Chapter Text
Allag is dying.
Or so the rumors say.
It is not difficult to believe—not when the skies of Azys Lla are choked with noxious green clouds; when monstrosities and machines roam the lifeless landscape below.
“Welcome home, my lady,” her attendant says.
It is an insult that rips her focus from the window; that brings tears to her eyes she cannot yet blame on the inhospitable air. “The skyship hasn’t landed,” she spits. It is unbecoming. She does not care. “We can still turn the bloody fuck around.”
Her retinue is small, yet their affronted tittering impressively loud. “Mistress—”
“I know, alright?” She takes a deep breath that does nothing to calm her. “I know.”
And she had always known, that it would come to this. An empire with an uncertain future would pay a high price for someone who could see it; when Dravania rose against Ishgard, it fell to her ward to become the currency with which a war could be won.
So no, this marriage was no surprise.
…Least of all to her.
An aide hovers at her shoulder, insufferably oblivious. “Might I refresh your complexion before we arrive, my lady? I’m sure the crown prince is eager to meet you straight away.”
She sighs; collapses into her seat with such force it is sure to crease the elaborate gown they’d all but sewn her into, a confection of ivory silk and black ribbon cut with Allagan tastes in mind. Another time, she might’ve found it beautiful; now, it may as well be her burial shroud.
“Eager to weaponize me, more like.”
Her servants say nothing, and she is thousands of malms away from anyone with either the context or desire to respond. Haurchefant, Aymeric—they’d wanted to accompany her, to see her safely to the Agrius and the arms of her husband-to-be. Or his armaments, she thinks acidly. It is not clever enough to distract her from the memory of their faces when she told them goodbye.
“I’d marry you myself,” Aymeric said, dropping a kiss to the crown of her head. “If you thought it could save us.”
Haurchefant wrapped her in a hug. “Shall I duel him for the honor?”
As ever, he was smiling.
But this time, his eyes betrayed him.
She cannot feel their arms around her now. Her chest burns with a different warmth; with flames that lick into her throat, daring her to scream. She is so, so angry. At the world, for its eagerness to tear itself apart. At herself, for having the complacency to believe that happiness had been hers to keep.
She was not their duty. They are the sons of a nation; she, a girl whose only pedigree is the blessing of a god.
Alone in the cold, spartan hull of the ship, she doubts it will be enough to shield her from the machinations of an empire.
“The landing bay approaches,” the aide tells her, hurriedly dabbing color into her lifeless cheeks. From there, everything happens too fast. The skyship barely touches down before a troupe of automatons whisks them away to a lavish antechamber; before a commanding voice filters in from the throne room up ahead.
…It is a fortuitous day, indeed. Not only for my son—though he seems at present disinclined to join us—but for our most beloved empire. Long has Allag yearned for the strength of new blood. On this day, my good people—on this day, she shall finally have it.
Cheers erupt from within.
She’s going to be sick.
A maid cries out in alarm as she bursts from the room, moving as quickly through the castle’s labyrinthine halls as her accursed gown will allow. She is lost, here as everywhere; breath catching in her throat as she stumbles near blindly through the next door she finds.
…It is a garden, or what remains of it.
Ivy drapes lazily over stonework, carefully laid paths and flower beds now veiled by tangled vines. Strange flora grows stubbornly in the shadows of unkempt topiaries mutated into chimerical forms, of once-proud statues blurred by time and neglect and it lodges in her heart that this place might have been beautiful, once; before it became nothing but a crumbling waymark between the halcyon past and a decaying future.
She catches her reflection in the murky green water of a disused fountain.
Gods, she hadn’t meant to cry.
Something rustles behind her. Panic sparks behind her breastbone when she reaches for a blade she does not find; when she realizes they would not bind her in such delicate satin without robbing her of the means to claw free of it. And perhaps her assailant knows this, for he makes his approach armed only with a pristine white handkerchief pinched between his fingers.
“Pardon me," the man says, his ruby eyes dark with concern. "But—are you alright?”