They were a thunderous wave across the silent countryside, hoofbeats of the horses drumming against the dirt. Rey rode at the front, properly attired in a dress and furs for once, determined to face this with all the Queenly dignity that she could muster.

She had no doubt that the Order of the First Saint would be able to hear them coming from a mile away.

The copse of trees indicating their meeting place slowly came into view, rising against the rolling hills. She could see the group assembled there, of moderate size and camped about without any particular order.

When she reached them, she could immediately distinguish their leader from among the group. He was dressed to a much finer standard than all the others, with a stiff posture and a firm hold to his jaw.

As they clattered to a stop, the man stared at Rey with such venom that it took all of her control to keep her face placid and calm.

Ren dismounted first. He then offered a hand up to her, holding his palm even so that she could grasp it tightly as she slid down from the height of her horse. The ground was thankfully dry enough that she didn't sink in too heavily when she landed, maintaining as graceful a demeanour as possible.

As she approached with the clatter of armoured men slowly dismounting behind her, the surrounding crowd gradually knelt in the dirt. All, that was, except for the richly dressed man who stood at the front. He merely bowed slightly from the waist, letting her see a glint of red hair from under his fine hat.

They were a ragtag group. Any fears about an ambush had clearly been unnecessary; most of them didn't even appear to have makeshift weapons, let alone real ones.

The redheaded man spoke first. "Lady Rey."

Ren corrected him sharply. "Your Grace, Hux, remember your place."

"Lord Hux," the man corrected back, equally sharp.

Rey sidestepped the issue by folding her palms and addressing this Lord Hux directly, as well as the greater crowd at large. "You called for a meeting. You appear to be under the assumption I am here to discuss terms; I am not. I am here to tell you to disband and return to your homes."

Hux ignored her. "Our demands are reasonable, Lady Rey, and backed by the word of God."

"Is that so?"

"We only ask that you accept that Eve was meant to follow Adam."

She closed her eyes in irritation. "I somehow think that is not all."

"If you accept this fact, you must realize that it is only right that you should cede authority to your husband." Hux's voice took on a sharp edge.

Summoning her patience, Rey raised a hand before Ren could let out an angry retort. "I assume you have a written list of these requirements of yours? To spare us all the obsequious niceties?" She had absolutely no intention of agreeing to any terms, of course, but it was in her interest to stretch the timing of this meeting on for some while.

"This way," Hux gestured, and as Rey stepped forward to follow, she noted Finn and a small group of his men peeling away from the back of her retinue.

The ride back somehow felt longer, especially as it began to rain well before they reached the manor. The mud grew worse with each mile and Rey's dress gradually grew heavier and heavier against her skin, slowly becoming soaked through. By the time they made it to Lady Kanata's, the whole party was in a dismal mood.

Rey went directly to her chambers, accepting a helping hand from Jessika as she stripped out of her soaked things. Finally dry, she tugged a new shift over her head with a happy sigh. Jessika was pulling a brush through her hair when there was a stern knock at the door.

Jessika quickly went and opened it, before returning to Rey. "It's the Captain, your Grace."

"Show him in. By the fireplace, please, where I'll be obscured."

There was a brief shuffling sound of heavy boots before Jessika came back and began brushing her hair once more.

Rey cleared her throat. "Present your report, Captain."

The timbre of Finn's voice was a bit hesitant. "Your Grace, if I should return later—"

For heaven's sake. There was a solid screen and the new shift was made of a thick material that went straight to her knees. Which he wouldn't be seeing in any case. Some of this would be much easier if she were a man. "Time is of the essence, Captain. Please give me your report so you can return to your duties."

She almost heard him straighten and brace his shoulders. "Of course. I personally supervised the reconnaissance team as you were meeting the rebels, as you suggested. We tracked their main camp to a location not far from the copse, and we found them to be highly disorganized, without weapons, and poorly provisioned. There is no—"

Abruptly, Finn's voice went silent and Rey had the sensation of being pulled under the surface of a pond by steady and insistent hands. Confused, she tried to blink and shake herself awake, but she found that her eyes opened to a scene in an entirely different place. She was in a hallway in the manor somewhere, and the lamps in the grates were somehow closer than usual— like she was taller, she realized, by quite a bit. Lady Bazine's face was front and centre, peering up with lips organized in a tight pout. "I don't understand what hold she has on you," she was saying, voice plaintive. "We intend to put you back on your rightful throne, to the destiny that was yours by right—"

Ren's voice rumbled out in response, but it felt like she was hearing it from the inside of a round chapel, voice bouncing off in every direction. "That is treason."

