Almost Daemon didn't want to hear the answer. Almost.

He knew the answer, and he didn't like to think about it. At his shoulder, an old ache burned and began to flare up, becoming almost unbearable and deep in his soul, he knew why she was here.

The idea of 'kindred spirits' only began to explain it, and Daemon didn't think he really wanted to have what he was suspecting confirmed.

A raven brow quirked, "because it seemed a good idea at the time?" she suggested dryly. Silverthorn's eyes met his, watching him as if she could see all the thoughts and emotions swirling about behind his moss green gaze. Her own expression had grown serious and oddly intent. "What do you want me to say, Daemon? I am here because I want to be, because I want you, although if you need me to say that then you haven't been paying attention for the last hour or so. So what is it precisely that you want from me?"

The Tauremornan elf sighed slightly, her dark hair spilling over the sheets as her head rolled to one side, away from the seriousness of the Black's gaze. "Do you know how few people have ever been able to read me properly? Most people are fooled by the mask every time, and even those who are not cannot see beyond it. I've even been described as a black hole by people with empathic abilities. Yet you see through me every. single. damn. time." She shrugged a little uncomfortably, shifting as if she would slide out from beneath him, yet the weight of his body held her in place. "Do I like that fact? No, not always. No more than you liked the fact that I could see through you I imagine."

Her jade eyes swung back. "I am here because I want to be, because it just feels... right. Sometimes it feels as if we've known each other for far longer and far better than we actually do, however stupid that might sound. You're one of the few people I've met who doesn't actually seem to expect me to be anything other than me, and it is nice, just for once, not to have to pretend to be something I'm not. Does than answer your question?"

A hint of challenge crept into her gaze, "I could always ask you the same thing, and yes I know this is your room. I didn't mean that. I meant..." She paused, "you could have walked away very easily so many times back there in the Mess Hall. Why didn't you?"

A strange, soft laugh came from Daemonorel, a sound very few had heard in the totality of his lifetime, "A lot of things seem like a good idea at the time. Remind me to tell you the story about Tijuana, Mexico someday." The smile that came with the laugh flickered and died with the laughter to be replaced with a different expression as somehow Silverthorn almost slid out of bed, despite his weight.

Scarred fingers twined into her hair and Daemon's weight rocked to the side while one arm went firmly around her waist to pull her almost on top of him as he rolled to his back.

"It's not that I didn't know, Arianne. I did... do... know why you're here. But. For some reason, I had to hear you say it, and I can't explain why."

At this point, he almost didn't go on, something in him was feeling very silly right now, and for a moment he wondered if he could have sounded any more foolish.

"That's not true. I can explain why, I just... Right has only happened to me once in my life, and now I'm not sure it was right, because that moment, and this moment don't feel the same at all." An odd smile returned as his fingers pushed her hair back from her face, "You are the first person I've even seen through the mask this clearly, this intensely, and what I see is the most arousing, defiant creature I've ever met, and it scares the nine-hells out of me because with you, things feel right. That's why I asked, because I wanted to know if it went both ways. Now I'm really scared."

"You're not the only one," Silverthorn confessed quietly. A lopsided smile tugged at her lips, "perhaps there are different 'rights'. The you then isn't the same as the you now, no more than I am who I was so many years ago. People change." A callused fingertip traced the line of his cheek, an odd expression in the depths of her jade gaze as she looked down at Daemon, silent for a long moment. "I didn't expect this. I'm not sure I could even say that I wanted it, if I'm being brutally honest. My track record with relationships, any sort of relationships, is lousy. Really lousy. So if anyone has suggested to me a few days ago that I would be here now, I would probably have laughed in their face."

A dream from months back tugged at her memory and, somewhat to her dismay, a hint of colour crept into her cheeks. Okay, so maybe she would have laughed whilst swearing at herself inwardly, she admitted silently. "I'm here because it felt right, but even so... I said I had no expectations and I meant it. I don't know where this is going. Hells, at the moment I don't even seem to know where I'm going from one day to the next." The raven-haired woman gave a short laugh. "I can manage 'present' really well, it's 'future' I have a problem with."

"Knowing where you're going is highly overrated, if you asked me." The same odd smile returned and quirked the corner of his mouth for a fleeting moment, then was gone, "But I know what you mean. I can't say I wanted this..." Daemonorel paused as he noticed the slight rise in heat to her face, in the dark a blush could go unnoticed, but not the change of heat, not the layer of colours that underscored and outlined all living creatures in the night.

