APRIL SYLKRANA IS DETERMINED TO RISE. After the devastating news of her mother, the Imperial High Queen's, death, she only has one job before she can take what is rightfully hers: kill her half-brother, June. Not only is he elusive and serious about...
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2412, Diori 20, Reshpe
The fortress was busy, which pained April to the point of boredom. Since she found herself tied to a tree, she had accepted all kinds of fate that might befall her inside Penleth, but she had never counted on the humdrum to do her in. They only threw her in this flimsy cell because she had once hunted one of their friends and they're scared she'd start doing it again.
Well, she wasn't. What her brother did was nothing to her. She even gave up on trying to save him, because she had to face it—what was she saving him from? Their mother? She's long gone, hopefully serving her punishment sentence in Pidmena's embrace. The system he grew up in, perhaps? But she's trapped in it as much as he was, and she couldn't save anyone if she couldn't even save herself first. Or was it perhaps from the fate set out for him? But why? She didn't even know what destiny had in store for her.
It wasn't from himself either. He had enough friends and allies to do that for him. With the Virtakios always by his side, seemingly enamored by him, there's literally nothing he could do. He didn't need April—a sister he never knew, a sister from another father—and with her using the High Queen as the only justification for their connection was unfair to June. He probably had done his best to get out of his own situation—he's got a good head on his shoulders for that. April was an ornament in June's hallway—there, but unnoticed on a daily basis unless it's broken, stolen, or laying rampage on the estate.
Either way, April had a life of her own, and June, his. They didn't need to be in each other's lives just because they're related. Yeah. She had hurt him, his friends, and everything he stood for in her will to save him. But that boy was right. Saving people was something that takes a lifetime to learn, and for April, who had done nothing but hurt people, it would take longer.
Don't let guilt tie you down. Live your life free to choose, because you are. Those words from so long ago echoed in her head. It's amazing the potion didn't erase that vague part of her life, or that she still remembered Hera's face as she lay dying in April's arms. It's the woman's last wish, one that April had been desecrating since she went down from Falkirta. At the taste of the real world, promises held no permanence. The dead couldn't grieve, anyway.
This time, April did something very, very wrong, and she should live the rest of her life in guilt. She wasn't free to choose. This war was enough proof of that.
The Penleth soldiers zipped by her cell, which was a cubical slab of rock hollowed out in the middle. She remembered they had to get an Earth Sprite, which was oddly familiar to April, to make the cell. Then, they tried to stop her escape by weaving flimsy sticks together in a semblance of railings.
It's not like April would try to escape. Her magic was as distant as ever, leashed by a different force, but a force nonetheless. Instead of the oppressive strain of the Sovereign's spell, this one was a gentler and excusable leash. Yet, it annoyed April greatly, especially when she vowed to Daexis she wouldn't ever see her brother's face or any of his friends' as soon as she got out of this accursed fortress. Forget about being High Queen. The island's mess would take four Imperial monarchs to fix. There's no way April could do it on her own, especially when the Seelie Court did their best to block her from the throne.
