his own shoulders and sank deeper into the water.

"You may be weakened, Traye," Hayvala whispered. "But you're not dead yet."

Dampness clung onto his cheeks, and he shook his head with a soft, but no less fierce chuckle. "Curse this life," he whispered. "He bade me look upon it, but refused to do it himself. Refused to give me mercy for what I've done to him. Well." His fangs dug into his lower lips when the crimson lightning tore through rainwater and he gazed upon her. "It is people in your place that make this world unfair. Cruel. It is someone in your place that let this happen to me, to an entire city of people." Tears escaped through his eyes, and he shifted in the water. "Does this give any of you some sort of satisfaction? To see your worst nightmare like this?" His voice softened into a dull requiem.

Hayvala checked on her staff, who stared at him with their feathers puffed out in disbelief. "I would see that I don't perpetuate this cycle, Yuven Traye," she explained. "I have done that enough."

"We don't change from what we are." Yuven hauled himself out of the water, causing her staff to whip around to avoid the bareness of life. He crawled out on trembling knees and wrapped himself in the towels. He took the clothes offered to him, but Hayvala frowned when he put them to the side and curled into himself. Crimson electricity intensified around his throat, and he grimaced.

"Yuven?"

He swayed, then laid down into the bundle of towels.

"If—"

Hayvala winced when the electricity struck her in the temple, and Yuven stiffened, then choked once more. Blood slipped along the path of water when he convulsed. It ruined the sound of the songs through the city at his pain. Kazmira lifted her hands to her mouth in wide-eyed terror. Others scrambled away in terror and misunderstanding, but Hayvala found herself trapped. "What's wrong with him?" one of them asked.

"An expulsion flash," she whispered as it continued and dragged his aura through mud with his ceaseless shaking. In her mind, she counted the smallest moments of her imagined day until he went still. "Yuven Traye?"

He rolled onto his stomach with a shake of his head.

Hayvala knelt closer. "Do you know where you are?"

He peered at her, then rasped, "In these ridiculous, fancy bathhouses?"

"Yes, tell me your name."

Yuven gazed at her, a swirl of disorientation flattening the maelstrom into dull clouds. "Yuven Traye."

"Hold onto your name," Hayvala assured and handed him the fresh clothes. "When all else falls into the abyss, Warden, hold onto it. Sing it to the heavens. If all else fails you, it will not. Sing it to the soul inside you, so that it may awaken to your voice."

He swayed and no longer fought back when the servants helped him into the clothes. "What are you blabbering about?" he whispered when they set him back on the ground, though farther from the puddle of red he left.

Just the dreams of our people. Hayvala said, "He's going to need a litter."

Yuven fell asleep underneath the crystals of ice, and the least she could do in someone else's memory was to deliver a Storm Warden home, no matter what it took.