"Ah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know anymore!"
Marielle groaned loudly, dragging both hands through her hair until several pins came loose and her dark hair fell into a messy halo around her face. She slumped backward into the heavy armchair, letting her head drop over the backrest as she stared blankly at the high, carved ceiling of her private chambers.
She had been up all night.
It wasn't that she hadn't thought about it ever since Iryna brought it up. She had. She'd thought about it so much her brain was practically smoking. But every time she tried to find a solution, she hit a dead end. A very solid, very annoying dead end.
Well, not exactly a dead end. There were branches. Plenty of branches, actually. They just all seemed to lead to another dead end.
"If it weren't for this absolute mess," Marielle muttered to the empty room, her voice raspy from exhaustion, "we would already be on the road back to the North."
