Altar
Part One, Chapter Six
And this girl is Aerrow's lover; this girl is his best friend. The turbulent past between them manifests itself in the form of bile rising in her throat. Cyclonis swallows hard and fights off the emotions she refuses to name as betrayal.
I've lost.
The immense weight of failure keeps her head down and her feet moving forward. She avoids looking into the eyes of her captors flanked on either side of her, pushes away their misplaced mercy. If they think they are saving her, then they are extremely misled. One way or another, death will be hers.
And there she stands, Piper, situated i the middle of her comrades like a bride at the altar, waiting for Aerrow's victorious return. And there she is, the Empress, walking behind the groom, trapped in his lengthened shadow. The hazy sun blinds her, the shadows chill her. She is filthy, inside and out. The heiress questions her tightly controlled thoughts and wonders if they could be labelled as shame.
- Because it is one thing to blindly follow the man who saved the Atmos, but it is another thing to lie down with him willingly.
Reality and illusion melt into one and Cyclonis sees flashes of dead Talons trampled underneath Atmosian feet; a bloodied arm here, and a twisted leg there. Their ghosts rise from their torn corpses and sway like restless wraiths above and beyond their murderers, their faces a sea of impassiveness.
Then they start to wail.
She has never cared for them, these Talons who lost their lives fighting under her banner, never spoke a kind word. But at the scene of her ultimate failure she loves them all, each and every single one of them.
And in this hallucinatory vision, she feels the rope around her neck. Desperately, she grasps the life's essence of her warriors and cherishes the sacrifice that bloodies her hands. She will take the guillotine for them all. It is the fall of the Empire; therefore, the fault is hers.