Blood and Tears
Chapter 11: Lockdown
The instant the words left Aang's mouth my heart fell. I couldn't believe that she had gotten out; even with all that security they supposedly had around her cell. Ari left after another hug to go make sure that the palace was going into lock down. Sokka continued to fill us in.
"She's out in the city looking, so far she hasn't thought to think of looking here for you two. We aren't quite sure which one of you is a target, so both of you are not under any circumstance allowed to leave the palace without a proper escort. But for now we are issuing a complete lockdown, no one in, no one out," My twin said. I suddenly burst into a run, and the boys tried to pull me back.
"Where are you going?!" Sokka shouted. I didn't answer, instead I continued running toward Iroh's room.
"Raine, please don't do anything stupid!" I heard my brother say. I stopped and turned around to look at him. He had a serious look on his face and I could tell he was a little bit scared.
"Do I ever do anything irrational?"
"No…"
"Then trust me, I'm only going to talk to Iroh," I replied as I began running again. I didn't stop running until I got to his door, out of breath.
"Azula…she's…gone…she…escaped."
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Instead of gaping in shock and taking things out of proportion he merely nodded and had the meeting called into immediate effect. Once we were gathered about in the throne room that use to belong to my father, Ari gave an update on the lockdown status.
"The palace is already in complete lockdown sir," Ari reported. Uncle glanced at Raine and they held a silent conversation. Finally Uncle vocalized, "We should tell them."
"Okay," Raine said nodding her head. She cleared her throat like she was going to begin and then gave Uncle a timid look.
"Go on, they have to know…" He said. She repeated the process but this time she did speak.
"There's a reason why Azula hates me so much, and it is not for the reasons you might think. You see, there's more to my punishment than just having 'fraternized with the family' when I was servant girl here. I learned a terrible secret one day and when I had decided that I was going to tell, Oazi sent me away to the war, in hopes that I wouldn't make it out there by myself," Raine paused. "This sort of secret started out as a plan to get Iroh away from the throne, and continued into an even more elaborate plan once Azula showed a mania for fighting. Oazi killed his father after he refused to change the order of succession, and forged his will, using the timely death of Iroh's son as an excuse why Iroh shouldn't have the throne. Then he began planning to get Zuko out of the way so Azula could take the throne. But there was a kink in their plan. Azula was not a full blood royal; instead she was a bastard child of Oazi and a mere servant who had been working there long before I came. They wanted to get rid of the only person who knew other than I did and that was Ursa." Raine had paused again to allow time for what she was saying to sink in before she began once more.
"I had warned Ursa to leave, because her life was in danger if she stayed here. Once Ursa had left, Oazi confronted me, knowing that his wife did not simply just leave her only child for no reason at all, and I was forced to tell him I had learned of his plan. But I hand the leg up, even though I was a child at the time, I had most of the servants on my side, plus the mother of Azula to confirm. He was powerless until he found some other excuse to rid of me. Now that the war is over and I am still living, Azula is going to do everything possible to kill me and Zuko so she can take the throne," Raine finished. I dropped my glass of water and it broke on the floor. Everyone was staring blankly still working out the situation. While we waited from someone to say something Raine began to use water bending to clean up the mess I had made.
"It makes so much sense now…" I replied. Then we were left with that question of what do we do now that we all know what's going on? I sighed. Everything was just getting more and more complicated. Little did I know that it was about to get worse.