Out of the darkness a gentle voice whispered to her. “Quel amrun, elen en cormamin… Oio naa elealla alasee.”

With it the moon rises again above her and bathes her in its tender light.

Under his touch she moves slightly toward him but continues to sleep. Gentle pink light begins to filter through the cracks that last night had let in the tears of heaven. It falls over her face and she stirs gently.

Eyes open slowly and catch the familiar silhouette of Nyx outlined in morning pastels. Before she pulls out of this half sleep state she whispers softly back to him. “Ithilamin, lle entula.”

“As I told you I would, melamin,” Nyx whispered in reply, his fingers drifting across her cheek and into the spill of her hair.

A soft smile played on his lips when he thought to lean down and kiss her rose-petal lips… He thought better of it, though, as he knew she was still in that nether place between sleep and wakefulness… If she suddenly found herself thrust into consciousness only to find his lips on hers, who knew what the consequences might be… he contented himself with the feel of her tresses in his hands, the sight of her, soft and silent there in the blankets, and the nearness that this moment allowed…“I am never far away.”

“hmmm…” she muttered softly. Across the dreamscape that still called to her the moon held its zenith but it wavered as if she looked at it not in the sky but reflected in a pool of dark water. Eyes close to the manifestation of the moon and she curls away from it and closer to the tree.

“Amin ila edhel… amin ila mith’ganni… amin ila… Lyssa.” The whisper, soft and sad is offered to him but gets tangled upon the roots of her tree.

Those words and that sadness in her still sleepy voice plucked a chord in his heart that had not been played in he couldn’t recall how long. His eyes held her even as the chestnut tendrils of her hair were pulled from his fingers when she rolled towards the tree. He sighed softly, realizing that her own sadness was an echo of his own, and his gaze let her go for the moment. Those yellow eyes dipped to the floor between his feet for an instant, his elbows coming to rest on his knees and his hands coming up to run through his mane as he chewed thoughtfully at his lip.

All of those things are true, a voice in his head murmured as Nyx’s eyes panned the tiny apartment, “She’s not an elf. The part of her that is, is not mith’ganni. And she’s not Lyssa.

The moon-hued eyes came to rest on the loom, then, and on the moon and the rose that graced it. … see what the fates have spun for her…

“N’malia,” he whispered, at first, the smile that had begun to wane on his lips, waxing fuller again as he turned and let his eyes fall on her again. “N’malia,” he said again, not whispering this time, but still softly, “None of that matters to me, Cayrimsa.” His hand reached out for her again and came to rest on the delicate curve where neck met shoulder; “All that matters to me, now, is that you know…”

“Know what exactly?” Her voice rose through the roots, more awake than it had been. The witch turned, laying upon her back, his hand finding itself on her shoulder as she moved. Twin amber stars rose to meet the moons that looked upon her.

“Know that you desire me? Know that you have replayed again and again in your mind what it would be like to lay with me? Is that it? That doesn’t make you special Nyx. Many have thought it, several have taken it, but never an elf. I’ve never lowered myself to such.

What makes you special is that I owe you a debt…” she takes a deep breath and looks at him as she relaxes her shoulders down onto the pallet. “You have but to ask Nyx and you may have what you desire.”

Despite the offer and the relaxation of her body her jaw sets slightly and her eyes waiver as she tries to maintain her gaze in his. It threatens to pull away and wander to the loom or to shut the lids completely against the words she has just spit out at him; it threatens to be washed away in a flood of tears.

Nyx blinked…

You see, another inner voice snickered, your dreamweaver lies to you, just as the humans lie to you, and just as this one lies to you, Nyx. Go on, admit to her that, yes, you want her; yes, you’ve dreamed of lying with her. Do it… ask her to repay her debt and then let her ‘lower herself’ so that she may do so.

She uses you just as the rest, do, mith’ganni… I’ve told you this before…

…and withdrew his hand from Cayrimsa’s shoulder. “No,” he said, rising to his feet and abandoning his perch on the edge of her pallet before finally allowing his eyes to tear away from her, “no…”

His gaze lifted to the tree that loomed above her as his hands shoved through his mane again… fell back to her for the flickering of a second as his hands came out of his hair and pressed together, almost as if he were praying… and then, as he turned and padded a few steps away from the bed, came to rest, once more, on the tapestry that still clung to the loom.

“I could lie to you, Cay,” he murmured after a moment, “and tell you that I do not desire you, that I have not entertained thoughts of sharing your bed…”  One hand fell away from his face, then, but the other lingered for a moment and moved to cover his mouth as another sigh tried to escape his lips; “…but you would know they were lies, yes? So what would be the point?

And, elen en cormamin,” he added, “I would no more take that from you as repayment of some debt you think you owe any more than I would take it from you by force…”

The mith’ganni stalked a few steps further away, still not having turned to face her again, and stopped when he found himself standing in front of the loom… studying the moon where it cradled the bleeding rose in the vastness of a night sky….

Without one another, the both of you are alone, Steppe Son, both of you without people or place… both of you with nothing to care for save for that dark anger and hatred that you each profess gives you purpose…

…Alabaster fingers tracked away from a tight-set mouth and reached out to trace over the weaving before him. There was a truth in the weaving just as magical as the truth in Taellyn’s reading had been and Nyx felt it travel through him. “I am alone without you, Cayrimsa,” he whispered, his fingers gliding along the petals of the rose where it met the yellow glow of the moon, “and whether I ever lay with you or not is no longer of any consequence…” His hand fell away from the tapestry, then, and, after another moment, he turned, slowly, and let his eyes find her again.

“…All that matters to me, now, is that you know… that I love you…”

The young peredhil that had watched as the carriage with the round human woman drove off and plastered her face with dust, the woman who had stood in the moonlight listening to the caresses of Prien while black blood dripped down her chin, the girl who had paid a handful of silver coins to have her ears hewed, the babe left in the frosted high grass screaming when it realized the woman who had birthed it was no longer there… they all had expected his lips to press down hard against hers, they had expected hands upon her body, exploring and groping along her possessively.

She had not expected him to pull back, to refuse her offer. A dark eel of anger writhed inside her as he did. It threatened to lash out at him. ‘No’ he had said.

What gives you the right to deny me? A filthy dung smelling horse pacher! That is all you are… I offer the greatest gift you will ever be offered and you deny it?!

For a moment his eyes fell on hers as he stood, the fires burning in them quickly sent his gaze elsewhere. To the loom. Her breath held but the voice screaming in her head went on.

Do not read into that star gazer. A foolish dream…

“I could lie to you, Cay,” he murmured after a moment, “and tell you that I do not desire you, that I have not entertained thoughts of sharing your bed… but you would know they were lies, yes? So what would be the point?”

That’s it hwandi. Admit it… you are like the others. Do not lie to me about what you are, or what you feel. I’m nothing more than a beautiful body… one more in a long line of them you’ve no doubt had. You will probably revel in the thought that I have lowered myself so in letting you have it. You’ll enjoy the thought of being the only elf I’ve allowed to penetrate me…

The eel twisted in her stomach, vomiting its bile until she felt it rise into her throat and twist her features.

“And, elen en cormamin,”

…don’t… don’t say that… even the voice in her head quieted as he continued to speak in the soft tones and the sweet elven accent she had grown so familiar with.

“I would no more take that from you as repayment of some debt you think you owe any more than I would take it from you by force…”

Things quieted down as she watched him examine the loom. Furiously the eel gnashed its teeth when his fingers fell upon the fine weaving. Not his! a stern voice reminded her. While another softly pleaded with Nyx, Please… leave it be… I cannot… do this… I don’t… I don’t…

Both voices cut off when he began to speak again.

“I am alone without you, Cayrimsa, and whether I ever lay with you or not is no longer of any consequence…” His hand fell away from the tapestry, then, and, after another moment, he turned, slowly, and let his eyes find her again.

“…All that matters to me, now, is that you know… that I love you…”

I don’t deserve it… the pleading voice finally finished.

Through threatening tears she searched him. No one had ever dared to say those words to her. Even the human woman had not said it to her. Those that had desired her had not even bothered to offer it as a lie to convince her to give them what they wanted. This was not a lie.

The man

man not elf?

Who stood before her trembled slightly with his admission, his eyes stared deeply into her truly seeing her for more than a beautiful body, for more than her blood for something she couldn’t explain, the color rose in his cheeks and his fingers tensed again.

Hours seemed to pass as she looked back at him and stripped him bare with her thoughts. She laid aside the yellow eyes and the pointed ears, no longer elf, no longer mith’ganni. The grinning belt buckle fell from his waist and the black clothing pulled from his body, ridding him of his obligations to the god that had once tried to seduce her. Layer by layer she removed the things that separated them until finally what stood before her was indeed just a man. A man who like herself had nothing but anger to fuel his life. A man who had gone out on a limb had offered himself to her. Not like she had offered herself to him only moments ago. She had offered her body, he offered his soul, his heart.

A tear slid down her cheek, and finally she took a breath. Barely she nodded her head to him. Her response carried across the room with the scent of rain water in a whisper.

“I know…”

As soon as the words had been said she turned her head. The blanket rose and she drug a corner of it over her cheeks. Once dry she tried to speak again but her voice seemed hallow.

“Dmitrova gave me a few days off with a tail. We can look further into this Avenon situation once I loose the tail. Find some breakfast along the way…”

I know…

Her answer had plucked that same discordant string in his heart and, for an instant, his gaze faltered a bit; eyes winking closed then dropping to regard a puddle that was beginning to both be absorbed into and evaporate from the floor at his feet…

Surely you didn’t expect that she would say it back, Prien’s voice mocked.

No, he answered. He had hoped she would have replied in kind but, at the same time, knew that she wouldn’t. But… I would not be able to continue if I had not, at least, told her… and… her answer is enough.

Is it?

It has to be.

…Nyx’s yellow eyes slithered away from the diminishing puddle and found the darker pool of his cloak where it lay discarded on the floor.

