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Tragedy follows those who cannot accept their true destiny

--Crime and Punishment in a Reunified Amadera, by Fiennes de Marta

Adelina Amouteru

Queen Maeve is thinner than I remember, and her face has becons with death With ine she thinks the same when she looks at me She and her battalion traveled over the Karra Mountains, the crooked range of long-dead volcanoes that divides Beldain from Amadera, and set up an encampment of sheepskin tents here on the outskirts of Laida, where humanity ends and a horizon riht the snow in patches between the caht throughwashes the bleak landscape in blues and purples, the Beldish queen h puddles of slush from her tent to ours, flanked by her soldiers

I wonder what she has gone through since we faced each other on the seas, and what the state of her navy ht be A part ofBeldain in the future or not No doubt she wants to do the saues now as she nears She gives

"We leave at dawn," she tells me "If your sister does not wake by then, carry her"

I return her nod, even though my whispers hiss This is the closest ill come to civility "We’ll be ready"

Maeve walks pastmy words I turn and watch her disappear inside our tent Show her what you can do, and then she will respect you The Queen of Beldain and I may be forced allies for now, but there will be a time after this ill all return to our sides, and our eneiano When he sees me, he removes his cloak and wraps it around my shoulders I relax as it blocks the bite of the wind; the lingering warainstinside a tent," he says, gesturing over his shoulder as ice crystals flake from his braids Some distance from the tents, where the land fades off into the blackness of thein the wind, his head down in prayer Teren

I put a hand on Magiano’s arods until he feels coer Does he, like Raffaele, now feel the pull of the Elites’ origin calling from somewhere deep in the mountains? I can sense a pulse in the back ofsohs in exasperation "I’ve told Maeve’s men to keep an eye on him," he says "Let’s not have come all this way only to lose hiside me as we head back into our tent

It’s war as she wraps her ar the battle, but when she notices lances away Nearby, Raffaele rises from his chair and bows his head in Maeve’s direction Maeve stands near the tent’s entrance, her body turned subconsciously toward Lucent, her eyes on Violetta’s bed

Even in the lantern light, Violetta still looks deathly pale Her eyelids flutter now and then, as if she were lost in a nightmare, and a sheen of sweat covers her forehead Her dark waves of hair fan out across the cloak folded under her head