Clarke woke to a gray dawn, a mouth thick from last night's wine, and her hair filled with ash.
Grounder warriors were sprawled on the stones around her- passed out in huddles, tumbled in piles of furs and cushions or stretched across stone, exhausted from a fire dance that had not ended until the last embers had faded with the stars.
The morning was cold, and the stones beneath the furs she lay on radiated a dull chill; the winter that had been promised what seemed like a lifetime ago finally descending with a bleached bare sky and a sharp taste of ice in the air.
Clarke flexed her fingers, shaking the ache out of her joints as she sat up, eyes narrowed against the glow of the gray morning.
Lexa lay beside her. Her body was curled in on itself, making her smaller and more angular, more bird-boned and young than when she was awake. The skin of her arms had goosebumps. Clarke pulled the red sash more fully over the Commander's sleeping body, her hand lingering at Lexa's hip for a moment. The morning was quiet enough that Clarke could pretend they were in stasis; the coldsnap of the impending winter shifting everything into a pale and faded dimension where no one could judge her hand against Lexa's body, not even Clarke herself. Lexa sighed in her sleep and Clarke withdrew her hand.
With a suppressed groan Clarke got to her feet, her bones aching and tired calves protesting.
There was someone else awake.
Nova sat at the end of the long table, reclined in the Commander's chair, her legs thrown haphazardly across the arms. The red mane of her hair was even wilder in the aftermath of the celebration, and the ash smudged into her cheeks made the lines of her face that much sharper. She had a bowl of grapes in front of her and while Clarke watched she sat tossing them with an unnerving accuracy into a cup some ten feet away.
"Good morning, Heda," Nova said, her concentration still on the grapes. The arc of flying fruit was weirdly hypnotic to Clarke's tired mind.
"Clarke is fine," she responded, voice gravel in her throat.
Nova stopped, and the Ice Queen's eyes turned to her with a shift in intensity so sudden that it made Clarke's stomach drop.
"Heda," Nova said, and the edge to her voice made it sound like a command. "Do not be a coward. You will disappoint me."
Clarke glared, trying to find her feet in this conversation, "I don't think I care about that."
Nova's eyes remained piercing, "And the Commander's disappointment? Do you care about that?"
Clarke's shoulders tensed. "No," she said, and she could no longer feel whether she was lying; whether the bitter taste on her tongue was anger or regret.
Nova smiled. "Good," she said and Clarke frowned.
"We have much to discuss."
"No, we don't."
Nova's smile never faltered, and Clarke felt the distinct horror that the Ice Queen's sharp and beautiful face was just a mask for something ancient and cruel, a disguise that might melt or be torn away at any moment. Clarke shook the impression away with effort as Nova admonished her, "You cannot tell me that you are not curious."
"I'll live," Clarke scoffed, with more bravado than she felt.
"Is this something the Skaikru do," Nova asked, tilting her head, "Tempt fate with their words? For people who do not believe in the eternity of souls, you are very quick to risk them."
"What do you know about my people?" Clarke demanded.
"I know that you have ways of killing that look like magic to the foolish. I know that despite your power you can be killed. I know you have managed to talk your way out of death many times," Nova replied, counting on the fingers of her remaining hand, "I know you destroyed your enemies to the last child."
Clarke gritted her teeth, "You sound impressed."
"I am," Nova said, "You are worthy of your titles. But you are still weak, Heda. You allow those who have betrayed you to live."
Clarke felt like she was walking a minefield, parts of her aching for the explosion to finally happen, other parts terrified- wary of a blast that might take out far more than just her.
"I don't need vengeance," Clarke finally said.
"You are more like the Commander than you think," Nova said, "Merciful at all the wrong times." The Ice Queen shook her head, smile still at the corner of her mouth, "Though I have never come across a right time for it."
"I wouldn't call the Commander merciful. Lexa lives by jus drein jus daun."
"And yet she left the Mountain alive," Nova replied, running her good hand across the stump of her right wrist.
