…..:::::|. Fifty-Foot-O-Rope Inn .|:::::…..

When she had reached her room upstairs, two platefuls in hand, darkness met her upon opening the door. No candles burned. No sconces lit. No afternoon sunlight even shown in. She felt a cool warmth crawl over her skin as she stepped in.

“Halycind.”

The amber in her wolf eyes lit to a bright yellow, when she heard her name, then faded as she melted backward into his embrace. The mere rumbling timber of his tone stole away whatever will she thought she possessed and Halycind found herself in a bed of voided hazes wrapped up in the necromancer's passions once more.

…..:::::|. Unknown .|:::::…..

There was nothing near her, save him. Nothing around her, save the brawn and heat of this man upon the small of her frame. Nothing, save to eat...and much. She laughed in her euphoria and with panting, still-hungry breaths, studied the curiousness of his orange eyes as he grinned above her. The bed was softer than she remembered in the inn; certainly softer than a cedar table under the weight of him.

Bed? This wasn't her bed.

He kissed her jaw, and took a glimpse behind her ear, where the nine-pointed star had been etched. His brow furled in a kind of silent anger.

“Scerci...what does it mean?” Halycind attempted to whisper between swoons.

He stared at her for some time watching the girl swim in his sway; thumbing sweats back from her brow. “Useless.”

“That's not what you want to be...is it?”

His answer was the weight of his thumb, at the hairline, pressing the pitch of her chin up to his face. He was so strong; too strong. She stared into his eyes. “That's why you call everything a tool.” He tried to kiss at the star, felt a warmth from it, then hung his head very close to her face. “Even me.” She whispered. “Hm, smith?”

He, instead of answering, buried a passion down her throat to silence the girl. The mass of this man engulfed her once more. She felt the soreness of the day's activity and remembered the commands of their first rendezvous as he pressed upon her his will in desire. He was so long in holding her, she whimpered out small tired breaths even from this embrace.

He, while slowly moving to rise with a spreading grin, allowed her to catch her breath as he poured a dark red liquid into a green almost black glass.

“What're you,” She sighed, “Dicus or something?” She let spill in a hazing retention of his weight. Dicus were Half-Giants after all.

“Yes.”

“Oh, right, well, that explains why yer so heavy. What's the other half sub-nature?” She said wincing out twinges with one eye shut. He huffed a chortle and handed her the glass.

“I...” Taking the glass, she paused. And for a great deal.

For she only now noticed the reality of his presence and that this shadowed space was not the Inn room she had walked into.

Off in the blackness, across this room, she could just make out a bath, steaming with warm waters and rose petals floating alongside dim candles. A lacy black robe hung long at a stand on the side of the bath and the room was filled with a pleasing fresh scent. The bed they lay upon was not in-fact of full sleeping size, but a lounging bed for the day, draped in a canopy of sheer white, peach, and black fabrics. To the rear of him stood a long rough-hewn wood vanity and screen for changing, oddly in the make of her old vanities in Ashok. Above the vanity hung a very large wood-framed mirror, oblong, and finished with black, gold, and rose metals.

How did she get here? Where was here? And how long of a haze had she been in to even be here? Percival had only just told her to go eat.

Eat...and mull over how to tell the man she loved what she’d done.

What she'd done, no, who she’d done...was right here!

Her eye rounded the darkly adorned doorless chamber then back to him, beside her, leaning on one elbow with his own glass in hand. She took a moment to remember herself and tears burst from her eyes.

“What have I done?”

“Oh, nonono, Ylva, don't be ashamed.”

Her whimper was too much and his darkened form crowded to hold her upper body to him for comfort.

“You chose power over province.”

“He's not provincial. He's my – what did I do?”

“You made a choice. You chose me.”

“I don't even know you.”

“Don't you?”

“What?”

She stared to hear her own voice skip and whiz and crawl across the walls and down the mirror and from the bath waters. Utterances of the things she’d said before in her curious wonder of him. Things she wanted to know of him.

