FROM HER ASHES³ ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐈: Shadows of Malevolence

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SHADOWS OF MALEVOLENCE

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         LYRA IS A servant for her people's unhappiness.

     She can make herself angrier, larger, blistering, if that's what they want. She could be smaller, all for her people, quieter, if it's that what they need. She is the wound they cannot stop picking. Taking scraps at meals as little parts of appreciation. She is not an easy person to appreciate. She wears her fury so visibly that they've become ashamed of her. So make her smaller, crush her up in the palms of their hands, tear her apart in the pits. Destroy her for breakfast and devour her for lunch, leave nothing left of her, not even for the vultures. Eat her. Eat her all up. It's too late for her to come anything else, there is nothing left for her to be when they're already choking on her leftovers.

     Everything feels like eating her own heart.

     Eyes scarred with ruby tears the following morning, Lyra drifts through the halls and that's where Octavia finds her.

     Lyra violently erupts into consciousness. Shame swamps her frame like a shawl. They stare at each other for a long moment. One heartbeat. Then two. Then three.

      "I should have told you about the worms," Octavia says with startling abruptness.

     Lyra gives a jerky nod because yes, Octavia should have. Lyra might not be the leader, but she wants to help, she wants to share Octavia's burden as best as she can.

     "I wish you told me about Kane yourself," continues the Red Queen stoically. "But. . . I understand why you didn't."

     They stare at each other a moment longer.

     Blankly, Lyra wonders how much you can change and still get away with it. Before you turn into someone else entirely. Before it's some kind of murder. Before the person you used to be was all used up and gone. Drowning. Dead.

     Octavia's voice becomes tentative. Quiet. "Are we. . . Are we OK?"

      Unspeakably lonely and hideously drained, Lyra nods.

     They will exist. Together. The halo and the sword. In thousands of agonizing monstrosities, they will exist.

     She has nothing else.

     "We need to check on the eye," says Lyra at long last. Her voice is dry and scratchy, vocal chords fried. "The spy must have gotten it down by now."

     Anxious heart eating up her body, eating up her nerves, eating up every part of her brain, Lyra obediently shadows the Red Queen as she stalks through the bunker. Guards flank them and they find their council of Indra and Cooper and Nate. He shoots Lyra a questioning look, but she gives a subtle shake of her head. She feels this poison slowly filling up her veins. Every atom agonizingly becomes tainted. She is never, never calm, never even for a heartbeat.

     They find what's left of Spacekru huddled together around a computer, Clarke with them, seeming to have joined their ranks. The azure screen glows brightly, Monty glistening in the shadows, and Lyra's eyes sweep the screen easily.