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Parents |
Kieran Badb Catha
Cerys Windsinger
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Grandchildren |
Corbin Black
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"And, you didn't answer my question. Care to brave the cold spring rain
for a shower?" An evil grin turned up the corner of his mouth before
offering her a hand, "I'll even lose the wings and scale, so I'll be as
cold as you are."
"I do hope you're not accusing me of cowardice, Ashev," she replied,
her hand was in his before she had even thought about it, rising to her
feet with a lithe grace. A challenge of any kind was something
Silverthorn had always found hard to resist. Jade eyes gleamed with a
combination of wicked amusement and defiant challenge. "That's always a
dangerous sort of accusation to throw around."
A wicked smile curled her lips and, releasing his hand, the
raven-haired elf walked over towards the doors. As she looked back over
her shoulder she was highlighted in a flash of lightning, thunder
rolling overhead. "So... are you coming, or are you going to wimp out?"
Then she stepped out into the rain.
A fleeting thought of, she's as insane as I am, flicked through
Daemonorel's mind before he shrugged and began walking toward the
rain-washed ledge. His wings vanished while scale melted back beneath
scarred and even lightly freckled skin and once at the door frame, he
peered out the lightning jagged sky, then at Silverthorn, who was
soaked in chill rain.
"Enjoy the moment, pal," Daemon muttered and glanced straight down.
Chilled rain and nude women was often a wonderful combination, "Caaause
you won't react the same way those did."
A deep breath later, and the First Captain stepped out in the
rain and beside Silverthorn, then angled his face up to the sky, eyes
closed, and let the cool drops wash over his body. As his blond hair
began to drip and the rain ran over him in trickling rivulets, his eyes
rolled open and his head lowered. Thunder from a close crack of
lightning shook the ledge and rumbled across the sheer mountain face
the ledges of the Black Guard were situated on. The sporadic flashes of
light illuminated the deep gorge that ran along the base of the
mountain and wound its way along the edge of the plateau. The
glittering thread of silver far below the carpet of evergreens and
scrub brush that clung to the rocks was but one of the larger rivers
that flowed from beneath the Keep and was fed by snow-melt.
This time of year, the river was little more than a series of
raging rapids and foaming water, and was also something of an
attraction to younger Blacks and even some Silvers who had claimed the
Keep as 'home'. It was wide enough and deep enough for the thrill
seekers to 'ride' the rapids... in whatever form they were brave enough
to attempt it.
"Its a hell of a view at sunset," Daemon's speech filtered to
Thorn as his eyes slid across her wet body before he walked to the very
edge of the ledge and peered down, all the while fighting the urge to
shiver from the cold rain. Blacks didn't deal well with being chilled,
and it didn't take much for them to get cold being the desert lovers
they were.
"The sky looks like fire-corals as the sun sinks past the mountains,
and if you look hard enough, you can catch a glimpse of the Sand Sea
beyond here."
"It's a hell of a view whenever," Silverthorn murmured, looking out
across the landscape. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back to
feel the cool rain on her face. Water trickled over her tanned skin,
dampening her raven hair and washing the blood away from the wound at
her throat.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the night sky and her
eyes snapped open. The primitive splendour of the storm-lit sky
appealed to something deep inside of her, something that made her
heartbeat faster and adrenaline race through her veins. Exhilaration
shone in her jade gaze as she stood there on the very edge of the
ledge, stretching out her arms as if embracing the night, and wondering
what it would be like just to let herself fall, to feel the air rushing
over her.
Despite the cold, Daemonorel felt his body react almost painfully to
the sight of Silverthorn, standing there, illuminated from time to time
by silver light. In the after-image, Daemon's thermal sight saw her
outlined in warm blues, pale yellow and hot white as his senses
combined to rake across her body. She was a predator, violence and
malice contained beneath a skin of cool precision and calm, but a black
flame, coming to life almost as he watched. The Arianne he'd known was
a Queen, once assassin, a hunter forced by her love for Y'Roden to try
to become a politician, not the killer she was born to be.
And to watch the change in her was stirring a change in him. Life was returning to his veins.