“Dmitrova gave me a few days off with a tail,” Cay said as he bent to close his fingers around the discarded garment, “We can look further into this Avenon situation once I loose the tail. Find some breakfast along the way…”

I suppose it does, Prien’s voice chided even as Nyx chased it from his mind, She, apparently, has nothing more to say on the matter…

“Your tail is half-asleep,” Nyx answered, his eyes gliding back to where Cay still sat curled in her blankets, “underneath the staircase.” He swept the cloak around his shoulders and refastened it. “I shall see to it that he finds the other half while you dress…”

Her lips parted as if she were about to warn him against killing Dmitrova’s shadow - though, she may have been going to say something else - but he stopped the words before they could form with a faint smile and a subtle gesture.

“I will not kill him,” the assassin assured her as he backed towards the bell-hemmed canvas, “worry not. I shall simply make sure that he is truly sleeping before we leave, yes?”

His gaze lingered on her for a long moment before he finally turned on his heel and whispered through the doorway, again, failing to evoke even the faintest pealing from the numerous bells that dangled from the weathered sheet that covered it.

I know… Cay’s reply, as well as the tears that had accompanied those simple words, resonated in Nyx’s mind again as the soft soles of his boots came into contact with the warped and splintering boards of the landing outside her door. He glanced back, filling his eyes with the heavy, weathered canvas that comprised the door of her apartment, stifled another sigh that threatened to escape his pursed lips, and turned his gaze skyward, perhaps hoping to find answers, there, for the questions to which her response and the accompanying tears had given rise…

Was I wrong to show you my heart, Cayrimsa, he wondered, wishing that there were still stars visible in the firmament to counter the shimmering of those that had fallen from her eyes.

 Does your knowing mean that you can accept it – even if I am everything you despise – or does it simply add to the pain and torment that your own elven blood stirs in your soul?

Despite the considerable skill Nyx had cultivated where reading and interpreting the truth that hid beneath the words and actions of others was concerned, he found that the truth behind Cay’s reactions was elusive at best. There had been anger in her eyes when she first staggered into wakefulness and found him hovering over her – that same anger and loathing had been thick in her words, too, when she had offered to ‘repay her debt’ and that anger had only seemed to swell when he had refused. The fire of that anger, though, had been quenched by the tears that, in that interminable span of time between his admission and her reply, had welled in her eyes. And when she had quickly changed the subject after daubing those tears away with the edge of her blanket, that anger seemed to have been replaced by an indefinable sadness and, as he glanced back at her before leaving her alone in her rooms, something more akin to confusion. Should I, perhaps, not have told you at all? I have known your torment for a long time, melamin… contributed to it, I am sure, in my own way, at times… but it was never my intention to do so with this.

…Behind him, beyond the canvas door, there now came the sounds of movement and the susurrations of whispered words which begged his attentions away from his own thoughts. He listened to those sounds for a moment and, following a curse that hissed softly from the other side of the doorway, reminded himself that he had come out here for more than a momentary respite from the torment he had visited on himself in finally professing his true feelings for her.

His gaze abandoned the starless sky above, lowered to peer through the narrow spaces between the planks at his feet, and narrowed slightly as he picked out the dark shape of Cayrimsa’s watcher still huddled beneath the steps. Nyx watched the watcher for a moment; gauged the man’s level of wakefulness by the way the shoulders rose and fell in harmony with his breathing… Not quite lost in slumber, yet, are you, the assassin smirked as he reached for the rickety railing that girded the landing, but it has been a long and quiet night and you are so very ready for a nap, yes? … When the watcher’s head dipped forward to rest on his knees, Nyx hauled himself over the railing to his left and dropped to the ground some two stories below, the sounds of activity within the lower level of the Vergal Sea Port masking the soft thud of his landing enough that Cay’s watcher failed to register it as out of place. Before the hawk could lift his head from his knees and force himself back to alertness, Nyx was on him and hand the man’s head, neck, and arms cinched into an intricate knot of limbs that quickly stole breath and blood from the brain. Dmitrova’s hawk struggled weakly for only an instant before lapsing fully into unconsciousness and, once he had done so, Nyx released the hold and eased the limp form to the ground.

“Vadim will not be happy that you fell asleep on your watch,” the mith’ganni smirked as he slipped from beneath the stairs and left the man to his dreamless slumber, “and let the witch elude you because of it, but breakfast for us will be more enjoyable without a chaperone, yes?” He took a moment to scan his surroundings, making sure that no other eyes watched before he climbed the stairs once again. Back at the top of those stairs, Nyx forced himself to wait while Cayrimsa went about preparing herself… even when a curse, just a bit louder than the last he had heard, floated through the air and was accompanied by the sound of shattering pottery…

“Karl is indisposed,” he murmured through the canvas door, “but I doubt he will remain so for long, Cay. We should go if you are ready…”

On the other side of that curtain Cayrimsa struggled with the knowledge he had just laid at her feet. Her eyes still stung with tears and the eel still slithered around in the dark patches of her soul.

I love you… The words kept echoing in her head. With a frustrated cry she threw the covers off herself and got out of bed.

“Why do you think I care? I don’t. It doesn’t change a thing Nyx…”

The words fell into the dark pool of briny water moments before she lunged her hands into it. Her reflection waivered and then disappeared into the ripples. She pulled the dark shadows from the bucket, wringing them out, careless of where the purple drops fell.

It changes everything Cay. Lie to everyone else, lie to him if you must, but at least admit the truth to yourself.

“The truth? I don’t know what that is.”

In her grip the shadows twisted tightly and the final drops of water that they would freely release stained the edge of her shirt.

Yes you do…

Using all her strength she released her grip on the dye induced ball of shadows, catching one corner of it as they unfurled to the floor. Amber fires flitted toward her pallet.

“The truth is he has ‘entertained thoughts of sharing my bed’”

If that is all he wanted he would be doing that right now. And Cay…

She shook her head and took the shadowed gown to a line hanging against the wall where the loom usually roosted. The wet material fell over the line and sunk toward the floor. She focused her eyes on the purple puddle already forming below the dyed garment. In the drops she could almost see a reflection of the eel that threatened to turn in her stomach again.

“Don’t… don’t you dare…”

He isn’t the only one. soft elven caresses pulled at her mind.

“Liar! Cooshee!”

Cay threw her now purple fingers into the air as she cursed herself. Turning from the lurking dank shadow she stormed across the room to where a small pile of clothing laid gathered on the floor. Fingers sought the dark burlap dress.

No Cay… I’m not lying. You’ve thought about it. He’d be an amazing lover would he not? Is there a single desire that he could not fulfill for you? Those fingers of his, nimble and yet strong… scarred by his love for you…

She rose with the dress and stopped as it came close enough for her to catch a whiff of Nyx still clinging to the material. Her eyes fluttered for a moment and she could feel his weight upon her body, his lips upon her own in the darkness of an alley. Groaning she tightly closed her eyes and started to pull the dress over her head.

“I’m not hearing this… I’m not. I won’t. The hwandi is just toying with me!”

Felt jealous over the cup he kept caressing last night didn’t you?

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?!” She plopped onto the floor and began to pull her stockings up her legs. “I told you it doesn’t matter… perhaps… perhaps we have entertained thoughts, but it’s a game. He cannot really… love.”

Her fingers found the little buttons on the top of her stockings and slid them into the small loops on the bottom of her shirt. Each one slapped back down against her skin when she released it.

Then tell me something Cay…

“What?” The word was barely above a grunt as she shoved her feet into her oversized boots.

If it is a game and you finally push him to a point that he succumbs… let’s say you treat him as all the others. On your knees in some alley, listening to him groan in pleasure. When it is all said and done, would he treat you like the others? Lace his pants back up, throw you a copper or a slap across your face and walk off?

It was a scenario she knew well, but as she tried to imagine Nyx being the one groaning over her, pulling at her hair urging her on, she could not. She paused, glanced at the curtain that separated her from Nyx and slowly shook her head. “No…”

How would it be then Cay?

At first she did not answer. She stood up and smoothed the shapeless dress she wore over her rather shapely curves. Pursing her lips together she walked to the shelves in the room.

“It wouldn’t be like that...”

The belt she wore was slung around one of the supports for the shelves and she yanked it free while she fastened it around her waist.

How would it be? the voice repeated insistent.

“He wouldn’t leave me…” she whispered very softly and let her eyes close. For a moment she rested an arm against the shelf and sighed. For the briefest moment she could see him, bathed in moonlight, his yellow eyes looking down into hers. He was speaking but the words were meaningless, his tone and his eyes said more than words ever could. She felt him everywhere, holding her tightly against him, feeling his heart beat in time with her own.

And you long for that. It was said as fact not as a question, and it broke the image running through her thoughts.

“Pach!” She cried and swept her arm away from her body as she came back to her full height. One of the jars on the shelf was caught in the arc and crashed to the floor. Dark earth spilled across her floor.

From behind the curtain she heard a familiar voice call to her. “Karl is indisposed, but I doubt he will remain so for long, Cay. We should go if you are ready…”

“I’m coming!” Raising her voice to a level he could hear. A flutter of dark red and the jingle of bells and Cay stood before Nyx shoving the leather hat down over her brow. Behind her she left the pot of spilled soil where it had fallen, she left the work on her loom unfinished with the tails of threads catching in the breeze now and then, she left the swath of dark shadows drying on the line, she left her tree standing over her bed awaiting her return.

The moment before the brim of the hat cut off her gaze her eyes had locked with his. It ended too quickly for her to really give him a shot at deciphering the look. With the thread severed between them for the moment she merely turned and stormed down the stairs, saving only a brief glance at the huddled figure at the bottom.

Through the city they went again. Following the flow and ebb of the crowd they soon found themselves drowning in the market.

There was something almost comforting about being so lost in this group of people. He would not dare to bring up how he felt in all this, and the voice in her head had quieted too as she focused more on what was going on around her than what was going on inside her. Every now and then she caught Nyx in her scans of the crowd and could hear him whispering in her ears.

I love you…

Even through those moment, however, she could sense that something in Drasnia was different today. Nyx had always garnered apprehensive looks from those around him, but today the looks had a colder edge to them. She was no longer dressed as nobility and it was harder for him to appear the loyal servant of some round ear. Mutterings ran through the crowd around them like electrical current. Slowly she picked up on them. Aelion had been taken in.

A familiar cart came into view and the smell of the pies resting over a bed of coals to keep them warm drifted over. The short dwarven man who sold them placed a hand on a dagger when he caught sight of Nyx.