"Accept our help," Lady Bazine insisted. "We would have you lead us."

"And if I don't wish this?"

"I had no idea that you were so mild a man, to be led around by your apron strings—"

She felt Ren's irritation as her own, was aware of the twitch of his sword hand. "Leave me. Now."

Lady Bazine stepped back gracefully, but she still looked determined. "Consider it, my Lord. We are faithful to your cause. I have ways of delivering messages to Lord Hux, and can be your conduit to him without that woman knowing." She turned, and in a few smooth steps, she was around the corner and gone.

When Rey blinked, she was suddenly back in her own head. It felt as though there was still water sloshing around in her ears. She could distantly tell that she wasn't alone in her thoughts, and as she braced her stance, she found herself looking down to try and focus her gaze.

Ren's embarrassment was immediate when he realized she was only in her shift, which was ridiculous, given that trousers were more revealing and he regularly saw her with no clothing at all. Her own reaction to his embarrassment somehow made him more embarrassed—

She stumbled again, and her foot rattled against the small side table. Jessika made an alarmed noise and Finn inquired nervously from his spot by the fireside, "Is everything all right, your Grace?"

Ren's embarrassment morphed into flaring rage in the blink of an eye. Just as suddenly as he had arrived, Rey was alone in her head, and their connection was slammed shut.

Blinking rapidly, Rey bit back a groan. "I'm fine, merely a spell of exhaustion. Poorly provisioned, you said?"

"Yes," Finn continued, still sounding unsure. "At this stage, they are definitely without the capacity to take on the royal army. By my estimation, they do not even have the resources to last out the rest of the winter without scattering."

"You will now return and confirm this?"

"I will—"

The door slammed open with such force that Rey heard it bounce against the wall. Ren's snarl was nearly as loud as the bang of the door. "What in God's name are you doing in here?"

Rey let out a heavy sigh and let her chin fall to her chest. "Please leave us, Captain. Jessika, you as well."

The two of them couldn't disappear fast enough. When she peeked around the screen, she could see why; Ren looked like he was on the very edge of throwing the same punches that had broken a few noses during his last disagreement.

He pointed at her with a steady hand, advancing steadily. "He should not be in here when you are changing."

"He was standing where you are now," Rey shot back testily, "and how much— exactly— can you see of me? Nothing at all, if I wasn't deliberately looking around."

"That is beside the point."

"What— that is exactly the point!"

He stopped when he was standing in front of her, arms crossed, glowering down from his stupid height. "He should not even be anywhere near your nakedness."

"You are aware that I am naked all the time under my clothes."

"This is not a jest!"

"The Captain was operating under a tight schedule. I needed him to go while the daylight still remains." She snapped a hand out towards the window, gesturing at the slowly setting sun. "Asking him to wait for me to lace into the ridiculous number of layers that I am required to wear would be a waste of time. It would not be necessary, were I a King."

He stepped even closer. "But you are not. You are not, and you must be aware—"

"As if those such as the Order of the First Saint would let me forget!"

"I am trying to help you, you infuriating woman!"

"And I am daily trying to incorporate you into the regime even though the majority of my court would have you only be a figurehead, I am on your side—"

"Then do not have other men in the room with you when you are undressed!" His face was turning red, and she distantly had the rather inappropriate thought that he was almost cute when he was this flustered.

"As if I would ever," she retorted, pressing her palm against his chest and putting her strength behind it, enough that he took a half step back, "give you cause to doubt my fidelity—"

The rest of her words were silenced when Ren abruptly pulled her in for a smothering kiss, one that nearly bent her over backwards with its force.

What could she do but respond in kind? As they stumbled back towards the bed, she clawed her fingers through his hair, yanking hard enough that she almost felt the sympathetic ache against her own scalp in response. It only made her want to pull harder. Distantly, her brain muttered that this was a strange transition from arguing, but in some ways it felt as though they were still carrying through the same action. It was as much of a battle as it was when they were yelling, only now there was a dark undercurrent of pleasure rippling through the interaction as well.

When they fell against the coverlet, she was immediately covered by his weight, being pressed into the mattress. Given the lack of outer layers, it was easy to wrap her legs around his waist and grind up against the hardness that she could already feel in his breeches, breaking the kiss to arch back and gasp. With almost no prompting, he immediately began fumbling with his laces, groaning into her shoulder as scraped her nails through fabric all down his back.

