Nyu rolled over and let her hands slide over Elara's bare shoulders. Her skin was soft and without flaws, like a slab of marble, and very much unlike Nyu's own battle-scarred skin.

Behind a curtain of dark hair, Elara's emerald eyes emerged, carrying joy and sorrow at the same time.

"Morning," she whispered softly, and grabbed Nyu's hand with hers, gently pressing it against her body.

Nyu could feel the sparks of desire shoot through her mind, but she resisted the urge to give in. She could tell Elara was troubled by their upcoming parting, and as much as she wanted their bodies to become one again, she knew the moment had passed.

"Morning, little bird," she replied, painting a brief but beautiful smile on Elara's face.

The sun was already up, casting a golden ray of light through the small gritted window and onto the bed. Nyu could feel its warm touch on her exposed back, and the glow it left on Elara's chest made her skin tingle. Gently, and without intent, she started stroking Elara's sternum with the backs of her callused fingers. It felt wrong to touch something so pure with her rough hands, but the smile on the other woman's lips was encouragement enough.

"Do you have to go?" Elara asked into the serene silence.

Nyu felt a sting in her soul. She wanted to embrace this moment, make it last forever, but eventually she would have to go back to Morathen, to her family.

Her fingers stopped moving when she spoke.

"You know I have to," she whispered ruefully. "But I will come back."

"Is that just something you say to make me feel better?" Elara asked, pursing her pretty lips.

Nyu chuckled. "I couldn't fool you if I tried."

Elara propped up her head with her elbow digging into the pillow.

"I don't know what this is," she began, and raised her other hand before Nyu could respond, "and maybe I don't want to know. But I like it."

She smiled softly and started inspecting the features of Nyu's body — she let her, tracking her gaze as it wandered over her ragged skin, leaving behind a prickling trail of desire.

"How did you get that one?" Elara asked, pointing at a long scar just next to Nyu's hip bone.

It looked like a fissure after an earthquake, poorly healed and darker than the rest of her skin.

Nyu shrugged. "By being too slow."

She thought back to when she'd fought a group of scoundrels like herself in one of the unsavory parts of Morathen. She'd been coming back from a lucrative job, with a sizable haul on her back, when they'd ganged up on her. Naturally, she'd taken down the first two with ease, but in doing so exposed her flank to the third guy, a mindless brute, who never would've bested her in a fair fight. And yet, at that moment, she'd given him enough time to jam his rusty dagger into her side. Naturally, he didn't live to tell the tale, but the wound had, hideous as it was.

Elara gently touched the scar with one of her slender fingers and slowly traced its cicatrized ridge. The sensation sent shivers through Nyu's body.

When she gazed into Elara's eyes, she was met with a fiery glow.

"You have to come back," the other woman whispered assertively.

"Oh yeah?" Nyu inquired playfully.

Elara nodded and swiped a strand of hair off her cheek.

"Yes. Cause otherwise you will miss out on this …"

And with that, she wrapped her arms around Nyu and rolled on top of her, their skins tightly pressed against each other. Engulfed in a canopy of dark hair, they started kissing with fierce passion, flames of pleasure igniting in their souls. Nyu dug her fingers into Elara's back, pushing away the thin blanket that had covered their legs. A roaring desire filled her veins, making her skin radiate heat like a furnace. Brushing their exposed bodies against each other, they let their instincts take over, exhilarating Nyu's mind and soul like few things ever had.

Just when they were about to let themselves be consumed by pleasure, Elara suddenly froze, her body turning stiff like a sail in the wind.

"What?" Nyu gasped, her heart beating like a war drum.

But then, she heard it.

Somewhere below them, people started shouting, and she could feel the sound of metal boots vibrate through the planks. There was a scream, followed by the sound of something fragile breaking, and loud voices yelling orders.

They untangled their limbs and quickly got out of bed. Nyu reached for her clothes and hastily put them on, making sure her knives were in all the right places and ready for action, should the need arise. Elara didn't have her usual robes with her, so she simply put on her underclothes that served as a nightgown, making her look vulnerable next to Nyu's battle-hardened leather rags.

A few seconds later, they could hear heavy boots on the squeaky wooden staircase, and then a knock that made the door hinges rattle like a convict trying to break out of a prison cell.

"Open up!" a rough voice shouted, followed immediately by another shattering knock.

Elara and Nyu exchanged glances, signaling with their eyes that they were ready for a fight. Nyu was sure Elara didn't need her poles to cause some serious damage to whoever they were about to face.

There was a final knock before something heavy slammed into the door and made the hinges and their bolts go flying through the room. The door swung open and exposed an armored boot that, judging by the colors and crest, belonged to a member of the city guard. The tall man was not who Nyu had expected, but his violent appearance told her there was no reason to relax.

