The events that unfolded next were so profoundly peculiar that they made her question her grasp on reality. She was led in with one guard fewer, but he jerked her past the same set of doors, down the same hallway, and to the same Violet Queen, seated in the same pose as last time.

She peered down at her without an ounce of recognition in her eyes.

"Your Majesty," the guard bellowed, a second one joining his side at that moment. They then proceeded to take a knee, lowering themselves before their superior.

"We've brought you a human," they belted in unison.

"A human," she repeated in a singsongy voice, and tilted her torso down towards her. "I'm surprised your kind continues to enter our glorious city, considering how very much we try to dissuade you."

The guards stood again, pulling her up with them by the chains attached to her bindings. "We found her close to the palace. As such, she is being charged with Trespassing."

This time, they had left out the 'assaulting an officer' part, but everything else was the same, down to them yanking her to her feet with them. Her knees creaked and groaned at the forced movements, but she didn't allow the pain to contort her face.

"Very well," the Queen responded, a dark giddiniess imbued in her visage. "Take her to the dungeon, and put her with the other humans."

And that was what they did. They brought her down to the cages she had just escaped from, with the too-wide bars and the poorly oiled hinges. This time, she braced herself to be tossed into the cell and so when they did so, she landed gracefully on the tips of her toes.

The two of them turned and did a loop around the cages, checking to make sure all the humans were accounted for and then leaving up the stairs. Which was unusual, because all the humans were not accounted for. The human she had smuggled out on her back had been left behind, crumpled and unmoving. They had seemingly ignored her, while dragging only Nikola back down into a cell. But why? And why were they not noticing that red-haired girl was absent? They had certainly noticed when they were escaping together.

Nikola decided that there were better times for mulling over the state of her world than now, when she had been made a second-time prisoner. She waited for the guards to pass on their patrol once, allowing her aching body to be still. Achieving true rest wasn't doable. When she was sure they were gone, she popped herself out of her cage again.

Her feet were coated in a layer of muck, and her knees were blackening beneath the dots of crimson that were still rising to the surface. But she pushed forth, if only because she could see the sun moving through the sky. How long did it take for someone to die of starvation? Dehydration? Of all the methods she had used to end someone's life, they were much more roundabout than she preferred - and, to put it simply, she didn't really want to kill Luke anymore. The realization surprised her in its plainness.

She didn't want to kill Luke.

She didn't want to kill Luke, even with a cleaver.

Thinking of her blade crunching through the space between his arm and his shoulder brought her the usual amount of sick, passionate joy, but thinking of him ceasing to exist afterwards didn't inject the same sort of satisfaction within her.

Apparently maiming Luke = okay, delightful.

But killing Luke = not delightful or okay. She was still coming to grips with her own emotions, or even having emotions in the first place. They felt new and old all at once, like a flower that had always been on her walking path that she was only just noticing was everywhere, laced throughout the entire field. Or, in this case, it was a flower that had been written to be a flower but was only now realizing it could be more than a flower. Or... something?

Now, was it more peculiar that she didn't want to kill Luke, or that killing was becoming so commonplace that it was peculiar when she didn't want to do it? Maybe Luke was correct, and her father really would be disappointed in her.

On that note, she pressed on. Nikola repeated her escape route, but better this time. She balked when she got to the body of the elf she had killed, because it was still there, but with a much more pronounced pool of blood under it. It seemed the hallway that led to the kitchen was not well-guarded outside of the first and last meal of the day.

She was much more nimble on her second run-through. She made the trip in half the time, zipping tightly around corners and staying low to the ground. The only thing that signified her arrival were her mucky footprints, which weren't drawing the suspicion of the elves. Ideally, this would be the last time she would be doing this, so she wouldn't have to care that she was leaving traces of her escape. She didn't know if she could handle this a third time. Her body was already screaming at her every movement; her wrists and knees felt like one big sack of ouchie mush.

When she broke past the door, she bolted for the vines she hadn't even attempted to scale earlier, when she had a passenger attached to her back. She was unencumbered now, and ready to ascend the precarious vertical plane. She gripped the thick cords with her hands and used her toes to hoist herself up, bouncing softly in place a few times just to be sure they wouldn't rip.

Then, she pulled herself up the wall like someone who could do a really good pull-up. Nikola was sure to ascend the stone using fluid movements rather than jerky ones, because she didn't want her planty ropes to separate from the porous rocks, and in moments she was climbing down the other side. Down was much easier than up. She let herself fall slowly, gripping the green cords when needed, and soon enough her feet found the walkway.

She let out a puff of air she hadn't realized she'd been keeping in, and stepped noiselessly upon the cobblestone road just outside the palace. She had only gotten about this far last time, and as she turned around to face the city, her mouth hung open at the view that was awaiting her.