Cay thought quickly. They needed breakfast, and they needed to get out of here without causing a disturbance. She spun and found herself standing within inches of Nyx. The brim of her hat rose until her eyes could see his. As their eyes met again she reached out and slid her hand inside his cloak, without even having to think she found his own curled around his kukri. Just barely she shook her head and for him only whispered. “Ithilamin… let me… one moment and we shall leave.”

Before the full impact of her choice of words could really hit them she had pulled away and moved toward the dwarf to haggle a few of the choice pies off his cart.

“I’m coming!”

Angry again, Nyx noted, I should not have told her. He remained motionless – his back to the clapboard wall just beside the doorway, his arms folded across his chest – but his eyes roamed in an endless scan of the wakening wharf, marking the comings and goings of those who’s morning business regularly found them in this part of town, making note of those who seemed out of place, and, of course, keeping a keen eye out for any of Vadim’s shadows who might have been sent to relieve the one slumped unconscious beneath the backstair of this very building.

You think that she did not know before you admitted it,</i> the inner voice that was his own asked, You think that Taellyn’s reading misled you? That the work on Cay’s loom right now is not evidence enough that she already knew before you told her in your own words?

Before he could reply, Cay, dressed in the familiar sack of a burlap dress and blood-red cloak, swept onto the landing accompanied by the tinkling of bells as the canvas door fluttered in her wake. Moon-hued eyes abandoned their surveillance of the surroundings and slid sidelong to meet the amber gems that disappeared all too quickly beneath the brim of Cay’s hat… whatever thoughts or emotions he had hoped to glean from the flames that danced behind  those eyes, he determined, would have to remain only guessed at…

She knew, the voice reaffirmed, not having to try and read anything in her eyes to know it, <i>She knows and, even if she will not say it to you, she…

 Dinalle! Nyx shushed the voice, pushing away from the wall as Cay’s feet stomped past the third and onto the fourth stair tread. The time for thinking such things has passed, he added, trying to convince himself of that as he whispered down the stairway behind her, I cannot afford to be distracted by this now… She apparently is not…

He continued reminding himself of this, stalking silently alongside her as they moved away from the wharf and toward the inland parts of the city. It was too late to say anything more and, despite the thoughts… feelings… that Nyx still wanted to express but had yet to find words, he knew that the opportunity to speak them had passed the moment he had left her alone in her rooms. Now that they had worked their way into the humanoid tide that eddied farther in and about the market, it would have been impossible to speak them even if he had the words to do so and, for a while, the mith’ganni was, himself, grateful for the distraction that keeping a keen ear and a mindful eye on the milling throngs provided…

Nyx was not unaccustomed to being the object of scrutiny when he walked Drasnia’s streets in the light of day. He was an elf, after all – unbranded as far as any could tell and unaccompanied by humans – and, as such, immediately suspect in the eyes and minds of the xenophobic population of any Imperial city. The fact that he was mith’ganni – a free mith’ganni – compounded the wariness in human eyes that chanced to fall on him, as well, and inspired hateful glances and whispers to be uttered at his passing… “Horse-f***ing savage”… “Moon-eyed grass-eater” … “Why don’t those Twilighters just roll over like all of the other point-ears did and accept their lot… or, better yet, just finally die out all together?”… “Give us those plains they still try to keep for themselves and let their corpses rot into the earth if they love it so much”… “Twilighters are too stupid to give up all civil-like… that’s why ya hardly ever see ‘em branded… alive anyway”…</i> In his years of stalking the byways and back-alleys of what the Braudian Empire considered civilization, Nyx had heard it all and, in time, learned to ignore it for the most part. Had found it easier and easier to let the round-ears lull themselves into the safety of their perceived superiority by spitting their hate and fear laced rhetoric at him with little more than a contemptuous glance in reply (until he could no longer stave off his own hatred and found himself killing one of them for sport as opposed to coin or creed). The short-lives typically sneered, spewed their venom, and moved on, forgetting the mith’ganni as quickly as they had passed. This morning, though, those intolerant glances weren’t so quick to tear away and the acid-tinged comments that carried through the cacophony of voices were something more than the generalized racism he had grown used to.

…Nyx’s gratitude for the escape from his other thoughts that crowd-watching had provided morphed slowly into a grating paranoia when he sensed that he was almost being singled out by every condescending glare that swept over them and that the murmurings in the crowd weren’t as hushed or side-turned as was usual when he bothered to walk amongst humans… nor was it only the humans who offered them… The deeper he followed Cay into the bustling market, the more it became obvious that, this morning, there was a special hatred in Drasnia for Twilight Elves and, given the murmurings and mutterings that he had forced his ears to capture and endure, the reason for that focused revilement became clear. Lord Bolstoii’s half-moon stable-boy had been found out… All well and good for one of you paching round-ears to have your way with an elf when you so choose, but turn those tables and it nears justification for lynching, yes?

The assassin’s eyes, having become acutely aware of hands that rested on weapon hilts, narrowed as they continued to wade into the sea of stalls and citizenry and, beneath the drape of his cloak, his own hands moved to find purchase on haft and handle of his own blades…

You see what happens when you work without my guidance, Prien’s voice tittered in the back of his mind, what happens when you abandon my counsel in deference to your feelings for the half-breed who would as soon spit on you as suffer your presence?

 Did you think I would let you go unpunished for your transgressions, mith’ganni?

Nyx’s jaw tightened and his fingers flexed around the hafts of his weapons, his almond shaped eyes panning across the multitude of round ones that leered at him from out of the chaos of the market.

What are you going to do, Nyx, the Executioner’s voice continued to taunt, Loose a blade or two and take off a head or a hand, perhaps? Right here in full view of all of these anxious round-ears and their sub-human pets?

Do it… if you think you’ll escape this like you did your other folly… I should enjoy watching that, I think… Just as I’ll enjoy watching when those others I’ve set upon you peel the flesh from your bones and sever your thread…

Snarling, he tried to shut Prien’s voice out of his head and a low growl rumbled in Nyx’s chest as he realized what his penance was to be for the sin he had committed against the god…and that if he were to act on the murderous thoughts that were quickly being brought to a boiling point by the looks and leers of the crowd that surrounded he and Cay, that she, too, would likely suffer the consequences of the deity’s insidious wrath… A flash of red in the periphery of his vision as Cay changed course… His palms tingling where they rested on his blades, he turned and followed her towards a pie-cart tended by a sturdy dwarf… A dwarf who’s hand was more than eager to fall to the hilt of his own dagger when Nyx met his sight…

No where to go, point-ear, Prien laughed, No where to hide, now. Not amongst all of this… go ahead… start with the stump… they’ll let you take that one before they fall on you, I’m sure… but then…

 The god’s goading… the unbridled bigotry that crashed through him… the lack of clear and certain escapes… the paranoia resultant of it all… It was all too much… Nyx’s fingers slithered around the hilt of his favored blade and started to slide it from its sheath… his narrowed yellow-eyes, gleaming with the lethal conflagration that all of this had lit behind them, did, in fact choose the stout dwarf as the first of what were likely to be his last victims, and bore into the little stump of a boulder-buster as the mith’ganni made ready to spring…

The target was stolen from his vision, though, and replaced with Cay’s face. Nyx very nearly flinched when he felt a hand slide under his cloak and come gently to rest atop his own and forced him to ease the half-bared blade back to rest… He blinked, registered her look and the faint shake of her head, and allowed just some of the humming tension in his muscles to ease back.

“Ithilamin,” she whispered – the softness of her voice, that endearment carried to his ears upon it, and the light touch of her fingers over his sending a long-forgotten tingle of warmth through him – assuaging his angst a bit more, “let me… one moment and we shall leave.”

His answering nod was short and almost too stiff to have even been registered as a nod at all. His eyes stuck to her for only an instant – although, even now, they truly didn’t want to let her go at all – before, again, ticking from face to face in the surging sea of human hatred that the marketplace had become, watching for the attack that he felt certain was to come at any moment. “Hurry,” he whispered through clenched teeth, even though she had already slipped away to haggle with the vendor for their breakfast, “it has become dangerous for me, here, it seems, and dangerous for you to be near me…”

Tanna was alone and in the dark.

“Kettle pots indeed…” she sobbed to herself. An hour ago she had stopped trying to wipe the tears from her cheeks. Prior attempts had simply left her face soiled and salty. The tears that fell now left tracks in the dirt.

Every city has its underground activities. Drasnia was no exception of this. Unlike some, though, it embodied the term more blatantly than others. The wealth of the city lived up on the hills, high above the filth that festered near the wharfs. The nobility did not openly speak of the activities that scurried about their feet. Below it all, though, was a labyrinth of tunnels and caves that had long ago been dug into the earth. What happened in those dark recesses was not spoken of openly even in the wharfs. The tunnels were painted with blood, the dead rested uneasily in their corridors, screams that peeled from those unfortunate enough to end up in them never reached the surface, the sun could not wash over the spaces even for a few hours, and Tanna suspected that even if it could reach it still could not shine in a place like this.

The dark did not bother Tanna so much as the being alone did. All her life she had never truly been alone. Marianna and her and worked hard so as never to be separated. Many families were torn apart on the auction blocks, but she and Marianna had not. Of course she had known that the moment she stepped into the barn that she was unlikely to see Marianna again. But she had hoped that she would have Aelion instead. Now she had neither.

“She told me not to go. Mari said I would be caught, that they would string me up next to Aelion… but… Mari… I’m so sorry, so very sorry. I just couldn’t leave him there. I couldn’t! He was hurt and… and… I love him!” her prostrations fell on the shadows.

Desperately she again searched her memories to figure out just where things had gone wrong. It had all started with the unexpected visitor. Although she and Mari, being relegated to the kitchen most of their lives, had no idea at the time that a visitor was in the house, let alone if he was expected or not. That information had come to her later, through the network of eyes, ears and tongues that made up any household. At the time Tanna had been kneading bread and discussing with Mari what they should embroider on their dresses with the spool of thread she had pilfered from Kiki’s sewing kit earlier in the week.

