"Damn this mouth of mine!!!" Rissa hissed, standing outside the hut and actually slapping her own lips. "I should put a mesh on it! anything just to keep it SHUTTT"
She paced in the dirt, cursing herself and shooting guilty glances at the darkened doorway of the hut every now and then. She had done the one thing she swore not to do; she had hurt the Queen not with a blade, but with her tongue.
Finally, unable to bear the silence, she mustered up her courage and crept back inside. She found Aeryn sitting on the edge of the cot, her back turned to the door, her posture rigid.
"My Queen!" Rissa dropped to her knees, the thud echoing in the small room. "I have this damned mouth! I speak recklessly! Please forgive me!"
No response. Not even a single nod from the Queen.
"My Lady!" Rissa shuffled closer on her knees, her voice pitching up in panic. "I know I was in the wrong! I shouldn't have said such rude things! Please forgive me, I don't know why I talk so much! Maybe because I am too frank with you! Because it has never happened before, that I am acting so childishly! Please, My Lady! I know I shouldn't have said this, even if I am RIGHT!"
The moment the words left her lips, Rissa froze.
"Damnnnnn!!!" she wailed, hitting her forehead. "No, no, no! I was not right! I was not right at all! Please forgive me!"
Still, there was no response. The stillness of the Queen was terrifying.
Rissa couldn't take it. She scrambled up and moved around the cot to face the Queen. She put a tentative hand on Aeryn's shoulder and leaned forward to look at her face.
Aeryn looked straight at her. Her eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with red as if she were about to cry, or perhaps had been crying silently the entire time. Her face was contorted in raw, open anguish.
"Awwww!!! Are you crying?!" Rissa cried out, her heart breaking instantly. Without thinking, she rushed forward to hug the Queen, her arms wide.
Aeryn pushed her away.
It wasn't a violent shove, but it was firm, creating a wall of distance between them. Aeryn stood up, wiping her face with a rough swipe of her sleeve.
"You were right, after all," Aeryn said, her voice hollow. "She was scared. They are all scared."
"No, no, no, I was not right! I accept my mistake! I was not right at all!" Rissa pleaded, hovering anxiously.
"We have no time to waste on this," Aeryn cut her off, her tone shifting back to command, though the crack in her voice remained. "Pack your bags. We leave in a while."
Rissa blinked, looking at the half-eaten food and the warm fire. "We… we will not take food? But the hen…"
"I said WE WILL LEAVE IN A WHILE!" Aeryn said strongly, the command brooking no argument.
Rissa snapped her mouth shut, looking at the Queen's devastated face. "Okay. Okay, I understand. On it. We will leave in a while."
............
On the other side, Hundreds of miles away, the air tasted of sulfur and ash.
General Sakina and her elite team had reached the Cinder Hegemony hours ago. The heat here was oppressive, rising from the volcanic vents that powered the city-states' massive forges. The sky was a perpetual bruise of grey smoke and orange smog.
Sakina was tearing the city apart, metaphorically speaking. She had deployed her team into the crowded markets, the industrial districts, and the docks, doing her best to find the hidden Queen. But despite everything, despite Zephyr scouring the rooftops and Maris checking the waterways, they couldn't get a single clue.
It was as if the Queen had disappeared into thin air.
The search was made agonizingly difficult by Sakina's own order, silence. Not a single mention of queen's disappearance.
"General," Petra reported, wiping soot from her brow. "We checked the inns near the western gate. Nothing."
"Where could she be???"sakina thought out loud, petra added, "General! i must say, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. We cannot show the Royal Seal, and we cannot describe who we are looking for without alerting the local lords that the Queen is missing. And this is making it extremely hard to find her!"
Sakina slammed her fist against a brick wall, cracking the mortar. "I know!" she hissed. "But if the Hegemony Lords find out Aeryn is vulnerable, they won't help us find her, they'll hunt her. They've hated the Trinity edicts for years."
"She might not be here, General," Zephyr suggested tentatively, hovering slightly above the hot pavement to cool his feet. "We found horse tracks heading south initially, but… what if she turned?"
"She wouldn't," Sakina insisted, though doubt was gnawing at her gut. "This is the logical route. It has resources. It has cover. It is where a strategist would go."
She didn't know that the strategist leading the Queen was Rissa, whose logic operated on an entirely different, chaotic frequency.
"Keep looking," Sakina commanded, staring into the smog. "We check the foundries next. If she is here, she is hiding. And I will do anything! even burn it brick by brick until i find her!"
.
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