A ghost of wailing answered his whisper. Over the ring of shattering porcelain and stubborn rain, anguish echoed. In reply, the soft hair on her arms and neck bristled. Oristos shuddered, though his eyes were hard with knowing. His jaw tightened with resolve as he vaulted from his seat and towards the palace.

Yalira followed. Their wet sandals slapped against the marble, resounded through the corridors, as they pursued the cries toward the villas and rooms of Andar's most favored.

"Who is it?" Yalira asked between breaths, between the coils of dread. He knew whose screams decorated the halls, and, in the disquiet of her heart, Yalira suspected.

Oristos frowned. Hesitance dominated before he replied, "Sasha has been unwell."

Before Yalira could beg for answers, for symptoms to connect in comforting diagnosis, they stepped into Sasha's villa and greeted the remains of chaos. Sasha sat in the middle of her rooms, surrounded by the wreckage of her belongings, crouched over and whimpering. Her maid shuddered with soft sobs of her own as she held her fingers to a bleeding cheek. Dezma stood in the corner's shadows, watching in mute terror.

"Are you alright, Nyla?" Oristos asked the maid gently, ushering her onto a bench so he could examine the trio of oozing scratches against her cheek.

Yalira only had eyes for the broken queen. The bile of empathy rose in her throat.

Always pale, Sasha's skin had curdled into wasting gray. Her long sheet of hair, once coiled and kept, hung in lank, dirty strands. Blue eyes, too large for her face, bigger still against the deep shadows, clung fast to a misshapen bundle of rags in her arms.

Though Yalira had feared it, this was not the purging illness that had spread through the city.

Hollowness had regressed into violent despair.

For all the babes Yalira had guided into the world, there was never a pattern for which mothers would fall to madness. Women who drowned their child; women who ignored their bodies until they both starved; women who mumbled strange words and delusions until their voices turned to dust.

In her native language, stretched by her smile, she whispered in crooning melody. She hadn't seen Sasha smile since those first weeks in Semyra. Yalira swallowed.

"I tried to take it from her," Nyla whispered above the horrible lullaby. Her fingers folded into a fist she held at her lips, as if she meant to keep her voice from breaking. "I thought I might wash it for her."

Filth beneath her jagged fingernails, the queen murmured and made soft gestures. Yalira turned as Dezma loosed a soft cry. The other queen's knuckles were white around a bottle of blood-colored tonic.

"Dezma?" Yalira called gently. "Will you not come see Queen Sasha's babe?"

The queen hardly acknowledged she had been addressed, but Sasha's head snapped up. Her clouded blue eyes studied Yalira in narrowed scrutiny before they returned to the bundle in her arms.

"A handsome child, is it not?" Yalira tried again, moving closer. She knelt before the mad queen. Oristos shifted uncomfortably behind her. Playing into delusion was risky. The shattered porcelain that littered the room called in answer. So was confronting it.

Dezma took small steps forward, her slippers whisper-soft across the marble, her voice a fraction louder. "He is indeed."

The compliment breathed new color into Sasha. Her expression grew stronger. "He is fit to rule the world. The firstborn son of Andar of Tyr!"

"May I hold him?" Yalira asked. It was the voice she'd use with frightened children, a spooked beast. Sasha still flinched.

"You won't take him from me?"

"No," Yalira breathed. "I'll hold him only while you drink your tonic. So you stay strong for him."

Sasha's blue eyes met her dark ones in narrowed confusion. Remembrance warred with delusion. Her fingers dug into the rags. "You promise?"

"I do."

Carefully, the queen surrendered the pile to Yalira's arms and stroked the edges with delicate softness. Yalira took care to cradle the bundle and murmur soft praise, as she would a colicky child. In the held breath of the room, she could almost hear Dezma's teeth grind together.

But her voice came steadily, as did her steps. "Here, Sasha," she murmured as she, too, knelt. "Your tonic."

