maybe we started this fire [flamevein]

[Cress]

all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash

Eventually, the kingdom meeting draws to a close, and with it, Cress finds that she has more pressing matters to attend to. There is someone she has to find. Is he still here? Did he flee when Demian disappeared, when she disappeared? Did he take their son and drag him to some dark, dismal corner of Beqanna? There is no sign of him anywhere in the Valley; he was not at the kingdom meeting and there had been no mention of him at all. Surely Topsail or the newly crowned king—Eight—would have mentioned him (she nearly scoffs at that; Eight has ruled the Valley more times than any of them could possibly know). Is he gone? Is he dead?

She can’t bear to think it; he is her dear friend, her mentor, her ally. He was her (dare she say it?) one-time lover. He had provided her with a winged, fiery-spirited son who is more precious to her than anyone else in the world, and though she knows that he has countless other children, she can’t help but feel like… there was something special there. But then she had to go and disappear for reason she doesn’t even know how to explain to him, and it appears that he’s gone now too, and what if they’re both too far gone to ever return to the state they were before?

She’s not sure it’s possible.
She has burn scars still, memories of their passion.

Her own fire comes forth unbidden and she spits fire, angry at herself that she cannot control her thoughts. She whips her head toward the sky and breathes fire the way a dragon might, remembering the lessons he used to give her. Feel your fire, he told her in one of their lessons, when she had come to him begging him to teach her how to control it. He had taught her how to control her flames and she had let him burn her in return.

Now she turns her fire to the skies like the dragons of old. He will find her like that.

cress

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