MARIA

... how long have we been here?

Over her head, a lone brazier hung in the corner with flickering embers. Light, but no warmth, no sun. Her hair matted and tangled with flat, gold hues. Manacles wrapped around her wrists and attached her to the wall with the little brazier and cast her corner in despairing shadows. Icesteel bars stuck deep into the rock with several smaller ones in the corners to reveal the outside streets below. People clamoured and ignored the brutality among them, and when she tried to tug at the chains, she found herself without the strength to try to call upon her giant's magick. A lament sang through the city. Volaris, their masked assailants mentioned when they were thrown into the gryphling carriages. Knees tucked against her chest, she lowered her attention to the other individual across the way.

Wheat-spun feathers slouched with the wind. The shadowed shape gave no indication of reacting to her, with their arms locked tight in several layers of shackles as they tucked themselves into the wall. Furs wrapped around her body, but she frowned at the lighter fitting, baggy slacks the Avaerilian in the corner wore. Mist left between his lips every time he breathed, and he adjusted his shoulder against the rock. Her mother taught her the importance of someone's song, of their name. It drifted on her lips, rising as a pale reflection when it echoed around the cell and her ears with the constant refrain out in the streets.

Neven Lotayrin.

He raised his head with a slow lurch. Blonde waves fell across his brow as he clenched his fists. Sapphire beads answered back with an intense, magickal glow, the wyvern that had awoken out into the frostlands. Another puff through his nose, the metal clanged with his movement when he tried to stretch himself out. Too cold for terror, she frowned and huddled under the brazier, trying to stretch her flames to spread it through the cell. "Is this the cult?" she found herself asking, remembering the sleepless nights Kemal and Neven had trying to find the missing Wardens. Is this...?

"I don't think so." Neven's certainty made her jolt her back against the craggy brick, but he curled his fingers into each other. "No... this is something else. I do not doubt that the cult is here in Naveera, but neither of us have sensed a Derelict." He drew his sapphire gaze to the bars, then let out a guttural hiss when he moved his shoulder again.

"If it's not the cult, who is it?" Maria bit. "Who in their right mind would capture and imprison Storm Wardens?"

Neven flicked his attention to her again. "Those who do not consider their work important, nor treat it with the due respect. Or, worse yet... consider the Storm Wardens a product of a begotten age, willing to destroy the darkness, no matter the cost. No matter who was in the way." His shackles ran up to his elbow as he slid himself into the pale light. Shadows danced across his face and dug deeper underneath his eyelids. "Someone paid the Iceshards; for me. Not you. Not Storm Wardens. Me. No..." His feathers pierced through the blond waves tickling his pointed ears. "It is my name."

"Your name? Neven, if this isn't the cult you've been hunting, or the cult that destroyed Irimount, isn't it possible to—?" Maria shut her mouth at the clang of steel doors and jangling keys. It echoed through the corridor as light crawled across the pebbles. Agitation cracked along her knuckles when one Iceshard moved forward, followed by a dark-blonde Avaerilian with brown-tipped feathers. Behind them, a scaled armored figure with a glaive strapped to their back. Maria tried to find the strength in her knees to crack herself against her manacles the moment they opened the door, but ice folded her bones tighter.

"Neven Lotayrin," the brown-feathered Avaerilian spoke, ignoring her. "Do you know why you're here?"

His nostrils flared, and he didn't respond to the line of questioning. Maria bit on her tongue when the Avaerilian let out a venomous hiss. "I suggest you cooperate, Lotayrin," their Navei came out cold and lacked a song. "Your name is already on thin ice."

"You know my name, yet I don't know yours," Neven said with his own venomous huff through his nose. "I don't feel inclined to answer you." He up-turned his face to snub the other Avaerilian, a reflection of his adopted son — and all the consequences which came with it.

In a flash of a hand, it struck across Neven's face, but he kept his spine straight as he swung his attention back to their captor with another hiss, revealing fangs behind his lips. It slid past them as he opened his mouth when they grabbed onto his cuffs to pull him onto his knees, whether to bite with verbal words or physical action, she needed more answers.

"Hey!" Maria snapped, causing all the present Avaerilians to turn to her at her Navei. "What are you doing? We're Storm Wardens! We aren't your enemies!"

Feathers shuddered as their captor sniffed. "I'm surprised a barbarian from the sunlands has the capacity to comprehend the song, let alone speak it — however stunted," he said in response, then drew closer with his magelight, leaving Neven to shake out his own wheat-spun feathers as his beaded eyes zoned in on their back. Maria pressed herself against the wall, but held herself proud. "No... you have the blood of our people, just remember, you are not a wyvern. You are half-bred woman giant from their proud lineages. You are not one of us, so don't presume to know us."

Sapphires glowed when the shadow of Neven raised himself straighter. Maria widened her attention when he ran against his shackles with strength. It pulsed through the room and flickered the lamp above her head as he strained against the chains keeping him against the wall. Golden claws left a dim glow over his fingers. "We barely know ourselves!" he spat, full of rage akin to Yuven's. "You do not get to presume who she is or what her song is capable of! To do so is to spit on our ancestors' memories! We were made by the joining of two people's!" Another furious plume of mist left through his fangs and nose both. "It is I you wanted words with. It is my name that is the reason you threw us both in here. By the laws of the blizzard, you must give your explanation." His knees quivered, but Maria looked between them until their captor turned to Neven in full.

