Clad in a black leather corset and trousers that clung to her deceptively slim figure, the woman stalked down the tunnel without saying a word.

Inside the Great Hall, one Silver, possibly the first to ever see the inside of the Dhaunae citadel since the days of Kanley, stood in full form, his black-emerald eyes glowing softly in the near darkness. The false phosphorescent glow was a trick of lighting, a reflection of the golden sunlight that trickled in through a round shaft in the ceiling and struck a mosaic floor, the pattern of which told the family history of House Dhaunae since their first days on Aerdon.

With slow grace, his large, angular head swung from one architectural feature to another. This citadel, like all Black holdings, was built on a scale that dwarfed two-leggers and seemed enormous even by Dragon standards. Every buttress, every arch, even the furnishings sized to fit their two-legger forms were arrogant and so very different from what Areq had been born knowing. Silver homes were open, airy, almost elvish in design and coloration. Furnishings were elegant, delicate appearing and often in pale or neutral colors, not the rich, jewel tones the Black race favoured.

Areq's head stopped near a shadowed alcove and his nose lowered so he could sniff experimentally. The sound of Erinya's booted feet suddenly drew his attention back to the moment at hand and his head snapped up, only to crack sharply on a stone overhang.

"OW! Sonofa...." Areq's head shook back and forth as the addled Silver cleared his head. Seconds later, his serpentine neck bowed and rippled, and brought his head down even with the corridor Erinya had vanished down earlier.

"I could have gone with you, you know. I mean, you never know when you might run into someone unpleasant...you know?"

"Like me you mean?" Erin bit out, her general ill humour more than evident. She shrugged, "there isn't anyone here. That hasn't been anyone here for centuries. The place is well nigh dead."

Her dark eyes ran over the room. She knew this citadel so well. It had been her home for so many years and now... Now all she could hear was the echo of the centuries. Ghosts inhabited these chambers. Memories of a long ago past that she couldn't quite forget.

"Now you know why I say the Keep is my home these days."

Like some massive hound, Areq lowered himself to his belly and settled comfortably on the cool floor, "Aye..." his rumbling baritone echoed off the walls, "Someone like you, deadly, beautiful, amazing..." The Silver stopped and angled his head slightly, then lowered it to snuffle at her gently and Areq's scaled head lifted over her seemingly Human head, then began nudging her against his heavily plated chest, "You know, I...I read a lot..." He obviously didn't want anyone knowing that from his tone, "and in the library at the Keep, there is a book, about a people from off world, and they had a saying, 'Speak my name and I shall live."

His neck coiled back and bowed around as he lowered his chin to the tiled floor and one black-emerald eye blinked at her slowly, "So, tell me about them. Tell me about your mother, your father. They may have been Blacks, but Callan has always spoken of Valas as though he were larger than life, one of the few with honour... a rare creature among your race."

An ebony brow rose in a silent, but eloquent, comment on that last statement. Pale fingers, callused from centuries of warfare, stroked over the brilliant silvery scales of her lover. "Where do I begin?"

Erin sank down onto the floor beside Areq, leaning her head against his massive shoulder. For all her height, the woman was dwarfed by the dragon's form. "Valas Dhaunae, Vor'ill of the House of Dhaunae. My father. You saw what became of him." She paused, eyes closing for an instant as the memories of just what Areq Datari had been allowed to see that day in Sha'tris Thy'sn flowed back. She took a deep breath, "but what he was... He was honorable. Not good, perhaps... Hells! How many of us can claim that? but his word was his bond. He never betrayed any of us, not for a minute, no matter what Nargus and his followers did to him. Or to his Randii."

Almost absently she ran her hand over the Silver's shoulder, drawing comfort from his presence. "He loved her, you know. More than anything or anyone else. We used to have the most spectacular fights, Ill’harn and I, but she could stand in the midst of Flame and Chaos and remain completely unscathed. She had her own temper when provoked, and Ill’harn used to claim she was as stubborn as a mule, but perhaps that was why he loved her so much. He couldn't bully her or boss her around like everyone else."

A faint smile curved her lips in remembrance. "Her name was Shar'ryn, Shar'ryn Silinrul. She was the sister of the current Vor'ill of House Silinrul, Barak, Gabriel's father."

