Stain (Eithne) The texture wasn't to ever be erased from her memory -- warm, thick, clinging to the skin more than any ink. Currents ran across her hand, a hand that was limp underneath that foul liquid that pulsed and swirled. It flowed over the edge of the platform that was parallel to where she lay. The floors were gold and engraved with hieroglyphs of the Great Hunter leading the men who followed him; she could speak the myths from memory even with as little time she'd spent in Armas' temple. The floors gleamed even beneath smears of blood. The floors of the Generals' Tower. If she looked up, she might have seen the sky through the glass dome.
Her eyes moved, but only because she could move nothing else. A headless body wearing her mother's robes lay just outside the shadows. Her head... Vera did not look for it. She did not want to see it. Hania's corpse, covered in the dirt she'd shoveled over her days before, was strung just above on invisible wire. Seca strung dead birds in such a way on the lawns of their home once to display the feathers of those she'd killed hunting. Vera tasted the blood in her mouth now. Her chest was shivering. She could not move her hands. The High Lord's ring was still on her finger. She struggled to move just that one finger. Anything. She couldn't...
"Are you ready?"
Her father's voice. The scrape of a blade across the dais. There were the sounds of feet kicking wildly against the floor, sliding in the blood. Boots, perhaps of a man. She could hear someone frantically whispering, but could not see them. They were thrashing, though, and beating against the floor. Vera knew the sounds.
Her father was standing over her.
"Are you ready now?" came the agitated question.
The freedom of her hand came as instantly as the hatred that rushed the gates of her fear. Nothing was inexplicable in that moment. Vera launched herself up from the blood, knowing where to aim without looking. There was the sudden weight of a knife in her palm and she brought the edge right to the skin of--
Her throat.
A tin mug on the ground. One of Vera's hands held Eithne by her tunic while the other held a knife tightly against her throat. That intense, burning hatred was still moving through her veins when she recognized Eithne's face. It died a quick death, but it had been there, at the front of her eyes. Vera released the other Rider quickly and dropped her weapon, which clattered in the dirt just beside the tin mug.
Other things quickly came to Vera. Nausea, mostly. The smell of the campfire. Stars still hung over head. They were a day outside of Simanel. Vera had been, up until a few hours ago, awake through almost the entire journey. After their party split at the ruined chateau, she had driven herself harder than before. Bahn and Eithne had alternated exhaustion, one for healing and one for being healed, but Vera stubbornly refused it until she couldn't any longer. She had not even remembered falling asleep on her bed roll.
She was still frozen, staring at Eithne, who was staring back at her and opening her mouth to probably say something foul.
Rightly foul.
"I'm sorry," Vera said before she could. She bowed her head. "I'm sorry."