Febrile adj. marked or caused by fever: feverish
A/N: Mentions both Cassiopeia's pre- and post- Azir lore
She'd sworn not to tell, this time on a snake entwined dagger. But she'd sworn many things over the years, and had seen nothing different about this one.
Or she hadn't, until she had spilled that man's secrets from her lips.
The burning consumed her, radiating from her throat in stabbing spears of heat. Searing pain dug behind her eyes as if to press them from her skull. Her skin shredded itself, tearing itself up and digging back in hardened and changed.
No, that wasn't right.
For here she lay, curled alone in the darkness and stale air. The statue must have pinned her, she thought (Statue? What statue?) and the burning had started from without, not within. Even in the cold her skin still throbbed and the pain behind her eyes carried over from her misremembered recollection. She could not gather her thoughts, the contents of her head still jostling around in the frenzied heat.
Sluggishly she extracted herself from the rubble, vaguely aware that something was wrong. But the pressure inside her head and the too quick beating of her heart made sway.
Katarina waited for her in their father's quarters. But no, here she stood in the beating sun, among the gouged earth and scattered fallen statuary.
"Sisssssster?"
Katarina stood transfixed, as if her very gaze had turned her into yet another statue in ancient Shurima.
Cassiopeia's brow should have furrowed, but made no such move. She raised a hand to her still throbbing head.
She caught sight of her hand that was no longer a hand.
Looking down as if through a haze she examined her body. Where she had been smooth, tantalizing curves now she was a monster.
Her head seared from the inside and blistered from the relentless sun. Her eyes burned with the pressure of unshed tears; daughters of Noxus did not cry, and likely this thing she had become could not. She brought her blessedly cool hands to her head, and slithered (slithered!) to the ground.
Footsteps approached. She turned her face upward resentfully.
Katarina stared down at her, face blank. "Do you think I'm beautiful, sister?"
"Of coursssse." The hiss came unbidden. Cassiopeia bit at her tongue. "You always have been, Katarina, and you know that. Why are you asking me that now of all timessssss?"
Her sister pulled out her knife. Cassiopeia flinched back, but she simply tossed it in the air and caught it by the tip. "A silk dress and a well-crafted blade are both things of beauty. You were one, and I the other. Now you're the other too, but no less beautiful for it."
The tears did come then, hot of Cassiopeia's sun- and fever-baked cheeks. She batted them, and sliced her cheek in the process and adding to the trails down her face.
Katarina pulled a handkerchief from her jacket and reached up to dab the blood and tears from Cassiopeia's face. Her smile was the softest Cassiopeia had seen her wear since childhood.
"See?" she said. "You're still human after all. And surely a few scales have made you are no less clever."
Katarina finished with Cassiopeia's face. Besides the cut her face was like a sculpture, as if her tears had never been shed.
"Now come. Father is waiting."