Areq's massive head angled around, his jaw pressed against Erinya's proportionately tiny form, "So, your Anaril was very like you, was she?" A gentle hint of mischief crept into Areq's rumbling tones. He then grew even more quiet, drew in a deep breath, then gave the equivalent of a full-body shrug.

"At least you have the memories of them. They live on because you loved them, because you miss them."

More silence then followed, Areq was too young to remember much of his mother. Sunny impressions of a laughing, beautiful creature who was warm and generous, loving and kind, were all he had. He had forever in his mind a vision of perfection that he knew logically, couldn't have been his mother. He didn't remember the fear, the worry, the exhaustion Caella had lived with the entire time she'd been in love with Aranduriil...the finest assassin the Silver race had ever known.

Then, when Caella had died under Araxmarr's flames, Aranduriil, his father, had slid into deep Madness... Areq had been almost 400 years old before he'd met his father again, before the Silver assassin had dredged himself, impossibly, out of the depths of his grief... The time he'd had with his sire and siblings had seemed far too short before their little branch of the Datari tree had been bathed in flames again. Too little time for so very much living to be done.

"What about brothers? Sisters?" The words were asked quietly as his tail draped across her shoulders and squeezed lightly, "Surely you had more than the traitor Kor?"

The ebony-haired woman ran her hand slowly up and down the tail that hugged her shoulders. "If only that were the case," she murmured, "but no, there was only Kor'inth and I, or at least only he and I that survived. I vaguely remember Illhar nesting at least one clutch that never left the nest, and someone did mention that I had a clutchmate once, but they never lived long enough to really impinge on my consciousness."

Pressing her cheek against his silver-scaled body, Erin sighed. "I do remember how sad it made both my parents though, and it was so ironic when you looked at how big her side of the family was."

"Wellll," A wolfish smile tugged at the edges of Areq's draconic mouth, "Maybe next Irdan Elan, you... and I... can try to fill in the family tree a little more, hmmm?" The tip of the Silver's tail wound around her slender waist and curled over the rise of one breast, "You know, there's something you and I need to discuss. I... we started down that path at the Halloween party once, and since you had trouble keeping your tongue to the rim of the glass and not on my wrist, we never really talked about it much..."

Not to mention there'd been a crowd, a noisy, brawling, food throwing, Jacuzzi exploding, glue slinging, crowd. Hard to stay serious around a pack of drunk lunatics and it was even harder to think when Jose' Cuervo and Erinya were brought into the equation together.

One dark emerald eye blinked thoughtfully at Erin, then Areq's Silver form collapsed slowly in on itself, leaving the Black Captain held in his embrace. A silent prayer to his god and goddess that he was doing the best thing for both of them, Areq looked up at the brilliant shaft of sunlight over head, then cleared his throat, "Would you consider taking me as your Randii and, in time, your bond-mate?"

For a long moment Erin merely looked into the dark emerald eyes of the man that held her. It was still hard to believe that she, the Vor'ill of a Black House Major, had fallen in love with the younger son of a Silver House. Given the history of conflict between the two races such a thing should have been well nigh impossible.

But circumstances change.

No-one could have predicted that Nargus would have been resurrected by his youngest daughter; or that in the conflict that subsequently arose that a Silver assassin, one at whose hands even Black nestlings had been slaughtered, would ignore the Silver Nation's decision of non-intervention and take himself and his two sons to Blackthorn Keep to fight on the side of the Black Dragon Emperor of the Diirlathe, Araxmarr Zavern Sar’Da.

No-one could have predicted that a female Black and a male Silver who had been trying to kill each other from the first moment of their meeting would one day stop fighting long enough to truly 'see' each other.

A slow smile, all the more beautiful for its rarity, lit up the ebony-haired woman's porcelain features. "Yes," she said softly, "I will willingly take you for my Randii and bondmate."

Areq's blond head lifted from where he'd been slowly running his nose down her elegant neckline and breathing in her scent. She smelled like a desert sunrise, sandalwood, and something that was still a mystery to him, something like spiced fruit, something that almost stirred memories and then let them vanish when he tried to pin down the words to describe it.

"What? Now?" Areq's eyes darted around, he'd expected her to have to consider it, think on it at least overnight, not the 30 seconds or so she had. As for the bond-mate bit? He'd not expect a yes to that at all, ever.

"Right now? Here? Both?"

He couldn't quite help the goofy grin that came across his face. Erinya had seen his real smile possibly more than anyone in the Keep, aside from Landrii and Lena. Everyone else saw the infamous, arrogant ass grin.

