HAYVALA

Magick poured into the crystal runestone. Whips of ice grew from her hands to wrap around it in a soothing blanket. Petals formed along the ridge of the flow. A crinkle of what power she had left to her. It folded over on itself, the fullbloom of a crystal rose. It sat in her open hand when she stretched out her fingers, and it whispered along the tug of her reach. Wyvern's sat atop the monuments of someone's name and existence — history unforgotten. Mother, would that I knew how to approach this. On her knees in front of her grave, her feathers stretched tighter to protect her ears from the worst of the blizzard's teeth. This is all I have to offer for you, for now... would that Laucan came to give his own offerings... I think the crown is starting to weigh too heavily on him. He is so young for this. Hayvala glanced down at the smaller pots around the grave, one of them the snowrose struggling to bloom to become a great shield for all the rest. Yokonei... Her furs ruffled against her neck when she drew them closer to her body. Exhaustion dragged her steps, but she forced herself to her feet to participate in the endless dance of her people when Kazmira knocked on the glass panel of the balcony doors.

"You have a court meeting, m'lady," Kazmira said with a bow, her arms stiff at her side when she drew herself downwards. "Further discussions about the Hanekan diplomats."

Hayvala tucked her hands in her sleeves and played the game without them. "Oh? What of Lord Vlasiz?"

"He sent the missive back to his county about opening the iron gates of Whitehaven Pass," Kazmira gave her the report of smaller whispers. "None of the Lords have caught on yet, not even His Wyvern Grace." Her handmaiden frowned deeper. "About His Grace..."

"You've been observing him?"

Uncertainty ripped through the aura of dandelions. "Yes, he paces the royal wing from time to time muttering to himself," she mumbled. "He dismissed his personal Sentinels, from what Efram told me. Otherwise, he shuts himself in his room and does not let anyone see him." Hayvala returned into the comfort and flimsy warmth of her own room and took the teacup from Kazmira when she passed it to her with a quick headbob. "As for the other thing, Blackwall has also interred himself into the palace library with the world's eye."

Hayvala sipped the soothing mixture. Fluffy clouds of heat bubbled down her throat when she finished it. "Then I will have to see what this is about with the other Lords," she said. "Do you know if the Hanekan diplomats are safely inside the embassy?"

"Yes, m'lady. I checked on them earlier, and no one has made mention of the arrival of Fenrer Pyren — nor any comment about the Traye prince. For now, it seems they were never here. Everyone is too busy wearing their masks. If there had been gossip, it was not within the court."

Kazmira's news brought the smallest hint of relief, but it wouldn't take long for the dance to crack the ice out from underneath her when she dared to believe it firm. Nonetheless, Hayvala sighed for the one savored victory she gained with her movement along the board. "I shall worry about my brother for now, thank you, Mira," she said. "Please, take your ease. We shall talk after the council meeting." That I can only hope Laucan will attend this time around with Yuven Traye and Fenrer Pyren long out of his reach. The Traye prince's presence left a mark within the Volaris palace of their seated family. Yokonei Traye, a hostage to his name — killed for its meaning.

Auras swilled within the walls as she followed them to the center of the palace, where the council room rested. In each seat of the false round table, the Lords sat with their hidden impatience. Lord Vlasiz lifted his attention too quickly, causing the older Lords to scrunch their noses in dismay. Hayvala raised her hand not too far past her shoulders to quiet the eerie silence with her entrance. "I hope I did not keep you waiting long, my lords," she said and glanced at the empty seat, too big for a boy king. Dress propped up with the ribbon wings fashioned around her chest and waist, she glided to her own chair.

"Oh, are you expecting His Wyvern Grace to arrive?" Lord Lazron asked, as cold as the blizzard outside.

"Whatever do you mean?" Hayvala mused. "I may be Queen Regent... but the seat beside me is his." In her peripheral, Lord Vlasiz's attention faltered. "He has been very busy, my lords. I can assure you he is—"

"Here."

