[center][img]https://i.ibb.co/ssxt53R/Thalia-Evercrest.png[/img][/center]
[sub]Location: Eye of the Beholder[right]Interactions/Mentions: Sya ([@PrinceAlexus])[/right][/sub][hr]

[indent]Thalia studied Sya carefully, considering her words before finally speaking. “[color=#663399]Calm is easier for people who trust that they’re safe.[/color]” She gestured vaguely toward the shuttered windows. “[color=#663399]But people aren’t blind. The doors are barred, the guards aren’t giving answers, and you’re switching between feeding us and making sure we don’t bolt. You can wrap it in as many jokes as you like, but you’re worried, too.[/color]”

There was no accusation in her voice but merely a simple, immutable truth. Never had she envisioned herself in such dire straits, adrift in uncertainty, stripped of the quiet assurances that had once cradled her existence. She had been reared in a world where peril was a distant specter—spoken of in hushed tones, glimpsed in the margins of war chronicles, but never tangible, never hers to bear. Even when Aurelia waged war, others had done the bleeding, and she had been left only to witness, to hear of it secondhand, insulated by gilded halls that had surrounded her and the whispered reassurances from many in her ear.  

This, however, was different.

Dawnhaven lacked the towering walls of Aurelia’s citadels, the steadfast armies that had once stood sentinel at its borders, the weight of a sovereign’s crown to decree that all would be handled before ruin ever reached the people’s doorsteps. Here, there were no grand proclamations, only the suffocating press of fear and the quiet, creeping knowledge that the town was folding in on itself like a wounded beast. All she could do—all any of them could do—was place faith in the competence of strangers, truthfully. 

She loathed that. She loathed how foreign it felt, how out of place she was in both past and present.

And yet, rather than pressing further, Thalia did the opposite. “[color=#663399]You’re right about one thing,[/color]” she conceded, her voice quieter now, though no less resolute. “[color=#663399]Panic won’t help. It never does.[/color]” Her mother had always said the same. A noble woman does not panic—she prepares.

But what exactly was she supposed to do now?

Her gaze returned to Sya, unreadable for a fraction longer before, with a quiet exhale, she allowed the tension in her shoulders to uncoil. “[color=#663399]That said, since I’m apparently at your mercy, I might as well eat something.[/color]” Her words were smoother now, lighter, though the frustration hadn’t entirely left her. “[color=#663399]Let’s see if this legendary ‘ingot’ of yours is worth the hype.[/color]”

She wasn’t convinced that waiting was the right answer. But for now, it was the only one she had.
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