“I don't need your help! Not if it's going to be like this.” Wolf slaps Lilith's hand away from his shoulder. “You can't treat me this way. I won't accept it.”

Lilith takes a step backward and cocks her head to the side. In this light, she looks innocent enough, but Wolf knows the truth. He won't be fooled. “What do you suggest then?” she asks him, all the while crossing her arms and smirking. “I never said I wasn't open to suggestions.”

Wolf crosses his arms. “You are to treat me better than your men.” Asking to be on equal grounds with them would put Wolf at a lower position than he is now. “You are to view me as a comrade, and not a thing to play around with. You are to listen to me,” his eyes meet hers. “Or else, I will have no desire to listen to your words.”

Lilith's hands drop back down to her sides. “I do view you as a comrade.” Her voice has wilted into something softer than before. “When did I ever claim I didn't?”

“You keep trying to lay with me.”

“That is different.”

He scoffs. “I don't see how. You haven't shown any respect for me ever since our first hour together.”

“You're wrong.” Lilith kneels before him. She bows. “I do respect you. I would not take a fool for a husband.”

Wolf pauses. Outside, the wind howls. “You speak as if we are to be wed.” He cringes. “You may stop with your flattery, now. It won’t get you anywhere.”

“I am not flattering you.”

“Ah, is that so?” Wolf rolls his eyes and huffs. “Remind me… Is not you, who tried to kill me just hours ago?”

“That—” Lilith traps her lower lip between her teeth. “Was a mistake,” she mutters. And then, after a while, the head of guards says, “Forgive me.”

The words do not sound honest, when spoken from her lips. “Do you truly want to be forgiven, though?”

“I'm a woman of my word.”

Wolf looks away—back to the dull, white of the tent's many flaps. “And I'm a perceptive man,” he tells her. “So, do you mind telling me why you're asking me—out of all people—to become yours? Or is this some kind of sick joke? To be frank, I'd rather it be the latter. You’d be a troublesome bride.”

Lilith runs her hand along his bare shoulder. “That's easy,” she whispers. “Who else would make for a better lover, than your enemy?” Her arm falls, limp, at her side once more. “There is no need to be perfect—you already despise each other, and know both of your flaws. There is nothing left for either of you to do, but to love.” The words are like poison to Wolf’s ears.

He thinks of the stone. Of Lir’s heart. Yet, is it really? he wonders. Or is that just another lie? “Tell me about what you showed me before,” he says.

She pauses. This time, her palm finds the stone. “The artefact?”

“Oh.” He hums. “So that’s what you call it.”

“What we call it doesn’t matter,” Lilith snaps.

“We?”

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Who is we?

Who else is in on this?

“We,” she clears her throat. “As in us,” she tells him. But Wolf won’t be duped. He can see the tension in her shoulders. The way her voice waverd, and how Lilith had glanced slightly upward, whilst she thought up a palatable answer that would convince both him, and her, that this was no lie when it surely, without a doubt, is. “Kid?”

He rises to his feet. He smirks. “Not kid.” Wolf leans in, until they are almost kissing, though, still not quite. “Husband,” he tells her.

She breaks the distance between them. “Husband…” Her whisper is lost to the wind, to their breath intermingling and creating ghosts of what once was. “Do you forgive me?”

“No.” He presses his mouth to hers once more. “No.” His voice is low. “I hate you.” His tongue slides past her teeth. “I always will.”

They pull away, panting. Her lower lip is red with how he has bitten it, and abused the skin. “But I need you,” Wolf says—and so, he will go along with her plan.

“I need you.”

I need to get Lir back.

Lilith’s chuckle is one of a woman who has emerged victorious from a grueling battle. It is as if she is telling him, indirectly, You see, I have won, you are no match for me. And for now, that is truth.

For now, until Wolf finds Lir again—until he can strike this madwoman down with justice—he will have to make do, with this play-pretend relationship. “Tell me about the stone,” he whispers. “Or I’ll rip it from your hands, and find out for myself what it is this thing does.”

Lilith smiles. She thinks it a joke, says it is funny—it is not. Though Wolf has no time to show her he was not humoring their relationship, for she soon takes out the artefact, and shows it to him. “Here.” Her breath warms his neck.

The stone is cool in his palm. Her fingers are warm, as they linger, against his knuckles, his skin.

They kiss again. Wolf does not pretend it is Lir. He cannot. Her mouth doesn’t slot in the perfect way it did against his. So, instead, he forgets, pretends it is been a dream.

In her arms, he moans. It sounds crooked, yet the woman does not notice. Her mouth is red again. Her eyes are ablaze with lust. “Fuck me,” she grunts against his ear, as her leg hikes itself up against his waist. “Show me how much you hate me.”

Wolf blinks. He realizes, in this instance, that cannot do it.

He pushes her off. “I can’t.” He expects her to insist—to take him by force if she has to—but there is none of that.

Lilith sighs. “I figured.” The heat of her body leaves his, strangely empty and tingling, though not in yearning for more—it misses Lir. He misses Lir.

“You’re picky, husband.”

Is he? “Am I, spouse?”

Her face scrunches up in a peculiar, vexed way. It seems she does not appreciate the strange pet name. The thought urges Wolf to smirk; of course, he does not.

Lilith turns to the exit without answering his question. “Keep the stone,” she says.

But Wolf steps forth. He asks her to wait. “You don’t want it?”

Her shoulders rise. She shrugs. “I can’t sleep with it glowing next to me. It’s too bright.”

Is it?

Is that how it is?

“You aren’t afraid I’ll steal it?”

She disappears behind the tent’s veil. There is a sort of scratchy noise in the air, and leftovers of black fog, where she once stood. “Trust me, love, if anything, you should be scared of me.”

He holds his breath. He scratches his eyes. The fog is gone when he blinks again. He prepares himself to ask her, Why? yet, again. But it is as if the scene had never occurred, because Lilith is back in her initial spot, awaiting his reply. “Did you say something?” Wolf doesn’t know why he asks this. He just needs to fill the silence—with something. Anything.

“I said I don’t care.” Lilith huffs, then turns. Her foot is already a few good centimeters out of the tent. “You are to report to me if there are any changes.” It seems like she is in a hurry. Wolf wonders why.

“Okay.” He nods in the direction of the exit. He scratches at the back of his head. “Thanks, I guess…”

Before long, all that is left of her passage is the hint of a shadow seeping in from under the tent flap’s, the scent of perfume that lingers in the air, and the weight of the artefact, heavy in Wolf’s hand. “Good night, consort,” he mutters, as he goes back to bed, with the stone by his side. The glow feels like home. He understands what Lilith had meant by it being distracting. He could stare at it forever, if he weren’t so tired.

He thinks of her again. He shuts his eyes.

He will make sure to be the one who ends her, once they find Lir.