The dark red stain doesn't come away on her fingers. Not like it had the day she had arrived home to find the door missing, windows smashed, the caravan eerie and silent at its place at the border of the forest, away from the main camp.
-It is never silent—bright, booming laughter welcoming her home, cheerful greetings and warm hugs-
Red blood had flaked from her fingers as she walked unsteadily, horrified to the edge of the door.
The bodies had been buried long before she had arrived that day. She is grateful for that small, small mercy. The other members of her camp had done that after Lucien had left.
They hadn't said what Lucien had done to her precious husband and son. How he had butchered her child, slaughtered what had been most beloved of her.
But the camp had found them, and laid the bodies to rest beside the lake, in the shade of one of the great trees.
— The walls inside are covered in blood, black stains on pale wood. The air smells of decay and death. She fights the urge to vomit. How had they died? With terrified screams? Had Lucien even hesitated to murder her baby? Did-?
She turns away, unable to look any longer, stumbling out the door and collapsing into the grass, retches. A wail claws its way from her throat, a scream that echoes across the lake—
Now, she closes her eyes and moving away from the caravan, sets it alight with her Will. Bright, crackling flame gnaws at rotting wood and she watches the last link to her past collapse as the sun sets beyond the hills.
It is early morning when the embers die. She is still awake, tracing the shapes of the constellations with one raised hand as she lies in the grass.
She rises upon seeing the last ember flicker and fade into black.
Nothing keeps her here anymore. It is time to move on. Sparrow is a bird and birds have no real home.
She will not be Queen. Not now.
Now she is a Sparrow, burdened by grief. So she spreads her wings to the wide, dark sky and flies.