His head tilted to the side as his body turned and one, then
two silent steps had him standing behind her, his nose almost against
her dripping locks of raven-black. The heat of her skin could be felt
between them, and his flesh barely grazed against hers as his lifted
his head from her hair and peered over her shoulder, "I thought we were
through with standing on the edge, merely wondering how it feels?"
He'd known the look on her face, and knew that while both of
them had their own means of flight, the thrill of just... falling...
was hard to resist.
And despite having wings, the fear of falling was a very real one, for many reasons, not just physical.
"I know how it feels," she said softly, "we both do. That moment before
you shift, before your wings catch, when the air's rushing past you and
there's just that brief moment when you could just. let. go."
Her arms dropped down by her side, the elf leaning back
against him. "Can anyone who has lived their life on the edge ever walk
away from it? Completely and utterly, I mean? Because all the time
there is that fear of falling and yet, at the same time, that fear is
part of the reason for the adrenaline that races through your veins...
and there is a something about that that makes you feel alive."
In her eyes as her head turned to glance over her shoulder at
him was the exhilaration of the storm that still sang through her
veins. "What fun would the hunt be without the challenge of not walking
away from it? To stalk the weak is one thing, and fear has a lot to be
said for it, but the real entertainment is in breaking the strong."
After a long silence where a brief flicker of memory raced though his
mind, breaking the strong, he felt a malicious grin pull at one corner
of his mouth as he angled his head slightly and let the opposite side
of his mouth brush against hers. He'd been the strong, and in the end,
hadn't been broken. He'd spent the rest of his life doling out
something of universal paybacks, and had loved every moment of it.
"I can't deny that," His hands slid to her waist, "But even
more exciting, is the fear of the strong, as they're broken. Though, to
lead them to the point they're being broken willingly, and begging for
more? That is perfection in the hunt."
The wind eddied around them in a low whispering howl, bringing with it
a sudden shift in the sheets of rain and tugged at Silverthorn and
Daemon's wet hair, "And no. The hunger of the hunt never leaves you,
not once you've truly felt it, and fed it. It merely lurks beneath the
surface, constantly gnawing, constantly making demands both on your
mind," His palms slid down her abdomen and the sculpted junction of hip
bone and pelvis and his fingers slowly spread to fan out along her
inner thigh. The backs of his thumbs rubbed against the outer edge of
her flesh and heat, the kind that was given him as a gift from his
goddess, the heat of Flames, seeped into his touch.
"And flesh."
Silverthorn's breath caught, a softly betraying hitch as warmth
seeped into her rain-chilled flesh. "Yes." The word was little more
than a breath of sound murmured against his mouth as her lips brushed
against his, the cool rain that ran down his face overlying the taste
that was uniquely Daemonorel.
An elegant hand, the fingertips callused from millennia of
combat, slid down his hip, curving around his thigh. "The hunger gets
into your blood, until it is in every beat of your heart, until it's
part of who you are... and to deny it is to deny part of yourself." She
flexed her fingers, letting her nails graze his skin, tracing the
muscles that lay beneath.
"We are too much alike, you and I," Daemon muttered against
her mouth before he nipped at her lower lip, then brought his warm
hands back up her body. Every curve, every scar, every subtle texture
of skin was studied, traced beneath his fingers as he made his way back
up her form.
"Both of us waking from being dead for too long, both of us
predators, loving the feel of prey beneath our hands, both of us
hungry, and neither of us willing to seek that which we need to feel
whole again." His mouth wandered lower, and settled over the clean
wound at her neck, and his tongue ran over the torn and bruised flesh
before he sucked gently at her throat in a place yet undamaged.
"I know you, and I know the hunger," His eyes lifted to her
profile, and his fingers went to her jaw to turn her head, "And I don't
know why I'm just now realising it, but I've missed it. I've missed
you." He swallowed, completely unsure why he had said that. How could
he miss her, when he'd only been near her a handful of times? Tonight
was only one of two times he could ever remember being alone with her.
The Pit had been the other.