Father's voice ripped through her spine and almost sent her upwards with the dagger in her hand. King Laucan stood at the doorframe, donned in his own royal furs as he kept his hands tucked in his sleeves and he made his way to his seat. Shadows tangled themselves underneath his sky blue eyes to sweep into his aura when he sat down, then leaned back, fangs barely hidden behind his lips. "Well?" he said, a hiss leaving his nose with the word. "Are we going to talk about things?" His gaze remained straight on the wall ahead, not acknowledging any of the lord's songs and names. In another moment, he rested his elbows on the table and curled his fingers together as his downy feathers remained still in the breeze. "I have solidified the trade deal with the Hanekan diplomats, who will be returning home during the next lull of the blizzard, where they can return to their sunlands and we shall remain here."

Apathetic agony blasted into her face when his aura stretched further, and not once had he torn his gaze from the other end of the table. Lord Vlazis eyed her in confusion and contemplation, well-read of the room's shift in energy. "It's good that you went through with this trade deal, Your Grace," she stood up for his beliefs all the same. "Good for all of us to recreate a connection to the sunlands, where our people may have a chance to breathe and we may foster friendship between our people. No longer bitter enemies of our stubborn species, but as friends forged in the flames of wyverns."

"If they don't take advantage of us first," Lord Lazron complained. "I do not agree with this, Your Wyvern Grace. Your father shut us away from the sunlands for a reason." He tapped the table with his pointer, but Laucan barely blinked out from his staredown. "Now, I agreed to send tools and stonemasons here to the palace to use as you saw fit, but what I did not agree to is sending them into the sunlands where our people have been killed by the barbarians of Haneka."

"I read the letter King Reyn sent," Hayvala began.

"Ah yes, the one who dares call himself a dragon," Lord Lazron scoffed, and she frowned when Laucan's aura fluttered closer to his body, and he sank deeper into his chair with a tug to his eyelids. "You were not there when he took down the Knight-Valiant. I say we send the diplomats on their way as fast as possible." He swept his hand in the air. "We do not need them here so close to the crux of the festivities — of our people." His long gray feathers fluffed out in annoyance. "And you let that Hanekan dance to our ancestors at the ball."

"He did leave quite the impression, though," Lord Vlasiz commented.

"You are but a child that doesn't understand the weight the Wyvern Dance holds. Outsiders can't be trusted with it," Lord Lazron bit.

"And yet... someone had to have trusted him with it," Hayvala jumped on the foundations Vlasiz' put forward on their shared board. "An Avaerilian must have taught him that dance, those tunes with their voice."

"Any Avaerilian who teaches the dance to those who don't hold the song in their hearts are no true Avaerilians in my eyes," Lord Lazron griped. "It is the lowest of betrayals to our ancestors." Air pressurized in her temples at the thunderous shudder of scales filling the atmosphere as Lord Lazron continued his predictable complaints with no more fervor than usual. Annoyance at best, but as Hayvala opened her mouth to respond to his usual diction, she nearly drove her fangs into her tongue when a song whistled past her head and cracked into the wall ahead, leaving a trail of whispered ice over the table.

An icesteel chakram slammed into the wall with furious force.

Laucan barely moved position, but dropped his hand back into his lap and rested the elbow against the arm of the chair meant for a king of wyverns. "Everyday we betray our ancestors, I don't see how one Hanekan changes that. You are projecting, Lord Lazron. You weren't the one dancing." Laucan dragged himself out his seat, and summoned the chakram back into his hands to hook it on its sheathe, where its twin sat in its protected cover. "If that's all we have to discuss, then I see no reason to continue this council meeting. I have heard it all already. So go on, complain. It changes nothing." Laucan threw himself out of the chair and stomped back to the doorframe, where all the lords flattened themselves into their seats, and familiar fear washed into her lungs at his disappearing aura.

Though they all played with their pawns on the board — Laucan flipped over the table and screeched like a frustrated child at the unfairness in the dance.

Oh, you have no idea what you've just done. Every eye turned to her and her lack of true control over her brother. Each one lifted themselves closer to the table. Feathers shuddered and ice left blood upon the snow. Both of you. Laucan Travon and Yuven Traye. The mark you have both just left. On her feet, she bowed to the lords and tried to wrangle the situation, though the pieces remained scattered at their feet. This cycle... " apologize for His Grace's rough words. As I meant to say, he's been busy with the festivities. Pray forgive his lapse in judgment." Another bow, but she hid her growl between her teeth at the hungry vipers in front of her, save for Lord Vlazis, whose contention became palpable in the air. "Nonetheless, His Grace has made his stance clear. The trade deal will be going forward. Am I understood?"