The first clue that something was amiss was when Lord Bolstoii’s voice rang through the halls calling for his daughter. On its heels was Corrisan, dashing through the house and informing everyone to mind their own business, keep their eyes down and their bodies away from the front of the house. After that the house had been pulled as tightly as leather on a drum, and was just as noisy.

Even from the kitchen Tanna and Mari, no longer concerned with embroidery, could hear the argument boiling over in the front of the house. The argument came to a stunning conclusion of doors slamming and people moving out to the barn.

Corrisan had come around again, looking more pale and flustered than Tanna could ever recall, and again reminded everyone to keep their noses where they belonged. He had left out the back door after reminding her and she had exchanged looks with her sister. Going out the back door could only mean that he was leaving the estate, likely to warn the neighbors not to worry about whatever noises they might hear from the Bolstoii yard.

Holding their breath she had listened to the screams that Corrisan had obviously been anticipating. Tanna could recall throwing her sister a murderous gaze when she had hissed quietly in her ear: “It seems that Lord Bolstoii has discovered what you have been denying all along, Aelion’s carnal knowledge of the Bolstoii princess.”

Later, when she had snuck out to the barn, she found out what all the screaming had been over. For the rest of her life, which she was beginning to doubt would be much longer really, she would remember what she found in the barn. Aelion, or what was left of him, had been hog tied and left on a soiled heap of hay. He was covered in blood and manure.

She pulled him into her arms, but he had barely noticed.

“Aelion… Aelion please… please… you have to get up. I’ll get you out of here but you have to help, your heavy. Aelion…” she had pleaded.

Eventually his eyes opened as far as the swelling would let them. “Leave…” came through the blood stained spit crusting his lips.

“I can’t Aelion… I can’t leave you like this. She can, Kiki can, but I cannot. Don’t you see? We have to leave…” tears fell onto his face while she spoke.

“kill me…”

“No!” Tanna had been surprised and scared to find him thus.

“Kill Me!” He said louder and coughed from the effort.

Tanna closed her eyes to the memory of him begging her to kill him, and then showing her why he felt that way. She saw that Bolstoii had left him battered and broken, and no longer a man.

It had taken all her strength, and all the promises that she still cared for and loved him, to get him to crawl out of the barn. They got no further. As he took a breath of the damp morning air a club descended over her head and from there she knew only darkness.

Where Aelion was now was a mystery to her, even where she was exactly remained a mystery. There was only the darkness and her own thoughts to keep her company now.

Two mince meat pies were wrapped in greasy wax paper and held in the crook of her arm. Her other hand disappeared under the shadow’s of Nyx’s cloak, the tips of her fingers curled loosely against the inside of his wrist, keeping at least one of his hands from his weapon while also guiding him through the throng and toward a duller side street. It was strange, she thought to herself. One quick glance in his direction before she moved toward the pie cart and she had read his mind. While the rest of the crowd passed by him with disgusted looks it was she who noticed the tension in his shoulders, the widening of his stance and the cold crazed look in his eyes. The next moment she had moved in, knowing what he needed to calm his internal storm enough to get the out of this without a scene. Now that they were headed out she continued to feed him what he needed.

For several blocks she led him thus, feeling how his heart slowed and became more steady as her touch continued and the crowds thinned. The market gave way to the dilapidated residences of those who called this district home. Eyes still followed their movements, but the strength they gathered from the crowd was no longer with them and instead they backed off in fear more often than they rose up in defiance to Nyx and then filtered to her when they noticed her proximity to the horse-paching point ear.

She met the looks back with a glare from under the brim of her hat until they were finally cut off as she ducked them into a hovel that appeared to be abandoned. Wrapped in shadows again her fingers fell from his wrist slowly and she turned to him and held out a pie.

“I love these things…” she admits with a slight nervous smile before taking a bite of the one she kept for herself. A bit of grease dribbled out of the corner of her mouth and she wiped it away with the edge of her sleeve. Shrugging her eyes moved toward the door they had swung closed behind them.

“So what now? If they haven’t already they will kill Aelion, a few days and the city will calm down, but until then…” slowly she let her gaze float off the pie toward him, “until then you should lay low. I know you wanted to speak to Aelion, I don’t think we can get to him now though.” She sighs a little and lets her eyes drop again.

Might have had a chance if you hadn’t sent him on your errand last night…

“He obviously wasn’t working alone, though… I don’t know where to start poking around though. The contacts I have in this city are all… they are human. Whatever Aelion was up to he wasn’t telling any round ears about. But maybe Dmitrova knows something…”

A sigh and another bite of her pie, another wipe of her lips.

Going to go spying on your boss if Nyx asks you to? I thought being a Hellkite was your life goal, throwing it away already?

That’s not new news. I made that decision the moment I lied to Dmitrova about not knowing where Nyx was. I had my chance then… I could have turned him in, I could have screamed to the rafters where he lived, I could have told them the truth about Aelion… but I lied. And in doing so I cast my lot with him.

In the darkness her eyes shined out from under the brim of her hat at Nyx, she wondered if he found her as easy to read as she found him. If the feelings she dared not say yet were burning in her eyes. If he knew that right now he could ask her to go with him to the end of the earth and she would follow.

Nyx’s senses hummed as he waited out Cay’s dealings with the dwarven vendor; his yellow eyes narrowed to slits as they swept from one sneering face to the next, his jaw clenched tight as he forced his mind to ignore the epithets and slurs that were lobbed in his direction, and his fingers resting at the ready on the hilt of his blade. Even as exposed and anxious as he found himself feeling, then – standing alone like some stony island at the mouth of the bay, defiant against the crashing waves of hatred thrown at him from the storm-tossed sea of humanity that coursed around him – the Mith’ganni couldn’t help but take some small satisfaction in the moment, as well… Yes, he thought as he evenly returned the spiteful glares of the trio of young, brash humans who had seen fit to press their luck and shove roughly past him as they lofted their insults, you are all so very brave when the numbers are in your favor. This is how your empire managed its birth, yes? Where will your bravery be when you are without your friends … alone in the dark … and I give you the opportunity to make good your threats?

The mith’ganni’s eyes and ears were keen on the crush of loathing that seemed, now, to exude from the market, itself, and he opened himself to it, let it flow into and through him to fuel his own hatred. His mind was occupied with thoughts of how many of them he mind send screaming to their ends before he was brought down himself and, had some other numbers-emboldened round-ear chosen to take inspiration from that last group and intentionally jostled him in their passing, Nyx was almost certain that he would not be long in finding out. He found himself hoping for it, in fact… Just one small excuse to open one of them up… and his fingers curled around the well worn hilt of the kukri at his hip as one of the thugs made the decision to turn and shout at the “horse-f***er” one more time… the motion that would draw the blade from its scabbard, along with the intended step toward the monkey-faced breeder, was halted when he felt Cay’s fingers on his wrist. He stayed the instinctual flinch of his muscles that the unexpected contact brought and, as her hand guided his gently away from the kukri, tried to force some of the remaining tension from them as she led him away from the throng in the market and towards less crowded venues along its periphery.

A short time later, some distance from the crowded thoroughfares hemming the bazaar, she led him off of the streets all together and into the dusty stillness of an abandoned tenement. The thrumming tension of his paranoia had steadily ebbed from him as they had made their way here – the cautioning touch of Cayrimsa’s fingers at his wrist having done as much for that as had the diminishment of scornful glances and bigoted comments – and almost drained completely away as she led him into the clinging comfort of the shadowed room. He cast a glance over his shoulder as the door to the place closed behind them and, now freed from the need to perpetually scan his surroundings, Nyx’s yellow eyes found Cay’s face. His gaze drifted downward and watched his fingers trail after hers as her hand slid away from his wrist, and then returned to meet her eyes again as she offered one of the paper-wrapped pies to him…

“I love these things,” she smiled nervously, taking a bite of the pastry she’d kept for herself.

… Nyx blinked, then, and his hand broke off its pursuit of hers to take the greasy parcel she had offered. His gaze let go of her face for the moment and peered at the curious contents of the pie that were revealed when broke a piece of the crust away. Still unsure of what he might be about to eat, he tentatively sniffed at the filling. He wasn’t sure what to make of the thing but, when his eyes lifted to her face once more and he watched her chase down a trickle of grease that had escaped her lips and blot it away with her sleeve, Nyx smiled faintly and finally took a bite. “Not bad,” he agreed with a nod after having swallowed that first mouthful.

“So what now,” she asked as he took another bite, “If they haven’t already they will kill Aelion, a few days and the city will calm down, but until then… until then you should lay low...

Lay low? Nyx scowled, his gaze sweeping back toward the door for a moment… imagining the city full of people beyond it who, today, had much less tolerance for moon-eyed point-ears than they had yesterday. You mean ‘hide’… from them…

“…I know you wanted to speak to Aelion, I don’t think we can get to him now, though.”

The scowl curled into a something of a wry grin and his gaze swung back in time to catch hers turning downwards. “We can if we must,” Nyx assured her, “Humans, I have noticed, tend to design their prisons with more thought given to keeping people in and give little consideration to keeping people out, yes?”

“He obviously wasn’t working alone, though… I don’t know where to start poking around though. The contacts I have in this city are all… they are human. Whatever Aelion was up to he wasn’t telling any round ears about. But maybe Dmitrova knows something…”

“I am certain that he does,” the mith’ganni nodded again, his expression going thoughtful as he bit off and chewed another mouthful of the pie, “otherwise, why would he have taken such an interest in Bolstoii’s affairs to begin with, yes? It is more than just a simple percentage of Styopa’s caravans, I am sure; there would have been easier methods for Vadim to have gotten that…” He licked the grease from his fingers and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes met Cay’s, then, winking at him from the deep shadows cast by the brim of her hat and he smiled…

“As for what we do now, melamin,” he purred, taking a step closer to her, “I have an idea or two… if risking your position with the Hellkites is no longer a concern…”

He could read part of her at least, that she admitted to herself when his locked on hers and he smiled and stepped closer to her.  As always his proximity made her breath still and silently she cursed herself for the reaction.  He questioned her desire to stay loyal to the Hellkites and she paused, debating how much he saw and how much she dared to reveal.

"If Dmitrova ever discovered what has truly happened over these past two days... I'm dead."  She says nothing more but instead looks up into Nyx's eyes. 

