This is a short story companion to the Avallac'h/OC tale Dance of Flames and picks up after CHAPTER 12. For the most part, this is a stand alone but eventually it will tie in here and there. I'll try to keep it from being too confusing. I'm a big ole SMUT fan so please be aware that yup, it's gonna be in here.

I love comments so feel free to express yourself. This is all in fun!

Captive

Destiny and power were truly a wondrous phenomenon. They could destroy, create, sever, and heal. Unite entire nations or tear apart the closets of family.

From a young age, Etain had shown a great affinity for power. But though she could do the smallest of tasks such as bringing light to a single candle or the summoning the grandest of storms, she had never been granted leave to study with other sorcerers. Instead, she had been tucked away in the farthest reaches of Tir ná Lia until the day her family could decide her fate.

Destiny however, was more elusive. Life rolled past Etain, leaving her with few outlets besides seeing how far she could push the boundaries of magic. Making idle use of her isolation, she had built entire towers around her home with the power within her.

Only to bring them down again.

She wasn't a bad sort, at least when she compared herself to the villains in the books she read. According to her father, she had wicked tendencies but that had been so long ago, and how would he have known? He had never steeped one foot in Chateau Saol.

And then there was her brother…

If she were anything like him, then she knew she was the villain in her story for certain. It was on the days when she felt the line between her righteousness and loneliness grow that she lost control. The days when the storm clouds rolled in and the rain cut swift, the servants of Chateau Saol knew to leave the tray of dinner at her door, and to leave her be. Not that she had ever hurt any of them, but they were wary none the less.

A wariness which young Etain had grown more than accustomed to, which made her current situation all the more perplexing.

"On your feet prisoner!" A strangely accented voice shouted from above her. She could for the most part make out the hen llinge words spoken but they were… off a bit. Just enough that her addled mind couldn't put it all together right then.

Her first clear thought as she squinted her eyes against the glaring sunlight was who in their right mind would dare kick her arm and shout at her. Her second was that her entire body ached with the fury of a thousand stampeding unicorns.

Anyone who knew her or who her brother was, knew to give her a wide berth.

But then again, she had never been laid out flat on her back in muck with a stick jabbing into the soft spot behind her ear.

Before she could fight back the fuzzy fog in her mind enough to put together a biting set down to the cur who dared treat her so, two sets of hands wrapped around her upper arms and hoisted her to her feet. Feeling too light headed to protest, Etain closed her eyes against the spinning scenery.

Licking at her cracked lips with a dry tongue, her stomach turned dangerously at the taste of blood. "Wh- what happened?" She managed to croak out and open her eyes a fraction to find a blurry male of indistinctive characteristics beyond a flash of red where hair normally would be expected. Her last memory… slipping aboard a ship, unnoticed in her stolen armor.

"I expected something more… fearsome from the legendary Wild Hunt. Not a waif of a girl who could barely lift a sword, much less use it." A new, equally accented voice sounded, but this time she had the odd reaction of a shiver up her spine.

Anger flashed through Etain, suppressing the pain radiating through her bones. Pulling against the hands holding her, she sought to summon a finally crafted bolt of lightning to strike the offending bastard - her right hand briefly strained against the one restraining her for the pendent around her neck, but nothing was there and in consequence nothing came to her beyond a prickly feeling of static across her fingertips.

Realizing too late that she was much too injured and exhausted to so much as light a candle, much less fry the blurry form like a toad, darkness swept across her and she fell limp.

Watching as the mud and blood covered prisoner's pale blue eyes rolled back into her head, Iorveth bit back a sigh of frustration and crossed his arms.

"Interesting find, Commander." His second in command, Diarmuid, said with a grin.

Iorveth curled his lip with a shake of his head. "Take her back to camp. If she wakes, give her water but nothing else and keep her quiet till I return." He did not wait for his order to be followed, knowing already that it would be explicitly without question. Diarmuid and the two archers who had accompanied them left with the fallen soldier - if she could indeed be considered one - and Iorveth concentrated on looking for clues and piecing together what had happened in the small dh'oine village.

It went against his and every man and woman under the Scoia'tael banner to have any interest in such things, after all the loss of a couple dozen sheep were only noticed by the shepherd. And it was the same with humans. None would notice the loss.

But Iorveth was a strategist. He would never have survived a life of war and evasion if he ignored such obvious curiosities.

And a village frozen was indeed a curiosity.

He recognized the woman's armor well enough. Impractical and obviously ill fitting, the steel skeleton over blood red cloth marked her easily as a Red Rider.

One of the Wild Hunt.

But what was odd had been that she'd clearly been defeated by… a shit shoveling dh'oine? And then there was her worth. Would her comrades return for her? She had attempted magic, making her a sage? But a sword had been found still within her grasp.

Sweeping his gaze around the frost covered grass, distorted by puddles of mud and strewn bodies, he searched.

Then there, in the light of the rising sun, a glint of blue among the brown and red near where the woman had been found. Bending quickly, Iorveth retrieved a necklace and wiped it clean with his thumb. His lips hardened into a thin line. He was not a sage, but all Aen Seidhe were sensitive to power.

He'd felt it when the Wild Hunt had arrived when the moon had been at its highest. He'd felt it when the fallen prisoner had attempted to cast a spell. And he felt it now as he held the small sapphire with a broken silver chain still through the loop.

Perhaps he wouldn't regret killing her the moment Diarmuid said that she still breathed.