"So, as long as we're being brutally honest, I did want this. I've wanted it for a long time, and I've woken in the dark of night almost ashamed that the woman I dreamt of was you, that the feel of nails tearing my back and hair brushing across my chest was you. And what bothered me the most was why I think it was you, and why it's you now."

"And why is it me now?"

The question fell from her lips before she had even thought it through, the tone slightly breathless as his words conjured up an image she recognised only too well. She knew how it felt to wake in the night with the sensation that someone was lying there beside her, to hear their voice, to be able to smell them, taste them... and then to question her own sanity when she realised it was only a dream. To deny it for a hundred and one perfectly good reasons, and yet to find herself craving one person's touch despite it all. Until in the end she found herself here, unable to deny it any longer, no matter where it led.

"Why is it you now?" Daemon's fingers stroked down Silverthorn's back, exploring every scar there, then lingered, teasingly at the very base of her spine.

"The better question is, why was it you THEN? When I think about the answer, I get more than a little nervous. I prefer to think of life as a series of occurrences and responses, decisions made, not manipulated by the Gods or the Fates, but when I think of why you, then or now, I have to question my beliefs and my faith and I have to ask, why didn't I see through the mask sooner? Why didn't you?"

And before she could say, 'But you didn't answer my question,' or something of the like, he answered her.

"Why you? Because now, for some reason, it's right. What worries me is, this all seems fall a little too neatly into place, despite the agony we both had to get here."

Silverthorn had always had a suspicious nature and at his words her jade eyes narrowed. "As we can count the number of occasions we've actually been in the same place as each long enough to talk on the fingers of one hand, which then are we talking about exactly?" Her tone was cool and slightly clipped. Despite the warmth of the fingers that lingered so teasingly in the curve of her back, the raven-haired elf tensed. Warning sirens were going off in her head, and she was a hairs-breadth away from bolting off the bed in search of the nearest dagger. She was all too familiar with the sensation of being manipulated by various deities, and it was a feeling that she hated. What alarmed her most though was the way Daemon seemed to be suggesting they might have been manipulated. Unpleasant thoughts reared their ugly head and she began to pull away.

The mood that had filled the space between them in the Pit seemed to seep into the room and Daemonorel released her. It was a wariness that came when two predators met in the forest, the tension clear in both their faces and body language.

"Which then? The first then, the second then, the third, and every then afterwards when I'd wake up and realise I'd just dreamed of bedding another man's mate, one that I'd never been alone with in my entire life, one that I'd been in the same room with enough times to count on my fingers, as you say."

As she slipped from him, Daemonorel shoved himself up on the bed and flung his feet over the edge to the cool stone floor. Something about the granite beneath his feet reminded him he was awake, that this wasn't a dream like so many before. Without thinking, he rolled his shoulder, the one with the deep ache, in a vain effort to relieve the pain, "The first time though...it was the first time she marked me. The first time she called me the Chooser of Battles. That was the first 'then'. The first time I felt myself buried in you, and wanted to feel it again and again." His words seemed laced with acid, "Ny-emarr's mark lies between my flesh and bone," his fingers scratched through his hair, now dry from the rain soaking earlier, "and I'll be damned if I accept it."

"Elg'caress!"

The word spilled from her lips with vicious fury. Kneeling amidst the tumbled sheets, her raven-dark hair spilling over her bare shoulders, Silverthorn's hand clenched into a tight fist. Her jade eyes seemed to glow with the force of the anger that flooded her veins. "Eld'chalok dosib elg'caress!"

A sudden burst of movement saw her feet hitting the floor in a single, lithe movement. Without thinking about it she scooped up one of the daggers that lay on the floor, her fingers tightening about the hilt until it seemed to imprint itself on her skin. Jade eyes fixed on the figure of the dragon and a burst of harsh laughter spilled from her lips as she stalked forward. "She doesn't give a damn whether you accept it by choice, or whether she forces it on you."

"Oh, she's forced it on me, alright," Daemonorel's words were hissed out, "and I've lived with the agony of not accepting it long enough to know she's not gentle about what she expects me to do with my life. It feels like a hot coal is shoved on top of my shoulder blade and the only time I feel the pain subside is when I'm with you, and that's just scraping the surface of what I deal with on a daily basis."

The First Captain swallowed and let his eyes drift to the dagger in her hand, "I know what she wants of me now. I know how she expects to get it. The Chooser of Battles, consort to her Velkh'airee, her chosen male, her chosen female." Daemon's eyes slowly narrowed as they slid back to Silverthorn, and despite his anger, despite the feeling that once again, a god and the Fates were weaving his life without his input, felt himself grow painfully erect. There was something savage and beautiful about Arianne, something full of Flame and Chaos, and something he couldn't define.

