"Do you have any idea what you've done?" He seethes, standing above me. "Any idea at all, or is that pretty head of yours as empty as I feared?"

"I know what I've done," I whisper, not looking at him. I'm not afraid of his anger, I realize, though it's rolling off of him in waves. His dark eyes have narrowed, gathered tensely under generous brows, and his mouth is drawn tightly across his flushed face.

But his anger seems far away, unreal. Or maybe I'm far away, pulled into myself so tightly nothing external can really touch me.

"Do you?" He spits. "You swore to me you'd do as I said, that you'd behave- that's the only reason I agreed to take you into that meeting, Shira! Do you understand how much I risked, what would have happened to me if they found you out? And you repaid my risk by disregarding every warning, by behaving like a child, careless of consequence!

"You made such a scene running away I had to excuse you by telling everyone my scribe got sick because he couldn't stomach Kami food! And then you wandered off like some Shattered idiot, just wandered off into the city! What, did you plan on living here now, in this grove, like some cosseted forest nymph? Do you know how long it took me to find you?"

"I'm sorry," I murmur, my cheek still pressed against the rough bark of the tree. The fading light of sunset holds my attention. It's a soft light, a purple grey that reminds me of the innermost petals of a Bavyana flower.

"Shira!" He shouts. I turn my head towards him, force my eyes to focus.

"What?"

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Yes," I whisper, drawn back to the light behind him.

Bavyana flowers grow best in the desert, with no water and no true soil. Impossible flowers. They seemed so hearty I once planted one in my garden, assuming that if it could survive so well on nothing, it would thrive under my tender care.

It died within a week. Too much water, to much soil, too much shade. It could only survive in impossible conditions.

"No, you're not," he chuffs. "I was wrong to take you five feet from the manor. I should've known Shikkah's prince would be an empty-headed fool."

I laugh. A broken, grating sound. Now confusion mingles with the Ambassador's anger.

"I'm not empty headed," I murmur. "I wish I was, Ambassador. My head is much too full."

"What is it full of, then?" He questions harshly. "Cradle songs? Flowers? It certainly isn't full of any sort of sense!"

"Yes, flowers," I whisper, smiling strangely. "Very full of flowers. Bavyana flowers, to be exact. Fields and fields of them, Ambassador. You know them, don't you?"

He looks at me like I'm truly a nymph, some unearthly creature speaking a foreign tongue. "Have you gone completely mad!?"

"No, not me. The world, it's the world that's mad." I press my cheek into the tree, closing my eyes. "I'm a Bavyana flower. Only good for the desert, put me anywhere else and I wilt to nothing. A useless transplant."

"Stop it," he huffs, though not entirely unkindly. He watches me for a moment; I can feel his eyes studying me. "What's happened to you, Shira? Why are you acting like this?"

Why? Such a simple question, but I can hardly begin to explain. He's never seen a Bavyana flower. He's never loved O'otani. He's never lost everything, and then lost it all again one month later. How can I even begin to explain?

I open my eyes to meet his, and I try, for both of our sakes.

"I like to think I'm practical, Ambassador," I say, my voice mingling with the buzzing of night insects. "That my mind relies on rationality and not emotions to steer it- that's is the measure of a good leader, isn't it? Well, that's what I've always been taught

"That's what I've consoled myself with this past month: practicality. It was practical to save myself, to follow my mother away from the Shikkah and watch our home burning like a shadow on the water as we sailed away. It would've been foolish to fight then, we were outnumbered, betrayed, hopeless- flight was smart," I explain, my voice cracking. I take a moment to steady myself before continuing.

"I've staved off the guilt well, telling myself that now I have the chance to raise an army and avenge those one hundred and nineteen deaths. To bring some peace to the ghosts haunting about my head. But now, after Yukkaita... I think, practically, I maybe should've died that night. With them.

"We don't have a chance now, do we?" I laugh through a sob, sounding like an animal choking on its own tongue. "Don't answer me, I don't want to hear it confirmed, and I don't want any pretty comforting lies. Though I don't think you're the sort to tell them. I just- I thought they'd burn themselves out early, all smoke and flame. But there's embers. They're permanent. Trade, treaties, the Shao Asha; next they'll have the support of Kama... And all we have is a birthright no one cares for. It's no chance at all, is it?"

"I don't know," the Ambassador says, his anger dissipating slightly in the face of my helpless honesty. "But giving in to despair won't help you,"

"What if it's not despair, though?" I ask. "What if it's just the truth?"

