*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
In the slow tides, the low rock of cold water on gray shores, there is a hum, almost imperceptible to the human ear. It's a murmur, a sigh, a swell of growing want, anticipation. As newly-crowned queens banish friends and lowly men steal through the night, whisking a glinting package toward a city lying in the shadow of a tall, pale tower, these shores and the things beneath them grow, expand in the never-ending dark.
A great change is upon them, they sense, a change that the world has not seen in ever-so long. And they have grown hungry here, in the cold, in the dark. They are hungry, needful.
Come back, they asked. Come back, they demanded.
And on other shores, set before a city that still lies in bloated, crumpling ruins, she stands, face turned almost as if she can still hear their call. She stood at these shores once before, feet clenched by sand, calves blasted by sea water. Things were different then. She was different then. All it was was blazing sun and vast infinite sea and she was content with it, content to be no one with the man she loved at her side, her friends at her back.
Some part of her wishes that would be enough now.
But it is not.
Now there are seeds, gardens planted in her now, that have blossomed and grown, vines that need something more for nourishment.
Something more to feed on.
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It is a misty, gray morning when the island finally materializes in the distance. It hangs out there, a looming shadow in the chill air, set just above the dark, chopping waves.
It grows closer, this place, this thing, ever closer as the hours, minutes, seconds slip past, and when the boat beaches on its pale gray shores, Lethinor is no more understandable than when Lei Chaudri first saw it. But the feeling of it grows, grows on the edges of his shoulders, the nape of his neck.
There is something prickling along Lei's senses. An instinct, a half-knowing, the warning bell before a blow.
There is only dead silence in the island's jungle, long, gaping gaps of sound in which no living thing stirs, no leaves rustle. The trees move queerly here, just in the corners of Chaudri's eyesight. He keeps turning to catch them, turning as he follows Allayria—silent, purposeful, unafraid—but every time he faces the tall shadows they remain still.
He doesn't like it here.
The creatures, Allayria's other companions, quiver like lightning rods, masks twitching and shivering in the green gloom, in tune with something Chaudri can't understand. Something he never wants to understand. He hates them, can barely stand to look at them, when they remind him of before, when they remind him of Isi.
He had asked Allayria the night of the feast in Solveigard, when they returned to their quarters, alone at last, why she kept their masks. Why she didn't at least let them take them off, be someone again. The Paragon had turned then, pale-faced, peering at him from beside the bathroom basin, hands slick with glittering water, eyes dark pools of fathomless, indecipherable curiosity, and said:
"You wouldn't want to see what's beneath."
Yes, uneasiness weighs on Lei Chaudri's bones, and it has been growing long before this, only amplifying now that they have made landfall.
In the heart of the jungle now, the party shuffles and scales, hands gripped on vines, feet wedged into cliff-rock, pushing through wet brush, slick rock. When they vault over the last ledge, when Lei straightens up, moves to stand beside Allayria, he sees it.
A great eye, carved in stone.
He had heard stories before about this place. Not that he really listened, not that he had cared to hear any more about monsters and vicious things outside of his control. But still, he listened enough to know what this place is.
He starts, moving toward it first, to scout it out, to make sure, but the Paragon's hand catches his shoulder.
"No," she says, voice soft, lilting like dried leaves. "We aren't going in there, not this time."
She leads him up and around, over tangling vines, up crumpling walls, and to mossy grass stretching up on the roof above. It's a flat, vast terrain up here, open enough for the wind to howl through it, and the Paragon moves as if in a trance, as far away from him as she's ever been.
Ruben had told him about this place once, at the beginning, after their first fight. He had told Lei then about Allayria falling.
Lei doesn't like this place. He doesn't like the look on her face.
It feels like home, he thinks unwittingly, hands flexing, feet shifting, looking for higher ground to climb. It feels like something is waiting here.
He reaches out, puts a hand on the back of Allayria's neck.
The touch seems to stir her; she turns, her inky, coiling hair slipping across the back of his hand, the muscles in her shoulders rippling, taut and alive, and when she looks at him this time, he can see those stars again in her eyes, silent, but twinkling life.
Allayria answers with a hand placed on his chest, above his heart. Pressing, firm and slightly warm today, though not as warm as a normal hand would be. Even Lei Chaudri has to admit this. She's feeling the beat of his heart; he's feeling the rhythm of her breathing.
Chaudri lets his other hand touch her face; its coldness does not bother him anymore. People said he was too cold too. At least he isn't alone anymore.
Her grip grows harder, twisting in the hair at the back of his head, pulling his mouth down to meet hers, and Lei lets his eyes fall close.
Everyone else is dead, he thinks. Mother, Beinsho, Ruben, Isi. Everyone else who saw the inside of me.
Lei Chaudri is lost, and all he can do is follow her.
A/N: We're back! Not only that, but we are back in Lethinor. But why? (Seriously, why? Why would you ever?) What is Allayria looking for? Any theories?
Chapter Notes: We first hear about Lethinor in Paragon's "Questions and Answers"; we first visit the island in "The Approach" and we first see the entrance to the library in "The Eye." Lei reminisces about being called cold in Partisan's "Choice."
