Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Harper came into the greeting hall first, dressed in his mage robes and without his shackles. Those had been removed at Wren's insistence because he knew Harper well enough as one of his most prudent generals that he trusted him not to harm anyone. That, and with Cadence in the castle, Harper had more motivation not to cause issues. They had decided to keep the boy away from all this because it was more likely to end in death than peace, even though Wren wished that everything could work out all right. Life was never that kind to Songs.
Wren sat beside Talamayas as Shan brought Riff in, still in chains, no one feeling safe to have his constraints removed. Riff walked, despite it taking arduously long with the ankle manacles jerking each step short. Riff was as he had always been, powerful even chained, his grey eyes darker than any of the Songs and full of malice and hatred for vampire kind. They had allowed him to keep his pitch mage garb, bordered by red song notes on the trim of his neck and sleeves, but he was filthy, covered in grime and dirt from the dungeon floors. His resplendent red braid was frayed in several spots but still swung tied just below his hips until Shan came to a stop below the thrones.
It struck pain into Wren's heart to see his best friend and first general caged, yet there was no despair or plea in those hard eyes. Songs didn't beg, not for their lives nor those of their people. They merely suffered in silence until opportunity arose, and then they conquered. The pride of the Song people burned within Riff's eyes as he stood tall in the face of his captors, persisting even when Shan kicked out the back of his knees and sent him to the floor.
Wren stood as immediately as his general fell, but a hand from Tala stopped him from going to his friend. Wren wanted to, to kneel with Riff, to press his face to his, and to save him. Yet everyone here knew that the only one who could save Riff was himself. It was his decision to choose peace or pain that would seal his fate. Riff was too dangerous to be let go.
As soon as Riff was stable on his knees, he lifted his pitch eyes and laughed, his smile twisting his face into something truly sinister. The deep rumble from one such as Riff was like the roar of a lion before it lunged for its prey's throat even as bound as he was.
"Back to being a fuck toy for a tyrant?" Riff's low voice rippled like a beast snarling. With his hands shackled behind his back, he lifted his body as straight as possible on his knees, and Song pride radiated from him as he refused to bow even went already bent.
"Riff, I am not a toy of any kind here." Wren had to sit back on his throne so he didn't shake Riff into behaving like a human being. Riff never had and he wouldn't now. Showing any compassion would only be read as weakness here.
"Keep telling yourself that every night he bends you over, Wren." Riff kept at it.
"Riff, I am a leader here, just as I was with our people. I am no slave and I do not wish you to be a prisoner. No more of our people have to die. Let this be the end of it." Riff had already given Harper a quick glance the moment he'd entered the room, and that was all he intended to pay the man who had betrayed him. It was different for Wren because he was Riff's superior, then and now, but that didn't make the disdain any better.
