I'm just a sucker for pain [TEAM NEW VALLEY]

[Cress]

all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash

After that first brief and panicked meeting in the Meadow, they had all vanished to separate corners of the new, much smaller Beqanna, perhaps to try and create their own way in this strange new world. Cress had a goal of her own then, to find Flamevein and touch the summit of the Mountain that had been mentioned by Eight, and she had only gotten partway to the top before the pains of labor had wracked her body and she had been forced to stop, giving birth only halfway up the treacherous slope (thank the gods for her healing being returned to her on the Mountain, for she wouldn’t have survived it otherwise). She had stayed there, to wait for Flamevein, with their new daughter, on a mountain where the only thing protecting them from the thin air was a bubble of healing energy and a circle of protective flames.

But the time for hiding her precious gift is over; the child is several weeks old now, and so much has been set into motion already. Eight has teamed up with the former king of another kingdom (and perhaps the other monarchs of others, it seems, but Cress is a bit behind) and they have already been granted a land by Beqanna herself. Cress leaves her meeting with Offspring with a sense of grim determination, and she sets off to find the other former members of the Valley. No doubt that they have stuck together, for who else do they have but one another?

For Cress, it was always about the Valley. For them, it was about each other. Leaving the Valley behind for a new world will be easy as long as they have each other’s companionship, but it will never be the same for the golden woman of the Valley.

She finds several of them easy enough, Gunsynd and Thorrun and the mare whose name she doesn’t know. Rhaenyra scampers into their midst and rears playfully, her small black horn glinting in the light. “Enough, my little princess,” Cress murmurs, and Rhaenyra races back to the side of her dam, tucking close to her mother’s flank and staring at the three horses with wide blue eyes—her granddam’s eyes, though Cress couldn’t say where the genetic outcropping suddenly came from.

“Gunsynd,” she says with a nod, because she knows without a doubt that he is the one to gather them; he has all the characteristics of a leader. She turns to Aranea and Thorrun in turn and smiles at both of them. “It’s good to see you both; I had hoped to run across you today. I come with a proposition. Eight, our former king, has joined with Offspring and several other former allies to claim a land not far from here. I know he wasn’t our king for very long, but he was the Valley’s guardian for a very long time and I trust him enough to follow him. I do not want the former members of our kingdom to be spread across the corners of Beqanna. Will you join me in following Eight to our new home?”

cress

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