𝄞⨾𓍢ִ໋ THE LIGHT THAT BREAKS THROUGH 𝄞⨾𓍢ִ໋
(Starter with @leilathesongbird)
The sea air tasted cleaner here. Lighter. It carried salt and sun-warmth instead of stone dust and the weight of gold.
Faircastle rose against the cliffs like something half-remembered from a dream. Smooth, pale walls stretched toward the sky, and light spilled through its colored glass windows, casting ruby reds, ocean blues, and soft ambers across the cobbled paths. It wasn’t like Casterly Rock, all shadowed corridors and gilded gloom. Fair Isle breathed. It lived.
Tyshara walked slowly, letting Leila take it all in.
The midday light cast them in shifting hues. Amber one moment, sapphire the next. A slant of rose gold caught in Leila’s hair, setting it aglow like the edge of a flame. Tyshara swallowed hard against the ache rising in her throat. She wondered if their mother ever noticed things like that. If their father did.
Her hands curled into the soft fabric of her skirts. No. Probably not.
But she noticed. Always. Every sharpness and softness that made her siblings who they were—she saw it, held it close like a secret no one could take from her.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Tyshara murmured, though it wasn’t really a question.
She glanced at Leila’s face, though she didn’t expect to find much there. Leila had always been quiet in a way that wasn’t quite shy, her expressions tucked away like folded sheets of music. Tyshara never minded. She didn’t need words to know what her sister felt. She had raised Leila. Knew her like she knew the lines of her own palm.
She knew Leila didn’t want to go back.
“I thought you might like it here,” Tyshara said, trailing her fingers along the sun-warmed stone as though she could memorize the castle by touch. “It’s always bright. Even on cloudy days, the light gets through. And when the sun sets…” Her smile was small, wistful. “The whole castle looks like it’s on fire. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The prettiest thing she’d seen before was Leila, with her harp in her lap and her head tilted, eyes half-lidded as though lost in the sound.
Tyshara forced down the lump in her throat. She hated how easy it was to picture her sister back at Casterly Rock, playing in those gilded, echoing halls. Her voice sweet and soft and wasted on people who wouldn’t truly listen. People who would praise her in the same breath they told her what songs were proper for a lady, what songs weren’t.
They would clip her wings, just as they had tried to clip Tyshara’s.
“I have something for you,” she said, brightening her tone as they turned a corner into an open courtyard.
Sea spray danced in the air beyond the walls, and the waves murmured distantly, steady and soothing. At the center of the courtyard, a small platform stood waiting—polished wood, open to the sky, framed by benches and low walls that would make a perfect amphitheater. The light here came through a row of narrow stained-glass windows, each a different hue. At dusk, the whole space would bloom with color.
Tyshara had tested it herself. She had stood there, watched the light pool around her feet, and thought of Leila’s voice. Of how it would sound in the open air, wrapped in gold and sapphire.
“The Lady of Fair Isle holds feasts every fortnight. They’d love to hear you play. I spoke to her myself, she said you could perform whenever you like. The islanders love music. They’d love you.”
They would. Tyshara had no doubt. Leila wasn’t just a songbird. She was the whole damn sunrise.
Her throat burned, but she pushed past it. There wasn’t time for tears.
“And I…” She hesitated, her hand finding Leila’s. Her fingers curled around her sister’s palm, gentle, as though she might startle and fly away. “I have another gift for you, too.”
The last stop was a room. A guest chamber, technically, but it felt more like a sanctuary.
The window was tall and narrow, the glass a soft lavender-blue that filled the room with twilight even though the sun was still high. A writing desk sat near the window, and the bed was draped in gauzy, seafoam-colored linens.
On the bed, carefully folded, was the skirt.
It wasn’t Westerosi fashion. The layered silk moved like water when touched, dyed in soft shades of turquoise and violet, like the sea meeting the sky. Tyshara had bartered for it from a merchant ship out of Volantis. It had cost more than she wanted to admit. But the price didn’t matter. Not if it worked.
“I thought you might like something that moves when you dance.”
Her voice almost broke on the last word.
She wanted to tell her everything, but the words tangled up inside her. Stay here. Stay with me. I’ll make it better, I swear. You’ll be safe. You’ll be happy. Please don’t go back.
But Leila wasn’t a child anymore, and Tyshara wasn’t supposed to beg.
So instead, she squeezed her hand, breathed in the salt air, and said the only thing that mattered.
“You don’t have to go back.”
Tyshara had already left too much of herself behind at Casterly Rock.
She wasn’t sure how much more she could give.
Leila’s fingers trailed over the silk, barely skimming its surface, as though she feared the fabric might dissolve beneath her touch. It was softer than anything she had ever worn—softer even than the beautiful gowns her mother chose for her or the fine dresses her father commissioned, It moved like sea foam, light as a whisper.
She didn’t lift it. Didn’t press it to her cheek the way she longed to. She only looked at it, her breath caught somewhere between her ribs, her throat too tight to swallow.
Leila didn’t turn to face Tyshara, not yet. If she did, if she met her sister’s eyes, she thought she might crumple like parchment.
She should have smiled. She should have thrown her arms around Tyshara’s neck, whispered thank you, whispered I love you, whispered all the things her sister deserved to hear. But Leila’s voice was gone, lost somewhere between the folds of turquoise silk and the ache in her chest.
Instead, she smoothed her hand over the skirt one more time and whispered, “I—”
The word faltered, crumbling like sand.
She didn’t know how to say it.
The sea air did not belong to her.
It tangled in her hair, kissed her cheeks, and whispered through the folds of her dress, but it wasn’t hers. Not like the hush of the Rock’s corridors at dawn, or the way the wind howled through the Lion’s Mouth, singing in a voice only she could hear.
Fair Isle was beautiful. She couldn’t deny that. It shimmered, breathed, swelled with light and sound in a way Casterly Rock never did. But that was the trouble. It wasn’t home.
Leila continued staring at the gown laid out before her to avoid looking her sister in the eye. It was beautiful—oh, it was so beautiful. Soft as seafoam, light as mist, dyed in the colors of the horizon. The fabric shifted like water beneath her fingertips. She could already imagine how it would move when she twirled, how it would catch the air and billow like a sail in the wind.
It was a gift meant for a dreamer. A girl who belonged to the sea. It was the kindest gift her sister could have given her.
Tyshara meant well. She always had. She had seen what Leila loved, what made her heart race, and she had offered it freely, without hesitation. A stage to sing upon. A gown to dance in. A place where she could be herself, unbound and unburdened.
The thought of leaving Casterly Rock—the halls she had played in, the sisters who still nestled against her in the early hours of the morning, the golden light of home—made her stomach twist. She was supposed to grow up. Supposed to accept that one day she would have to leave.
But not yet. Not yet.
“I can’t,” she whispered. The words felt small. Weak.
Leila had never been alone there. Not truly. It had never occurred to her to leave. She wasn’t brave like Tyshara. She didn’t want to be.
She bit her lip, then tried again. “I love you, Tyshara, truly. But I—I can’t leave home.”
This—this was the one thing they would never see the same way.
Because Leila didn’t long for freedom.
She longed for the life she had always known.