Halycind was disgusted.

“How are you doing that?”

“I'm only bringing to memory what you said.”

“I don't lov--”

“Are you sure? You kiss me like you love me.”

Her mind spun for all she could suddenly remember was kissing Siin and she growled a hate at this one. “How? When did I even learn of you?! Ch-chance meetings?! Letters some crazy woman wrote?!”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“No such thing as coincidence.”

“What?! So I just mysteriously fall in love with some dark figure because he whisks me through a wall?!”

“Not by chance.” He sipped once. “And it wasn't entirely mysterious.”

She gave a small furrow of her brow. He was not smiling.

“I know you, Halycind.”

Horror swept the whole of her being in rolling waves of fret.

"Long before he ever did."

“And I only now have the displeasure?” She questioned, half-attempting to hide her fearfulness.

He sat up completely to give her room to ponder. She placed the glass he’d given her on the marble of the stand next to her and once again let the strangeness of this place waft over her frozen nature. She was definitely not in the Fifty-Foot-O-Rope.

Oddly, her curiosity made her prop herself up on elbows, letting the curves of her bare frame fall into a comfortable position for listening. Then she wholly realized she was naked.

Before she could scream the lace robe that had hung on the stand found itself wrapped comfortably about her person and he made quite a pleased noise.

“I like you in lace.”

Part of her wanted to dash—perhaps the better of her—but there was no door and she was frozen in her fright. He was kneeling, knees wide, on the bed with his head tilted a bit; letting the locks of his mildly wavy tress fall away from his cheek. The grey one looked her body over, hummed again, sipped his glass, then caught her gaze once more. He set the glass and his fingers to rest upon it in the space between his knees. A smirk crept at the side of his lip.

“Citrus blooms didn't used to grow in your country until a sapling was planted there. Do you remember it?”

“Eberhavven.”

“Yes.”

“Kodlaa's family took the name of the tree when they became caretakers of the Dorari Falls surrounding it.” She was, at the very least, pleased to speak of a good memory of her homeland, even if it were with her kidnapper. “It's because of them we've made such good neighbors of the Dicus and Giants in Sidian Garden.”

“The Axe planted it.” He offered as she furrowed again. “A native of Khartoum. He is the Fourteenth of us. Scerci. The Seventh of Wyyt'Phyr. Lorde of the Flora and Fauna. Do you know Wyyt'Phyr?”

“No. Well I mean, I've heard of it.” She had hoped he couldn't see her true thoughts the Ghostgale had seen about her Immortal father. She attempted to remember passing conversations both Taphsel and Percival had spoken about the Scerci Kaehn, instead.

“It is because of him they grow every place now in your Ashok. But you...you used to play with Kodlaa around that one...the first one. Erhemund, your father, would watch you. He is the Sixth of us, the Third of Wyyt'Phyr. Regent of The Shield. And I would watch him...watch you.”

He knew.

Her ears reeled.

How could he have known who her father was—then she thought of with whom she lay, and her mind halted. She thought if she screamed Siin's name loud enough he could hear her here. Come retrieve her. Protect her.

"He can't hear you here."

"Get out of my head!" She yelled full of fear.

"We are linked." He slowly lay a palm on her middle and she saw the back of his hand light up to a darkly sparkling orange sigil just as her own hand lit to glowing. "It is the only reason I can hear you. You asked for a piece of me. So, I obliged."

She stared at the mark on their skin and began a whimper. "I didn't know what I was saying." She was starting to sob and his warm thumb stroked the tear from her cheek.

“Erhemund would speak so highly of his daughter, so highly of her developing skill and curiosity. I ignored him most times. As you would a burr in a boot. Do you remember the day it burned? The tree.”

Her memories turned sour and she grimaced a scowl towards the ornate bath rug at the bed's base. Halycind could think of nothing, now, save the gore of that day.

“They just lay there...like slabs of meat on a board. Dicus children I had played with. Eberhavvens who had defended Dorari. Agents mourning their lost. I came only to ashes and blood. An army had scorched the land.”

