…..:::::|. Delicatessen Seventh .|:::::…..

“Alright! Here's a go!” Percival’s eyebrows shot up while his hand was yet still on the pantry closet handle.

“Whuh?!” Halycind cried as Siin's head full of hair whipped around to view the intruder, while his palms still warmly held her bosom.

Percival scoped their positioning.

She snatched up Siin's leather jerkin to cover her undershirt and his hands. His fingers snatched themselves from her but her leg remained wrapped round him.

“Smashing wasn't on my provision list!”

“Percival we can – I can explain.” Siin said letting his pup's thigh go.

“Pantry bangin'?”

“Aww when I said trouble this isn't what I meant.” Halycind whined.

Siin turned back a stern loving look to her. “I don't want you in trouble.”

“Nobody's getting in—” Percival started in exasperation of the whining already.

“Please don't tell Veygornn—” Halycind started to beg.

“I-I don't want her in tr-”

“Look. Liste – you're not in—no one’s getting in trou—” Percival tossed hands in the air at their nervous youth. “I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Everyone of us probably did....but Siin didn't you just express--”

“I know. I know…” He sagged into himself. “I know.”

“What?” Worry shot to Halycind’s face and she looked for Siin’s gaze.

“We can't do this, Haly. We can't do it.” Siin tried to resolve his thoughts with himself but his hand was still on her back, warm and trembling. His decisions were fighting with themselves.

“Well, not in here you can't.”

“Why are you in here anyway?” Siin shot suddenly offended by the interruption, again still not letting Halycind go.

“Owner said I could take what I wanted given the fact the Gale-Killer was in my company.”

“Wow, knowing her comes with those kinds of perks?”

“Siin?” Tears were beginning to pool at Halycind’s eyes. She was shocked to worry maybe he didn’t want her.

His warm eyes turned back down to her and could read the worry all over her poor pretty face. “Haly...”

And his expressions were telling her all sorts of things as he stared long into her eyes. “Halycind.” He tried to whisper but his thoughts and words were becoming so defeated looking upon her.

Something was telling her she didn't want to know what he'd been thinking and her scared head started to shake. His lips were forming, between his calming breaths, to say something but he didn't want to utter them. Not now not when he'd made so many decisions. She was wanting to be his, now, how could he think anything less than this? She had been the love of his entire life.

“Come on you two. Save it for when your faces aren’t plastered to one another.”

Percival lead the two confused youth from the Delicatessen Seventh after procuring the left overs of their meal and a few other dishes they’d taste back at the inn.

He’d been with Brisbe-Hexandrea the whole morning going over potential troubles on the last few days of May Rising and he was attempting to relay these points to the two behind him but they’d been glancing to one another trying to figure out what the other was thinking. And Halycind was making worried whimpers like a pup the whole time as she was walking closer to him than air.

She held him as they walked. Held him about the waist as she felt the power and sway of his gait. It was something she’d not known she never wanted to let go of. Her fingers were wide spread down the bend and crook of his hip as he walked and Siin let her hold him. They’d had a beautiful morning and he’d had ideas of a well planned evening but he could feel her trepidation and wanted to let her know his heart and his mind but he was all a jumble of nerves and thoughts and decisions and obligations and dread.

“You're not going to tell him are you?” Halycind whimpered toward Percival’s back.

“Tell who what?” Percival questioned.

“Veygornne. He'd rip my fangs out if he knew I almost ban--”

“Do you know how many girls I've kissed in a pantry...how many girls I've – well – well – what you were about to do...in a pantry? I'm not telling anyone anything.”

“Oh, thank you, Percival.”

“Don't' thank me just figure out whatever your hearts or your hormones are telling you. Though not now. Back at the Inn. Please? Out of my sight.”

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Siin stared at her after those words. There had to be a way he could have what he wanted and still be wise regarding his duties. He let go some of his worry and only stared at the woman he loved.

Halycind looked up at him again, trying to share a pant leg, she was so close. There was a look in his eye that hadn’t' been there before. And she wanted that look all over her body.

He wanted to keep touching her. He wanted to keep kissing her. He wanted that moment back. He wanted to let Havvenchael know he'd finally, after so many nights of worry and loneliness and tears and fear, claimed his life's conquest. So his arm flung around her shoulders, his tail flung around her waist and his walk grew defiant.

Halycind chewed her own lips, being watched by crowds as their group headed toward Percival's interest.

The sway in his waist beckoned she hold him with renewed want and confidence. She began to understand what the older girls back home had gossiped about their boyfriends. Why they’d sneak away from their dens to see them. Play chase through the night with them. Touch them. She’d suddenly wanted to sneak away from Percival right now to go back to touching Siin. Her breaths were wild with giddiness and fury now. Every ounce of her body, her heart, her whole being wanted to find out everything she never knew about being with him.

