(Interlude - Adelina)
"You will have to transform, so that I can carry you."
She eyes the bird suspiciously.
Her Diente can make gestures to the birds. He can even swear by the goddess if he wants.
His mother made a gesture not so different to Adelina's own people. Just as feared and hated, but at least they have the same form, the same nature; at least they are not so different as to be something incomprehensible.
Can she do it as well? Can she make gestures, and can she hold to them and believe in them even when she holds to and believes in nothing else?
She shifts, and as white scales ripple all along her body, the bird shudders. He flinches from her, his dark wings are spread as if for flight. But, he holds out his hand to her. She eyes it slowly, slit pupils examining him. He is fearful, but determined. She feels in him something of what drives her - the desperate faithfulness to someone who has seen you as more than what you were, more than what you had been limited to - and she is not pleased to feel they have that connection.
She winds her length around his arm, up and around his body. Her head circles his throat, rests at last on his shoulder, and he is tense with his need to repress his distaste. She is amused, but then he steps to the edge and he leaps off into the palest of starlit nights, and she feels her heart seize in her. Fear overwhelms her and, though she is not one of those who constricts her prey, she squeezes around him tightly. He falters for a moment and she eases her grip on him, even a mind numbed by terror recognizing the source of continued elevation, continued existence. The ground is so far below her as to be completely unseen, unfelt, unexperienced and therefore unable to be proven to be real. Perhaps if they fell they would fall forever, her and the bird...
She thinks she might have blacked out for a moment; when she comes to herself she finds the bird holding her so that she doesn't fall. He lights on the ground as easily as he left it and she slips gratefully to the dirt, feeling it solid, warm, and welcoming against her ridged scales. They are near the palace of her own people; she wonders that it was such a short distance by air. She wonders that they have never successfully used that against her people before. But soon there are other things to concern her.
She hears her people moving in the brush. The bird hears them too; he is still, his eyes on her and his ears open to the night. She shifts and raises her arms to signal her people. She senses weapons being lowered and a form materializes before her.
"Adelina," he addresses her, his dark scales blending his skin into the night so that his bright blue eyes almost float on nothing. "We have heard news from the Hawk's Keep." He fixes those eyes on the bird, burning eyes that want answers and, failing answers, will settle for blood. "News that says our supposed Naga is a lying traitor to our people."
She supposes that this is the moment she should feel that she has a choice to make, but it is a choice already made. "Lies," she says, "all lies. The Diente was ambushed by a visitor to the Keep. It was not the hawk's intention to shed blood. Zane lives. Peace is still his desire, and his Naga's desire."
She does find that those words sit strangely yet in her mouth: his Naga. They were almost different words: me, mine. But the bitterness that followed that thought has been replaced with other things in an odd sort of detachment. At the moment what she feels is relief - that Zane is alive, and that, for the most part, it does not seem that the hawks want him dead.
The guards move around her, more of them coming out of the darkness to examine the bird. She shakes herself, remembers her goal. "Take me to Charis."
The bird comes with her. She supposes he doesn't want to be left alone, and she cannot say that she doesn't understand it, even as she thinks of her brother and her king, alone, surrounded by birds in that place. But...
Always "but."
It is hard to overcome ways she has thought all of her life. She knows it is hard because she is here, in the house of the Cobriana, where those of her family have not tread for generations, and even to this day she sees those who only want to remind her that it should have stayed that way: that Maeve's children have no place with true serpiente. It is hard... but it is not the hardest thing.
Charis is standing in the synkal, surrounded by her people. Irene is with her, the crowd reaching for their last princess, wanting to touch her, reassure her, protect her. She is whiter than her brother was when Adelina left him, pale and determined and giving every piece of himself to secure peace.
Adelina calls out to the crowd, raising her hand to bring attention to herself. She thinks that it might actually be the bird that gets her the attention. Fangs are bared to him, but she takes his wrist and pulls him with her, through the crowd. Realizing she brings news, a path opens for her to the dais and she pulls herself and the bird up to Charis' questioning, desperate eyes, and she says, "He lives."
Galen catches Irene as she faints, overwhelmed at the news, too full of joy - and the knowledge that she is not, yet, the last hope of her people - to bear another moment. He carries her from the crowd of people, and they turn to Adelina, silent now, in the restless watching silence that precedes the wild storm, silent until they know which way the storm should turn.
"The Diente was ambushed by a strange visitor to the Hawk's Keep, one of the Ichneumon," she says, hearing hisses of derision and fear throughout the crowd. Charis herself almost faints, and Adelina pauses a moment. She gives them the moment she never had time for, to stop and wonder how the birds ever found the legendary hunters who are more myth and fable than flesh and blood, and then to wonder why it hadn't happened sooner, mutual foes drawn together by their hatred. She gives them that moment, but only a moment. "Zane slew the hunter." She pauses again, for their cheers, and she knows Zane has become more than a legend to his people now, for the Ichneumon are the greatest monsters that live in stories used to frighten children. Their dark and innumerable powers are limited only by the teller of the story and they are often undefeatable. "He was wounded, but it was not the hawk's intention to shed blood. Peace is still Zane's desire, and his Naga's desire."