His dark eyes are inscrutable as he tells me, "there's no such thing as truth; just perspective. Nearly everything is mutable."

"Mutable?" I laugh. "No, Ambassador. You're wrong. Nearly everything is set in stone."

He looks at me oddly, so I continue, trying to make sense of the jumbled yarn of my thoughts.

"My entire life has been set in stone. Study, grow up, become the Deme, lead the Dimaraste. And now, well, it's still set in stone, just a different sort of rock. Can't you see it?

The rows of headstones I sleep on like pillows, set in stone, forever. I thought I could change it, rewind time, but there's no way to put blood blood back in veins or unbreak bones or unsee the tragedy of a society falling in on itself. Shikkah will never be the same, and neither will I.

"My back is against a rock." I lament. "And what can I do? I have no money, no power; just a name I can't use. Shira Katzuna, Katzuna, who is he? Is he at peace, because his namesake is half-mad. I'm half mad." I laugh, tears falling down my cheeks at the same moment. "To have control all your life, then to have none- to be completely at the mercy of an indifferent world- I see it now, and I'm afraid it will break me. Break me completely.

"That is what has happened," I whisper, taking a shaking breath. "I have seen clearly. And what I see is much too horrible." My next breath is more ragged, choking, the tears gaining momentum as I hear Y'merit's voice whispering in my ear, "their rot runs deep..."

I bite my lip to try and contain its trembling. "And- and what they said about my O'otani- I can't bear it, Ambassador." I paw at my eyes, trying to wipe away the water there, but the tears seem endless. My throat feels tight; words fail me. So I just stare at him, mute, sniveling like the fool he thinks I am.

I don't know what I expect, but it isn't the softening of his face, a sort of empathy coming into his eyes. His features relax into something almost kind, stone to moss.

He sits down beside me, leaning back against the tree.

"You'll ruin your tunic," I mutter, seeing the bark and dirt already staining it.

He ignores me. "I learned a long time ago it isn't your enemies that will destroy you. It's the people you love that have the power to drive the knife deepest." He exhales, seeming lost in memory. "You can't blame yourself, though. Wondering if you could have seen it, if you should have known, how you could have been so blind- it will drive you insane. Love is blindness, isn't it? You let someone so close you can't see them clearly until it's too late, and when you look again they've become something totally unrecognizable-"

"You think she did it, don't you?" I ask, his speech stirring me from my morass of self-pity and apathetic staring. "You think she betrayed us all!"

"Someone had to," he answers, "for Shikkah to fall so cleanly. And what the delegates said, it made sense. If she was dead, I'd think it nothing more than defamation, dancing on her grave, but if she's alive I see no reason why they'd lie."

"No reason?" I ask, pulling myself up to glare at him. My voice raises. "It's defamation, clear as day! Kill us all and then paint our ghosts as traitors to legitimize their violence. How can you not see that? It doesn't matter if she's still alive now, she won't be for long. They'll find a way to kill her, but not before they use her!"

He looks shocked, but quickly adjusts, his features hardening again. "It's possible. But it's equally possible they're telling the truth, Shira. Prepare yourself for that."

"I will not!" I shout, standing up, staggering forward as my weak legs cramp. The ambassador stands, putting a steadying hand on my shoulder. I shake it off in disgust.

"You are faithless," I mutter, my anger redirecting towards a living target. "You are the kind of man they would corrupt, just a few words and you'd believe a saint capable of anything! She is not a traitor! It's impossible!"
"You can never know someone that completely," he argues. "Your mother- I thought I knew her, and now I only know her face. I doubt the person I thought I knew even existed. I was as blind as you."

"I am not blind!" I shout, shoving him as hard as I can. "I don't give a damn what happened between you and my mother, whatever it was, it has nothing to do with O'otani! I know her better than I know myself! I know her better than anyone, and I know what she's capable of, and she's not capable of that! Never that!"

He looks stunned as he stumbles backwards. I drop my hands, shocked at myself. I've never tried to fight anyone, never once laid my hands on another in anger. My hands shake, and I look up, expecting a swift reprisal.

Instead the Ambassador looks at me with something close to pity.

"Shira, calm down. I didn't mean to upset you further."

His words bring me back to myself. "I'm sorry," I breathe. "I- it's just- she's my arm, Ambassador. Do you understand? She is a part of me. I know her, and she would never, ever betray me."

"Alright," he responds, probably just to placate me. "Alright, Shira. It's alright."

