Chapter Text
News doesn’t come often to the City of Life.
It’s one of the compromises that has to be made for the sake of, well, living.
It also means that after Tasha’s baby sister gets married to the King of Rowoon, news doesn’t come often. There had been the occasional visits at the beginning, but those had ended shortly after Alver’s birth.
It’s a bit harder to sneak out of the palace with a newborn, somehow. Who would have thought.
All in all, Tasha hasn’t properly seen her sister in months (video communication devices don’t count). She’s seen the baby even less, though she supposes that out of toddlerhood, Alver would likely protest being called a baby. Children often do.
Letters are scarce, so Tasha is resourceful.
Whenever they scour the desert above to check for refugees from Caro, she always manages to sneak in a question or two about how things are doing in Rowoon. It’s not like refugees from a different kingdom will know the day to day details that Tasha craves most of all, but she manages to get by with the occasional “Rowoon? I haven’t heard anything about them.”
Sometimes, no news (as much as it can hurt) is the best news of all.
Tasha has never been a patient person by nature though. It chafes to know nothing, stuck under the blood-red desert because she doesn’t want to be forced to pretend to be something she is not. Sure, there are the occasional calls, but that’s just what they are. Occasional. Life as King Zed’s first concubine is apparently a busy one, especially when you’re still hiding your status as half-dark elf.
(yes, Tasha has Strong Opinions on her sister’s marriage—concubinage?—but that’s neither here nor there)
The important part is, it’s not unusual to go weeks without a word from Rowoon. It’s not strange like it would have been only a decade ago.
Maybe that’s why Tasha is so blindsided when she asks about Rowoon’s royal family, their first prince and his mother, and gets told: “Oh, the first concubine? She’s dead.”
The bearer of bad news says something more, but Tasha doesn’t hear any of it through the sudden ringing in her ears. At some point, the human stares at her, mouth agape and eyes wide in clear concern, but Tasha can’t—
She can’t—
“Dead?” she chokes out, even though she can’t hear her own voice. All she knows is that her mouth moves and she can feel the air pass through her throat, and the only word in her mind is dead dead dead dead dead.
The first concubine is dead? How long has she been dead? How long has Tasha not known, unknowing, uncaring, sitting alive in a land of death when her sister was supposed to be happy and alive and delighting in her life.
When she was supposed to be with the husband that she loves, as much as Tasha dislikes the man. When she was supposed to be raising her son—
Oh gods.
Alver.
Tasha scrambles to clutch the human’s shoulders, unknowing of her own strength and not particularly caring.
“What of the first prince?” Tasha demands, barely avoiding the urge to shake it out of the human, gentleness be damned. “Is Alver dead? How is the king reacting?”
Instead of answering any of her questions, the human cries out in pain.
“Tasha!” a voice calls out, but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care.
“Answer me!” Tasha snarls out, mind racing, her sister’s corpse vivid in her mind in a hundred different dying agonies. “How did my sister die?! What happened to her son?!”
The human cries out again, words coming out from their mouth but they’re not the answers to Tasha’s questions and so they don’t matter, nothing matters except finding out—
“Tasha!” the voice bellows again, and then she’s being flung off of the human and pinned down by familiar hands that nevertheless, she can’t recognize right now.
What happens next is a blur.
Tasha remembers being held down, frantic voices trying to shush her, to calm her, to ask what’s wrong.
The human whimpers in pain, but somehow they find it in themselves to look at her with pity.
Tasha screams. She screams until her throat is raw, even though she can’t hear a word of it. She doesn’t know what she says. No one tells her later.
She thinks it might have been her sister’s name.
˚₊‧ ꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
“You scared our new residents,” Shawn says conversationally, putting a mug of tea in front of Tasha.
Tasha doesn’t respond. She doesn’t particularly want to. She knows that Shawn’s watching over her because she nearly broke the human’s collarbone in her questioning, and that he’s waiting to see if she’s able to interact with people again. It can be dangerous for a warrior to be unstable.
Tasha doesn’t want to interact with anyone, so she remains silent.
