The inferno is growing.

Fae watches it from the window, watches as the tiny specks of her soldiers go not to quench it, but to feed it. The southeastern quarter of Solveigard City is ablaze, and no one is stopping it.

Her spymaster does not try to lure her away from the window this time; they have both learned that some things must be endured.

"Beinsho will be here in the morning," Keno says instead, a low voice in the darkness, the quiet messenger of secrets and knives. "We have eyes on them in the western woods."

Fae nods. Of course they do, with birds and their human partners, relaying and conveying details and guises. But as surely as Fae's men do, the Cabal will also, which is why a fourth of her city burns.

"Aren Dost continues to move south; she passes through Halften, not Keesark."

No. It is not safe to come to Keesark anymore. Fae wonders if it ever really was.

"Feuilles remains where he is."

A smile answers this, cracked and bitter. She expects no less of the haughty king and his deep-rooted self-interest. She only hopes that, when her people are ashes, the Jarles march through it straight to him.

No, she tells herself not for the first time, nor for the last. We will endure, and I will come for Feuilles. I will bring the bones of our children to his feet and see if he can do anything but sneer.

She doesn't know if she believes this more than her first thought; she only knows she must hold both if she is to move forward.

Beneath the heavy weight of her obsidian crown, Fae exists in a haze. The panic, the fear, the grief, and the nail-biting fury are there, but somehow tampered down. It's as if they belong to someone else, someone suffering, and all she can do is look on and choose. Does she hang the Cabal supporters at the front of the Tower or does she take them down into the dungeons, where Keno and others whittle away? Does she hold court or does she retreat, up in her rooms where no one can see her, where she's more a figment than flesh and bone—should she be an unkillable idea or a fallible being? And she picks, trying to choose the path that stops them from tearing themselves apart.

It's a hand at her elbow, light, but still pressuring, checking maybe if she is still here, still real. She doesn't need to turn to know Keno stands behind her, that he is looking down at the delicate profile of her face.

"It's not over yet," he tells her.

No, she thinks, it will never be over.

"Beinsho will bring supplies," he continues, and his hand deftly trails down, wrapping around hers, light, but solid. "People are calmer, more reasonable on a full stomach."

"Speaking from personal experience?" she murmurs, her voice a low and scratchy whisper.

"Always,"

A smile twitches on her face, but she doesn't feel it. He squeezes her hand.

"I'm downright unbearable without food."

"So am I," Fae says and she kind of laughs, if a short and breathy huff can count as one. "I was like a bear that slept too long and had awoken to an empty stomach when Caj and I travelled back from the Jarles."

The uttered name breaks the reverie; she can feel it in the way his hand twitches around hers, and he lets go.

"There is something you should know."

Fae halts, turning back to catch the spymaster in the corner of her eye.

"Ben has left the city."

"Left?" Fae repeats, a shameful flush of relief passing through her, quickly followed by suspicion. But they're still fighting, still attacking.

"Who leads them now?"

Keno huffs.

"Isn't their point there isn't anyone in charge?" But the cruel twist of his smile quiets, breaking in the long pause.

"If there is," he continues at last, moving to her desk and reaching into his coat, "It'll be her."

He throws a paper down on the table and upon it is a sketch: a dark woman, young, with short tufted hair and a sharp, penetrating gaze. There is something arresting about her, and Fae thinks that the illustrator, or perhaps the person who described her, must have known her well.

And so must I.

"Who is she?" Fae demands, memorizing this face, this new opponent.

"Her name is Meg. She is close to Ben."

Meg. But Fae knows her—recognizes her now, as the woman from Helm's Hollow—and Fae looks up, meaning to ask what 'close' might mean, but she catches Keno's expression.

"You know her too," she states.

"I know all of them," he answers, and Keno, spymaster and thief, turns away, choosing to face the open window and all the fires burning out beyond it.

She wants to ask several things, most she has no right to know, so she settles on the one demand she is entitled to:

"Tell me what you know of her."

In the glow of bombfire she listens to her door click shut. Thoughts and memories swirl, clicking together and apart, grasping for an idea, a plan to claw her way out of this corner. But there's nothing in here, nothing but the pressure of the black thing pressing down along her head, hanging heavy on her brow.

She watches the orange glow outside a while longer, and then she goes into a different room, to a different person.

He has already returned from the night's activities; he sits, hunched over, on the marble platform of his fireplace, a dark thing of metal and cinder, his helmeted head hung low between his broad shoulders.

She approaches, a hand touching the cold helmet, resting where the back of his head should be.

He does not stir.

But he does when she trails her fingers lower, to the edge of that metal coffin, curling around its corner to pull it off. He twitches, as if to brush off a fly, so she lets it be.

Fae moves instead into the washroom, gathering from the counter the hand towel she had left the night before and dipping it into the clear basin of water. When she re-enters the room she doesn't move to him yet; she turns to the fire, holding the cloth over the flames until she feels its gentle warmth. It's a simple gesture, something some might now consider too lowly for a queen, but it's these quiet moments that root her. And, besides, she is the only one who can do it.

When she returns, she places the towel on his neck, on the only bit of skin exposed, and she lays a hand over it.

"Beinsho comes tomorrow," she tells him. "He's bringing weapons, troops, and food."

The silence hangs between the flickers and cracks of the fire.

"Enough food to feed many of the citizens too," she adds. "Maybe that will... People are happier on a full stomach, aren't they?"

Her question hangs in the air, amidst the soft popping of the flames and muted sounds of the tumult outside. It hangs and hangs because she's too tired to carry on, because her arms are lead, and because the pressure on her brow has turned to a dull throb, the dark obsidian pressing in further.

And the masked creature beneath her hand does not respond.

A/N: Caj, u r doin me a heckin concern.