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Her dark eyes gleamed with laughter, and something else far more serious. "I love you. Why would you think I would say no? As for here... there's no one else around."

Slim fingers wound into sun-bleached blond hair as the ebony-haired woman leaned up to kiss him.

"Wel..mmmphhh..." The rest of what he was going to blurt out was muffled quite nicely by Erinya's kiss. Fingers, rough from the past several years of serious training, not the training he was taught as the son of a noble house, skimmed the pale skin at her throat and threaded into her hair as one arm snaked around her waist and pulled her even closer. The Silver Captain wasn't a huge fan of the Fates and of any gods when they seemingly bungled much of his, and so many other peoples', lives. Right now though? Right now, he had nothing foul to think of any them, they'd seen further ahead than either he or Erinya could, and despite the painful twists of the past and uncertain paths of the future, here they were, right now.

"Then I'm yours." The kiss slowly began to deepen and the pair of them sank to the dusty floor. There, illuminated by the single shaft of desert sun that shone down from the ceiling, Areq's mouth tore free of hers and wandered down to her throat, then to the pulsing vein. With agonizingly slow pressure, his jaws began to clamp down until he could feel every beat of her heart.

A soft growl vibrated in her throat, desire washing through her body in a heated wave. Elegant fingers, calloused from a lifetime of warfare and training, dug into the fair-haired man's back as Erin's head fell back, ebony lashes partially shielding her gaze. "I'm yours. Just yours."

"Then I would have you know all of me, from now on," The sucking bite increased until the familiar tang of Erinya's blood touched his tongue and as the beating of their hearts began to strike the same rhythm, Areq let down the walls that surrounded the core of his being. He was hers to take or leave as a soul-mate, companion and chosen life-mate.

There was a sensation almost of awed wonder in the way the dark-haired woman let her own walls fall, the ebony black and garnet strands of her soul reaching out to touch his. The hunger was still there, the feel of his teeth sinking into her throat sending heat to pool low in her abdomen, but at the same time there was also love and trust. Slowly, her spirit touched his, tendrils exploring with an oddly gentle touch.

A choked growl resonated along Erinya's flesh as he slowly released his bite and brought his mouth up to hers and seized it with a hunger that was not only his, but now an echo of hers as her soul and her needs, her fears, her desires, began to bleed into his own silver and black-emerald essence. Garnet moved alongside ribbons of scarlet, the wounds to the soul he'd recently acquired, yet were fading with time, and his body shuddered as the memories of first battles, the loss of his father, the visions of so much carnage, rushed through his mind and now hers.

He caught himself almost letting out a sob before the silver threads of his own soul tangled with the ebony of hers and the deep greens delved deeper into her soul than he'd dared go the night of the Midsummer Ball. What they'd done that night was a mere mutual sharing of each others souls that had barely scraped the surface, a temporary, light bonding meant to only deepen trust, not to leave them joined forever as bond-mates.

With each strand that caressed hers and began to tangle hopelessly beyond the point of ever being able to be free again, Areq began to lose his sense of here and now. Only Erin filled his senses, and as the last strands of their souls found one another and began to slip even deeper, Areq's eyes lit a phosphorescent color that was closer to true emerald. Brilliant scale shimmered across his nose, cheeks, down his chest and spine and silver wings writhed free at his shoulder blades and shifted beneath them as he fought to stay in one form for the time being.

"Merciful Storm, I love you," his voice against her mouth was husky with the need to be one with her, not just within the core of their beings, but in body as well. Shaking fingers caught at hers and placed her palm against his chest over his heart, then began to draw it lower, his intentions on its destination clear.

"Doste' Iman, Vershan." Her words were a husky whisper. Clothing reverted to patches of obsidian scale that bled beneath her skin to leave alabaster flesh as she let him guide her hand to where he most needed to feel her touch, her fingers curling around him.

