city;

[Nayl]

I am not afraid... I was born to do this.

Who wouldn’t get a sudden thrill from lashing back to their superior? To questioning the competency of one that overrules them. Nayl narrows her eyes beneath the unruliness of her forelock, her breaths somehow remaining steady despite the lurch in her gut in wanting to instinctively lash back. ”I am,” she resigns to say, ”thus the reason I never left or haven’t given up like many others.” City had vanished. Despayr had lost herself in the waves. There were a few that took a hiatus from Nerine’s shores, but some are now returning like vultures to a corpse. Alas, Nayl refuses to let her kingdom – her home – wither and burn to dust. It’s why she is standing here swallowing her pride and looking to revive everything she can before the crown slips from her head.

”Some are returning out of the blue,” she reassures City, knowing that not all hope is lost and that Nerine would never be truly abandoned, but it isn’t only their numbers that claw at her. ”Nerine was powerful with two subkingdoms, but I let Djinni come back home and abandon Sylva, and Amet retracted his promises and therefore our hold on Hyaline.” The taut muscles in her shoulders flinch upon remembering their last confrontation and how it brought her blood to a boil. It was to be a kingdom of children, one for Nerine to nurture and feed from in the end, but Amet became greedy and refuses now to release the throne as he reaches the cusp of adulthood. Her head shakes and her jaw clenches as her eyes meet City’s again. ”Then we shall gather them all. I could use some fighting again,” it has been far too long – years – since adrenaline last coursed through her veins on the open plains of the battlegrounds. ”My last fight was when I won Nerine’s throne,” did City know that, or anyone for that matter anymore? It’s already a piece of history, a bedtime story for children about their coastal queen.

”I haven’t seen either of them lately. Last I saw Tantalize she was flirting with Offspring,” with an enemy, she doesn’t say.

queen of nerine
daughter of covet & myrina