This has gone too far for me to turn back... it is you I trust with my life now.

"What did you have in mind?"

“No, elen en cormamin,” he whispered into the air between them, swimming in her eyes even as he willed his hand not to reach out and touch her unbidden, “if Vadim ever discovers the truth of these past two days it will be his death that is the price of it, not yours… I promise you that if nothing else…”

Ask me to kill him for you, now, Nyx couldn’t help but think at that moment, and I shall gladly do it… and hand you the whole of the Hellkite’s for your own if that is what you wish.

The very thought brought a smile to his lips again… Such a thing could possibly happen before this was all over and done, couldn’t it? Very soon, in fact, if the plans that were at work in the assassin’s mind played out... “To find out exactly what our dear Captain knows, we shall need to visit his home,” he said before poking the last of the mince pie into his mouth, “There will certainly be information to be found in his offices beneath the Hydra but, if Vadim is anywhere near as smart as he believes himself to be, he will have squirreled away any allusions to his darker dealings somewhere more private, yes?”

Her heart fluttered and her fingers twitched slightly.  He promised so much, his words were laced with terms of affection and his eyes suggested that none of it was trite.  She couldn't full decide if she should throttle him or kiss him.  It seemed that at this point both prospects were painful to her.

Instead she tries to focus on the job at hand.  Slowly she nods.  "Yes... he might underestimate people, but he is not a complete fool.  Whatever he knows will not be easy to get to.  Aelion might be easier to reach come to think of it.  I still think we should move quickly no matter what we do. 

"My face is too well known amongst the Hellkites to use a ruse like we did with the Trade officer to get in.  I'm not due to report to Dmi for another few days.  I imagine they drug you there in some back way, but I doubt you can clearly remember it."

She stops a moment and her eyes drift off somewhere as she considers a thought.  Slowly they refocus on him.  "To get into the dungeon our best bet would be to do something that would get us arrested... the same could be said for getting into Dmitrova's lairs.  One of us could easily be escorted down for the right infraction... as you have learned well enough... it would be dangerous, though." 

He crumpled the grease-stained paper between his hands as he chewed the last morsel of the pie and considered her words. “Easy enough for me to get arrested, I would think,” he smirked, tossing the crumpled pie wrapper into the gloom, “I could step outside right now, say a word or two, and have Legionnaires on my heels in moments…” he brushed his hands off on his pants and, folding his arms across his chest, leaned a shoulder against the wall beside her… “and to end up in Vadim’s private audience again, I think I would have to do little more than show up at the Hydra and wink at him, yes? Speak my mind to him and get ushered just as quickly back into that tunnel…”

Ah, yes, the tunnel…Nyx’s voice trailed off, there, and his gaze flitted away to fix on some nether-point in the shadows that blanketed the depths of the room. That tunnel in which Dmitrova’s little torture chamber was secreted away continued on past the chamber itself, didn’t it? How far beyond, he wondered – all the way from the Hydra to Dmitrova’s own private lair, perhaps - and what would be the best way to get inside to find out? A mischievous spark flickered in his yellow eyes as they let go of the shadows and returned to dance across Cay’s face once more… “Tell me, Cay,” his lips parted in a devious grin, “what do you know of spells that might render a person invisible?”

Speak your mind indeed... you seem very good at that dear Nyx... She thought to herself with a sigh.  A few more bites of her pie while he spoke kept her eyes on it instead of him, noting the slight crescent moon shape it took while she ate it.

"Invisibility?"  The corner of her lip raises and she turns her head to look at him.  A little laugh escapes from her and she shakes her head.  "None.  I cannot say I have had much use for such spells.  I'm not like you Nyx.  I have not crept in the shadows for years killing... and it has likely been easier for me to avoid being arrested all these years than it has been for you..."  A sliver of ice slipped into her voice when she reminded him that they were not alike despite their almost comfortable conversation.  It did not disappear as her thoughts shifted to Dugan, recalling the way his blood soaked ring had caught the morning light. 

"However..." she hurried on, "I can make it so that others are stricken either blind or deaf... of course it isn't temporary..."  Her eyes brighten and she smiles at that somewhat proudly.  "And then there is one I used on the Trade officer... he could see what happened around him but was not in a state to do much about it... although that was helped by what I did to his balls...  that one is temporary, but it lasts for a long while.  But most of what I have learned is to inflict pain." 

The assassin offered a faint nod as Cay, in her musings, didn’t fail to point out the differences between them, again. A near-inaudible sigh – which could have emoted exasperation as easily as disappointment – whispered over his lips as his gaze hardened a fraction and slid away from her face to regard the dusty floorboards at his feet. “We each creep in the shadows in our own way, Cayrimsa,” Nyx offered as he contemplated the difficulties of infiltrating Vadim’s tunnel without the aid of the spells he hoped she would have, “though, I suppose stealth would concern you less that it does me, in most cases. Your targets, I have noticed over the years, are lured to their fates easily enough with but a look and a promise…” He shrugged and almost chuckled, lifting his eyes to hers again. “…Those I hunt are not so easily persuaded. Perhaps if I were prettier, yes?”

The mith’ganni pushed away from the wall against which he had been leaning and ran the fingers of one hand through the ebon spill of his mane as he paced towards the door. “Spells of invisibility would definitely be of use where gaining access to Dmitrov’s is concerned,” he said, thinking out loud more than informing her of anything she likely hadn’t surmised for herself, “in the absence of them, though, we may have more success in our pursuit of having that conversation with Aelion… That which we need from Vadim will likely remain where it is until he is given cause to move or destroy it… But Aelion…” another shrug “…as you said, if the half-moon has not yet been executed it shan’t be long before he will be… and once his thread is severed, any information he might be able to provide is gone along with him…”

He stopped just before the door, his mind already formulating plans on how he might get into the dungeons, and turned to regard Cay curiously for a moment… “Have you ever been subjected to the Empire’s hospitality, Cay?”... For some reason, he couldn’t imagine that she had ever been shut away in the confines of a Braudian prison and, as he had begun to sort the particulars of a planned foray into one of the Empire’s more notable facilities, wondered if she would be able to manage such a thing… wondered if he would be able to manage seeing her there…

She bit her tongue and hardened her own gaze when he started to insinuate that she used her body to accomplish her goals. 

Does it bother you Cay?  It never did before.  Does it bother you because he knows or because he dares to point it out... and did you expect otherwise?  You bit him, he bites back.

She said nothing, though and he went on "... I have noticed over the years..." 

Years?  Over the years?  The thought of him watching what she had done with her life for the past years made her shiver and feel naked before him.  It was not a feeling she enjoyed and it darkened her expression even further.

Dark eyes followed him as he began to pace, his boots kicking up small clouds of dust in the debris that littered the floor. 

"Spells of invisibility would definitely be of use where gaining access to Dmitrov’s is concerned..."  he began to contemplate out loud. 

"I might be able to get my hands on something..." she murmured and let the last bite of her pie cut off anything else she might be considering.

His eyes ticked toward her and he nodded slightly to show he had heard her then continued with his thoughts, discussing Aelion and the possibility of moving down into the dungeon.

“Have you ever been subjected to the Empire’s hospitality, Cay?”  He had turned and looked over at her again, finding her eyes to still be a bit dark and narrowed when he did.

"Don't you know?  Don't you know everything about me?  Followed me for all these years, standing in the shadows while you watched me work, watched me tease and torture?"  She crumbled up her own bit of paper and tossed it behind her as she rose to her full height and took a step closer to him.  "Have you enjoyed it Nyx?  Watching those humans hurt me all these years?  Felt that I was getting what I deserved for abandoning my elven heritage perhaps?" 

A pause and then she finally answered his question.  "One night, many years ago I found myself in Imperial hospitality.  Never again..." 

The frown that fell over her lips suggested that it was not a pleasant memory.  The fire the burned in her eyes suggested that her emotions were making it difficult for her to stay focused on the task at hand.

“Have you enjoyed it, Nyx,” Cay demanded, causing Nyx to realize that somewhere in his words he had just admitted to ghosting her steps for far longer than even she was aware. She tossed away her trash and strode towards him, her eyes dark and hooded when his gaze met hers again…  “Watching those humans hurt me all these years?  Felt that I was getting what I deserved for abandoning my elven heritage perhaps?”

The moon-colored eyes didn’t waver from the amber ones that glared almost accusatorially at him as she advanced; neither did they reflect any of the perceived animosity that burned behind those cinnamon pools. Nyx shook his head even before the answer to her questions formed on his lips. “I have enjoyed watching you,” he said softly when she came to a stop in front of him, “I still enjoy watching you… but, no, I have not enjoyed watching them hurt you…”

Now, a voice tittered in his mind’s ear, tell her how many of the ones that she let escape you have killed for having done so… tell her that you have wanted to hurt her on occasion for her denial of her blood, too, hmm? She’ll surely appreciate that…

Another shake of his head, this time not to express anything I particular but, instead, to dislodge the mocking voice from his thoughts…

She didn’t need to hear what he thought, though, the buttons had already been pushed.

She took a step closer to him, taking in a deep breath of his scent as she did. For a moment she said nothing, just breathed him in and looked up into his eyes.

“But you did nothing to stop them. Did you? For all your talk of…” she swallowed hard unable to speak the word yet. “For all your feelings that I am like you, that half of my blood is enough… you never came out and stopped them.”

“You may be right Nyx. What you refuse to say out loud, but what you have slipped between your words. I may be a whore… I may degrade myself to lay with humans in order to get what I want. But let us get something straight Nyx…” Her voice whispered coolly. Without hesitation she reached up and her fingers pushed back a lock of his hair only to light upon the pointed tip of his ear. The fingers dripped down the pale skin and down the line of his neck.

“Your blood is pure elven… you sport the ears, the almond moon eyes of your people…” there was a twang of disgust as she spoke and continued to look into those eyes she mentions.

“You use the silvered tongue of the elves, but not always…”

Despite this tone in her voice her fingers do not leave him, instead they trail down his neck, pressing a bit firmer when they move over his jacket, making sure that through the padding he can still feel her touch. “You dress in shadow, instead of the light that elves adore… cloaking yourself in the tombs of humans deep in the belly of a city not the gentle embrace of nature, and have for years.”