Tearing her mouth away from his, Erin trailed a string of hot kisses down his throat, tasting his skin. The pulse that beat at the base of his throat drew her, her teeth scraping over it, as his scent filled her head. Cool waters and dark forests, that was what his scent had always reminded her of. She could feel his soul within hers, her own weaving through his; silver and black, garnet and green, until she was no longer certain where one stopped and the other began. His need was hers, her hunger, his. Memories, thoughts, dreams, desires... All shared in one breathless moment as two souls wrapped around one another in an unbreakable bond.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A soft sound, almost a purr, rumbled in Erinya's throat. One foot ran slowly up the back of the Areq's leg as she nuzzled at his throat, savoring the warm weight of him on top of her. "Have I ever mentioned how much I love the way you smell?" the ebony-haired woman murmured, her voice rich with lazy satisfaction. Lying there on the dust-covered floor of her ancestral citadel, their bodies warmed by the sunlight that streamed in from above, she couldn't remember a time when she had ever felt quite so content.

"I'm not sure," Areq mumbled and shifted his weight a little and dropped to her side before he drew her even closer, then nuzzled into her hair, "most of the time you're complaining that I stink of Silver." A soft bit of laughter was muffled by her ebony hair, "of course, I have to shut you up by kissing you, and you have rip my clothes off, and then here we are, trying to remember what the other one said recently." The fingers of his right hand slipped around one elegantly sculpted thigh and began to trail their way up, then the slow burn just beneath his flesh on his forearm began.

"Are you certain this is what you want?" The question was soft and accompanied by a gentle caress of the silver and a near ice blue of his soul, the colors of the Storm that ran so wildly in his veins.

A soft gasp escaped her, ebony lashes dropping as a shiver rippled down her spine. "Are you?" The black of her spirit that seemed to burn with all the fire of Flame and Chaos wound around the silver of his.

Rich brown eyes met dark emerald for a long moment. "I want you... I need you... more than I have ever needed anyone, and yes, sometimes that scares the hell out of me, but I also can't lie to myself and pretend that it's otherwise. Not any more. But I am also one of the Black Guard. There are things in my past that I can guarantee you will NOT like. I am almost twice your age, Areq. When it comes to events that you've only heard about when it comes to clashes between our races, chances are I was right in the middle of them. Can you live with that?"

"Erinya, I am the son of Aranduriil Datari. My father was the Nahtahri Dahnna for the Silver Counsel. He killed hundreds, if not thousands of your kind, your own family. Can YOU live with that? With the knowledge that my father and a handful of his cousins almost wiped out an entire generation and even a few Houses before the killing stopped?" Areq's voice was thoughtful and quiet as he pulled himself free of her and then gathered her into his lap. Dark eyes went to her forearm and the scarlet outline of flesh that was forming a vague outline of welted skin; "If the worst of is that you were there when Araxmarr burned my mother, if the worst of it is that you killed innocents for sport or business? I can live with that." He stretched out his own arm where she could see the echo of the bondmark that was struggling to form on her own body, "As for the half your age thing? Well." An impish grin cut through the serious expression on his face and his eyes danced with a flash of mirth, "You know what Humans say about older women?"

Her fist thumped into his shoulder. "Watch yourself, you're straying into dangerous territory there," the ebony-haired woman laughed, "Any jokes about my age will be met with painful retribution."

She rested her head against his chest, rich brown eyes dropping to the mark slowly taking shape on the inside of her arm; two dragons, one silver and one black, illuminated by a flash of lightning. "As for the rest, I can live with that knowledge far easier than I could live without you."

"You said it far better than I could have," Areq muttered and pulled her up higher as his own forearm began to burn even more. An mirror image of the mark on Erin's right forearm was becoming clear on his, the positions of the dragons reversed, the background a flash of fire that spread from just above his wrist almost to the crook of his elbow.

"So, why don't we both quit worrying about it?" Areq's mouth hovered over the corner of hers a moment as his eyes followed her line of sight, "I love you, Erinya Dhaunae, I told you that in the Pit, after I knew more than I'd ever thought could have happened. I meant it then, I mean it now," and with a soft sigh, Areq closed the short distance between their lips and kissed her with what began as a slow, gentle kiss, but quickly turned to something else as the gnawing pain of the fledgling mark being raised somehow set his soul on fire as well.

With a faint growl, the ebony-haired woman buried her fingers in his sun-bleached hair and kissed him hard. The mark on her arm burned as if true lightning was being etched into her skin, igniting the flames that burned so near the surface of her soul. Only this man had ever melted the ice beneath which they had been so carefully banked.

As they kissed she let the concerns go. He was right. The past was over and nothing could change it. What they had was now, and she would be damned before she let him go. Love and passion burned as hot as the Flame and Storm of which they were the offspring, and together created something even stronger and more enduring.