Echos

Time was no match for Clan Korath. Because it would never matter how many stretched between their meetings, they would never break. Sure, things would change, experiences would be had, life would be lived but in the end they were who they'd always been, a family. A family that surpassed the name she now bore. She was only a Nero in the sense that she sat at the head of the faction they liked to call family. Very few of them were actually related and everyone else was acquired much in the way refuse collected on the street curb, all of them piling on each other in a stinking, festering pile of amorality. That was the part she played and now she was the ostentatiois head of the Nero Family, First of her Name, Sixth Talon of the Antivan Crow syndicate, and dangerously sweet viper siren of Antiva City. It was all too often that people fell for her trap, expecting her to be too young and naive to understand how The Game was played. She played the part so well that even some of her closest advisors were lulled into that false calm at times. 

She played it well because it was the essence of who she was. Aethra Korath. Chaser of rabbits and overly precocious daughter of Faelyn, Cian and Silas. 

Though she'd never let herself forget her name, it took it being spoken aloud after too many years to reminder her of what she'd been foolishly avoiding all this time. So with no small amount of encouragement from Faelyn, Aethra agreed to come home. She wouldn't be able to stay, but she could entertain the hidden parts of herself enough to make a difference in her sanity. It would have to be enough for now. 

Parts of Arlathan were on fire but she was here, with a heart full of vulnerabilities to drop at her father's feet. 

Leaving the door open is a risky decision. She stepped in the doorway, knocking on the open door to alert her presence. Sneaking up on him was a risk she would level another time when disaster wasn't looming so close above them. Instead she smoothed sweat matted hair from her temples and smiled at the man she called father.