Inch by inch her fingers move down the midline of his jacket, down his breastbone and to the softer flesh of his stomach. “You do not hold life sacred as elves by nature do, instead you kill…”

Finally her hand descends toward his hips, a thumb dragging over the silver skull leaving her smeared fingerprint across the top of it. “You kill for him… your seductive God of death… and you kill because you enjoy it. You gave yourself to him, you left the plains, you killed your people.”

She grips his belt buckle more firmly in her fingers and pulls him half a step closer to her. “You, Nyx Shyndyn may have been birthed of elven parents, raised in their embrace… but you are no more elven than I, perhaps less.”

The amber sparks fly across her eyes and it is difficult to read what goes on in the mind behind them, mainly because she herself was confused by it.

The fires that burned behind Cay’s eyes did so with a peculiar light in the moment that Nyx paused in his confession to the witch. That light, more so than his own inability to find the proper words to continue, stretched his hesitation out into a longer-than-intended silence that ended only when she drew in a long, deep breath after closing the distance between them all the more. There were no words for the moment, it seemed – none that could be vocalized, at any rate – but, in that lingering silence, Nyx knew that those nebulous things were being spoken in the place where their gazes met … and found himself hoping that, this once, his eyes wouldn’t find it all too easy to lie…

 “But you did nothing to stop them,” Cay murmured after a moment, “Did you?...”

Should have known that was coming, yes? But just had to stop and attempt to arrange your thoughts… Nyx’s jaw clenched but his gaze held hers. What ever his eyes told her, now, he hoped their words were penned by his heart as opposed to his ever-quick-to-defend mind….

“…For all your talk of…For all your feelings that I am like you, that half of my blood is enough… you never came out and stopped them.”

You would not have wished me to, his mind defended, You have taken your pleasure from your pain for far longer than I have been watching you…

I should have, his heart admitted, and had I known sooner why I was watching you… why I could not stop watching you… perhaps I would have…

Nyx said nothing as Cay proceeded, though. His gaze transfixed by hers and his senses thrumming at her proximity, the mith’ganni simply stood staring into the half-elf’s soul, absorbing her accusations and admonitions as they were hurled at him… He scowled, eyes narrowing but not leaving hers, when the witch turned words he had or had not spoken into something akin to calling her a whore… No more a whore than I am, nwalmaer…… he thought to voice his dispute at that moment, too, but…

“…But let us get something straight Nyx…”

…the challenge was washed away on the hissing intake of breath as she reached up with slender fingers to push back a lock of his hair and come to rest upon the pointed tip of his ear. Even as those fingertips drifted away from his ear and whispered downward along his neck, Nyx didn’t move... the cool of his skin warmed beneath her touch… muscles fluttered their reaction to her fingertips as they traced over him… the beating of his heart quickened… but the assassin remained still and silent as Cay continued. There was nothing he could say to dispute anything she said, anyway…

“Your blood is pure elven… you sport the ears, the almond moon eyes of your people… You use the silvered tongue of the elves, but not always…”

It was strange how the feelings that surged through him, now, were so close to those that enveloped him in the moment just before the kill, Nyx thought, as her touch rippled away from his neck, became firmer so as not to be diminished by the bulk of his coat as those fingertips trailed over his chest. His yellow eyes narrowed a bit more as his ears registered the tone in her voice but still didn’t break from hers One onyx brow arched upward and the tip of his tongue flicked across his lips before they started to curl into an expression somewhere between snarl and smile but otherwise, the mith’ganni remained still…

“…You dress in shadow, instead of the light that elves adore… cloaking yourself in the tombs of humans deep in the belly of a city not the gentle embrace of nature, and have for years…You do not hold life sacred as elves by nature do, instead you kill…”

… A certain tension – a sensation at once familiar and forgotten - crept into his lithe frame as her fingers wandered lower, languidly tracing downward from the point of his breastbone, across his stomach, and over the skull-shaped buckle of his belt. Nyx’s stomach tightened – contracting instinctually as hands that weren’t his own came that close to his weapons – his fingers flexed and he drew in a slow breath to keep the reaction from spreading farther..

“You kill for him… your seductive God of death…”

Or, Nyx wondered, considering the events of these last few days and the revelations – some that he had come to on his own, some others offered by the likes of Taellyn and even the forsaken death-god that Cay now provoked him with – that seemed to have unraveled in their course, do I kill for you?

“…and you kill because you enjoy it. You gave yourself to him, you left the plains, you killed your people.”

“You, Nyx Shyndyn may have been birthed of elven parents, raised in their embrace,” Cay’s fingers closed suddenly around the silver-skull buckle, then, and with a tug, she pulled him even closer as she finished, “but you are no more elven than I, perhaps less.”

Finally, as the ambiguous expression that had been ghosting his features solidified into a sharply primal grin, Nyx’s moon-hued eyes broke free of Cay’s smoldering amber gaze, dipped slowly to where her fingers were entwined in his belt, lingered there for a moment before, just as slowly, slithering back up to lock to hers, again… and the smile evolved into wicked laughter… “Much less,” he nodded as one alabaster hand shot out from beneath his cloak to clamp around her wrist, keeping her from moving her hand from where he now had it trapped. He stepped forward as his other hand appeared from the penumbral folds to tangle fingers, savagely and sensuously at the same time, into the chestnut tresses that spilled from beneath her hat as he backed her into the wall and pressed tightly against her. A subtle turning of his wrist was enough to crane her neck back, tipping her face up to his more than was required to simply meet his eyes… He leaned in even closer; pressing against her and pulling her to him all at once, his face close enough to hers, now, that when he spoke again, his lips scarcely brushed over hers

“For all your attempts to deny it, Cayrimsa Etellenya,” Nyx whispered, the grip on her wrist loosening as the hand that held it feathered up along her forearm, past her elbow, and danced delicately around her waist from there, “your own words have done nothing but confirm what I have been telling you these past days… I am not an elf any more than you are… I am not the human that you tell yourself that you want, either, am I?”

His hand found the small of her back, pressed firmly against the celestial shape that hid beneath the formless burlap sackcloth of her dress, and lifted upward enough to lift her feet from the floorboards beneath them. “No,” he murmured, tasting her lips and her breath on each word that he spoke as he held her separate from the rest of the world that surrounded them, “were I that, melamin, I would have taken from you what those others have, already… I would have stopped them all from granting you the pain that has been your pleasure all this time and you would have hated me for more than the points on my ears, yes?

You are right… I am no more elf than you are… and you are no more human than I am, are you? And that, elen en cormamin, is what makes us so alike! Your blood and mine be damned… elven… human… all of it! I am nothing, Cay… but I am yours…”

He lifted her higher then, enough to bring her lips fully to his, and kissed her. He kissed her hard, at first, much as he had just a few short nights ago in that alley, but there was more passion than anger in this kiss than that first one… nor did this one end as abruptly…

A dark laughter and a grip that pushed her back against the wall is what she had elicited from him at first.  The vile manifestation of her anger rolled in her stomach with it, making her wince and tighten in his hold. 

You pushed him to do this, don’t deny it Cay, you pushed and now he will take…

But the voice died as he leaned in toward her, whispering softly to her even as his hand released her wrist and moved to a caress down her body.  She shuddered and tried to hear the words that he spoke to her, but concentrating on them was nearly impossible.  The voice in her head was screaming too loudly, the blood rushed through her skull as her heart pounded in her chest, and his eyes stared down into her very soul saying more than his words ever could.

Stop him Cay… won’t you stop him?  You could.  Don’t pretend that you are some weakling, we all know better than that.  If this is not what you want then stop him… the voice with the elven accent taunted her, and for once she recognized it as her own voice. 

Or is that why you pushed him?  You wanted him to do this, because you were too scared to make the first move yourself.  Because under it all you are a coward.  Too afraid that in the end you’ll just be hurt again… best to be hurt in the beginning, isn’t that right?

Bits of what Nyx was saying filtered through to her.

“I am not the human that you tell yourself that you want, either, am I?”

Is that what I want?  Is that what I really want?

She stared into his eyes as he pulled her closer to him and up off her feet.  They apologized for causing her any pain, they spoke of the torment she had put him through while he had watched her in the shadows, they begged her to accept him, to complete him and in doing so to complete herself.

“Your blood and mine be damned… elven… human… all of it! I am nothing, Cay… but I am yours…”

The voices stopped they no longer needed to continue, and even if they had tried they would have been cut off by the feel of his lips pressed harshly against hers.  He held her tightly against him.  Layers of clothing could not hide the heat that sparked through his body, nor the rushed beat of his heart so close to her own. 

The first moments of it she stayed stiff in his arms, feeling the passion and the demands that the kiss made of her.  It was too familiar at first, the demands that came with such an act, but as he continued it softened some and while still demanding the demands were not what she was used to.  He was not asking her to degrade herself for his pleasure, nor was he trying to make her into something she was not, to fill some gap that she never could.  He demanded only that she be honest with herself and with him, that she take his broken soul into her embrace; and slowly she did. 

Sparks of warmth from his body began melting into her own, relaxing the muscles to a point that she felt herself begin to slip in his arms for a moment.  He retightened his grip on her, holding her even more firmly against him, but the act was almost not needed as her own arms rose to curl around his neck.  Breath by breath she returns the kiss with more feeling, taking what he offers and ever so slowly offering something back in return. 

To belong… that is all I ever wanted… her mind whispers as she pulls him closer.  Fingers press into his shoulders; lips caress his own as she becomes the one to demand.  The more she demands the more she realizes it is simply not enough.  Her fingers roam over his back and up his collar seeking his skin, running through his hair.  If he is hers she suddenly wants him, all of him.

Several minutes of time that no longer registers with either of them transpire in this mutual bliss until finally she pulls her lips back with a gasp.  Her eyes stay closed as she sinks back down toward the floor, but keeps her body pressed against his.  One hand drifts with her, stopping at his heart where her head has settled.

Trembling she whispers, “Amin delotha lle…” 

With a breath, though, her fingers find their way inside his jacket and the thin shirt under it, to the scarred skin below, pressing her palm over his heart as she turns her head and buries it against him.  “Nan’ amin caelaya’lle…” she mutters against the dark shadows.