When she says it this time it comes easier to her tongue. She remembers the fierceness in the hawk's eyes as she tried to cast her guards from the room to protect Zane from their predatory stares, and she remembers the hawk's soft words of desperation as she confessed the path of events to them, the victims, and hoped against hope that they would still accept her offer of peace. The hawk does want peace, Adelina believes this. She is starting to believe that the hawk wants this peace and Zane's continued life as well.
Charis is eying the crow. She is not alone, and the crow is nervous. Adelina knows this because he is blank to her, but he is standing officially "at ease" so sharply she thinks his bones might pop out of his skin from the tension of his stance.
"Andreios," she says, her voice carrying to the whole synkal, "brought me here by wing so that I might quickly bring you trustworthy report." He blinks at the recognition, or perhaps that she remembers his name, and ducks his head in response.
She turns to Charis. "I would return to Zane now."
Charis nods. "Take more guards with you," she says firmly. "And a doctor. They cannot begrudge Zane that." She glares at the bird, and in the queen mother there is more mother than queen at that moment.
Adelina doesn't know what that means to the peace, to bring more serpiente into the hawks' nest without the hawks' manifest, but Andreios only nods in acceptance. She grins wickedly, wondering if he knows that means he will have to carry more of them on the trip back.
She doesn't think that he had realized it, but he stands patiently as more than 18 feet of serpent curls around him. She directs them, remembering freshly her own first experience with flight, and makes sure they will not impede him if they become frightened. She has carefully chosen another guard and a young physician; they should be experienced enough that they won't startle but fresh-minded enough that they will not cause incident at the Hawk's Keep by clinging to what was and no longer is. She can see that they are already impressed by Andreios; his stoicism is not enough to hide his fear, but he stands firm and does not flinch from the sinuous touch of their scales as the three snakes wind their way around his body. She wishes for a moment that she was as stoic; the tickle of feathers on her nose as she circles his neck still makes her hiss in revulsion. But then, as he leaves the ground in a powerful thrust of strong wings, she thinks she is doing well to be here at all, and to not have killed him yet.
They arrive safely, though shaken, three snakes not used to the wind and a bird not used to scaled passengers. They set down on the highest floor of the Hawk's Keep, and she can see her brother down the hall, her brother and the sparrow standing guard. Ailbhe nods to her and looks relieved to see she has brought reinforcements; the sparrow looks displeased but resigned.
They stand guard outside the door, and Adelina knows what that means but she cannot stop herself from going to that door and pushing it open. Andreios is beside her; she doesn't know if he follows her to check on his queen or if he follows her to prevent her from taking whatever action he supposes she'll take. She suspects the former, but thinks that he will plead the latter even with his dedication to this peace. He moves as soundlessly as she, and she is impressed, though not in the least bit surprised.
Her Zane is sleeping on the bed. He is still far too pale, but his face is relaxed in sleep and he does not look as though he is in pain.
The hardest thing, she thinks, is not letting go of the ways of thought she has cherished all of her life.
It is letting go of the things that came after that.
For generations - as long as there had been a war with the birds, and longer even - Maeve's children knew the place that should have been theirs. Never would Adelina have thought that she would love one of the Cobriana. Her family was well versed in stories of the cobra's arrogance, their lust for power, and their disregard for common decency. When she bridged that rift, Adelina thought she'd done the greatest thing she'd ever be called upon to accomplish in her life.
The hawk is lying beside him on the bed. Danica. She is curled next to Zane, her face half hidden against his hair. Her hand lies against his arm lightly. The determined set of her mouth is only slightly less resolute in sleep; she twitches slightly, battling some dream, and her hand turns, grasping Zane's arm and holding it firmly, pulling him closer.
Adelina looks across the bed. Andreios is standing there, and he looks up to meet her eyes. They do not wear masks for each other in that moment. The emotion is too raw, too full, too much. Heartbreak and love, and...
And Adelina sighs, a soft exhalation of breath that represents so much more. She loves Zane, and because she loves him she must honor what he loves: his people and their safety, the peace he has given himself for and upon which he has asked the blessing of the goddess. She did not want to give him to the cold embrace of a hawk, but... She looks at the determined set of Danica's face and thinks: as long as you care for him, as long as you know what he has given up for you, as long as you give him what he needs, then... then I will trust him to your keeping.
Heartbreak and love, and acceptance. She turns from the bed. Dawn is rising through the window, and she hasn't slept since the night before this last one. Andreios beckons her back to the hallway and she leaves the new guard she brought on duty as Ailbhe gladly follows her to the room the crow shows them. The crow is practically dead on his feet as well, and as he shows her people to beds, as he tells one of his own guards the situation, he and his sparrow fall onto beds as well and sleep. She thinks that part of it is that he can guard her and her people, and his queen, better if he stays close, but she thinks also that something has passed between the two of them that night and, as much as she still does not like that she shares it with him, she finds it is not a bad thing to not be alone.