Arinel had always appreciated the value of life—she was well aware that each life carried a different value, and thus could be traded.

The life trade was ever prevalent in her world. As a baby, she was chosen to live at the expense of her mother. As a young girl, she was nourished by the lifeforce of hundreds of peasants who worked her father's land and grew the food that fed her. As a becoming bride, her father had insured her safe passage to Hadrian with twenty guardsmen, of whom fifteen survived, and a band of decoys, of whom none did.

Over the years, as she watched nameless, faceless people parade before her to form a wall of living flesh, protecting her from harm; as she imagined her mother lying serene on a bed of blood, cast aside to die as if she were a mere container for a higher being, she was overcome with uncertainty; Was she really worth all these lives? Had she lived up to the potential these people saw in her, when they drew their last breaths at her father's command?

The answer was no—and never will be. Though life could be traded, life could never be replaced. No matter how much she would contribute to progress in Latakia, how many lives she would go on to better and save, how many dreams she would accomplish in her mother's place, the shed blood of others that flowed within her veins and tied her to life would never be diluted. Not even by a single drop.

And yet, even as she knew her sin could never be undone, nor her guilt forgiven, she couldn't help but try in vain. It was her only way of coping; her only way of living. It was such that Arinel hardly knew, anymore, what it was to live for one's own self. The choice that Zier had always found so simple and inherent to make.

"This is your mother. The mother you have never known and never will know. And you're putting the needs of others above your own? Again?"

As Gretella's rebuking voice echoed in her ears, Arinel burrowed her cheek deeper into her pillow and hunched her shoulders against the chill within her bones, shutting her eyes against the prodding moonlight.

My needs aren't worth considering. Because I'm not worth considering.

Every sacrifice. Every life lost. Every choice made—have always been for Lady Crosset.

Lady Crosset would know what she wants. But I'm no longer Lady Crosset.

Now, I'm just Arinel.

And I barely know Arinel.

Rather, is there even anything to know about Arinel?

The gong of the chapel bell reverberated in the night air, signaling the actual end of first sleep, and Arinel rose thankfully from her down-stuffed four poster, trailing not a remnant of drowsiness.

Last night was the first time ever since she left Crosset that she slept in a bed. As Meya's maidservant, she was relegated to a hay mattress on the floor, alongside Gretella and Agnes. They were at least given a separate, conjoined room to sleep in, however, which was fortunate, considering the frequency with which Meya and Coris went about their nighttime business.

Beside her on the bed, Gretella lied awake yet unresponsive, her bloodshot, swollen eyes boring holes into the ceiling, and Arinel quickly turned away in shame. Twisting sideways, she noticed Heloise's empty mattress and overturned blanket. Agnes was already up and combing her hair. Fione rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she struggled to rise, no doubt meaning to go tend to the fire in Meya and Coris's room.

One might assume the absent Heloise could have beaten her to the task, but that wouldn't explain how Arinel hadn't heard her leaving despite having been awake for the good part of an hour, and why darkness still seeped out unmitigated from the gap under the door. Like Arinel, the Greeneye lady had probably woken long before the bell, sleepless from the astounding revelations about her dragon nature.

A sudden inspiration lit up in Arinel's head at the thought.

Greeneyes...Dragons—Meya.

Of course. Arinel doesn't know. But Lady Crosset would know.

I should go ask Lady Crosset.

Arinel planted her stiff arms on the yielding mattress and edged to the side. Her numb legs fell to the carpeted stones like lead planks as she swung them off the bed. She hobbled towards the side door, wiggling her hand behind her at the half-risen Fione.

"Rest, Fione. I'll take care of it."

"Thank you, m'lady."

Fione gave a melodic yawn, falling back to her hay sheet with a grateful flump as Arinel turned the icy metal knob. The solid black of night engulfed her as she stepped over the threshold, blemished only by a sliver of milky white moonlight slashing a slanted path down the foot of the bed. She could just make out Coris's bare toes sticking up behind the lumps of Meya's blanketed feet.

In the fireplace, pinpricks of orange light peeked from among shambles of ash and blackened timber. The suffocating cold of a desert night would have jolted a regular sleeper from his slumber—but not Coris, who would sleep through an earthquake even without an urging from laudanum—and Meya, who was impervious to the cold due to her inner body furnace.

Hands outstretched, Arinel grasped and groped in the darkness for firewood—but her foot found them first. The resulting thuds of rolling timber was followed by rustling from the bed. Arinel glanced sharply up, just in time to catch Meya's silhouette swaying upright, barely discernable against the backdrop of pitch darkness. She turned around, her glowing green eyes blinking blearily, eerily seeming to hang suspended in mid-air.

"Sorry. Looks like I let the fire die again."