A lifetime could have passed in the moments that the two of them were lost in that kiss and, perhaps, in some fashion, a lifetime… several lifetimes… did pass. The fury of the kiss’s beginning was a testament, it seemed, to the rage and loathing that burned in their very souls… his anger at the human blood in her veins; blood that had taken everything from him and made him less than he had ever been manifested in the hungry insistence of his lips on hers… her hatred for his elven blood (and her own) evident in the icy and rigid resistance against those demands. The wrath and scorn were rapidly consumed in the both of them, though, as that initial fury burned itself into a passion born of more powerful things… want… need… desire… acceptance… and the hard ferocity of the kiss melted, softened by the flames of truth and yearning that burned in the two. The aggression and rough insistence of Nyx’s attentions eased in the span of the shuddering and longing breath that accompanied the thawing of Cay’s stony opposition. The contention, animosity, and apathy that had for so long clad the façade of the relationship between the witch and the assassin were flicked away on the dancing flame-tips of the ravenous fires that, at last, were freed from the long-damped furnaces kept by a pair of hardened hearts and shattered souls.

Yes, a lifetime and more came and went in those moments of eternal bliss in which those lost souls found one another, melded together in a union of sincerity that, perhaps, neither of them had expected and, for Nyx, it seemed, a new lifetime stole it’s first breath from the gasp that escaped Cay’s lips and blew sweetly over his own when she finally pulled away. There was nothing behind him, now, he thought… taking her breath as his own in the instant before his arms loosened slightly around her and let her feet find the floor again… and everything ahead. It wasn’t as difficult as he had imagined it would be to draw in a breath past the pounding of his heart… Cay’s head and hand resting against it, now, somehow kept the thrumming and fluttering organ from crushing his lungs, he imagined, and prevented it, too, from exploding from his chest altogether. His scarcely opened when he realized that it wasn’t just his own arms that held her to him, now… he still held her, yes, but now wrapped in a languorously tender embrace, not one inclined to restraining dominance… his tongue danced over his tingling lips, still tasting hers upon them, as she leaned into him, and his hands feathered lightly over her as he bowed his head to nuzzle into the rainwater scented locks of her hair.

“Amin delotha lle,” she whispered, her words trembling against the air just as her body trembled against his.

“Amin sinta,” he answered just as softly, closing his eyes again as he gingerly kissed the top of her head, his fingers gently stroking along the spill of her hair and across her cheek.

A trembling breath of his own followed as her fingers slid into his coat, under the tunic beneath, and traced their way along a path of scars to come to rest over his heart. One arm lay across her slender back as its hand moved to cradle the back of her head, and the other snaked a bit more tightly around her waist, its hand coming to rest on her hip, as she buried her face in his chest.

“Nan’ amin caelaya’lle,” she murmured, her breath following her hand, caressing his skin with its warmth.

“Amin hiraetha,” he replied, planting another kiss amidst her locks. For a long moment he said nothing else… let himself be content in the peace and simplicity of just holding, caressing, and feeling her… but there was more to be said; more that had to be said. As much as all of this had confused him, Nyx knew, Cayrimsa was likely even more confused by it… even if she had been granted the insights he had been provided by the stars and Taellyn’s dreamweaving she would have denied them as stubbornly as she tried to disavow everything else and, he felt, if he didn’t explain those insights to her now, in this moment… if she escaped without truly knowing… she would all too easily find her way back to that denial and be lost to him again.

Tell her then, Steppe Son, a voice that sounded curiously like Taellyn’s murmured in his mind, Tell her the truth… if neither of you take anything else from this, let it be the truth…

“Amin ero nowe amin vithel delothe lle, Cayrimsa,” Nyx whispered then, both hands moving to cradle her face between them and lift her gaze to his. He sighed, studying her face through heavy-lidded eyes, and then, although her eyes hadn’t opened to see it, smiled softly. “Nan’ sii’ amin sinta tanya iire amin delotha lle,” he continued, pausing a moment to taste her lips again, “ten’naa amin mela lle til’en mele tanya ta kelasakkata amin fea…”

Her eyes opened slowly and took in the soft smile he offered under those yellow soulful eyes. Her hand caressed from his neck to his pallid cheek. Gently she touched the warmed skin and then trailed back toward the base of his neck where the caress turned into a more firm grip that matched the fixed look in her eyes.

“Stop it Nyx! Stop apologizing… stop explaining things I already know. Just tell me how to accept it! Tell me what I’m supposed to do with it!

You say you love me, and believe me in my life that is something very rare. Forgotten, hated, pitied or simply tolerated is the usual gambit. The times that I felt I could be loved… they were taken from me before they could bloom.

And… and I think I believe you Nyx. I want to believe you.”

With the word want she presses up against him a bit more, but the firm grip does not relax.

“But what does it change Nyx? It cannot make things easier. You could never be accepted back into the folds of an Elven community with me at your side. They would not allow it, and neither could I. I won’t go back to that life Nyx. I can’t.

Our life in a city would be equally as difficult. The Hellkites are spread out all over the kingdom. We don’t exactly have a low profile… the mith’ganni assassin and the half elven sorceress with the lopped off ears. If they ever found out what we have done… there will be a price on our heads, a price that killing off Dmitrova might not remove.

And then there is us… I have despised your kind my entire life…” her grip loosens to touch his ear, “those pointed ears make me want to scream, I couldn’t even bear to look at my own. Half of what I am is destroying your civilization and I know you hate humans as much as I have hated elves.

I think I can accept you because… you aren’t like the rest. But it isn’t going to change how I feel about the rest Nyx. Perhaps you can accept my heritage for the same reasons… but… but I cannot agree with you on your hatred of humans, I feel no kinship toward my elven blood, I do not sympathize with their plight. If they were all wiped from the face of this planet tomorrow, I would not weep, save for perhaps you…”

The fingers resting against his heart spread to cover more of his chest.

“I do not love the humans, but I can respect them…”

Her eyes clench tightly as her fingers, those clutching at his ear and those resting over his heart, press harshly into the man who brings her such torment while at the same time offers her the world.

“I don’t know what you want from me! And I don’t know if I can give it… Stop the poetics and the promises and the bull! Tell me what you want! What is it you want from me!?” Her voice rises in the small space between them.

Without opening her eyes she again buries her head into his chest, trying to hear his heart if only to still her own while she waits and pleads with the Gods above for him to answer with something she can give.

What did he want?

Nyx wasn’t sure that he truly knew what he wanted. There, in the shadows of the abandoned tenement, with the rest of the world vanquished beyond that penumbral veil, all he could truly claim to want was for this moment to last… but he knew that they couldn’t linger, here, in their own private world forever, just as he knew that the answer she wanted wasn’t a thing that could be contained in that perfect, timeless place… There had to be more than that and Nyx knew that there was – he had seen the answers in the stars and in his dreams, had them affirmed in the words of the Dream-weaving Taellyn and, in a lesser, mocking fashion, in Prien’s rebukes and taunts, and thus had come to understand how Fate herself had wrought all of this – but finding the words to explain that to Cay, finding the words to clearly define what he wanted, not only from her but from himself, as well… Are there such words? Is there time to speak them all, should I manage to find them?

Nyx drew in a breath as his gaze dropped to where Cay’s face was once again nestled into his chest and her hand spread over his heart – felt her breath as it whispered through the folds of cloth she had slipped aside to get her skin against his and, where skin met skin, he felt her pulse keeping rhythm with his own – and released that breath in a soft, almost uncertain sigh. “I want this, ” he said at last, one hand at her back, cradling her body against his, and the fingers of the other brushing across her cheek and over the scarred place on her ear, “I want moments that no one else has and where nothing else matters. I want what I came to this place to find… and…I cannot say if it changes anything or if it makes any sort difference… but I have come to realize that I came here to find you, Cayrimsa, vanima nwalmaeramin …”

He felt her tense slightly, then, the pressure of her fingertips increasing as one part of her fought to refute what he told her as impossibility and the other part of her fought to hear the truth in what he said. In response, Nyx’s arms, at first, wrapped more tightly around her, pulling her closer to him if such a thing was possible; then, after a moment, his embrace loosened, his hands gliding delicately over her still trembling frame. “Everything you have said is true,” he whispered, “There is</i> no place for us in the human world or the elven one. Neither would accept me… humans because I am a point-ear, as you say, and elves because I am kinslayer… but I do not care for their acceptance… I belong to neither and I hate them both the same for it… just like you…”

A heavier sigh blew past Nyx’s lips following that admission and, in its wake, the mith’ganni bowed his head to plant one more kiss atop hers before he reluctantly pulled a single step back from her. “When I left Shanurdir, I followed the stars, believing they would lead me to find the humans that destroyed my people… and I did find them… but I also found that I had destroyed myself … that I had become the nothing that I am now, yes?” His eyes sought ought hers as he continued, one hand still lingering on her hip and the other moving to touch her cheek again, “I was already less than nothing in human eyes, Cay, and, after what I had done in the name of vengeance for my people, discovered that I had been forsaken by my people because of it… All that was left for me, then, were the stars that lit my path and the god that had taken everything else from me in order to give me nothing but the hopes of the hopeless… So I became Death… the edge of the Executioner’s Axe… and belonged nowhere other than where the stars led and belonged to no one other than myself and my god…

Neither Prien nor the stars kept me in one place overlong until twenty years ago when the stars led me to Drasnia. They led me here and Prien called for his souls and I took them while I waited for the stars to guide me to the next place… but the stars have not guided me to another place to find what it is I seek because it is already here and has been here all along… they brought me here when you arrived here… they pointed me to you when your pain was no longer a private thing… and they painted you in the sky when it came time for me to steal that pain from you… That is what I want, Cay. I want to belong, again, to something… to someone… to you…”

Sinking in the liquid depths of the glimmering amber eyes that stared silently up into his, Nyx paused for a moment, the fingers of one hand caressing her cheek and then tracing the rose-petal curves of her lips as the other at her hip lifted and moved to close over her hand where it splayed over his heart. “I am not asking for you to change who you are,” he murmured after a while, “to run away with me and live a life on the steppes or in the forests. I am not asking you to suddenly despise the human blood in your veins as you do the elven. I do not care if you even acknowledge to anyone else that you love me... just tell me that you do… tell me that I belong to you in the same way that you belong to me… Tell me that you and I can have the one thing which has been denied to both of us and I will show you a world where our blood does not matter, Cayrimsa Etellenya. Tell me… make me more than death and dying with that one small thing… and it will not matter if Vadim ever discovers what we have done because, if you can… if you do… I will show you love like you have never known… I will show you love that cannot be taken away… and… I will give you the Hellkites, as well.”