She doesn’t want anything other than her sister to be alive.
Shawn watches Tasha for a moment, before sipping his own tea.
“I convinced Kora to teleport to Rowoon while you were calming down,” he tells her.
Tasha’s gaze sharpens.
“The king isn’t taking the loss well,” Shawn says with deliberate calm. “The first prince wasn’t with his mother when the attack happened, but he’s fallen out of favour. Besides that, he’s still a seven-year-old who’s just lost his mother.”
When Tasha jolts up, Shawn seems completely unsurprised.
“I have to go to him,” Tasha chokes out, suddenly berating herself. Yes, she’d lost her sister, but Alver had lost his mother.
(she shies away from her sister’s name)
(it aches too much)
Shawn continues to watch Tasha. “You should talk to your grandfather first,” Shawn gently reminds her. “He might have some advice.”
Right. Grandfather has centuries behind him. He’d often sit his grandchildren on his knee and tell them stories of the world outside of the City of Life. Grandfather had been an explorer in his youth. He might even know how to help Alver.
“Thank you, ” Tasha says fervently, gripping Shawn’s hands in her own for the span of a moment. He looks back at her, eyes so very, very gentle. “Thank you, I’ll go see him right now.”
She has to help Alver.
˚₊‧ ꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
Tasha’s blood roars in her ears.
“What,” she hears herself say, voice so very, very far away. “What did you just say?”
Obante looks at her, steel in his eyes though his shoulders are weighted with sorrow. “It’s better to let the boy go,” he tells her, his gentleness like a knife in the back. “His mother,” and here he pauses, for a moment looking like the grandfather Tasha remembers instead of the stranger who speaks to her with his face. “His mother chose a different life for him. The people of the city cannot be drawn into a surface kingdom’s conflict. They fled here for safety, not for politics.”
Maybe if Tasha were anyone else, she would understand the pain in his words. Maybe if she had had more time, or if she weren’t reeling from her sister’s death, or Alver had been even a decade older, she would have been able to respect Obante’s choices.
But she’s just Tasha. And her sister is dead, and her nephew is a little boy who may very well join his mother if no one goes to help him.
Who would help a prince if not his maternal family? Alver’s father has turned away from him. He’d be eaten alive by the vultures grasping to put their candidates on the throne.
Alver is a child.
Alver is Obante’s great-grandson.
“He is your great-grandson!” Tasha howls, barely noticing her elemental’s reaction to her rage. Obante’s desk slams into the wall, shattering at the impact. “He’s my nephew! He’s seven!”
Obante’s elemental shields him from the tornado that spawns at Tasha’s feet, but it’s focused on only its elementalist.
The rest of the office whirls into the air, papers shredded by Tasha’s gales and furniture making dents in the walls. A window shatters as a chair hurtles through it, surprised voices shouting in concern.
“He’s a child,” Tasha snarls, barely restraining herself from attacking Obante. “You’re telling me to leave him to die!”
“We can’t save everyone,” Obante says wearily, his arms limp at his sides. “You know that better than most.”
Tasha laughs disbelievingly. “I know I should try,” she snaps back.
Obante merely sighs in reply.
With a sudden, awful clarity, Tasha knows it’s a waste of time to continue here. If Obante had been willing to help her—if he had been willing to help Alver —he would have done so already. But he’s not.
He’s not.
Tasha whirls on her heel, determined to waste no more time.
“Tasha!” Obante calls out, but he doesn’t matter anymore. Not when he’s willing to leave a child to die.
Tasha rips the door off its hinges on her way out.
˚₊‧ ꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
“Who are you?” Alver demands when Tasha creeps into his room, silent as a breeze. “What do you want?”
His reaction is understandable. It’s the middle of the night.
Tasha takes off her hood, watching Alver’s eyes grow wide in surprise as he takes in her appearance. As he stares at her skin, dark like a shining black pearl.
She’d come undisguised for a reason.
“I’m your aunt,” Tasha answers. “And I’m a dark elf like you.”