“I saw you then; among Anter's fighting men. I watched you stare down the horde that had attacked the land you loved and people you were raised to serve, with a viciousness no child before the perfect age should have ever had to display. Erhemund should have taken you from that place.”

“He wasn't there.”

“He was there. Shielded, as you fought and raged. It was then I finally heard what Erhemund had been bragging of you. His last child. His hunter girl. The bravery of his soul. You fought with out relent and without fear. He watched me make a choice to stay my hand and my armies against the wishes of my brothers who raided on you. His most curious offspring. Do you remember the quake?”

“That ended the fighting? That was you?”

“I quaked the dead and they quaked the earth. And my brothers knew I was unhappy. They have armies of warcasters, armies of blades, armies of beasts...but without my support they cannot raise war with any of them, for I command the largest of armies. I command the dead. They could not take Ashok so they left. Then Wyyt'Phyr left. And I watched as a father, full of cowardice, leave his daughter to become a weeping woman in a blood-soaked field of her brothers.”

Halycind said nothing, only tearfully studied this stranger who’d but moments ago heaped passions upon her. She’d had no idea anyone was even with her in those moments on that bloody field; those moments that never left her mind.

“I weighed the implications of desiring such a mortal child, buried those desires for the insanity of it all again, then raised them once more. So, I seeded your hunt of me. I let you see me do things I knew you were most curious of. I let you hear things of me I knew you'd research.”

She poured over the histories of their meetings. Her eyes grew large in open realization.

“I hated him for leaving you. I hated him for abandoning you.”

“So, you seduced me...to enrage him?” There was hardly voice behind her thunderstruck whisper.

“I thought so at first. When you saw me in Aoustueilless. I thought that would be a good revenge against a Useless Immortal.”

“So that was you. In the piazza.”

“Yes. But I knew myself better. Erhemund's plans are petty, powerless, fearful. Any retaliation against him would be meaningless. Trite. Too small to spend your life over. No. I had fallen for you. I fall for you, always.” His voiced dipped in a mournful sigh. “I knew I could give you what no mortal could.”

“Perplexment?” She said almost sarcastically and he almost laughed.

“Purpose. You've an interesting destiny, Halycind Cashtiel. Many of the Scerci cannot even see you. I...have watched you. I am the Seventh of us. The Fourth of Daemphred. The Hallowed Shadow. The Lorde of the InnerMost, And you." He touched her nose with his fingertip. "...are the Eyes that Peer Within. A mothering force between immortalities. Birthed from and will give birth to.” He stroked her trembling chin once. “There is a great reforging coming...and I know who the linchpin is.”

Everything in her had been stricken with crippling fear. Nothing he had said sounded like a lie but none of it sounded real either. She was beginning to panic; instantly desiring to flee again. Then, instantly also, cursing every desire of a mage she had ever had before. What was he that he spoke of destinies and ever-living and seeing into things? He had seen her in her youth? Watched her?

Her breaths quickened; almost to a dizzying pace. Though she suspected, she had not heard him actually admit his immortality before. She also had not fully believed the possibility of it, no matter how much The Fjardhamr and the Agency talked of such a thing. She felt ugly for having been so curious. And all she wanted now was Siin’s forgiveness.

A child's squeak exited her throat as she spoke.

“S—So you're using me?” She sounded so small.

He placed a large palm on her lace wrapped quivering belly, just at her womb, and lowered himself slowly to her cheek. “No.” He slid that palm up the curves of her form to then cup her jaw and drew in a strong whiff of her welling fear. “I am enjoying us.” He softly, gently whispered. "You chose your power...revel in it." The kiss he laid upon her cheek was light and seemed of a genuine gentleness but her fears were far from soothed. That kiss moved to her lips as she let this thing press against them. Was she to end up like the dead girl? Or the cut one? The leaping thought of inescapability crawled across her mortality and she wondered when this creature might tire of her.