While Cam’s redemption arc had yet to be realized, Regan was hopefully well on her way. The fiasco of Othello’s arrest in Coheed had been replaced by a Cambrian victory. While Cambria slept soundly, Regan and Othello had made off with the priestess. It was a long journey back to Skia made short on the back of a leathery, fiendish creature whose wings stretched across the sky like a dark storm rolling in.

They set down just outside the walls. Othello was let to go see his son while Regan took care of the prisoner’s delivery. Isolde, still under the effects of the sleeping potion, was collared shortly upon arrival. Regan wasn’t eager to test her luck—especially when it came to Cambrian strength. Once Isolde was secure, Regan walked alongside two guards who held the priestess upright as she started to regain consciousness. She would still be groggy when they arrived before the king and the man that stood at his side.

Regan hardly noticed Cam. She was entirely fixed on Cassian, the hound eagerly dropping her prey at her master’s feet—serious in expression but with big hopeful eyes.

The priestess dropped from nightmare into blackness. Isolde sank into the potion-induced sleep, falling deeper and deeper into the abyssal sea until its dark was almost heavy enough to crush her. There she waited, unable to move or think or see. Time and consciousness ceased to exist until a glimmer of sunlight pierced through from the surface. The light was joined by noise and color, and the priestess wakened to her nightmare again.

Isolde found her feet. She did not jerk away from the guards, did not act reflexively to save herself. The once witch doctor did what she’d always done: she observed. Tightness around her neck. Two foul-smelling guards. A scarred woman with a crop of dark hair. Cold, stone castle walls and a damp chill.

By the time Isolde registered where she was, the door had been opened for them. The short-haired woman went first, and Isolde followed, now carried by her own feet. She tested the strength of the shackles that still held her arms only to find what should have been easily broken strong.

For the first time, the priestess felt fear.

Isolde would raise her chin, looking ahead with a stoic expression to face her fate. She started to pray, a silent plea to the All Mother that sprang from the very floor of her soul.

The study was appropriately quietly as it filled, and the silence stretched on, waiting for the king to set the topic and pace of whatever conversation might follow.

Cassian let his dark gaze flicker over Regan, assessing her physical state, before landing on Isolde and doing the same—but with different intentions. He’d only briefly exchanged with the Priestess, and while there had been a strength in her he could admire, there was also a stubbornness there that no longer served his motives in Cambria. The discovery that she had been the one branding women had not been surprising, and it had also been very convenient. Her presence in his study represented killing two birds with one stone to a T.

“Do you know why you are here?” Cassian’s near monotone broke the silence.

(OOC Note: maybe we prioritize Isolde/Cassian interaction, Regan and Cam jumping in when you have something to write? Don’t wanna force a “they stood there silently” reply on you guys 😁👍🏽)

Isolde wondered at the boy that had brought her once great kingdom to its knees. She’d witnessed power before. She’d seen Cambrian strength cleave stones in two, crack the skulls of their enemies like birds’ eggs. She’d watched her horse ride further and faster that it’s body would allow simply out of devotion to her rider. She’d seen the heavens stretching endlessly above her in the dead of night, stars alive with the songs of her ancestors.

Cassian did not hold the same gravity as those things. He was a swindler and a bully who’d awoken one day with a crown on his head. And what a shame it was that Kore did not let Cambria burn to ruins before offering it up to one of the lesser sex.

Isolde looked at him dead on, head held high, her features serene despite her disheveled state.

“Because the All Mother wills it.”

A beat of silence followed Isolde’s declaration, one that—at least for Cassian—served to accentuate just how silly the words that left her mouth were. The king had never been a religious man. He couldn’t deny evidence of a greater power at work in the created world, but he fully believed that everything beyond the turning of nature came down to the whims of human decision. He was only king because his father had acted. He had remained king because he was acting now.

Isolde was here because she was a criminal.

Of course, the quiet king of Nevermere didn’t have so many words. Isolde’s direct stare was met with his own. His head did not need to be held high, he had all the power here whether his demeanor reflected it or not.

“Because you have been assaulting citizens of my kingdom.” He wasn’t asking questions. The facts had already been laid before him.

“Because of this, I am removing you from your position as Governor. You will be given the opportunity to reform your ways under the guidance of Lord Petyr. Your compliance will determine your future.”

The silence brought Isolde no shame—only a moment of peaceful communion with the spirits that spoke even in the foreign land. The king’s next words brought a soft, almost maternal smile to her face as if she were lovingly indulging the fantastical stories of a child. For what a fantasy it was. Though Cassian’s troops occupied Cambria, it was hardly his. Its daughters belonged to the All Mother, no matter how well Nevermere might make them forget.

But she would not correct him. The wise did not quibble over semantics with fools.

When the man she assumed was Lord Petyr was referenced, Isolde turned to examine him with the same matronizing gaze.

“My path has already been laid before me, my future already determined. Whatever part you have to play, Lord Petyr, it is a role that she has chosen for you.” She smiled a little more. “I suppose we will soon find out what it is.”

Isode redirected her eyes to the king.