her breath rattles through her lungs sharply. sweat slicks her forehead, at the nape of her neck where errant hairs glue themselves to her skin. 'we don't have much time,' she had declared upon her dramatic entrance, 'follow me.' jude is the picture of urgency, mouth slimmed into a line, hand clasped around the edge of the cell door. the prisoner's appearance is at odds with itself, hair and eyes dark, skin pale. upon first glance, she is inclined to say there is something magic about @fospherus, errant energy seemingly slipping away from her and into the cold stone of the floor. she may be half fae, half mortal. perhaps her magic is within the desolate impression her sagging frame gives, somewhere behind the shock of animal clarity in her eyes. jude cannot quite make sense of what she is. it doesn't quite matter. from afar, she can hear the heavy footfalls of sentinels.
for jude duarte, from alice liddell: "i'm not going anywhere with you, not until you tell me who you are."
incredulous, jude stares blankly at the girl. why were people always so willing to stay behind the bars that imprison them? breaking into this prison was hard enough, now she has to quarrel with her charge about the upsides of freedom. if she aborted now, jude could leave with her life. but, the mission would fail. if she were to return emptyhanded, what would dain think? she can hear his voice now, the echo of the command that stops her from outing him. what would dain do? in the torturous milliseconds between the prisoner's words and jude's gruff answer, time sinks further and further into the plot. time may be a faerie luxury--- for jude, it cannot be something to gamble with. desperation turns her thoughts to violence. was she ordered to return the girl unharmed? her instructions surely implied such, but did not outright say it. the girl is a bizarre picture, frenetic down to her bones, the shadows below her chin as black as night and light upon her cheeks as white as bone. jude's gaes would surely protect her against typical faerie magic, but would the strange girl be physically stronger than her? and even if jude could best her, her dead-weight would be impossible to sneak past the guards.
annoyingly, the spy finds herself speaking. "i'm jude. i was sent here by someone with a vested interest in your freedom." even under the time crunch, she takes great care to pick her words purposefully, to make them sound official. she is an woefully inexperienced child, a woefully inexperienced mortal child, but this is a political mission. it requires refinement. a creak from down the hallway. have guards caught onto her presence? adrenaline thrums insistently at her pulse point. they need to start moving. now. "whatever fate awaits you beyond these walls cannot be worse than what you’ll suffer within them." she means it to be kind, assuring, but the words come out glacially cold.