In practiced movements, Sasha pulled the vial to her lips and titled the bright liquid into her mouth. Her attention returned to the soiled rags. For a heartbeat, her blue eyes cleared, her lips frowned in confusion, as if she remembered the details of her labor, the squalling spawn with its flayed back, its single eye. She shuddered.

"I deserve to die! The goddesses whisper it! I hear them!" Her soft voice rang in wild desperation, fell to a broken whisper. "I want to die."

Despite the heartbreaking truth of her sentiment, Yalira could not grant Sasha that mercy.

"You will survive this, Sasha," she said.

"I'm so tired," the queen whispered, "of being sad."

The blue of her eyes sharpened in those moments, cleared with pain and understanding. Yalira nodded to Dezma to help her stand, to guide her to the tangled mess of her bedding that Nyla rushed to straighten.

"Then rest," Yalira answered, still holding the bundle in her arms.

In the bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets and furs, Sasha looked small. "I don't want to be alone."

"I'll stay with you," Dezma said, stroking the limp blonde hair from her face. Harrowed with the burden of bearing witness, the shadows beneath her green eyes matched her friend's. Sasha's gaze gleamed for a moment, as if she might succumb to tears, but she raised her chin instead.

"Give him to Nyla," Sasha commanded, pointing to the bundle. "See him bathed." Her voice turned haughty as her lashes fell against her cheeks. "I won't have the crown prince be anything less than perfection."

A gradient of gray, night fell between one moment and the next. The darkness weighed heavy against the sheerness of her curtains, leeched the warmth from the hearth.

"Will she recover?" Andar asked.

He felt too large for her furniture, for her rooms. Elbows against his knees, hands in his bright hair, he waited with taut patience for her prognosis. With mismatched eyes, Oristos was fixed towards Andar. His hands twitched against his own skin, but he did not move to comfort, to hold.

"Many do," Yalira answered, fingering the rim of her glass. "It is a question of time."

Over a private dinner, she and Oristos had recounted the details of the afternoon, of Sasha's brutal delirium that was tempered by the sleeping tonic. Yalira had protested its frequent use and protested it loudly when Oristos claimed not to know its ingredients.

It's a physician's tonic, he'd explained. Used for years without ill effect. Even Andar's mother had ritually taken it. The assuredness did not console her worries. A sedating herb could spell danger in excess. She'd said as much and bullied Oristos into promising that Sasha would not be left alone with doses of the potent medicine.

Andar swallowed. "How long?"

"I cannot say." Yalira paused. She rubbed at her eyes, at the prickly fatigue that was growing behind them. "But there is hope. For a moment, I think she recognized the truth."

"The truth." Andar scoffed and stood, abandoning his untouched plate to lean over the fire. "She's happier in delusion." The hearth flickered in his bronze eyes. "Perhaps I should send her home."

Irrational jealousy flared bright before the dismal nature of reality reminded her that there was no Antalis to return to in homecoming. Yalira set her wine aside with forced gentleness.

"Dezma cares for her. She is not alone here."

Andar's mouth twisted into ugly, humorless laughter. "And I suppose I would be poorly served if all of Crosao whispered of stillborn sons and demented wives."

Oristos shuddered. Yalira snarled.

"Yes, because this is all so awful for you."

The king turned to her in bright, new fury. Lit by firelight, he burned at the sharpness of her words. In wryness and matched venom, he goaded her just as surely as he bristled from the barb. "If you have something to say, dear wife, please do not censor your wicked tongue."

With a weak attempt at keeping peace, Oristos moved to interrupt. But the effort died as Andar and Yalira smothered him in synchrony of dark anger. He swallowed before showing his hands in silent surrender. He seemed to disappear into his stillness.

"Why?" Yalira asked, her voice brittle. "Why did you wait?"