"I think that was more tactics than compassion," Clarke ground out.
"It is true that the Commander allows reason to rule her. You should be wary of that. She will need you at this conclave, and she will use you. You have seen that she will say you are an ally, but will make plans as though you are her enemy. She will call you Heda one day and her subject the next. She will ask you to be her confidante but her preference towards you will not stop her from doing what she decides she must."
"I know that," Clarke said. "We do what we have to-"
"To survive. Yes," Nova broke in, "I am glad we understand each other so well."
Clarke balked at the comparison, nervous that anything in her could be kin to whatever lurked just beneath the Ice Queen's smile.
"You seem to know the commander well," Clarke said.
"I do not know her well," Nova replied, "I know her best."
"Because you killed Costia?" Clarke demanded, eager to be on the offensive.
Nova smiled like she tasted something sweet. The morning felt colder on Clarke's skin, and she was reminded of the way the outer walls of the Ark had felt when she pressed her hand against them; the frozen threat of annihilation just a few inches away.
"Because I killed Costia," Nova said. The Ice Queen stood, pushing away from the Commander's chair with a suddenness that made Clarke want to jump back, the defensive impulse only stifled with effort.
"The Commander was not always so bent on peace," Nova began, and Clarke could tell the Ice Queen was beginning a speech. If Clarke wasn't anxious to hear about her history with the Commander, she'd be tempted to walk away, but Nova might be her only chance for information on Lexa's past. Nova picked up a table knife as she passed it, twisting its point against her wrapped wrist. Clarke widened her stance, crossing her arms and digging in. Whatever tactics of intimidation Nova possessed, Clarke was determined to appear unaffected.
"She fought her way through my country," Nova said, dragging the blade across the ancient wood of the table, scoring a ragged line as she advanced, "She braved the winter and led her people against my armies, spilled more blood in war than has been seen since the bombs ended the world. Her war lasted months, and her people died by the hundreds- lost to the cold and the hunger and the swords of my warriors. She brought her revenge with her, whole villages were massacred and ancient forests burned where her armies marched, and my people knew suffering."
Nova's face took on a rapturous quality, a kind of hazy bloodlust that made her words slower, the movement of her hand on the knife more sinuous and sensual.
"When she walked into my throne room, the blood of my warriors on her hands, I thought I had seen the Goddess descend, ready to bring in the new world with fire. I was ready to fight, to kill or die that I might be part of that spirit of conquest and war," Nova dug the knife into the wood, twisting it deeper by sheer forced of will, anger contorting her face, "But then I saw the Commander fail."
The Ice Queen's eyes were icy, a flat and impassive blue like ice that had been frozen since the beginning of the world, her voice just as cold.
"When she saw the body of her lover, the body I had hung in pieces above my throne, knowing she would come to me, she lost her will. She demanded peace from me, an end to the bloodshed. I could not believe my ears, that the warlord who had bathed in the blood of her own people and mine would falter now. I forced her to combat and though her sword bested mine, it was not a deity I fought- just a lost lover, weak and sentimental. She took my crown, but not my head, stole the hand that had taken her lover's spirit, but not my life."
Nova caressed the hilt of the knife, the blade standing upright in the wood with the force she had pressed it with.
"She commanded my alliance and the rest of the tribes followed because they believed her strong. But I knew the truth- that I had seen her weak, an affront to the Goddess and our people. I had seen the Commander's spirit fail at the moment of victory, and I knew this flaw would consume her. I needed only to wait," Nova looked at Clarke with something like hunger, like she couldn't decide whether to pull her apart or devour her, "To wait for you."
Clarke had been wary of the web she felt closing around her since she entered Polis, waiting to be confronted with an adversary as she turned every corner. She'd expected to feel some relief to the anxiety once she was finally faced with it- the danger imminent but known. Confronted with Nova, wielding the specter of Costia's ghost and Lexa's bloody past, intent on twisting Clarke to her purpose, Clarke felt the noose of this web suddenly pull far too tight.