"You!" the man shouted, pointing at both of them, "you are under arrest!"

Confusion set Elara's defensive stance off balance, while Nyu carefully moved her fingertips closer to the nearest dagger handle. She could hear more boots hurrying up the stairs, and already saw more soldiers behind the man in the doorframe. They'd come in numbers, ready to fight.

"What's the meaning of this?" Elara demanded, a hint of her aristocratic entitlement shining through.

The tall man rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, then proceeded to declare in an accusing voice: "You are being arrested for murder."

"What?" Elara scoffed in disbelief.

Nyu used the moment of irritation to make sure all her fingers were touching cold steel, hidden under her cloaks and ready to be drenched in blood.

"What murder?"

"The murder of King Montis of Cylion," the man roared, unsheathing his sword just a few inches. "If you don't come willingly, we'll take you by force. Or in the back of a cart, if you catch my meaning."

They did.

Nyu closed her eyes — she had overstayed her welcome, and now she was paying the price. She should have left when she had the chance, loaded with at least some of the gold she'd been promised. Instead, she had made the foolish mistake of staying in one place for longer than was necessary.

And they had even seen this coming, at least the part where King Montis would get murdered. The siblings had spoken the truth, their prediction turned out to be right, and yet they still fell victim to their own cleverness.

"That's ridiculous," Elara protested. "We just talked to the King yesterday to warn him of an attempt on his life."

"Sounds to me like you came here to kill him," the man growled, drawing his weapon.

His comrades had gathered behind him, following suit.

"If the king is dead, on whose orders are you arresting us?"

"Funny you should ask," the man said, and smirked. "You are being arrested in the name of Lord Vaelorian Dor, Master of the Royal Bank and new regent of Cylion."

"What?" Elara and Nyu blurted at the same time, but with very different pitches.

Nyu wasn't easily surprised, but this revelation had caught her off guard. Of course, she had resented Elara's and Kaelen's father from the moment she met him, but for him to pull a coup like that and then have his own children arrested for it — that was a level of bad parenting even she hadn't anticipated.

But her training and conditioning quickly caught up to her, and she regained her emotional balance.

"Why don't you tell your pretty boys in shiny armor to back off?" she snarled at the man in front of them, trying to give Elara time to process. "I wouldn't want to make a mess in rooms we didn't even pay for."

A hint of uncertainty crossed the soldier's face, but he didn't move.

"That won't be an option," he said dryly. "Surrender your weapons and come willingly, and you won't get hurt."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about me," Nyu hissed and exposed a pair of shiny daggers, one extended to either side.

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The soldier looked increasingly uncomfortable and hastily ordered the men behind him to get closer. Still, the doorway was narrow, and he would be the first to meet Nyu's blades. She already mapped out how she would do it, how her knives would rip through the fleshy part right under his shoulder plate, severing muscle and tendons like she was filleting a piece of meat. He would drop before knowing what hit him, and she would already be onto the next — but there were a lot of them, maybe even too many. Still, she preferred the odds of fighting their way out of this mess over surrendering themselves to the mercy of Elara's maniacal father.

But just as she had expected, that was not a path Elara was willing to take.

"You say my father sent you?" she asked quietly, her green eyes staring at nothing in particular.

"He did," the soldier confirmed, seemingly deciding to only address Elara from now on, as she seemed more reasonable.

Nyu couldn't help but crack a smile at his sudden insecurity — the more armor they hid under, the more fragile their personalities.

Elara glanced at Nyu with an expression that said, "I'm sorry." But Nyu had seen it coming. Her only hope now was that Elara knew what she was doing, and that she wouldn't underestimate her father.

"We will go with you," Elara declared, letting her arms drop to her sides.

Nyu spat onto the floor before the soldier's feet and let the daggers disappear into the depths of the jacket.

The soldier tracked the blades with his eyes as they vanished from sight. "We will need those," he said with wavering resolve.

"Touch them and you will lose a finger. Touch them again, and I will take the entire arm."

The soldier cleared his throat, then stiffened his posture.

"Follow me!" he shouted louder than he had to, probably to appear tough to his comrades.

Elara and Nyu slowly walked out of the room, and Nyu couldn't help but eye the soldiers distrustfully, trying to have as few of them in her back as possible.

"I will need my robes," Elara said once they stepped into the hallway. "Surely, you don't want to present the new regent's daughter to him in a nightgown."

