The morning broke over the high towers of the palace with a strange, breathless stillness, as if even the wind paused to listen. The air carried a sense of shifting tides, of forgotten truths stirring awake, of bloodlines rising after a hundred years of quiet.
Inside her chamber, Sakina moved quickly and deliberately. Scrolls were folded with care, ancient silk-wrapped maps placed into crates, herbs tied and sorted in little bundles. Her hands never hesitated, but her mind wandered far ahead; toward whatever waited on the road, toward the girl she had sworn to protect, toward the secrets that were no longer sleeping.
She did not hear Sasha until the girl was already standing in the doorway.
Sasha had always been like a quiet breeze; soft, observant, and never intrusive. Sixteen now, with curls braided neatly down her back, she had grown into a thoughtful young woman whose eyes caught everything that others overlooked. Sakina had kept her away from the core of court politics, raising her on the edges of the noble world so she would not be pulled into its blades and whispers.
But today… today the palace felt heavier. And Sasha knew.
She stepped inside.
"Mother," she said gently.
Sakina looked up, startled by how long the girl must have been standing there.
"Sasha," she exhaled softly.
"You are leaving?" Sasha asked.
"Yes. At dawn." Sakina attempted a small smile. "You should be resting."
"That's why I came." Sasha's fingers twisted in her tunic. "The guards are packing things. Everyone's whispering. You're going somewhere important… and dangerous."
Sakina set the scroll down a little too slowly. "It isn't dangerous. You do not need to worry."
"If it wasn't dangerous," Sasha said, stepping closer, "you wouldn't leave me behind."
Sakina almost answered, but Sasha continued, her voice growing steadier.
"It's about Aeryn, isn't it?"
Sakina stilled.
"She is her royal highness," she corrected automatically. "You cannot call her by; "
"She's changing." Sasha didn't let her finish. "I haven't seen her closely in years, but I remember her. The quiet girl. The one who stopped talking. And now everyone whispers her name with fear. They call her the Witch Queen."
Her voice broke a little.
"How did that child become this? What changed her? Why is she acting like this now? And what is all this commotion?"
The questions weren't accusatory. They were aching. Confused. Almost grieving.
So Sakina sat down.
"I remember Aeryn when she was ten," she said quietly. "She used to slip away with her nursemaid to pick wildflowers by the lake. She laughed easily then. But the court… and its poison… stripped things from her, piece by piece. She stopped smiling. Stopped playing. Stopped trusting."
Sasha listened without blinking.
"They thought she was going mad. Some even whispered she cursed her family. But I was there the first time her power broke through. A drop of blood, Sasha. One drop. And the earth trembled." Sakina swallowed. "She didn't mean to. She cried for hours. But the court never forgot the day they realized she wasn't just a child."
She took Sasha's hand.
"She didn't change. She remembered."
"Remembered what?"
"Her blood," Sakina said softly. "Her fire. Her water. Her pain. And everything it cost the women before her. Something inside her simply refused to forget."
Sasha let the words sink in.
"But… how is that possible?"
"Not every question has an answer, my child."
Then, Sakina gave a faint, almost bitter smile.
"Take a child, kill its parents before its eyes, and then try to force it into submission. Some break. Some… break differently."
"Some break and some break?" Sasha echoed, frowning.
"Some break themselves trying to submit," Sakina said. "And some learn to break others before they can be hurt again. Aeryn is… both. And neither."
She looked toward the window, where storm clouds gathered slowly in the distance.
"The blood in her remembers pain as a weapon. The fire remembers loss as fuel. And the water; it remembers everything. The court fears her because she cannot be bent. Not until she stops yearning."
"Yearning?" Sasha repeated softly.
"Yearning for a home," Sakina said. "For a family. For a life that wasn't stolen from her."
The simplicity of it struck Sasha more deeply than anything else.
She sat in silence, trying to understand the girl who once felt so familiar to her. Aeryn's pain wasn't fading; it was growing sharper with age.
Then Sasha whispered, "But why are you leaving? Where are you going?"
Sakina looked at her hands.
"She's going to find others. Girls from the Water Nation, the Fire Nation… and beyond. Those with something hidden in their veins. She wants to train them. Protect them."
"Train them in magic?" Sasha asked.
"In truth," Sakina said. "In power. In the arts meant to stay buried. She wants to make sure no girl ever suffers what Hama did. What Anya did. What she herself survived."
Sasha's breath caught.
"She's not doing it for power?"
"She's doing it despite power," Sakina murmured. "Because she knows what it does when greedy hands reach for it. Her father tried to hold it. So did every man after Hama. But the trinity refused them. It found her instead. The first daughter in a hundred years."
Sasha clenched her hands.
"Then… why not let her carry it alone?"
Sakina gave her a sharp look, the answer obvious in her silence.
Finally, Sasha said, "I want to go with you."
"No." Sakina stood immediately. "Absolutely not. You are not trained for this."
Sasha rose too. "You taught me everything so I could help you one day. Isn't that day now? If there are girls out there suffering because of what they carry… I want to help them too. I don't want to stay behind wondering. Please."
Her voice trembled, but her eyes didn't.
Sakina stared at her for a long time before cupping her cheek.
"You are braver than I was at your age," she whispered. "But the road ahead is cruel."
"Then teach me to walk it."
Silence stretched; tense, fragile, decisive.
Finally:
"Alright," Sakina breathed. "But if you come… you obey her highness. Always."
"I will," Sasha promised.
"Go. Pack only what you can carry. We leave before dawn."
Sasha rushed out of the chamber, heart pounding, hope and fear swirling together.
Left alone, Sakina allowed herself one small, tired smile.
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