"Her Velkh'airee..." Then his skin crawled as sudden cold realisation dawned on like the sun trying creep over the mountains in a blizzard.

"That's what you are. Isn't it?" Daemon's words thickened with the accent of the Black Kin of the Diirlathe as white wrath began to seep into his veins, "You're her Velkh'airee..."

"I am my own." The words were bitten out, eyes blazing with sudden fury. "I have always been my own and I'll be damned before I give that bitch anything more of my life, but if you mean does Nuuruhuine believe me to hers... Oh yes. I am the Battle Raven, First amongst the Choosers of the Slain." She laughed again, "ironic, isn't it? That her High Priestess should hate her quite as much as I do."

Her legs brushed against his as she stalked forward, close enough to see that the heat in his eyes wasn't entirely from rage, and she felt her body clench tight with need. Even with the anger and frustrated resentment burning through her veins, even knowing that they were being manipulated, she still wanted him; desire joining the already heady cocktail of emotions that surged through her. She felt her heart beat faster, and in that moment she had never looked more untamed.

Jade eyes gleamed with a feral light as the tip of her dagger pricked the skin of his shoulder. The scent of blood added a metallic tang to the charged atmosphere as a crimson drop welled up beneath the blade. "Why you?" she demanded, her words almost a snarl, "I know why she keeps interfering with me, what she hopes to gain from me, but why you? Why you and no-one else?"

The sting of her dagger cutting into his skin only added to the rapidly pooling pressure that was gathering low in his body, and her appearance, wild and wary, dangerously dark and unpredictable, was a near lethal mix to the Black. Rather than touch her though, Daemon leaned back, palms on the bed to support his weight, a motion that shifted his flesh and caused the dagger point to cut deeper, then slip back from the bleeding wound.

"You ask a lot of questions." His eyes seemed to be illuminated pools of deep green water swirling with shadows and murky places, "House Ashev has always held Ny-emarr above all others, she is our patron goddess, it is by her hand we live or die. By turning House Asmoor to Ashev, she has been restored in our pantheon. Why me and no other? Why not? But I'll tell you this much, had I known by taking our mother's name, it would make me a target for her, I would have let House Asmoor AND Ashev die."

"And been what? Nameless?" The dark-haired assassin made a derisive sound. "Like hell you would. I've been around both Blacks and Silvers long enough to know just how important their House is to them. You truly expect me to believe you'd walk away from that?"

Her fingers tightened around the hilt of the dagger. The Battle Goddess was his patron deity? Inwardly Silverthorn cursed virulently. "One day I'm going to kill her. I don't know if it's possible, but I swear I'm going to try. I'm so damned sick of this!" With a furious gesture she threw the dagger, the blade skimming past Daemonorel's ear before burying itself into the mattress.

A strange, half-grin tilted up Daemon's mouth with Silverthorn's question, as if he'd been caught telling a lie to himself, "There's a lot of things I wouldn't be able to walk away from now, and now the question is, do I even try?" His heated gaze slowly slid from the apex of her thighs to meet her own jade gaze, "Because, no matter what decision I make now, its going to be because she manipulated my life."

His eyes slid to a pair of short swords hanging in their scabbards from a simple rack nearby, "Those are hers, by the way, given to me by her hand before the last Tourney." Moss green eyes slowly shifted back to Silverthorn as a bolt of lightning from the almost-spent storm slammed into the mountain overhead and illuminated the room with flickering silver light, "MAYBE I should have walked away from those, maybe by accepting the gift of faith from her, I accepted her interference in my life. Maybe."

It was then, his eyes narrowed again and he sat up once more, "But why you? I think that's a fair enough question. Why are you considered her Velkh'airee?"

Jade eyes glared at him as if daring him to touch her as his moss-green gaze slid up her body. "Why? Why not? That was your reply, wasn't it?"

A hand clenched into a fist for a second, and then relaxed again. "I am a Badb Catha, a Battle Raven. My family have been associated with her since the time of Maeve, back in the Forest War. It is said that it was the Phantom Queen who first gifted my ancestor with the ability to change form. Whether that is true or not I am not sure, but it is certainly true that she had a hand, at least in part, in the dark magic that lives in the souls of many of the women of my line." Her words were clipped, the explanation obviously reluctant.

"The oldest male is Master of the Sluagh, the Wild Hunt, Lord of That Which Lies Between. As for the females, it is normal for at least one to belong to her Ravens, the Choosers of the Slain... and that female is always First amongst them. The High Priestess if you like. In that the roles of both myself and my brother were destined from birth." Simmering anger was visible in her movements as she crouched, picking up a different dagger this time. She spun it in her fingers for a moment before continuing.

