"No."Obiageli's face smoothed back into its mask."We're not."
Azul looked up through her lashes, her eyes cold.They were the same kind of person; Azul understood clearly what was going through Obiageli's head.If she were in her place, she too would kill her twin sister to obtain their full abilities.
The Dowager was never her divine King, Azul only found out because she dared to ask her snake to eat the old woman despite their alliance.
"Sister," Azul called as Obiageli walked towards the door.The Oracle paused.
"Thank you."
A long moment passed, then Obiageli nodded once and stepped through the door, closing it softly behind her.
The room was silent again.
Azul sat motionless for a long time, staring at the door her sister had disappeared through.Then, slowly, her shoulders trembled.The quivering quickly spread before becoming a convulsive shake.And finally, a manic laugh escaped her lips, and her eyes locked onto a dark corner of her room ceiling.To the shadows that gathered there, thicker than they had any right to be.Darker.Deeper.
"Do not tell the Great Khan anything."
The shadows did not move.But Azul knew that someone listened.
"I am your Khatun," she said, and her voice, though broken with her laughter, carried the weight of command."I command you.Silence.Until I say otherwise."
The eagle arrived the very next day, at dawn.
Nyraxa caught it herself, her arm raised as the great bird descended through the grey light, its wings cutting the air.She unstrapped the message from its leg, unrolled the tiny scroll, and read.
Then she read it again.
With a confused expression, she walked to the Khan's tent.
Ragnar was already dressed and armoured, preparing to ride out the last stretch of their journey.He looked up at her entrance.
"A message," Nyraxa said."From the city."
She held it out.
As he read, his expression did not change.
"It could be a trap," Nyraxa said quietly.
"It’s her handwriting."
They fell into a beat of silence.Nyraxa understood; he would go anyway, as long as it was her that wrote to him, he had no reason to disobey.
She was speechless, was he truly beyond logic?
“Alone?”She asked, quietly.
Ragnar nodded.“You need to carry on the march if I don’t return on time.”
She was quiet once more, and then, she spoke."I'll have a horse ready."
Chapter 37
Theshrinecourtyardwassilent when Azul was dragged back to it.
The women Chukwuemeka had brought worked quickly without meeting her eyes.They stripped her.Bathed her.Dressed her in fine robes.They painted her face, covering the bruise on her cheek, the split in her lip, and the hollows under her eyes.
When they finished, she sat by the low table in the shrine's main hall, dressed, devastatingly beautiful and utterly still.