She mumbled as she slid down the bed, landing with two dull thuds on the carpet. She shuffled drunkenly—though not blindly—towards the fireplace, knelt down to gather the scattered logs, laid them one by one inside the grate, then topped them with kindling. After about a minute of striking flint, a hatchling fire clawed its way out to open air, flickering within Meya's glowing eyes, now narrowed in worry at Arinel.

"Lady, how come you're here? You been sleepwalking? Thank Freda we weren't shagging tonight."

Arinel reckoned Meya was still too drowsy for modesty. After throwing a furtive glance at Coris, who hadn't wiggled a toe, Meya tossed in a pinch of twigs to coax the fire out further, then turned back to her,

"I'd been meaning to talk to you, actually. You've been acting strange since you came back from the alchemist's. What happened?"

Out of habit more than conviction, Arinel shook her head listlessly. Though she had decided to let Meya in on her mother's murder and follow her lead on the matter, now that Meya was right before her, she was again too dazed to speak.

Still, Meya persisted. Once she had lit a tallow candle on a stand in the fireplace, she took Arinel tenderly by the arm and led her to the half-vacated bed.

No sooner had the candlelight fell upon the figure on the bed, than the candle itself plummeted to the carpeted floor. The remaining dim orange light from the hearth mingled with moonbeam, illuminating a pale hand falling out from a gathering of shadows. Long, tapered digits lied splayed lifelessly, fingertips resting against an empty glass vial.

A gust of wind scattered the curtain of clouds. Moonlight reflected on the bone-white slits of his half-closed eyes. A trail of spittle glistened as it inched through his parted lips...

Meya's strident scream pierced the petrified air like a blade of lightning, jolting Arinel to action. At the acrid smell of burning wool, she hurriedly stamped out the candleflame. By the time she had glanced up, Meya had already scrambled onto the bed and lifted Coris into her arms, shaking his limp form and shrieking his name both in prayer and beckoning.

A crash sounded from behind them. Arinel spun around to find Fione hanging from the side door, wide-eyed and panting. Her gaze fell upon Meya's bent form, screeching dementedly, and her eyes bulged wider. Knowing better than to wait for her question, Arinel yelled her command.

"He's poisoned by laudanum! Healers, NOW!"

There was another bang of the door as Fione rushed to carry out her order. Meya's abrupt silence had Arinel whipping around in alarm, fearing she had collapsed in shock. To her relief and astonishment, Meya was furiously tearing off her nightdress. As Arinel looked on, perplexed, she heaved Coris up from her lap and pressed him flush against her naked body, sobbing and rocking back and forth. Coris's head lolled about on her shoulder, his face bloodless.

"Don't die." She whimpered into his hair as she rubbed blood back into his back and arms,

"Don't die. Don't die. Don't die."

Arinel understood then—she was keeping him warm. As tears stung in her eyes, she picked up the folds of blankets with trembling hands and wrapped them loosely around Meya's bare shoulders. A glare of moonlight arced into the corner of her eye from the abandoned vial of sleeping death. She picked it up and examined it; it was sucked dry save for one last dreg clinging to the bottom.

The chilling proof hit home like a sickening blow to the stomach. Her fist clenched as if to crush the baleful phial in her bare hand, Arinel pelted towards the door and fell into the hallway, screaming for the one soul who would come to regret tonight for the rest of his life.

⏳

The hallway had been transformed into a waiting area for ashen-faced Hadrinians and masked Jaisians by the time Zier rounded the corner towards the fray, Christopher, Simon and Heloise hot on his heels.

The moment the spectacle came into view, Arinel let go of his hand and rushed towards the pathetic figure sitting crumpled on the floor beside the slightly ajar door. Her bare, freckled shoulders rose from the unraveling blanket pooling in terrace-like folds around her folded legs. Her straggly blonde hair with a hint of red-gold at her crown hung draped over her face, cascading onto her covered knees.

Her trembling hands clasped tightly in prayer, she crouched listless as healers and apprentices in sweeping black cloaks hurried past her in and out of the room she shared with his brother, rocking back and forth on the balls of her bare feet, gleams of unfaceted emerald spilling out from between her fingers.

Meya...?

Zier shuddered at the unsettling sight, especially as he recalled the disparaging titles he had branded the Greeneye with. Coldblooded. Monster. Half-breed...

Even then, she had barely flinched. Even at the mercy of dragon mercenaries, her spirit remained unbroken under the pressure of twenty lives. Yet now, she seemed on the brink of utter despair; the situation was that dire.

Brother.

Zier whipped around and stared at the slamming door; another wide-eyed apprentice had just scrambled in, lugging an empty wine barrel. Lady Jaise weaved her way through the chaos in her billowing nightdress, dishing out curt commands to her fretting subjects left and right.

As she ordered her seneschal to send an urgent note to Baron Hadrian, desperate shouts from inside the room burst into the corridor, superseding her voice, ebbing and swelling as the door swung back and forth on its well-oiled hinges.