Raven lashes drifted partially shut, veiling jade pools. Beneath his
hands her body arched slightly, stretching in a manner that was almost
feline, a low sound catching in her throat as he sucked at it. At his
words, her lashes flickered, lifting. In the depths of her eyes was
surprise, perhaps not so much at his words, but at the fact that he had
been that painfully honest. He had shut himself off so thoroughly,
locking the prison door behind him and damn near throwing away the key.
To hear him admit that he missed anything outside those walls was
almost shocking. Perhaps not so shocking as his final admission,
however, and yet...
"It takes one to know one, remember? You said it yourself that
day in the Pit." Turning slightly, her hand reached up to cradle his
jaw as she leaned in, her lips brushing against his. "I know you as
well as you do me, and I don't know why I hadn't realised it before
then, but it's still the truth."
"Maybe both of us were blind, thinking we were in the place we
should have been?" His feet shifted on the soaked stone of the ledge
and his rain-slick chest pressed against her back. A soft, nearly
inaudible sound welled up within him at the sensation of warm skin,
dripping wet, against him. "Too proud to admit where we were was wrong,
and fighting too hard to remain where we both felt safe?" His mouth
moved from hers as he nuzzled past her dripping hair to her ear and
there his nose explored the outer arc and intricate design of her
pointed elf-ear.
Within him, emotions were swinging wildly from something close
to fear to relief with every word he spoke. He'd had a year, almost,
between his first encounter with her in the Pit until tonight, and
while he'd been aware of what she'd said then was truth, he'd simply
not wanted to contemplate it. Anger had been the easiest way to deal
with the truth.
Why then tonight? Why was he willing to admit now that he'd
willingly denied what he was? Somehow, he didn't think he'd be able to
blame to alcohol intake from earlier, especially since the cold rain
had done a fine job sobering him completely.
"Sometimes pride is all you have left," she replied quietly, her eyes
closing as her head tilted slightly. A soft sound escaped her as he
nuzzled at her ear, a slight shiver running down her spine at the feel
of his warm breath on the sensitive skin. "And if it is all you have
left it's damned hard to give up, if it's the only armour you still
have, the only thing stopping everyone else from seeing how you really
feel, but that doesn't mean it can't also be nothing more than cold
comfort."
The raven-haired elf sighed, a quiet breath of sound all but
lost amidst the crash of nature's fury. "I may lie to others on a
regular basis, but I try not to lie to myself. Perhaps I was though, or
perhaps I simply didn't want to admit the truth because that would have
meant facing other unpleasant truths as well. In the end though, it
isn't possible to run forever, and you sure as hell can't run from
yourself. I can't pretend to be someone or something that I'm not, and
as painful as the process of admitting that was, it's nowhere near as
painful as trying to be someone else... and failing. It's odd though
that, despite everything, just making that admission is... liberating.
To actually just turn around and say 'this is me, this is who I am' and
stop trying to be anything else."
"Why do we do that? Try to change, try to be something other
than we truly are, for the sake of polite company?" Daemon muttered as
his nose slid down her ear, and his eyes watched the outline of her
profile, "I know that feeling, trying to be something else, for someone
else, and I know the look on her face when my true nature surfaced,
when the pleasure of watching the weak die beneath the Flame and Chaos
of a battle long past reminded me of what I really am." His cracked and
bloody fingers closed around Silverthorn's upper arm as he slowly
turned her to face him, "I remember the shock on her face, the disgust
in her eyes, and even then, she thought I was a pet, to be petted and
calmed. And I remember the cold hate I felt for her then, and for
myself."
Moss green eyes flickered both with true phosphorescence of emotion as
well as reflected light from the brilliant shards of lightning and
seemed to focus on her mouth before drifting to her eyes. Rough fingers
curved along Arianne's jaw and slipped down her neck before sliding
under the masses of soaked, raven hair to tighten at the nape of her
neck while he traced the lines of scars and sculpted muscles down her
arm, then ribs and abdomen with the fingers of his other hand.
"And what sort of love is it, that we have for another, that
we think we have to change, to be something other than what we are,
even though the other never asks it of us?"
"Not one that can survive."
