The Sovereign-V5: C5: Storms Fed by Baby Talk

The Sovereign-V5: C5: Storms Fed by Baby Talk

Their exile was not a quiet slipping away into the night. It was a public stripping, a ceremonial unmasking performed by the vicious curiosity of the court. As Nyxara, Lucifera, Statera, and Lyra walked the grand, serpentine passageways of the Corona Regis for the final time, the silence that had once been a wall of judgment now teemed with a new, virulent life. The parasitic whispers had evolved, fed by Mavros’s official decree.
The words slithered from shadowed arches and balconies, no longer just psychic intent, but sibilant, spoken poison.
“…there they go… the traitor queen and her corrupted court…”
“To think she hid the Oji heir in her very nest… desecrated the Falak line…”
“And the other one… Andrasteia’s spawn… a walking curse…”
“They deserve worse than exile… they deserve to be purged with stellar fire…”
“She’d plunge us into war for that… that refuse…”
The mothers walked on, a fortress of four. They did not hunch their shoulders or hide their faces. Nyxara led, her head high, her multi hued light banked to a grim, smoky aura that seemed to absorb the hateful words, feeding the cold furnace inside her. Lucifera’s gaze was a forward facing scalpel, dissecting the path ahead, ignoring the bacterial growth of sentiment around her. Statera’s Polaris glow was extinguished, her focus turned so inward that the external world was a faint, meaningless rumour. Lyra moved as if in a trance, the dissonant threnody of her own grief a shield against the cacophony.
Yet, the words found cracks.
‘Oji heir.’ ‘Andrasteia’s spawn.’
Each term was a twist of the knife, a violation of the names they cherished,
Kuro, my storm. Shiro, my rain.
The love they felt was now a vulnerable organ, exposed to the toxic air, and every whisper was a grain of salt rubbed into the raw, weeping wound.
The journey through the void woven paths leading from Nyxarion’s core territories to the independent Citadel of Aerie Stellara was a blur of distorted starlight and silent grief. It wasn’t brief in terms of distance, but an eternity in the hollowed out chambers of their hearts. The familiar constellations outside the viewports seemed to mock them, their cold, impersonal light a reminder of a universe that was utterly indifferent to the theft of two infants.
When the spires of Aerie Stellara came into view, it was not a sight of comfort, but of grim necessity. The Citadel was not a single structure, but a cluster of ten colossal, interconnected sectors, each shaped and illuminated to reflect its ruling clan, the sweeping wings of Cygnus, the lyrical harp of Lyra, the sleek arrow of Sagitta. It was a place of order, of ancient power, and of Nyxara’s deepest roots.
“This was my father’s home,” Nyxara said, her voice hoarse from disuse as they navigated the bustling, orderly docks. “And Aerel’s.” The name of her slain husband was a fresh pang, a ghost joining the chorus of their loss. She led them with the surety of one walking a path worn by memory, through grand avenues where Starborn of the ten clans moved with a purposeful, martial grace, their gazes curious but not hostile towards the four clearly Nyxarion women.
She bypassed the ostentatious palaces of the other clans, heading towards the core of the Altair sector. The central house of the Falak line was not what one would expect for a clan of such legendary predators. It was a structure of simple, elegant lines, built from a pearlescent stone that seemed to drink the light, humble and unassuming. None would ever suspect that the heart of the Eagle’s Talon beat within such quiet walls.
The door opened before they could knock. Standing there was a woman whose presence was a silent song of authority. Aquilina of Altair. She was tall and sharp featured, her eyes the same piercing, gold flecked grey as Aerel’s had been. Her hair was a practical, dark braid crowned with a simple silver circlet. In her arms, swaddled in soft grey cloth, was an infant, no more than a few cycles old.
“Nyxie,” Aquilina said, her voice a low, warm thrum, using the childhood nickname that spoke of a shared history long before thrones and war. Her sharp eyes, however, did not miss the devastation on their faces, the emptiness in their postures.
“Lina,” Nyxara breathed, the word a surrender. The regal facade she had maintained throughout the exile crumbled at the sight of a familiar face, a touchstone to a life before the world had ended.
Aquilina stepped aside, ushering them in. The interior was as humble as the exterior, warmed by a real fire and filled with the simple, comforting scent of baking bread and zeolite. It was a home, not a palace.
As they settled in the main living area, Aquilina looked down at the infant in her arms, her expression softening into a pure, unguarded love. “And this is Caelia,” she cooed, her voice dropping into the universal, melodic cadence of baby talk. “Yes, you are. My little piece of the sky. Are you being a good girl for your mommy? Yes, you are.”
The effect on the four exiled mothers was instantaneous and catastrophic.
It was a tsunami.