"Harder, Eidred! His chest isn't rising! And keep the rhythm!" One of Jaise's senior healers barked at his apprentice, who presumably was in charge of pumping the mouth bellows.

"Coris! Coris, can you hear me? Coris Hadrian!" Then came the frantic calls of Bishop Riddell, jolting and panting from the impact of pressing his charge's ribcage. Receiving no response, he rounded on the unseen maids preparing the antidote in exasperation,

"How far along is that cure?!"

"Nearly there, sir!" Dineira's sobbing voice echoed from the other end of the room, coinciding with her father's frustrated growl, his breathing heavy and choppy now that he had taken Riddell's place.

"Come on, lad. Breathe! Or you're going on the barrel!"

"The barrel?"

Zier breathed, eyebrows tied in confusion and cheeks draining in dread. His eyes still fixed on the doorway, Simon whispered out of the corner of his mouth,

"They'll roll him face-down on the barrel to revive his heart. They couldn't keep up pumping by hand for that long."

The brusque yet clear explanation sent chilling fear coursing down his limbs and extremities. Guilt tore at his spasming heart like claws of whetted ice, as he knew full well what had agonized the unbreakable Coris to the point of casting away his very life like dice on a gambling table.

"You fool." Zier rasped, his strangled voice choked with sobs, his breathing ragged from the strain of biting back tears, then succumbed to his anguish and roared,

"You blithering fool! D'you have to go kill yourself over every bit of crap I said?!"

His pleading, chastising scream could not penetrate the limbo between life and death his brother was trapped within. Instead, it alerted his grieving mistress of Zier's presence. Meya's bowed head snapped upright, glowing green eyes blazing from behind tangled strands of golden hair. Her teeth bared and gnashing, she bolted up and stomped over to him with murder in her eyes, blanket trailing from her naked torso.

Heloise shrieked and dropped the tea tray she was still holding as Meya snatched Zier's collar and dragged him down to face her livid, crazed glare, rattling him senseless as she screeched into his ears.

"Meya!"

Pried away from the petrified Zier by the combined efforts of Arinel and Haselle, Meya crumpled to her knees, weeping wretchedly. It was apparent that even more so than she blamed him, she blamed herself for what had happened. As the startled crowd, Lady Jaise included, looked on in mingled shock and pity, she crawled to the wall and fell against it, thrashing a bare fist feebly on the lime-washed plaster.

"Take my blood. Take my eyes. Take my anything." She whimpered, collapsing into a limp heap on the floor, as she begged and bargained with Fyre for more borrowed time for her beloved,

"Coris...please...please...don't leave me again."

After a suffocating pause of silence, Lady Jaise stepped forth and knelt down beside her. She shed her cloak and robed the mourning girl, then gathered her into her arms,

"Hush, lass." She chided gently as she nestled Meya's head on her bosom, whispering reassurances down her hair. "You may fear, but you mustn't lose faith in your Lord. You, his Lady, are his duty to love and protect, and a Hadrian does not desert his duty."

Her solemn words rammed succeeding blows into Zier's heart like a battering stake, oozing shame and guilt like poison which crushed his chest from inside out. As Meya twisted her hands in Winterwen's nightgown and bawled into her embrace, Zier lowered his gaze to the bare flagstones, unable to withstand the cold, silent, accusing stares from his friends spread out along the narrow hallway. All the while, muffled, harried voices echoed from the other side of the door, seeming only to mount in urgency with each second that crawled by.

Then, there was a piercing, strident scream, followed by hushed murmurs whose nature could not be deduced, whether they were echoes of an astonished pause that heralded a dreadful proclamation, or simply the hum of a reprieve of relief.

Resigned for the worst, Meya wailed and buried her face into Lady Jaise's chest, clinging onto the Lady as she stared transfixed at the door along with every eye in the vicinity. After what must have been five Miracle Fests, the door finally banged open.

Bishop Riddell stood panting, his face pale and drenched with sweat, clinging to the doorframe for support. At long last, he regained his breath and eked out a smile of utmost joy.

"He's breathing." He croaked, his voice choked with tears, then shouted over the screams of joy from the gathered crowd, "He's lucid. No lasting damage. He wants the Lady Hadrian."

Riddell had barely even finished when Meya streaked past him into the room, throwing the door into the wall with a resounding slam. Even as Zier shot in barely a second after her, he found her already lying prone over his brother, sobbing uncontrollably onto his bare chest, as he stroked her hair with whatever meager strength he had left, muttering feverish apologies to her unheeding form.

After a while, he registered Zier standing just nearby. His bleary silvery eyes slid to the side and met Zier's wavering gaze, bursting with as much guilt as relief, then his colorless lips creaked up to form his signature lukewarm, reassuring smile.

In that moment, Zier felt he had never loathed his brother's smile more in his entire life.

🐉🐉🐉