She ran. While she curled up against his chest, lost in the shadows he carried with him always, she pounded her escape through the aspens and the oaks that populated her dreams. If she kept running eventually she would find that the trees gave way to a city, that the soft ground was replaced by hardened cobblestones under her feet.

“I want this” his words slowed the race she ran in her mind. The accented words continued as did his touches. His fingers caressed over her even as his words slapped against her bare skin like fresh saplings leaving welts that rose in bright red.

She jolted when he stepped back found herself staring at his moonish eyes once again. Out of the corners of her eyes she could still see the trees rushing past her, branches of white and black bathed in milky yellow moonlight.

Run… something deep in her gut commanded but she held fast to the words he said now. They were not lost as some of his earlier words had been, she feared that if she lost them she would run. Already without his arms wrapped tightly around her she could feel her legs tighten with the desire. The words he spoke were like guiding stars in the heavens that kept her steady instead of retreating backwards.

Eventually his words ended and she was left with the faint impression of the stars in the sky to follow, if she chose to. The impulse to run was still strong but she focused and instead found herself truly considering what he said.

She let him keep the hand he clasped to his heart, although she pressed it further against him and felt the pull of the gash in her palm. Her other hand began to trace over him. It rose first to the fingers that caressed her lips. Delicate as snowflakes falling she flitted her fingers down his and to his wrist, they floated along his arm, catching every stitch in the fabric of his coat and back up to his neck. They traced the pulse that throbbed out from under her other hand up toward his jaw, likewise across his cheek and lips before returning toward his temple and finally into the thick black hair. At last they trembled back across his ear. Carefully they dropped again, down his chest and back to the skull at his waist. Her eyes followed them, considering every inch that the touched, wondering if she could call those inches hers.

Emotion boiled deeply inside of her. Some of it she recognized (desire). Some of it she did not (love?). Thoughts tempted her to simply tear at his clothing and stop this conversation with passion. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t right, not here, not now, not yet… there was still that other emotion to be dealt with. The one that screamed that she did want to claim him.

The need to run welled up in her again, she considered it again. He had offered her love, not just the lustful desire that certainly sparked between them, but something deeper. There might be something here that could trump even her fantasy dreams of what love could be. Could she walk, no run, away from this now? Or would she regret it?

She leaned in a bit and closed her eyes. A deep breath and again she smelled him, and for the first time she really took in his scent and recognized it for what it was; fall, the delicate sap that clings to the golden yellow leaves of the aspens as they drifted down toward the damp mossy earth. She searched her memories, had he truly been with her for years? Another breath and some deep place in the dark spewed forth a memory.

Her ears were still tender, the pink flesh growing over the damaged cartilage was still sensitive to everything. They stung now as she stepped out into the night. Something caught her attention, she spun and just barely caught the sight of a shadow flutter. With a gasp she stepped toward where the shadow was but saw nothing but inky blackness. Her eyes narrowed as she examined it a bit closer, on the wind the smell of aspens drifted out of alley. Still there was nothing there. She shook her head and left.

The next morning she heard that the owner of the house had been slain in his sleep. The memory brought forth more. Shadows that moved, the scent of aspens passing her in the street, the brush of fingers through her hair on the street that she could never attach a wrist to, stars watching her every move. They were always moments that had left her unbalanced but yet somehow she did not mind them.

Could he truly leave me? And will I regret it if I tried to leave him now, after all he is offering?

Slowly her eyes open again and her head bobs in answer to the question in her head as well as the question that he has put at her feet. Tightly she holds his hand and whispers to him softly.

“Amin sana lle corm ar’kama cormamin. Ar’amin ondea lle corm ar’kama corm’lle.”

Rising onto her toes she closes the distance between them and seals what she has just said with a kiss. She breathes him in as he pulls her close again. The kiss does not linger though and she pulls back only to look up into his eyes, a cooler look in hers again.

“But I swear Nyx Shyndyn… if you go back on anything you have just said, if you ever hurt me… you know full well what I am capable of. I will make sure that every moment of your long elven life will be nothing but torture. I will think up new ways to make sure you regret it constantly. May the Gods help me.” There is but a slight tremble in her voice as she says this and immediately after her lips are back on his, harsh and passionate.

It is broken again with a gasp as she again brings her head to his chest, “As for the Hellkites… I want them to know. I want Dmitrova to know that it is you who kills him, the elf whom he severely underestimated. I want him to know why… to know that it is our...” she paused but finally says the word, “love that has ended him.”

“Amin sana lle corm ar’kama cormamin,” Cay whispered, her hand clasped tightly around his, “Ar’amin ondea lle corm ar’kama corm’lle.”

“My heart has always been yours,” Nyx managed to breathe in reply just before she lifted herself on her toes to kiss him again. The rest of his words were lost as her lips met his but the sentiment continued to be expressed in his touch as he pulled her to him once more, reveling in the heat and lightning that flashed at her answer and the feel of her against him.

That taste of her lips, Nyx thought, was too fleeting for the feelings that had just surged through him and his tongue danced hungrily over his lips to capture every last mote of that sweetness when she pulled away. A soft yet hungry smile formed in the wake of the longing sigh that shuddered past Nyx’s lips and his eyes opened to find hers looking up into them. The words she spoke next, he was sure by the way Cay had tried to cool her gaze when she spoke them, were intended to be something of an ominous threat…

“But I swear, Nyx Shyndyn… if you go back on anything you have just said, if you <i>ever</i> hurt me…”

Never, moon-yellow orbs promised as they danced between her lips and her eyes…

“…you know full well what I am capable of. I will make sure that every moment of your long elven life will be nothing but torture…”

The torture would be that life without you, his eyes and smile and fingertips chorused as they feathered lightly but longingly over her…

“…I will think up new ways to make sure you regret it constantly,” Cay promised, though the trembling of her breath and body alike belied the fact that she knew her warnings were unnecessary, “May the Gods help me.”

“The Gods be damned,” Nyx purred, lifting her against him as her mouth sought out his again, “ will help you…”

For a long moment the he was lost in the all consuming flames of passion… his hands kneading her writhing body as they clutched her wantonly against him, devouring her with a hunger that was matched if not exceeded in the meeting of their lips and the yearning growls that rumbled in his chest as she both stole and gave him breath… and, in the instant before she again broke their kiss, Nyx could very well have been pressed to tear away the burlap sack-dress that now hatefully kept his fingers from her flesh and devour her completely… Not here, he managed to remind himself as she pulled away from him to let their shared breath explode into the heated air with a gasp, she deserves better than this…hovel…

The assassin trembled a bit, himself, as Cay’s head came to rest on his chest again and he forced himself to draw in a breath to replace the one that had just been lost between them. His chest heaved and his arms wrapped around her all the more to keep her close, his head bowing and nuzzling his face, once more, into her hair as he let that breath go and took in another…

“As for the Hellkites,” the witch murmured into his chest as she clung to him, “I want them to know. I want Dmitrova to know that it is you who kills him, the elf whom he severely underestimated. I want him to know <i>why</i>… to know that it is our...”

…His embrace grew tighter still in the short pause in her request and he nodded faintly… reassuringly… before he kissed her head and she finally said the word…

“…love that has ended him.”

“He will know, elen en cormamin,” he promised, “he will see it written in the blood of his followers and friends as they are taken from him… he will feel it as the strands of the web he has woven over this place are snapped and his pocket empire crumbles around him… and he will know his end when he is on his knees at my feet and sees you take his chair…”

Nyx felt Cayrimsa’s smile even before she turned her face toward his … felt it in the shift of her cheek against his chest and in the tingling, electric tremor that surged through her body at the thought of his promises come true… her amber eyes sparkled like stars when they met his; her delight, not just at the thoughts of taking that pleasure at Dmitrova’s expense but, also, at the thoughts of sharing that pleasure with him shimmering even brighter that the raging fires that were ever present in those cinnamon pools. One hand found her face again… fingertips feathering over her lips, across her cheek, and into her hair behind the scar-topped curve of her ear to cradle her head in his hand as his eyes absorbed her face… and he returned the smile before his lips fell towards hers again.

He felt her wrap around him – her hands roaming and clutching at his back and shoulders, her leg curling around his hip and thigh – as he lifted her in his arms, and felt the breath stolen from his lungs as her lips moved against his and she whispered; “I love you.”

“Amin vithel mela lle,” he whispered back on that same breath, their lips so close that those soft words were a kiss in themselves, “and for that love, I will give you the Hellkites, Dmitrova’s head, and more…”

The purr that had been rumbling in his chest swelled to an anxious, needful, and almost impatient growl as he held her hungrily to him and punctuated his words with a kiss that echoed the urgency of the growl…

“But...” he broke the kiss for a breathless instant as he lifted her higher, and took a step forward, his lips still on hers as he held her aloft between himself and the wall, “ …right now, Cay...” He kissed her again, unable to resist the temptation, forced himself to stop so that he might finish his thought, “…I cannot think of Dmitrova...” another punctuating kiss “…or Aelion or any of the rest of it... All I can think about is you... making love to you...”

He growled then, his hands moving over her with a furious want as he kissed her with a passion that had all but boiled over… “Not here, though,” he said on quickened breath as he again forced his lips from hers and, against the shuddering protests of his muscles, returned her to her feet and pulled her away from the wall, “You deserve much more than this…”

A bit shakily, the mith’ganni backed away, his yellow eyes blazing as they tore away from hers for just long enough to find her hat where it had fallen. He snatched the thing up, handed it to her, and took her hand in what seemed to be one hurried, yet fluid movement…

“…but until we find that silken bedroom in the manor that you deserve,” he purred, leading her toward the door, “I know of an inn not far from here…”