Elexis

"What do you mean Cinis Sarnifeace is Anatia?" Elexis had never been so hateful and happy in one moment. Anatia, she was truly alive, even if she was anything but safe she was alive. But Cinis Sarnifeace, the rebel slaughterer, the king's beast. The women she had hunted since she had first heard of her killing a rebel. It couldn't be, not Anatia, not the blazing flame of a girl she remembered.

"I mean that Anatia is Cinis, she looks just like her, the red brown hair, the eyes ringed with scarlet, it's her Elexis, and they broke her." Axton looks distant in the same way he did when he learned Lythian was dead. Lythian, the princess he had sworn to protect, sliced and stabbed. Brutalized until the only thing they could use to identify her body was the silver grey ribbon she had used to tie her hair that day, stained with blood like the locks of her formerly white blonde hair. The killer had left her body in the snow to be found by anyone. Elexis had never gotten to see the body, no one would let her, saying it was too gruesome for a 9 year old, though at the time she was mere weeks away from her 10th birthday. Axton had seen it though, even though he had only been 11 at the time. He didn't come out of his tent, didn't speak to anyone for a month. Even now he didn't speak of it, and she certainly didn't ask. So instead she had listened to the whispers and heard that when they found the body curled up on the bloodstained snow the hand was still clutching a branch, like the girl had tried to use it against the killer.

"Anatia can't break." She couldn't believe this, the King had boasted of holding Anatia prisoner for years, but to have her serve him. The Anatia she had known would never yield to him, not in a million years. But then again, hadn't she changed in the last ten years too?

"Anatia couldn't break, but now she has, I have seen her broken pieces." What had the king done to break the strongest girl she had ever known? In the years since she had lost everything the thought of reuniting with Anatia had been all that kept her going, she had to be strong for Ana, like Anatia would for her. If the king could break Anatia, then there was no hope of braving him. Her best hope was to sneak Anatia out and start putting her back together. Put back the pieces the king had spent years breaking. All she could do was hope that some part of the Ana she knew was still in there.

"We get her out, we spread rumors about getting contact with Anatia and when the king sends her after us we help her escape."

"Elexis, she isn't just Ana anymore, she's Cinis. How do you expect to keep her from slaughtering everyone when we try to approach her?"

"Because I'm going to be the one to approach her."

"Elexis she'll-" she held out a hand.

"If she is willing to kill me then there is no Anatia left, and there was never any hope of saving her." there was never any hope at all. Axton is silent. "Tell the others to start rumors that I, Elexis Teliam, am in contact with Anatia, and that I was spotted in the slums of Nocthaven." A test to see if her friend was still somewhere inside the monster that stood at the king's side. To see if an ember of self still burned amid the ashes of their ruined kingdom.

"Should I tell Connel?"

"No, I-I don't think Connel would," she takes a breath, "I think Connel might try to break her out of the palace if we told him. And I really don't need him getting himself killed."

"If you fail he'll find out eventually." She looked back at Axton, "If you fail, he might break in the palace to murder her, oath or no."

"All the more reason not to fail." She sighed and looked around the camp, at the people risking their lives for a better future, and Elexis prayed to the gods that Anatia was still in there.

And that she had not just doomed them all.