Chapter Text
The Holy Mother was born Feyami Khu’rain. She led a tragic life of persecution, as great people so often do. After sharing her holy wisdom with the kingdom of her birth, she was betrayed. The Holy Mother disappeared; her sister’s children inherited the throne in her absence. It is from this lineage that Rayfa descends: Lady Kee’ra and her blood of battle. That was the secret of the Queens of Khura’in.
“What a lie,” Rayfa says with quiet contempt, her head in her mother’s lap. Lady Amara has aged twenty years in a day. She is Nayna in truth now: twisted, ugly and powerless. Her feeble old woman guise has become her reality. What a fitting companion in purgatory.
“A necessary lie,” Amara says without conviction. “The common people could not be trusted with the knowledge that our powers were waning with each generation. We lived in fear of it going out completely.”
“No need to worry now, is there, Mother?” Rayfa sneers.
Rayfa had been the Crown Princess when she believed herself the daughter of the former tyrant queen Garaan and the usurper Inga Karkhuul Khura’in; she had been certain to rule as the true daughter of the legendary Dragon Dhurke and Goddess-Queen Amara. It all dashed to dust and ash when Pearl Fey took the stage at her ascension ceremony.
The face of the Holy Mother was beautiful and wise with a slight mischievous twist to her mouth when she raised a hand and shattered every camera, corrupted every broadcast to show only a great golden blur. Her face, her existence, was only for her people to witness.
Do not be afraid, she told them. Do not fear my face or my name. I will always return when Khura’in is in need. I will always watch over you, the people of my first home. I uphold the nominations of Pearl Fey. The worthy will be blessed.
Little lights like golden sparks traveled down the rows of the failed priestesses, glittering bright against astonished faces and flickering inward. Their face markings were not mere paint and artifice, they were burned in deep as bone. They shimmered slightly in the light, glowing with spiritual energy. Ninety-nine girls of Khura’in were blessed by the Holy Mother, marked by Ami Fey. It was a miracle, and Rayfa watched in wide eyed wonder as the Holy Mother turned her way -
Please, I’m scared.
- and then Rayfa saw nothing but solemn grey. Pearl looked at her with pity. Rayfa could train for a hundred years and never so much as brush against the Holy Mother’s aura in the Twilight Realm. It would be as a fish seeking the moon. The people would never accept her as Queen.
It was over.
Now the Palace is as silent as a tomb. There is no looting, at least. The imposter-queen’s finery is considered cursed, the gold and silver worthless in their care. Their bodies, at least, are safe. The stain of their tainted blood would sully the murderer into the next life beyond. They live as quietly as the dead.
Rayfa has not seen her brother for two weeks. She wonders if the mob had torn him limb from limb. She wonders if he too has abandoned her.
After her coronation, the Venerated Saint Queen Pearl Morgiana Khura’in Fey pays Rayfa a visit at the royal courtyard. Her guards are not the well muscled lackeys cowed by her powers but three of the slim young girls blessed by the Holy Mother.
“If I keep my friends around me, I’ll be safe - and on the right path.” Pearl smiles at the girls and they smile back. One makes the mudras for devotion. She is missing two fingers.
“Am I being removed from my home?” Rayfa asks dully. “Left in the streets with my mother like a beggar and her dog?”
“Khura’in is on the national stage now,” Pearl says gently. “People can visit without fear of the courts or abuse from corrupt temple officials. The palace won’t be safe from those who don’t believe in the Holy Mother’s wrath. These artifacts will be best protected in a museum. You have to be protected too.”
“Prison,” Rayfa says. “Royal Penitentiary No. 4?”
“Could we really never have been friends?” Pearl asks suddenly. “Was there really no chance at all?”
“Your machinations destroyed my family, my legacy, my friendships and my kingdom.” Rayfa raises her chin haughtily. “The thousand agonies of Bahlgpo’kon hell awaits you.”
Pearl gets to her feet. “There’s no hell but here on earth,” she says softly. “It’s hell as sweet as heaven, to which we return again and again. Goodbye, Rayfa. Be well in your next life.”
Rayfa sits in her rooftop garden, overgrown with cluttered flowers, weeds and thorns. In the distance she can see people by the Western Tower bustling about. It will be a lovely prison for her mother and herself when they are finished. It was how she began life; now too shall it be where she ends it. The guards sent to watch over them would be the ones that she had known all her life: the ones who stood by in girlhood as Garaan beat her ankles black and blue with every misstep of the Dance of Devotion and again when it was herself wielding the staff against the crying girls of Khura’in.
The ruins of her kingdom are everywhere. From her seat she can see the Southern wall, its sizable hole grown now in neglect. It is large enough for teenaged Albie now, or for slim Pearl or even for herself. It is also unguarded.
Rayfa is her father’s daughter: she could run underground, she could make her own way like a dragon. She is her father’s daughter: she could laugh while her people died by the thousands. Her mothers wait in a nebulous somewhere, driven mad through their powerlessness as Rayfa does now, still sitting in the near dark laughing when they finally come to take her away.