The fresh sea breeze blew across the sands of the beach, gently ruffling any unbound hair. Nikoleta stood with her back turned to Ali and Ashley as they spoke, only moderately focused on what they were saying.
Yes, she knew that power was gathering all across the globe, and that very specific factions were going to be coming guns blazing for the sovereign state of Gothic City. She knew that. But she had been bred for danger.
The last time that she had been here had been under far different circumstances. Megeara and Ezra had sent all three of their children to the esteemed Bashirs for three months that time, as opposed to the two they had been sent for most summers.
They had been younger. None of them had been naive, that was something beaten out of them long ago. But there had been...happiness.
She rubbed her now slightly blistered hands against the cargo pants she had worn. No longer soft like the Strix Princess, nor calloused like they had been for parts of her youth due to training. She had never been any good at being a princess, nor at being a warrior. She was a killer, though, and damned good at that.
But Nia? She had been the best of any of them at all of it. And she was gone now.
Nikoleta swore that she could hear her laughter in the air as she and Ali had once frolicked in the waves.
But she was dead now, her body burned upon pyre. And her sister Amara was gone with the wind, not to be heard from in months.
She turned, slowly, and gave a quick nod in Ashley's direction as she schooled any and all emotion from her face, leaving nothing but slightly troubled ice blue eyes.
"I need a favor, Ali," she whispered as she dug her toes into the warm sand and breathed in deeply the scent of the sea.
"I need access to the library."
Throughout the years, the Bashir had acquired tomes and texts and relics. Their collection was nearly unparalleled, and she was chasing leads, and chasing power. She had memories of scrolls and tomes from her childhood, kept in the high-security library housed within the fortress. What she was looking for now, who she was looking for now, she hoped to find leads on.
Regrets and remorse hung like a tepid pallor in the air. Nikoleta could feel them encroaching on her, even as she dealt with business from up in the air. The smooth mechanical whir of her chopper’s blades rotating cut through like a balm as she took phone call after phone call on the relatively short trip.
Olympus would survive under her managers for a very short while. She needed out of the city, if only for a day.
The anniversary was creeping up. She shouldn’t care. She kept telling herself that she didn’t. People were tools and weapons, and it had been ingrained in her long ago that her brother’s were her only allies. Her mother abhorred her very existence. She and her brothers had been forced to kill all those who had ever shown them any kindness to get themselves off that island.
But Kwazulu Alcazar had always held part of a heart that was otherwise stone cold, and she could feel the need for savagery and death building in her veins, and was yet unready to let it loose in Gothic.
And there were certain items, certain weapons….certain political attachments that would be fortuitous to her, all housed within the place she had spent so much of her childhood.
The sun was beginning to rise over the horizon as the copter touched down on the landing pad atop the roof of the ancient fortified castle. The mechanical whirring of the blades ceased, and she slipped her phone into the pocket of the flared peplum leather jacket as she disembarked.
The cool scent of ocean air whipped her wavy blonde hair around her face, and a part of her soul that she hadn’t fully realized was disrupted, settled.
Birds chirped as they flew over the ocean waves, diving for fish and flocking together as the heels of her boots clacked quietly over the sprawling rooftop.
Security would have alerted Ali to her impending arrival, and she expected him to surface at any moment. In the meantime, she offered a salute to Stefan, her pilot, and quickly headed for one of the towers, intent on descending into the ancient castle itself.
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