Qeya River mockingbird

blackfell bristles.

she has always chosen wrong. there is pause then, a flash of something deeper in red blazing eyes—something he dare not admit or speak of. a history between them veksar knows nothing of. that is not for us to correct. if she wakes, she wakes. if she drowns, she drowns. but it is by her own hand.

he looks at veksar and sees the fire in him. it is a fire that veksar has always ran from, rejected; it is the fire that binds them as one. as brothers. as kin. as crownore. an ancestral thing that either consumed or propelled. now, veksar's consumes—it threatens the silence, the peace, that blackfell has so far maintained.

and if we did take her? hm? he asks. what then, boy? what then when her husband sends his bloodhunters after us? it is these things that veksar's irrational mind does not allow him to see, to view clearly—these things that blackfell sees and considers.

you think i have not been haunted by this? he asks.