Some of the older lords glanced at her.

"Am I understood?" she repeated.

They drew their gazes downward.

"Good," she said through her teeth, then grinned out her fangs. "Enjoy the rest of the festivities. They will be performing the Wyvern Dance at the Crystal Cathedral if it is your wish to observe it, I have had my fill of it." Around the table, she stopped behind Lord Lazron's back, who stiffened. "If an outsider can dance it better than the oldest of us, then I suppose we have much to learn about our own song." She waited at the doorway, seeing the Lords out in a line of kicked gryphlings, stewing with rage and hungry for weakness. Lord Vlasiz arrived last, staring at her.

"The song still stands," she mumbled with the Lords out of earshot.

He tipped his head forward without a word, and left with the rest.

Out of the oppression within the courtroom, she rushed back into the royal wing to catch up with the king of wyverns. Up the steps, Kazmira's report came to life. Only two sentinels sat at the end of the hall, but nowhere close to her brother's room. Inside, Laucan paced his room in circles, feathers frayed as he dug his fingers into his temples and dragged his feet. "Laucan?" she asked and came closer to him, slowing to a stop when he slumped backwards and eyed her. "What is going on?"

"Only the truth," he said. "It seems the only truth I can find is in ghosts. You know, they're all around us."

Hayvala raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Around us," he insisted, and narrowed his eyes at her. "You have gone behind my back time and time again."

Helplessness filled her heart at the cold cruelty of Father's gaze. "I have only done what was best for you."

"No." Laucan raised a finger and swiped it through the air, silencing her. "I cannot trust those words — that song. Because it seems I'm the only one willing to acknowledge what is around us." He threw his arms out to the empty room, and Hayvala looked around for an answer, but none came to her auric sight. "What I cannot change, what they cannot change. We are stuck here with every ice wraith we've created. Tell me you see them too."

"I... I don't know what you're referring to," Hayvala whispered when he restarted his pacing. "What is it that is bothering you, Laucan? You must talk to me, I can help you—"

"You cannot help me, and you refuse to help yourself!" Laucan snapped, and Father's rage built upon a boy's pleas. "You think I am stupid, but I'm not. You tried to hide the fact that Fenrer Pyren didn't detangle—"

"He cannot!" Hayvala argued for a knight's reprieve. "For all his power, it is out of his reach, what was done to me was beyond him! Blackwall lied to you. I did this to myself, no Aurus, no matter how powerful can undo this."

"I don't believe that!" Laucan hissed out a loud echo through the room. "But what am I expecting? We never try. One thing goes wrong just once and we hide behind the blizzard, using it as an excuse!" He waved his hands at the window, and the pillars of blue flames oozed out of the towers among the battlements. "You convinced me to let the Traye Prince go — and now this cycle is just going to continue until we're a part of the ghosts haunting the palace!"

"Laucan," Hayvala said. "There are no ghosts haunting the palace. I'd see them if that was the case."

Laucan's feathers thinned, with not a single adult plume. "You would see them if you let Pyren help you, but you didn't. You didn't want to see them, well I had no choice. I had no choice the night Father died and I walked in on that butchery." He dragged his fingers through his feathers, and Hayvala winced when he pulled a couple of them out to whisk them into the air. "And it's going to be mine too. It's the only way this will end. With my blood carving out the Traye sigil and Yuven Traye laughing in my face." Rippled paranoia filled his aura when it wrapped around his shoulders with its own teeth. "Leave me, Hayvala. I have nothing more to say, so leave me to the ghosts, it's what I deserve, after all. It's what I asked for."

Hands in her furs, she slipped out of Laucan's room into the empty corridors with no ghosts, or ghouls, or wraiths. Only Father's constant, looming presence which followed behind both of them, biting her brother into a song not his own, sung with someone else's voice. Same words. Same deeds.

Father started seeing ghosts at the end of his life... but no, this can't be it. This is different. It has to be.