Raven lashes lowered, partially veiling her gaze, a shiver
rippling across her skin as callused fingertips traced the evidence of
a life in which only death, violence, pain and loss had remained true
constants. Within the darkness there had been moments of light, of
love, of happiness, but within a life that had already spanned more
than three and a half millennia these seemed so fleeting as to be mere
dreams.
"Sometimes there is no one to blame, people grow and change,
time and circumstances see to that. They don't always grow in the same
direction. Instead they find themselves trying to become something
they're not because they feel they have no other choice." Her voice was
husky, her lashes lifting slowly. "But there is. There has to be. If
someone doesn't love you for who you really are, how can it be love?
And there is nothing more soul-destroying than to try fit someone
else's preconceived notions of what is appropriate."
The last was almost a low growl, sharply bitten off. Jade eyes
flashed with remembered anger. "I will NOT do that again. Ever. And
anyone who doesn't like it can just get screwed.”
A twisted, almost wicked grin curved up one corner of Daemon's mouth
and a short, soft snort of warm breath blew against her skin. The
Captain's quiet laugh was lost in the rolling boom of thunder and the
sheets of rain that drove against the stones and splattered over their
skin and at their feet.
"And which is it you will not do again, Is'iis? Fall in love,
or mould yourself to someone else’s expectations?" His fingers lifted
to her shoulder and the tip of his index finger brushed the still-open
bite wound there, then the angry red halo around it that would be a
purple and deep crimson bruise by daylight. His grip released her
almost suddenly and he took a step back, angled his head up, and let
the cold rain wash over his face and the bloody marks that were now
clean, then raked his fingers through his own dripping blond hair.
"I don't know about you," Black wings sliced through the skin
on his back as he turned and started back inside his quarters. The
leathery appendages stretched over his head and stretched wide before
spreading out like a makeshift umbrella. His words and steps paused as
he twisted his head slowly and deliberately to let his neck and back
pop, then gave her a dark, lopsided grin from over his shoulder, "but
I'm tired of being cold."
"Oh, I don't know. It can be kind of refreshing." The elf looked up at
the stormy sky, enjoying the crisp, clean feel of the cool rain upon
her skin. After the near constant heat and humidity of Whispin it felt
like a breath of fresh air to a woman born and raised in more temperate
climes.
She raised her hands to her head as she neared the doors to
his chamber, tanned fingers twisting the dark, wet mass of her hair
between her hands. Water dripped onto the granite floor. The bitemark
on her shoulder ached with the movement; somehow, she suspected it
would hurt a damn sight more come morning. Oddly, she couldn't seem to
bring herself to mind. Red marks from Daemonorel's talons scratched
across her torso, bruises from his hard grasp marked her flesh, and yet
the sting only served to remind her that she was alive. Eventually the
shadows would come, Nuuruhuine always came to claim her own in the end,
and she could hardly deny that she was one of the Phantom Queen's
chosen anymore, for all that the Goddess often aggravated the hell out
of her.
A whisper of memory, almost forgotten, tugged at her mind. I
am there at the beginning and at the end. As I guide my children into
the world at their birth, so I guide them out of it upon their death...
and that death will be one of my choosing. The smile that curled
her lips was without humour and distinctly cold. Somehow she doubted
any death of the Battle Goddess' choosing would be one of serene
tranquillity.
"I was referring to not moulding myself to the expectations of
others," Silverthorn said coolly, walking further into the room, "but
as to falling in love... I'm not sure that any of us choose to
do that. I've seen too many instances where people would have chosen
quite the opposite to believe the head always rules the heart."
"And Iiii wasn't referring to the weather," A warm,
large towel was launched at the elven assassin and landed across her
shoulder and part of her head as Daemonorel scrubbed at his hair and
worked to get dry.
"Flames erupt where they will," He nodded as he spoke the
words of Brighid herself, "And they live where they will, and go where
they will, and if you're lucky, someday, they find you." He paused, his
own towel in hand, then launched a hissing handful of saffron and
scarlet flames into the dead hearth, then canted his head to the side,
his eyes settling on a mark at her hip, "And consume you. Whether it be
in death or passion. Or passionate death..."
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