REXANNA
the chains are broken
The conversation isn’t going anywhere, and all the attempts Rexanna makes to prove to Kiada she isn’t the same go unanswered. Instead, more accusations, more finger pointing toward the finery she wears. And suddenly, Rexanna grows somewhat self-conscious over the entirety of it; it’s for a good cause, she recalls. Help the Crown, live happily with Bastien, life would go on normally. Only… It doesn’t, it never does as Kiada points out and the rest of the memories come flooding back as though she’d built a bridge to hide the worst of it away. Her cheeks flush, and she has no way of responding.She had been a successful Thief of the Basin, leaving to become the consort to the King of the Edge. And oh, how that version of Rexanna had thought it to be fine, that every time Tembovu returned home with word of another half sibling to Kiada and Kianzo, that they’d promise to never do it again. And the cycle continued, time and time again. And when the Harpy mentions Rein, the girls older half-brother, she visibly winces. She had forgotten that, forgotten the chill in the mountains and the training spar she had participated in before falling pregnant and giving birth some months later.
At least here, she was with Bastien with no way to grow pregnant. But she didn’t feel like Kiada deserved that kind of explanation. “It cannot work here.” She replies, voice darkened as she shakes her head, her dark hair (so similar to Kiada’s) dancing over her shoulders. She inhales deeply and steps back from the girl slightly, but not enough to be done with the conversation. “You of all people should know why I was like that. I won't be shamed for surviving the way I had to.” She says sharply, that motherly tone chiding in her voice. Kiada, of all people, had heard the stories of how she escaped Halyven.
Rexanna won’t be ashamed of that.
but are you truly free?