"You do not presume to speak either, Neven Lotayrin, the son who abandoned his people," their captor said, waving the Iceshard and scaled knight into the cell with them. "The son who spit on the legacy his forebears left to go on a fruitless crusade for people doomed from the start." His hazel eyes narrowed into thin beads. "If you wish to call upon the laws of the blizzard, then on your head bear the weight of the truth. Neven Lotayrin, you have been detained for the abduction of the crown prince of Naveera, the last living Traye." He stayed out of reach of Neven, whose feathers folded closer together into an unsettling rattle of barbs. "You are to be judged a traitor underneath the full might of the blizzard, and your name cast to the accursed wind."

Neven withdrew his fangs, but he expelled furious mist. Maria lurched forward when the scaled knight drove him to his knees and elicited a small gasp from her fellow Storm Warden. Knees cracked against stone, and he snapped his head up to meet their captor eye to eye. Yuven. It was about the Ice Knight of her life. Maria found her voice failing her, all her energy sapped out of her without her pack full of her attempts to provide him relief. Thrown back into the corner, Neven tucked his feet closer and flared his nostrils.

"You don't have to do this," Neven hissed.

"We do." Their captor left the cell and closed it behind him once his two compatriots joined him. "We'll see if you feel more cooperative after a cold night. Don't worry. We won't harm the barbarian, since you seem more devoted and loyal to her than your own people. It's a pity to have the Lotayrin name brought to this level of disgrace." The bars shut with a rattled clang, and Maria shivered when their footsteps withdrew and the light they brought dissipated to leave them both in newfound shadows.

"Nev," Maria said once she was certain they were gone and all the energy in Neven dissipated when he slumped in his chains. "You didn't abduct Yuven. He would've died had the Storm Wardens left him in Irimount! We both know that! If you hadn't stepped in, he would've died sooner!"

"It does not matter to them," Neven replied. His knuckles turned white and his feathers continued to shudder. "In their eyes, their perception... I am guilty. Guilty of all their problems. Guilty for perpetrating them." He cricked out his neck, then sank deeper into the corner, a weight folding his brow. "I can do naught but see where they intend to go with this."

"We could try to escape," Maria argued.

"Escape where?" Neven asked, his Navei dull and without the familiar melody which came with his dialect. "If there is one of him, there are certainly more. There always has been. He was not alone in this, he is simply acting the face for the time being." He pointed out at the streets, to the giant white walls pulsating with magick. "Out there? Without a Snowshear or a gryphling drawn carriage, neither of us would stand a chance, not without supplies." His hand slumped back into his lamp with a tremble. "No, this isn't a cult. This is politics." The word came out through his teeth in a spit.

Maria trembled at the raucous shouts outside. "Then... I don't understand what they want from you."

"An example."

Her heart fell. "An example of what?"

"Of what happens to traitors in Naveera," Neven replied. "As for what they want... was it not clear, Maria? It is Yuven they want, the last living holder of his name, a prince of Naveera... whether it is his desire or not. His freedom is not more important than theirs to them. They want him to save them, to pull them out of the dunes of snow blanketing across our home." He drew his gaze around the bars, a small huff leaving his nose. "They do not care about him... about what he wants, just what he carries. And because I am the thing standing in the way..."

It fell into broken pieces of her Mother's fear. "Nev... what are they planning to do to you?"

"I am unsure as of yet," Neven mumbled, and Maria shuddered when a blast of wind pulsed through the corridor and he rested his gaze on her, his feathers stretching out to cover the tips of his ears. "Keep yourself warm, Maria. Stay under the fire. Wrap your furs closer," he instructed, but she found himself focused on him instead.

"What about you?"

"I am an Avaerilian, born of the blizzard... I shall never die," his words came out fervent. As fervent as Fenrer's prayers to the Ancients. "I will live. I will survive one cold night, Maria. You have our blood. Use it... and stay warm, for me, and for Yuven." He sat on his hindquarters, shoulders hunched with another roar of the wind through the streets. "He is still waiting for you, and I mean to get you back home with your findings from Irimount."

Maria hesitated on his lack of reference towards himself. Embers drained out of her bloodstream, replaced with the cruelty of her other half. Against her lit corner, she scowled at her powerlessness. Metal bounced against her wrist when she threw her arms out in anger, to listen to it clang and carry her agony through the breeze and into the blizzard to release her own song. Flurries whispered over the windows and the bars, and she dragged herself to her feet. "I am a giant too," she mumbled, then tugged hard on the manacles, dragging her shoes across the stone. It groaned against the hooks, but refused to bend to her lack of strength. Muscles tighter, she drove her teeth into her lips and pulled once more with another metallic shudder in the bricks.

"Giants don't survive here, you saw the state Fenrer was in from his trek across the frostlands," Neven whispered, considering her with a return of the sad, gentle spirit that he was. "Maria... if you wish to survive... you will have to accept the part of you that is Avaerilian. You are no less an Avaerilian than I am. Ignore their songs... listen to your own."

On her knees, she drove her fingers into her palm. Teeth in her lips with no fangs, she released an excess plume out of her nose to cycle the cold temperatures through her own soul, and make them into a spread of flames underneath her skin. Behind her, Neven let out a small sigh of relief, but she chewed on rage instead, the only thing keeping her grounded.

No... I mean to get you home too. Your actual home. Not this place that would sooner see you rot because of a kindness.