The sight of a mother cradling her infant, the sound of that specific, loving tone, it was a key that unlocked a vault of memories they had been desperately trying to seal. The sensation was physical, a wave of psychic agony that stole the air from their lungs. They saw flashes of Shiro, curled and trusting against Statera’s chest. They heard the echo of Kuro’s grumbling protests as Lucifera braided his hair. They felt the ghostly weight of a small body in their arms, the phantom heat of a blushing cheek against their shoulder.
Statera made a small, wounded sound and looked away, her hands trembling in her lap. Lyra’s breath hitched, a fractured note escaping her lips. Lucifera’s jaw clenched so tight it was a miracle her teeth didn’t powder. They tried to ground themselves, to push the memories down, but it was impossible. You cannot reason with a tsunami. You cannot ride it. You can only be drowned by it.
A single, hot tear escaped Nyxara’s eye, tracing a path through the dust of her exile. She swiftly wiped it away, a gesture of royal pride that was utterly futile here.
Aquilina saw it. Her baby talk faded. She looked from Nyxara’s hastily wiped tear to the shattered composure of the others, and her expression shifted from warmth to a grim, understanding solidarity.
“Don’t,” Aquilina said softly, her voice no longer singing to her daughter, but speaking to her sister. “Don’t try to bury it here. This is a house of family.” She adjusted Caelia in her arms. “I heard the whispers. I know why you’re here. You want revenge. You want to burn the world that took them.” She met Nyxara’s gaze, her Altair eyes sharp and unwavering. “And as your family, I will help you in any way I can. So don’t worry. We’ll get your Storm and your Rain back. I promise you.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please the violation.
The use of the nicknames, the simple, fierce vow, was a balm and a catalyst. For a moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire and Caelia’s soft cooing.
“He asked for steak,” Nyxara said, the memory a fresh wound. “His first real request. Shiro. My little alley kitten, who’d never had anything but scraps, looked at me and whispered he wanted a ‘big, bloody piece of cow’. The courage it must have taken… and the joy on his face when he ate it…” Her voice broke. “We fed them. We fed them by hand, and they blushed, but they let us.”
Lucifera’s gaze was distant, fixed on a memory only she could see. “He surrendered to the carrying. After the first training session, when they were so drained they couldn’t stand. Kuro looked up at me, all that fierce pride gone, and said ‘Aunty Luci…I can’t… walk.’ He asked. He asked to be carried.” Her jaw tightened. “That was the moment he became my son. Not when I defended him, but when he trusted me enough to show me he was broken.”
Statera wrapped her arms around herself, holding the ghost of a child. “I stitched his face. After Antares… after he tore it open. I held his hands and Nyxara held his gaze, and Lyra hummed, and he was so brave. He trembled, but he didn’t pull away. He let me mend him.” A tear traced a clean path through the dust on her cheek. “He let me mend him, and now he’s been torn open again.”
Lyra’s hum was a shattered thing. “The bath… after the fight with the noble boys. He let me wash his hair. Shiro. He was so tired, so defeated, he just leaned back into my hands. The water washed away the blood, and for a moment, he was just my damp, tired infant, and not a soldier covered in scars.” She looked at Aquilina, her eyes desperate. “We had just learned how to hold them without them flinching. We had just learned.”
The warmth of the memory faded, leaving only its ashes.
Lyra’s hum faltered, the last note dissolving into the quiet. “It wasn’t just victory,” she whispered, her eyes on the fire. “It was a language. We built a whole world out of silly words and soft touches. A world strong enough to hold them.” Her hands, which had been gently gesturing with her melody, curled into fists in her lap. “Now that world is gone. And all that’s left is the noise they took them with.”
“It is not gone,” Lucifera’s voice cut through, low and searing as a brand. Her brilliant white eyes burned, not with logic, but with a terrible, focused fire. “They stole our sons. They did not steal the fact that they
are
our sons. That truth is in our hands. In our bones. Every time we held them, every time they leaned into us… that was a mark. A claim. And I will carve that same claim into the flesh of anyone who stands between us and them.”
Statera drew a shaky breath, her Polaris light flickering like a faulty bulb. “But what if they’re… changing it?” Her voice was a ragged thread. “What if they’re teaching them a new language? One of pain? Making them forget the sound of ‘Mommy’?”
Nyxara, still gently bouncing Caelia, looked up. The multi hued light in her eyes had condensed into two hard, gleaming points. “Then we will speak that language back to them. Louder.” She said it calmly, as if stating a natural law. “If they have taught my Storm Baby to associate touch with hurt, I will touch his torturers until there is nothing left but atoms. If they have made my Rain Baby forget the taste of sweetness, I will grind their bones into sugar and force feed it to them. We will use their new vocabulary. We will become conjugations of their verbs.
To break. To unmade. To erase.