The soldier cursed quietly, then allowed her to get her robes from her room. Before Elara could do so, however, Kaelen emerged from his room down the hallway, amidst another group of soldiers. He looked awful, his eyes bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles, his black hair like a bird's nest after a storm. Clearly, he didn't sleep well, and by the looks of it, he'd still been in deep slumber when the soldiers knocked at his door. Luckily, he'd been smart enough to bring his staff, and his slumping body leaned on it like an old man, giving it the appearance of a mere cane.

When his tired gaze met Nyu and Elara, his eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to see more clearly. Confusion started showing on his face as he watched Elara quickly slip out of sight, half-dressed. Then he stared at Nyu and opened his mouth, but no words came out. She watched him as his brain tried to make sense of what it saw, gradually turning his expression from confusion to disapproval.

Nyu couldn't help but roll her eyes.

An awkward silence followed as they waited for Elara to reemerge. The heavy armor of the surrounding men squeaked every time they shifted their weight, like trees in the wind, and their raspy breaths grumbled in their helmets. Once Elara returned, now fully dressed in her usual orange robe, Nyu could see the tips of her poles barely peek out of her deep pockets, and she had to hide a smile — not for long, though, since the soldiers wasted no time and quickly moved them down the stairs and through the chaos they had caused in the taproom, where chairs lay pushed over on the floor among broken glass and squashed food. The innkeeper was watching them as they left, her old eyes filled with fear and a hint of anger. One of the soldiers tossed her a purse of coins for her troubles, but she didn't even try to catch it.

When they left the Inn, Nyu saw that the morning sun had vanished behind a cover of low-hanging clouds, their dark bodies heavy with the promise of rain. The air was cold and crisp, and it made her lungs burn with every deep breath she drew.

Just like any other day, the streets of Cylion were buzzing — this time, however, something was different. People were hastily rushing past them, carrying bags and purses as if they were trying to protect them. Their faces were concerned, their eyes darting around in anticipation of an ambush. No one talked. There were no market stands, no stalls along the street, no merchants praising and advertising their goods. People knew what had happened, and it had clearly put them in a state of panic.

As they walked through the maze of tall houses, they saw shady folk with dark hoods linger in house entrances and back alleys. A sour smile tugged at Nyu's lips — this was beginning to feel like taking a stroll through Morathen. There were soldiers patrolling the streets, but they did not seem to care one way or the other. Clearly, their main objective was to assert dominance and project strength. They pushed aside scrambling citizens like they were undergrowth, their faces cold and unrelenting, and only stopped to bang at seemingly arbitrary house entrances. Wherever they entered, Nyu could hear screams of horror.

How quickly paradise can crumble, she thought bitterly.

When she glanced over at Elara and Kaelen, she could see the shock in their eyes as they watched the commotion.

#

Nyu had expected them to be taken directly to Vaelorian, but instead, they were escorted to a prison tract south of the royal palace. Its courtyard was full of people, most of them brought in by a steady stream of soldiers returning from all parts of the city, with their captives ranging from beggars to nobility. The ocean of bodies was roaring with shouts and defamations, heaving like a choppy sea, but their own escort managed to carve through the crowd by virtue of armored elbows. Once inside, they pushed past a long line of soldiers and their prisoners, then through a set of heavy metal doors and down a long hallway. The air stunk of sweat and bodily fluids, and patchy hands started reaching for them like a disembodied kraken as they walked down the first cell block. Nyu was walking behind the siblings, and she could see shivers run down Elara's spine every time a harrowed face screamed at them from behind unyielding metal bars.

Nyu already regretted not putting up a fight when they had the chance to back at the Inn. They still had her weapons, but now there were hundreds of soldiers between them and their freedom. Even someone as reckless as herself didn't fancy these kinds of odds.

Eventually, they left the noisy cell tract behind and walked down a narrow corridor with a slight incline. At the end of it lay a round room with five metal doors leading in different directions, all of them with skinny hatches at eye level, and a staircase leading up into darkness. A guard was posted on one side of the room, sluggishly leaning against the gray stone wall. He quickly fixed his posture when he saw the group approach.

"New prisoners," one of the soldiers escorting them bellowed, and gestured at the guard to open the door closest to him. "Important ones," he added, as if to explain why he didn't just shove them in the large cells they'd passed.

"Yes, Sir!" the man responded and did as he was told, revealing the inside of a dark prison cell with no windows and murky puddles on the floor.

Spiderwebs and rusty chains hang from the ceiling, and a revolting odor emanated from the gloomy room.

Immediately, Nyu could feel an armored elbow in her back, signaling her to move forward. One after the other, they were shoved into the darkness of the cell, gagging and coughing as the foul smell filled their lungs. Kaelen tripped and fell on the ground, his staff clattering on the cold stone, his forearms covered in brown sludge. Elara pushed her hands against the slimy walls as if her knees were giving in, then turned around with an expression of pure horror on her face. Nyu briefly resisted their captors, but her back was quickly met with the heel of a heavy boot, nearly making her fall onto Kaelen.

