Phantom Hollow To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive

By turns Hunst spoke in soothing promises and scathing observations. Were he anyone but a cousin, a Sea-Snake, she might have struck him; she might have scorned him. Even then, Alara had always been enchanted by the warrior in some inexplicable way. Sea-Snake, yes, but in a sharper fashion, honed for wars fought in the name of independence.

Was she not the same? Crafted for the throne rather than the battlefield, true, but perhaps these little anomalies held the key to their future. A queen and a soldier; an iron fist and a steel sword.

I swoon beneath no one's feet, Alara reminded him, but there was no bite in her voice. And River's hold is tenuous, even now. He's taken a wife at last - a proper Sea-Snake wife, but even so, our people are losing faith. Why else would I be here?

He trusted you, yes - but it's my faith that will see us through. When we've reclaimed what belongs to us, I intend to claim my place as our people's matriarch. She didn't need to tell Hunst what that meant. Children; an empire; the old ways brought back to shivering, shuddering life. What she spoke now was treason, but the sort of treason that seems inevitable; the sort whispered among friends for years and years until one day it simply becomes real.

Now it was real.