Her palm caressed that thick thing wrapping her waist and she couldn't help the moan that escaped into her words. “Siin – I – I think I might be ok with Veygornne knowin--”

"Let's talk," He looked down to her with an assertive grin. "Later."

A wild arousal shot up her middle as she looked on him with love. "Yeah, later."

A man leaning on a wall, with flitting wings under a rich blue cloak, stared at the girl in white wrapped in the arms and tail of a Zhuer mage as they walked through the city streets. He was clearly waiting for someone, with his own arms folded tightly. The two lovers passed close enough to him where Halycind caught a shining flash of cyan in his eyes and her own instinctively answered him in detest already. She looked away, disgust inexplicably filling her gut, thinking he some twisted mage.

Her instincts couldn't have been more correct.

A halfman, in a hurry, crossed Siin and Halycind’s path on her diagonal and made his way toward the man leaning against the Gramaryeum where all the mages in the city studied their craft.

Idrissa, in his fine dark blue wear, pushed away from the wall and steered the little man toward a silent corner by the entrance.

“Idrissa!” He groaned in a loud whisper. A few heads turned back including Halycind's, then turned away from their conspicuously inconspicuous meeting.

“You know that one?”

“Idrissa, what do you want?”

“She has pandraegkyl pages that do not belong to her.”

“Get them yourself.”

“You’re the Bookkeeper. It is by definition your job to keep the books of that girl she killed.”

“The girl she killed?” The halfman’s head tilted. “My, you certainly do like to paint over the blood on your own hands, Scerci.”

“She fought with her, she was the last known being to touch that loon. If anyone asks...she killed her. She’s been known to kill other things. She killed one of Essoc’s peelings. A Ghost-gale, even.”

“I’m not discussing Scerci plots with you!”

“Why do you hate me so much, Brangerbuke? You do realized I saved us, correct?!”

“You’re a thief and a liar. And y-you twist everything!”

“It is my name and calling.” He bore into the little man. “Get those pages from her.”

The halfman shook his head. “Get this straight, pixie. I don’t do what you or any other Scerci tells me to do. You do not own me and I am not your brother. I tend to the writings of the people how I wish and you’ve no dictation or reign over this. Even if you were to procure the Dark One’s death stories, you’d never be able to re-order time. Glaurea is broken. That whole city is dead now. You cannot read time the way the nine of those Rings can. You couldn’t then and you can’t now. Fly back to Datn and wait for your judgement just like the rest of you wicked, vile, interlopers.”

“You’re one of us.”

“I might be Immortal, Idrissa, but I cannot wait to see you all fall.”

“I’d be sure we won’t fall.”

“I don’t want to reign the universes like you do. The last time you stole that staff, you nearly broke everything in creation.”

“But I saved the prophecy.”

“A prophecy no one knows or cares about, but us.” The little man rolled his whole head and turned to leave their meeting.

“Everyone on this planet will care about it once you get me his book.”

The short brown man with an array of spectacles upon his brow, sighed a full breath. “The thing about the Lorde of Shadows is...he and everything about him is a zshankedhi secret. It took Daemphred all of fourteen cycles just to find the child to conscript him. The Nine Rings wrote a god of secrets into existence and that is exactly what he keeps. Secrets! You do realize there may be nothing in that book at all, right?! So if you really want to know, it seems you’ll have to ask that little Gale-Killer kindly for the pages of his devotee. And good luck with that because she already detests you.”

“She doesn’t know me in this life.”

“I saw the way she looked at you. She detests you for all eternity, bug. And I’m glad of it.”

“That little Hedge knows where my Split’s faetzaht pandraegkyl is and you can get to everything she knows!” Idrissa was attempting in his anger not to draw too much attention.

“Ask Dome'nce to make her give them to you then, since you want his Staff so bad.” His own little blue eyes stared up at the towering dark-skinned man in cloaks. “He's the one who rescued the Most-Feared from the swords of Daemphred. He knows what happened to the book after the boy died. He know why the little ‘Hedge’, as you call her, has those pages. Go right to the source. If you’ve got the kundorah.”

Idrissa chewed the inside of his cheek. “Look, Brangerbuke, I get it, you are bent on keeping me from that Staff again but I assure you...what I do, I do for the AllKing.”

“Hm, a lofty stance you’ve touted since the beginning. But that has not been your history, Twisted.”

Idrissa squeezed fingers in his fists, “Do not test me for I am also known as The Onslaught.”

“Only to those who fear you.”

“The Book!” Idrissa growled with a spitting grit.

“With! The! Dead!” The Bookkeeper stepped sideward as if to walk away and flashed from him in a striking bolt of blue lightning. Folks in the streets glanced to the sky and all about searching for the lightning’s origin, for there had been no clouds in the sky.

Halycind, too, shot a glance to the streak and then down to where the two men had stood chatting. The corner of the building obscured her view of that heated chat mostly, but she was almost certain one of them had used some sort of craft. She noted to ask Siin about it later.