if I run from the wolves.
The palace on Klockstoppia hung heavy with the silence that seemed to perpetually follow Cycloninans. Their convoy buzzed off in the distance, weighed down with crates of precious crystals. Peregrine watched the clouds they left behind, hands folded neatly in her lap.
"Mistress," one of her servants addressed her, coming round the corner. She rapped lightly on the door jamb and Peregrine turned to face her. "The guards thought you might come see what they've found."
Peregrine steeled herself. Her guards rarely called her, a fact for which Peregrine wasn't sure if she should be grateful. They had grown harder since the fall of the Atmos, like her, and they did not fret easily. She rose from her spot on the windowsill and strode towards her servant.
They tread silently through the halls, passing portraits of Peregrine's dark skinned blue haired ancestors. They all share the same copper eyes and sharp nose, the same fragile build. They were a family that came into power by chance. The queen, for she is a queen now, she won that title on her own, raised her head to look at the portrait of her father, her predecessor. Peregrine wondered if he was ashamed.
Terra Klockstoppia had no autonomy and Peregrine's title was simply a symbolic one. She was the queen of boot-lickers and yes-mans, but she figure that was better than being the queen of blood and dust.
Her guards are waiting for her in the meeting chamber and her commander bowed to her when she entered the room. "Your Majesty," he said to her, "we have restrained a criminal who tried to enter your private wing of the palace. She claims to know you."
Peregrine wondered why the idea of someone slipping into her home did not scare her as much as it should've. She put her arms across her chest. "Show me this miscreant."
The guards parted and revealed a woman adorned in rags. Peregrine gasped. She and this woman wore the same face, with the same dark brown skin and indigo hair and the same copper eyes. The stranger was perhaps twenty-five, a scant year older than the queen, and scarred. Whereas Peregrine was a waif, her reflection was a woman hardened by battle.
And Peregrine knew her.
They had met once, ten years before. Before the Atmos fell. They had both been girls, then, thrown into a world that sought nothing more than to crush them. Peregrine eyed the woman, taking note of the way she carried herself. Even though the guards held her arms, she seemed poised and on guard.
They held each other's gaze for a moment. The warrior woman had a haunted light in her eyes, a woman who had aged too fast, a woman who had lived in nightmares, a woman who had fought the monsters in the dark.
"Why have you come here?" Peregrine asked, though she knew.
The woman stared at her. "Because," she said, "I had nowhere else to run. My friends are imprisoned or dead. The Master Cyclonis wants me dead and I've decided I'm not quite ready to die yet."
Of course. She was a fugitive. And what better place to run than Klockstoppia, an insignificant dot on the map of the Atmos?
Peregrine nodded. She wondered what it had been like, if she had remained in this doppelganger's shoes. She looked down at her gown crafted from silk and lace, luxuries afforded her because she had surrendered. She waved the guards away. "Consider yourself to be a friend of mine."
The rogue, the lone Storm Hawk, barked out a humorless laugh. "Thanks," she said, "because I don't have any left."