Aelin’s eyes were not full of anger as she gazed upon the face of her elder sister, but love, perhaps foolish. It was out of that same love that she'd found the strength to rise after all they had lost as children. Where she found the courage to not lay down and die, but to take the vengeance their father owed them, and wield it. To save them.
But perhaps for her elder sister that hadn't been enough. Blinded by the joy and prospect of a fresh start with her sisters, Aelin had allowed things to get farther than they should have, to fester. She should have seen the signs sooner.
"Tell me it isn't true, Eydis."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eydis steeled herself. The influx of emotion was more than expected. Granted, Aelin was a fool, but a fool that had begun to wear down her elder sister. Eydis almost found her endearing. But the galaxy was not a place for luxuries such as fondness.
"You still cling to this world," Eydis said, looking away. The desire to avoid eye contact surprised the supposedly hardened woman.
She had survived so much. Only to see those she was ripped away from still begging for scraps on a feces stain of a world. It made her sick.
"Your vision is stunted by the treeline. Your refusal to look to the stars," said Eydis. Her voice was hushed, breathy. Hands played with the sundry inessential items on the table.
"Islimore is not our home. It is our prison."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eydis should have begun by begging for forgiveness. Instead, she speaks of delusions of grandeur. She can't even bother to deny it.
A muscle in Aelin's jaw twitched, mouth tightening into a thin line as she reached for a calmness that could only be found in the deepest of waters, though this day would likely have her tapping into depths previously unexplored…
“I trusted your word, the word of my own blood and kin,” she told her evenly, scarcely hearing what Eydis had to say. Perhaps before, she might have bent an ear to her sister. Consider those words carefully, weigh them. Now? She clamped a steel will over herself. “And you repaid that faith with betrayal.”
The wolf who had double-crossed them to Volsung had been left to bleed out until he was a shriveled up sack of bones. What punishment should her sister receive for this offense? The sister who would let her sit in her lap and read her daring bedtime stories in place of the mother she'd never known. The sister who’d caused derision and discord, falsified reconnaissance reports and swayed allegiances towards her own ends.
“Because of the love I bear for our sister, Miera, I will give you until after tonight's holiday to celebrate and then say your goodbyes. Anders will be your escort. When the night is finished, you will collect your things and leave this encampment. You’ll be taken into the wolfswood where you will train, and re-learn what it means to be a part of this pack. Gods being good, you will gain some perspective.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eydis had grown rigid, back turned to her younger sister. Only with the last word of Aelin’s judgment did she move, her head lifting and tipping up. It seemed more a sigh of exasperation than a grunt of annoyance that came forth.
She knew her demeanor was unbecoming of someone in her place in the pack. She didn’t care.
“You are just going to make me a martyr,” she said, words clipped with breathy frustration.
Eydis spun about on her heels, one of the various desk items in her hand. She waved said item about as she spoke.
“Betrayal is a part of the game, don’t make yourself a whelp,” she said.
“The scouts were so malleable to my whims. So listless in their devotions. You should be thanking me that I grafted their allegiance to the Clan. It could have been someone worse.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You mean grafted their allegiance to you.” She fired back, her lip curling with a deep, primal warning growl that rose up from out of her belly, her lupine instincts roused - baited. Eydis seemed as determined to unnerve her, to get a rise, as Aelin was determined to not be unnerved. “What other choice have you left me? Do you think this is what I want?”
She pushed herself from where she sat, waving for the guards to escort Eydis from the hall. “Your devotees will hang high from the walls of Hljóðleva. The next time you betray me, kinship won’t save you.”