"I betrayed her," I continue, unable to stop the soft words from spilling from my lips. "I left her. I knew she was in that room, I heard the shots, and I ran in the opposite direction. What does that make me?"

"Smart," the Ambassador answers. "What would staying have done? What good would have come of it?"

"If the delegates lied, then she died alone-"

"We all die alone, Shira," he tells me, a certain hypnotizing conviction lacing his voice. "All come into the world alone, and all leave it in kind."

"She would have looked for me," I insist. "I- I could justify leaving there, leaving them all, when I thought I had a chance to come back. But now, after the council session-" I shake my head. "Now I think all I ever had was false hope."

"We all need hope," he says. "Don't begrudge yourself hope, h'yon. And maybe it's not false hope. Whatever your mother is, she's strong and she's resourceful. If anyone has a chance to reinstate the Dimaraste, it's her."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to comfort me," I mutter. "The Shikkan fool you regret ever taking in."

His mouth quirks into a small smile. "Maybe I am, Somitu's son. Maybe I'm just tired of your crying."

"I don't know what else to do," I admit, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye. "She was my strength, Irei. Without her-"

"You are still whole," he insists. "You will heal."

"How do you know that?" I ask, desperately wanting to believe him but feeling in my core the impossibility of his promise. "How could you know that? Have you ever lost everything, Ambassador? Your entire world, torn away from you?"

"Yes," he answers quietly. "Yes, I have. A long time ago."

"When does it get better?" I ask. "Do the ghosts ever stop haunting you?"

"It gets- easier," he says. "It will always hurt you, but the pain will dull to an ache. And when the ghosts stop haunting you, you'll miss them, because what else will you have to remember them by?"

"That's not much comfort."

"You said you didn't want pretty lies," he replies. "Well, that's the truth. You will never be the same again. You will always have pain. But you will learn to live with it, maybe even find a purpose through it. You'll survive."

You'll survive. There's something strangely beautiful in those words. I can imagine O'otani whispering them to me at dusk, her lips pressed against my ear, while we watch the sun setting like a firebrand over the desert sands. You'll survive, Amshira, even if you go where I cannot follow.

I clutch his words to my chest, pressing them into the empty space there. My center is still hollow, an echo chamber, but now each echo sounds vaguely like a promise.

If before I was a Varnic filling its nest with gold trinkets that glittered in the sun, filched pocket watches and ladies' brass buttons and hopes stolen from nursery books, now I'm a Kalabird, making its home in the hollow of a tree, lining it with the dun feathers pulled from its own chest. Ugly, plain feathers, but still soft and warm.

It's a new sort of hope, but maybe it's enough.

I will survive, I tell myself, wiping the last tears from my eyes.

The ambassador seems to see the change come over me, because he smiles.

"We should get back now, h'yon," he tells me. "It's a mile and a half walk, and the sun is almost set."

"Alright," I whisper, straightening my tunic and pulling my hair from my face. "Yes, we better get back."

It's a long walk in my exhausted state, and I begin to lag. The Ambassador says nothing. He slows his pace, and when that isn't enough, he wraps his arm around my waist and half-carries me the remainder of the way back to the manor.

I don't ask him where his kindness comes from, whether it's pity or the duty of an old vow or something deeper, some kinship of sorrow, but I'm thankful for it all the same.

When we reach the front door, he lets me go, and I almost fall asleep leaning against the column of the stoop.

"Ambassador?" I manage to ask through my delirious tiredness.

"Mmm?" He responds, fiddling with a large ring of brass keys.

"Why did you call me h'yon?"

He pauses, and I wonder for a moment if I've offended him.

"It's nothing, just a harmless Kamai endearment," he tells me as he fits the correct key in the lock and turns it, opening the door. The light of the manor comes out to greet us, pushing back the dusk with hues of soft gold.

"But what does it mean?" I ask as I stumble inside after him.

"Little one," he whispers as he shuts and locks the door behind us. "It means 'little one.'"

END OF PART ONE

Hi all! As you can see, this is the ending of Heir of Beasts part 1: Invasion. Part 2: supplication commences next weekend!

Thank you so much for reading, voting, and commenting. It means the world to me! I can honestly say that if it weren't for my wattpad friends and the positive feedback I've gotten from readers, this story would never have gotten past chapter two. And now I'm 82 microsoft word pages into my fantasy epic, and I'm just as excited to write part two as I was when I began writing part one. I can't believe I did it!!!!!

Excitedly yours,
~ Swpoet