Lucivar moved through the routine slowly, feeling the tug and pull of healing and healed muscle, stretching as he continued to get back into the familiar rhythms. The Eyrien stick was a comforting weight in his hands. His wings at his back, unfolding and furling, adjusting automatically to every shift in his weight, still made him smile, even after the last months. With a weapon in his hands and his mind clear with the purifying effect of familiar movements, he could almost feel whole.

He felt her eyes on him for a long time, just watching, before he turn to face her. Jaenelle Angelline. His Queen. Witch. Alive. It was that, of course, that truly set him on the path to feeling alive again.

Stretching his membranous wings and calling in a shirt, he gave her a lazy, arrogant grin before he noticed the expression in her eyes. His knees went weak and he stopped moving. "Cat?"

She glided to him – and it was a glide, slow and dangerous. He stayed where he was as she stepped around to his back, bewildered as to what had caused this sudden mood in her until one cool, light hand laid itself against one of the thick scars on his back, furrows of roughly healed scar tissue that traced a map of lines through his skin.

"Jaenelle?" Softly, almost.

He could hear the frown and more than frown in a voice that was suddenly dark. "What is this?" Touching another, tracing it with her graceful fingers.

"Jaenelle-" His voice was too hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Nothing. It doesn't matter anymore."

"But it does," she corrected him. She touched one crossing his shoulder blade. "This one," in a soft voice with a touch of the midnight. "When is it from?"

"The first time I saw you," Lucivar said without thinking. "Earlier that night." Then he stopped, half stricken.

"Ah," she said and then turned him to face her. "Lucivar…"

"It doesn't matter." Firmly.

"You remember every one, don't you?"

He didn't answer that question because he couldn't lie to her. She just nodded, her mouth twisting though the not-smile didn't touch her eyes. "Lucivar…"

"You are not going to apologize," he snapped, almost savagely. "Don't you dare try." He shifted and tugged the shirt over his head, trying to ignore the wound that felt like a raw hole in his belly. "If you don't want to see them, don't watch me practice."

Jaenelle's eyes flashed for a moment. "That's not it! Don't be a prick. You think I don't know what it was like for you there?"

Almost a flinch. Lucivar wondered, sometimes, how much Jaenelle knew of those years. The shame when that thought occurred to him tied his stomach in knots. "What is it, then?"

Jaenelle frowned. "Have you honestly forgotten they're there?"

Lucivar shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. "I'm used to them. They're part of me. I'm not going to regret their existence."

Jaenelle's eyes darkened. "How can you not?" In a soft voice, and Lucivar tensed.

"They've made me who I am." He tries for a grin. "You wouldn't have me any other way, would you?"

"If you like I could make them fade a little," she said after a few moments.

Lucivar forced himself not to feel the automatic pang with those words and looked away. "I told you. They're part of me. If you don't like them you don't have to watch."

Jaenelle frowned. "What does that mean?"

Lucivar made himself meet her piercing sapphire eyes. "Cat, I am what I am. Please don't let yourself forget that." Because I can't let you. I can't let you not be aware of exactly who it is who's serving you. Even if it hurts.

Jaenelle's eyes narrowed in a gesture that was, indeed, catlike. "You think I'm ashamed of your past?" He didn't answer that question, but he knew she could see it without looking too hard. She stepped to him and put one hand on his forearm and he tensed, forcing himself to look at her directly, not wanting to shy away from any reaction she gave.

"Lucivar," Jaenelle said seriously, looking straight at him with those unnervingly ancient eyes. "I'm not ashamed of you. I never will be."

He wasn't even aware of how tense his shoulders were until he went limp with those words. "You're not ashamed to have a half-breed bastard pleasure slave serving you when you're the strongest and best Queen the Blood have ever seen?" He forced the words out, rubbing that wound in his belly that didn't exist even more raw.

He felt the snarl more than heard it. "You're an Eyrien Warlord Prince and if you ever claim you're anything else again, I'll kick your ass."

Lucivar looked at her, startled, and then regained his balance and snorted. "You could try." But he let her see the little warm glow of relief her words gave him and she looked satisfied, more or less.

She leaned up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Don't be ridiculous." A pause, and then the witch was back and his sister was gone again, though not so very far. "How are your wings?"

He fanned them out for her and Jaenelle smiled. "Think you'll make the Khaldaron Run this summer?"

He tugged her into a hug impulsively, fuzzing her blonde hair. "Only if I go by myself. I hope you're not planning on trying it."

She gave him that smile that made his knees melt, a little. "We'll see." And after a pause, she added, "Lucivar?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you teach me how to use the sticks?"

That lazy arrogant grin came easily. "Just waiting for you to ask, Cat." She smiled, and tugged away suddenly, looking out at the woods several yards from her cottage.

"Lucivar? Do you ever really get used to the scars?"

He could hear the note in her voice and he knew that she wasn't really talking about him anymore. Perhaps they never had been, at least not fully.

"They always hurt sometimes," he said slowly, "But you learn to live with them. I promise."

She turned to look at him. Oh, the look in her eyes. So bruised. So deeply, deeply sad. His heart twanged loudly in the sudden silence. "Do you?" she whispered, and he was reminded of how young she was. How young and how vulnerable.

Something tugged at the edge of memory but he pushed it away, refusing to acknowledge it. "Cat," he murmured, and offered his arms. "Jaenelle," and he didn't know what he'd said but she was embracing him and saying something fiercely and too fast to make out.

His arms around her, he could feel the tug of scars on his back, reminding him that they were there, waiting for him to admit that this could not last forever. He denied them, turning his face from them and the thought that he and Daemon had been so foolish to fear that Jaenelle would want something better than them and their centuries of lust and death and pain. Because that made him think of Daemon, and Daemon…

He anchored himself in the dark psychic scent of his Queen, wondering if that promise he'd made Jaenelle had meant anything after all or if it'd just been another comforting lie.