"You can't do this!" Elara shouted at the soldiers, her voice bouncing off the ragged walls.

"Says who?" one of the soldiers asked mockingly, and the others joined in his laughter.

When the metal door shut behind them with a loud shriek, the narrow hatch in the door was the only source of light — until a pair of eyes appeared in the small opening, blocking out the glow of the torches in the hall.

"Time to suffer like the rest of us," the soldier who had brought them in sneered with satisfaction.

Then, he aggressively shut the hatch, leaving them in utter darkness.

They were silent for a moment, each of them processing what had just happened in their own way. Nyu was the first to speak again.

"We should've killed them," she murmured into the black void.

She could sense Elara to her right, Kaelen somewhere below her, still moaning in pain.

"I —" Elara began, but then broke off.

Nyu could hear a soft snivel and imagined the tears running down her pretty cheeks. In an attempt to comfort her, Nyu reached out with her hand but was only met with damp air. When she couldn't find Elara's shoulder in the dark, she instead said: "If they wanted to kill us, they would've done so already."

She found the thought reassuring — Elara, on the other hand, only sobbed harder.

Nyu sighed. This wasn't her strong suit, and she knew it.

"You okay down there?" she instead asked Kaelen, who still struggled to get up.

He winced, then mumbled something inaudible.

"What's that?" Nyu asked, searching with her foot for Kaelen's body, until she found what she assumed to be his foot.

"I don't feel so well," Kaelen muttered, his words muffled by his hood.

Nyu was quiet for a moment, evaluating the dire situation they found themselves in. When she spoke, her voice was firm as the face of a rock.

"Would you two get a grip?"

The sniveling stopped, and so did the moans of pain.

"Thank you," Nyu said, and sat down against the cold wall of their cell.

A wet substance started seeping through her pants, but she chose to ignore the unpleasant sensation.

"If we want to make it out of here," she continued, "the two of you have to toughen up. Besides, it could be worse."

Elara cleared her throat. "How exactly could it be worse?"

Nyu cracked a cynical smile, even though no one could see it.

"You've never been to Malvorn's dungeon. You were lucky enough to be sentenced to death right away."

"I guess our lucky streak knows no end," Kaelen groaned from somewhere close by.

Nyu chuckled and leaned her head back until it touched solid stone.

"Sounds like your father did not grieve Montis' death for long."

Elara exhaled, but didn't respond.

"It's almost like he was … expecting it," Nyu continued, waiting for a reaction that didn't come.

"I'm just saying, it seems a bit odd that he would assume power within minutes of Montis' death."

"He pays the soldiers," Kaelen murmured. "It makes sense that they would support his claim. And Montis did not have any children, no clear line of succession."

"And no one thought to prepare for the eventuality of his death?" Nyu asked skeptically.

"Well," Kaelen grunted, "it's like you said: apparently, our dear father was well-prepared."

Nyu considered her next question for a second, then went ahead and asked it anyway.

"Do you think your father killed the king?"

The words hung in the darkness like a hidden dagger, and for a long time, no one said anything. Eventually, she could hear Elara shuffle uncomfortably next to her.

"I don't think it's like our father to do the dirty work."

Nyu scoffed. "Did it mention in the tome that they did it themselves?"

She could sense Elara's body stiffen.

"I —" she stammered, "I don't know. Kaelen?"

It took a moment for Kaelen to respond, and when he did, his voice sounded hoarse and tired.

"I think it said —" he paused, and the sound of fabric grinding against stone filled the air, as Kaelen shifted on the floor.

"I — I can't remember," he finally admitted. "And I'm afraid it's a bit dark to read up on it."

"You still have the tome?" Elara asked in surprise.

"I … yes — yes, I have it with me. I grabbed it before I had to leave my room."

Nyu rolled her eyes, even if no one could see it.

"Great," she murmured, and tossed a pebble to the side.

In hindsight, she wished she had just destroyed that wretched tome the first time she laid hands on it, all the way back in that dark archive before some nosy Fateweaver had her rush out. It was ironic to think that Fateweaver had been Kaelen, almost like fate forced their paths to join. Fate, she thought with contempt, and frowned.

"Well," Nyu said after she brushed away the unpleasant thought, "something tells me we will find out soon. Evil men tend to have a desire to share their evil schemes. I trust your father is no different."

And with that, they embraced the glum silence, each of them lost in thought and patiently awaiting whatever fate had in store for them.

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