"I was seven years old when I was given this, the age I was when she used it to slit my wrists and let my blood run down onto the stones of her altar. You may have been given the chance to choose whether or not to accept, to choose whether to walk away. I had none."

Daemon's eyes watched the near-hypnotic twirl of the blade in fingers long accustomed to handling it as he seemed to digest her explanation, "That would explain why the first time I met your brother, we tried to kill each other." Silence ticked by for a few seconds, then, "You think... I've had a choice? My blood has soaked the soil of more worlds than you can imagine, for over 8000 years, all in the name of War."

Daemon's fingers curled around the wrist of the hand that didn't hold the dagger, deliberately leaving her open to cutting him if she chose. Carefully, he pulled her closer and studied the flesh there and the faint whiteness that to the trained eye indicated old scars, "These aren't just from a clean, sharp blade, are they?"

His voice was low, almost thoughtful, "I know those scars. Know them well."

Silverthorn froze, her breath catching in her throat as the question blind-sided her. Old fear rose up, thick enough to choke and acidic enough to burn. Deliberately she forced it down. He was dead, dammit. It didn't matter anymore, but no logic could alter the ice that ran down her spine. "No," she grated, "they're not from a blade." The edge of her knife pressed sharply against Daemon's throat, "let go of my wrist. Now."

Daemonorel's shrug moved his body just the hair amount it would take for the razor edge of the dagger to draw a fine bead of blood at his throat. The pain reminded him of salt on sweet fruit, the perfect counterpoint to the flavour of the moment, "The funny thing about getting scars like that," his fingers slowly uncurled until only his index finger and thumb held her wrist lightly, "is at some point, it doesn't hurt anymore."

Daemon's eyes seemed to lose focus and look through Silverthorn and into the past, "After a while, you don't feel the metal carving your skin back, but you know it still is. You don't want to look, and you don't. But you know the flesh is bare meat, and if you hung like I did, you can feel the blood run down your arms, trickle in this... slow," Moss green eyes narrowed with a twitching movement, "winding path down your ribs, hips and thighs until it drips to the ground. It draws flies and turns sticky. I think the worst part is the itching as the skin tries to heal itself and keeps getting torn back when the whip strikes and your body jerks."

The last of his hold was released and his head tilted ever so slightly and the nerve under one eye twitched once, then twice, then seemed to stop with a slow, deliberate exhalation of breath, "Nargus never understood once the threshold is crossed, the pain stops, the leverage is gone. Now that I look back on it, I'm glad he never figured it out." Finally, he focussed on her again, "Only because of that, he never really broke me."

"No, the worst part is the loss of control, the knowledge that someone else can do whatever they want to you and that there is nothing you can do to stop them." The words were little more than a whisper of sound, distant, the elven woman's eyes shadowed by the memories that whirled through her mind. "You can feel the chains cutting into your flesh, the iron burning until the air stinks of cooked meat, and even when you can't feel it anymore that smell lingers. It clings, following you around even when they take you out of the cell, a reminder. Yet in an odd way it isn't even a bad reminder, because no matter how bad being confined like that is, the consequences of being removed from it are always far worse."

A shudder rippled down her spine. "I guess I should be grateful for the drugs or the madness, because at least they mean that I don't remember all of it, and that I do is almost like it was happening to someone else." Another flicker of memory darkened her gaze, "most of it anyway." Some of it was still all too real.

The edge of the blade lowered slightly, her grip on the hilt relaxing, although the weapon did not quite move away from his skin. Her free hand cradled his jaw in her fingers, her thumb running over his cheek in an absent gesture as she looked into his eyes. For a long moment, Silverthorn was silent, her eyes searching his as if she could see all the secrets of his soul revealed there. Within her the fury had ebbed, becoming the dull, simmering anger that had inhabited the darker recesses of her psyche for the better part of her life. It was always there, a constant background noise. It had fuelled her through the hardest times, even when perhaps she should have given up, keeping her going out of sheer stubborn bloody-mindedness.

"I don't like being manipulated," she said quietly, "I never have done, perhaps for the same reason that I don't take orders well. My life is my own, and any decisions about it are mine to make. No-one else's. Trying to take control of my life away from me is a sure-fire way to piss me off. Yet at the same time..." There was an odd intensity about her, the emotions that had surged so wildly until control now, but leashed, not extinguished. "The reasons I gave for why I was here are still true. They haven't changed. So I guess the question is do we walk away regardless of that? Or do we not?"