where: the streets of duskendale, outside the dun fort
when: the night of the coronation, after it
status: open to all!
the dun fort was a cage of stone and breath, too small to hold the grief of a kingdom, let alone the ghosts nerissa carried in her train. the coronation had been a suffocating affair; she had stood shoulder to shoulder with the weeping nobility, watching her father bend the knee to a boy king who looked too small for his crown. the air inside had been hot, recycled, and thick with the scent of unwashed bodies and cloying incense. escaping it felt less like a choice and more like a survival instinct. now, she paced the cobblestones of duskendale, a shadow in fine silks, flanked by the silent, armored bulk of her sworn sword. the guard was a necessary nuisance, a reminder that she was no longer merely nissa the wild rose, but the heir to highgarden—a prize to be protected, a vessel to be watched. the city was alive, though the celebrations were dampened by the shroud of mourning. the smallfolk drank to forget rather than to rejoice, and it was the drinking that nearly broke her. nerissa watched a group of knights near a tavern far down the street, the torchlight catching the ruby glint of wine sloshing over the rim of what looked like a goblet. her mouth watered, a traitorous, physical ache that started in her jaw and travelled down to her fingertips.
she could taste it—the sharp, grounding burn of wine, the way it would silence the itching in her blood. thirty days sober. thirty days of feeling every jagged edge of the world without the soft, white blanket of the poppy to dull the pain. it would be so easy. to slip away from her guard, to vanish into the dark, to grab a bottle and find a brothel where she could buy oblivion for a night. she could be drunk. she could be high. she could be lost in a bed of linen and limbs, forgetting that her brother was ash and her future was a burden she never asked for. be good, nissa, the memory of willam whispered, his voice clearer than the clamor of the city. be the heir i can no longer be. she tore her eyes away from the alley, her nails digging half-moons into her palms to ground herself in the pain. she needed a distraction. any distraction. nerissa turned sharply, almost colliding with the figure standing nearby, and the words just started spilling out of her, a nervous, rambling flood to drown out her own thoughts.
"tell me," she started, her voice a little too quick, a little too breathless. "do you smell rain coming? back in the reach, you can smell the storm miles before it breaks, all green and heavy, but here... i can’t tell if it’s a deluge waiting to drop or just the natural state of the town to be this grey. it is my first time in duskendale, you see. do you think it will be a proper storm? or just a miserable little drizzle?" she didn't wait for an answer, her eyes wide and searching as she gestured vaguely at the sky, terrified of the silence returning. "and where have they put you? surely not in the tents outside the fort? i shudder to think what a downpour would do to the morale out there. nothing says 'long live the king' quite like sleeping in a swamp, does it? it’ll be like the gods' saying: 'here, have a coronation, and here, have a fever to go with it.'"