”
Lucifera’s lips drew back, not in a smile, but in a silent snarl. “Good. Let their lessons be our guide. They want to teach a language of pain? I am a fluent speaker. They want to build a world of fear? I will be the earthquake that swallows its foundations. Every scream they pull from my sons will be a blueprint for their own end.”
Lyra let out a sound that was almost a laugh, but it was brittle, dangerous. “A love song to the tune of their screaming. I can compose that. It will be the easiest song I’ve ever written.”
Statera wiped her cheeks, the motion leaving a faint smudge of silver from dried Luminis salve she hadn’t known was there. “My truth was that they were safe with us,” she said, her voice firming. “That truth was violated. So now my truth is this: we are the safest place in the cosmos for our sons, and everything else is a threat. And Polaris light… can freeze a star.” She looked at Nyxara. “You said six days.”
Nyxara’s gaze was already far away, looking through the walls of the simple home, through the Citadel, into the dark where her children were. “Six days,” she confirmed, the words a death knell. “Then we stop speaking their old language altogether.”
Aquilina listened, her face a mask of grim empathy. She looked from one broken woman to the next. “You didn’t just love your little rain and storm baby,” she stated, her voice low and certain. “You built a home for them in your hands. You taught them what safety felt like. That is not a failure. That is a weapon. They have known your peace. They will fight to come back to it. And we will be the storm that clears their path.”
“He had just started to accept the hand holding decree,” Lucifera said, her voice hollow. “He would grumble, but his fingers would curl around mine.”
“Shiro asked for dessert,” Statera whispered, a fresh tear falling. “His first. He made a small, happy sound… a little hum. I can still hear it.”
As they spoke, little Caelia, intrigued by the new voices, wriggled in her mother’s arms and began to crawl with a baby’s determined clumsiness across the rug. She made a beeline for Nyxara, grabbing the hem of her robe and pulling herself up.
Nyxara looked down at the infant, her breath catching. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached down and gently lifted Caelia into her lap. The weight was wrong. The smell was different. But the essence… the essence of a small, trusting life in her arms was a ghost that was both agony and a strange, piercing comfort.
“Hello, little star,” Nyxara cooed, her voice instinctively slipping into the cadence she had used for Shiro and Kuro. Her multi hued light, for the first time since their loss, pulsed with a soft, gentle rhythm. “Aren’t you a brave little eagle? Yes, you are. Exploring the big, scary world.”
One by one, the other mothers were drawn in. Statera offered a finger, which Caelia gripped with surprising strength, and Statera’s dead Polaris light flickered with a faint, aching glow. Lyra began to hum, not a broken threnody, but a simple, ancient lullaby, her melody weaving a temporary, fragile peace over the room. Even Lucifera watched, her sharp features softening minutely, a silent acknowledgment of the life that persisted even in the heart of their despair.
The simple, homely act of sharing a meal created a fragile pocket of peace. The edge of their all consuming rage was temporarily blunted by the familiarity of it.
“Do you remember,” Nyxara began, a ghost of a smile on her lips, “the look on Kuro’s face when you threatened them with the high chairs, Luci? The real punishment.”
Lucifera’s stern expression softened minutely. “The ‘Strapped In Star Baby’ protocol. I invented it on the spot. The padded helmets. The locking trays. The bibs.” A rare, genuine smile touched her lips. “I have never seen two warriors look so utterly defeated. They were ready to face a legion, but the thought of that… they capitulated instantly.”
Statera let out a wet laugh, dabbing her eyes. “They chose the hand holding! They begged for it! Shiro looked like he was going to be sick at the very idea. He said, ‘The hand holding! We’ll do the hand holding! Please, Mommy Luci, never… never even mention that other one again!’”
“He called you ‘Mommy Luci’,” Lyra harmonized, her melody shifting into something warmer, reminiscent. “For the first time. In that moment of pure, unadulterated terror, it just slipped out. And you,” she said, looking at Lucifera, “you looked like you’d won the greatest victory of your life.”
“We had,” Lucifera said, her voice thick. “We had.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the memory of that shared, ridiculous, profound victory a tiny, glowing ember in the vast cold of their grief. They had been a unit, a perfect, loving machine, and their sons had been the willing, blushing cogs at the centre of it all.
The warmth of the memory faded, leaving only its ashes. It was then that Nyxara slowly set her empty bowl aside. The ghost of her smile vanished, replaced by a chilling calm. She stood and walked to the window, her movements once again filled with the lethal grace of a sovereign. She looked out at the spires of Aerie Stellara, her reflection a pale, determined ghost in the dark glass.
“Six days,” she said, her voice flat and final, severing the moment of respite. It was the voice of a queen passing a death sentence. “Mavros has six days left to live if my sons are not in my arms.”

.
!
V5: C5: Storms Fed by Baby Talk