His pain, the concern he showed for Sasha, was unjust in the fire's wake. He had condemned the last of her legacy—the last pieces of her history—to death when he had the power to save them from the start. Oristos did not follow her abruptness, but just as quickly as she'd jumped to the crux of her frustration, Andar followed in swift steps.

"Despite the credit you give me, Yalira, I am not without limit. There is strategy in politics as surely as there is in battle."

"Strategy?" The question came with loud and discordant laughter. "So it was strategy that made it acceptable to sacrifice so many lives in the name of your victory?"

They had not argued to this point of passion, not since before her calculated submission to become his ninth queen. In that moment, Yalira felt like she had regained a lost piece of herself. Though it was sluggish from disuse, anger, familiar and comforting, burned away her patience and pain, muted the stubborn pull between them.

Andar counted her. "I have won every battle I have led because I understand war. Victory comes with cost. I could not move until I had the right information."

"Information?" The word dripped with indignation. "Do not pretend this is nuance and design, Andar! It is the ethics of what is just and what is not."

Oristos closed his eyes—brown and blue—and turned towards the heavens. A mute, reluctant audience. It should have been the warning that she'd pushed too far, but Yalira embraced the righteous anger that burned into her bones. Andar's mouth hardened, his face darkened. "Do not lecture me in morals, Yalira. One misstep in this world costs more than the lives of your priestesses."

"Then that, perhaps, is what is wrong with your world. To think that one life has any more meaning than another? That is arrogance and privilege and—"

"Do not assume my feelings on this cost."

"I must assume! For you will not share more than what you deem strategic. I am limited to judge you by actions and actions alone."

"This plague? The unrest?" Andar laughed, and she hated him for it. "Yalira, these are but small pieces."

"Then tell me!" she hissed. "If you are so desperate to be understood."

Andar paused as if he considered his counterattack. Silent, his eyes narrowed and his hand fell to the knife that sat between them. Brows furrowed, she watched his strong fingers curl around the gilded handle. Oristos leaned forward in confusion, stretched towards Andar's wrist.

The air grew taut between them, each breath thin and jagged.

Between heartbeats, a flash of gold, Andar shot forth.

Yalira flinched away, stunned that he'd attack, ironically pleased that she'd been correct about his nature those first moments in Antalis. Her last memory would be the sharp gasp from Oristos, Andar's golden eyes refusing to meet hers.

Though she imagined it, the blade did not come.

She blinked. The knife shone in the light of the hearth, but it did not gleam with human blood. Across the floor, a long body writhed by her feet. A severed head with dripping fangs.

"An adder," Oristos breathed, examining the serpent. He watched the scaled corpse still before meeting Andar's gaze. "It isn't native to Tyr."

Though Andar had cleanly decapitated the threat, his hand shook. His golden eyes, held fast to Yalira, inventoried each inch of her skin before he swallowed and set the weapon aside.

"No," he agreed. His voice did not betray that tremor of fear. "It's not."

Yalira pulled her feet onto the lounge, dug her fingers into her arms to keep her tone even. If they were to ignore the implications of a foreign snake, an unpredictable assassin, she would too. "Then why," she said, words calm, "is it in my room?"

The two men shared a glance that stoked her anger back to flame. Caught between fear and rage—bright and loud—ire stretched inside of her, rattling her breaths.

"Suffering and snakes and death!" Her voice flirted with hysteria. "I have had enough! Send me away."

"Where would you have me send you?" Andar asked softly. The calm surprised her, cooled her emotions into bleak understanding.

Andar watched the corner of her mouth, the tight fist of her fingers. Yalira could not bear to look at him, not when—cast in orange and night—he burned painful reminders into ribs.

"Stay with me."

In the cracking light, Andar waited. He did not voice in question, but still he waited for her answer. The insistent force returned, pulling her memories towards rain and morning. He could kneel.

It wasn't safety.

The dark body of the serpent against the clean marble, the goat's head against the white of her pillow.

But perhaps as close as she might have in Semyra.

A/N:

Happy Holidays!