Blacktail Deer Plateau hollow

i am changing, she said quietly, watching the daywalker as she left.

almalexia.

woman; wife; daughter of merrick the bear-witch, merrick the mad.

you were meant to be her heir, whispered by the silver-tipped west wind.

but i was yours. yours, your night-pearl, your blood and madness and hunger given flesh,

why did he come to her now? perhaps it was the shadow of his cursed mountain, that hot breath at her neck. or was it the shadow of the life she had traded for the whispers of spirits and the touch of divinity, only to fall to the blade of her own pride?

she had always fashioned weapons from every feeling. born to war against no one and nothing; everyone and everything. pride always cut deepest and last; her final lesson from merrick.

and she brushed divinity, walking that dark path set before her. regret could not taint that.

but she had fallen; she had failed. her god had withdrawn from her.

but not from ingram. her husband shimmered with his dark blessing; empowered, somehow, in the wake of her fall from grace. and some part of her, some ugly fanged part with eyes gleaming green, hated him for it.

but she loved him. love as she had never felt it before. it was a festering weakness in her. it was the will of her god.

her eyes found his, so like the rolling sea. not her black waters, no — brighter, purer than that. a beacon to light the way.

for you. for basilica. for our future, almalexia went on, stepping closer to ingram as if to embrace him. i visited sapphique. the wolves on the cliffs. i brought word of basilica.

and i left the skyrock behind. on my — the islands.

it burned. but it was for him.