That was a promise made so long ago. The world had changed since then. She had changed since then. Though her promise had not. She would try to find the girl for him. Not because she understands what it’s like to want someone that much, but perhaps because she can understand what it’s like to want something that much. She had the Chamber. Her first love, her only love. At least, the only one that would ever truly matter.
Not to say there hadn’t been infatuations along the way. There had, though in the end, they had all left. As everyone else does. She’s come to expect that the only constant in her life will be the Chamber. The Chamber was here before her and will continue to exist long after her. Everyone else – well, they were merely memories, in the end. The end just seemed to come far too quickly.
But Straia doesn’t dwell. She doesn’t need men. She needs the Chamber, nothing more. Needs it to be strong and powerful and feared. Well, that is less a need and more a want, but they seem to be the same thing sometimes. She wonders if Kingslay merely wants the girl, or needs her.
Granted, Straia has been to the Deserts on occasion, and never once has she seen the girl, this Etro. There are no more whispers of the power-stealing horse on the wind. Straia’s not sure she can even find the girl now, but perhaps. Perhaps the ravens could. But only if she was still in this realm, because Straia had no way of knowing what other realms to search. And as of yet, she didn’t think she could conjure those ravens to her.
Ravens follow the boy’s approach (grown now, but always a boy to her). They are made of water, and they swoop and splash and sizzle into the flames that lick her trees in his wake. The trees here have burned enough, and while she would always be the Queen of Ash and Ruin to some degree (certain things would never grow back), she was also ready for the Chamber to grow. To be more than it has in decades.
When he emerges from the tree line, she is already there with a ring of black feathers about her head like a crown. She wears it now and again, as she once wore the crown of flowers that Eight weaved for her. Never outside the kingdom, never to strangers, who don’t need to know what she has become quite yet. But here, she is no secret. “Kingslay,” she says, but nothing more. The boy sought her, and so she waits for him to say his piece.
straia
the raven queen of the chamber