For once, their gifts were not in sync. He was too disordered, the cumulative day's events too humiliating, and it overwhelmed her almost as much as his physical weight. It was fury and lust and wounded pride all at once, mixing with her own frustration into a potent blend. She was being swept under by the intensity of it, his anger bleeding into her as she reached up and bit furiously at his shoulder through his clothes.

Apparently, that hurt, because he snarled and jerked away. There was another dark pulse of his gift, and she was abruptly being rolled onto her front, legs hanging off the edge of the bed. They hadn't done this quite this way before but she could immediately sense the potential of it, almost see what he was imagining, and she hiked her shift up before craning around. "Hurry up," she snarled, alarmingly quickly ready for them to drown together.

She keened at the first thrust, brutal and to the hilt, but it nearly immediately slid into a groan when he started to move. This, they definitely should've done this before, as each stroke nudged against something that made her convulse. The thought could have been his or hers, she wasn't entirely sure, but his fury was still leaving so much vibrating energy in her palms that she flexed her fingers and a glass jug on the other side of the room abruptly shattered, shards raining against the floor.

A palm pressed against her shoulder and it somehow only served to intensify the connection, her fingers tearing holes in the coverlet as she writhed backwards against him. He was angry and she was angry but she also felt so very powerful, like she could burn the whole manor to the ground with a flick of her wrist if she wanted to.

His voice was close to her ear when he spoke, breath hot against the top of her spine. "You could. Together, we could. We could burn the entire country to the ground, all of our enemies reduced to nothing but smouldering ash, they would cower before us—"

She wanted less talking and more movement; she blindly grabbed for his hand and laced their fingers together, clenching them so tightly that it bruised, as if she was trying to swallow him whole. "Shut up and give me more, now—"

He obeyed and she vaguely got the sense that he would always obey, that they were helplessly locked together in this dance of one step forwards, two steps back, bound by a shared strange song. Pushing her face into the cover, she muffled her wails as she felt him finally let go of the furious hold of his gift, the air in the room warping around them. Still holding his hand, she gripped on for dear life as his movements became brutal until he shuddered and curved over her with a few, final and desperate groans, the final thrust leaving a warm slickness down her thigh.

When he slumped beside her on the bed, she smoothly rolled onto her back, smiling and practically vibrating with a strange and smug sort of satisfaction. Without another word, he folded himself against her, arm over her waist and face tucked against the curve of her shoulder. It was an oddly protective gesture, and she found herself sighing and relaxing against his hold as the last of the dark whispers slowly evaporated away.

She twisted her neck so she could brush her nose against his. "You have no reason to be jealous, I hope you know that." She let the sincerity of the emotion ripple through their connection, trying to convey how utterly disinterested she was in the Captain or anyone else.

He merely cuddled her closer, but she felt the surge of primal satisfaction and affection all the same.

The next day dawned bright and clear.

Rey was in a cheerful mood, humming a little tune as she prepared for the day. But when the young woman delivering breakfast arrived, Rey's mood was apparently not shared, as the girl looked nervous and deeply apologetic.

Of all of her ladies, it was Jessika who noticed first. Bless her. "Is something wrong, my dear?"

"My lady," the girl responded, bobbing into a curtsey, "your Grace. I am so very sorry, but there is no milk to be had this morning."

It was a laughable worry as far as Rey was concerned, given that she had simply gone without food for many mornings in her life, but the girl was obviously distressed. "Is something the matter with the cows?"

The girl's lips pinched together even tighter. "It… It's a poor omen, your Grace."

"I beg your pardon?"

"All of the milk in the manor is curdled, your Grace. As far as the village. The work of witches, my Nan says, spoiled in their communion with the devil."

Rey absorbed this knowledge and it took absolutely all of her considerable self-control to keep a straight face. The girl's words were not that far from the truth. "I'm sure it's nothing of the sort. Such superstitions are beneath our Christian realm, are they not?"

The girl bobbed into an embarrassed curtsey, scurrying away from the rebuke.

As they began their bread, the ladies chattered among themselves, speculating back and forth about the possible causes of such a curious thing. It was unknowable to human minds, they eventually concluded, nodding sagely.

Rey sat in the middle of them all, sending wave after wave of amusement towards her vaguely sheepish husband.

Author's Notes:

I've commented on the silence of the countryside a few times now. Seriously, though, I need you to try and imagine it: no cars, no planes, no background humming of streetlamps or ringing phones. In a lot of cases, no people, as the population was so much smaller. People were much more attuned to this silence. They write about being able to recognize individual dogs by their bark, for example. A group of galloping horses would've seemed SO LOUD.

I am taking so many liberties with the idea of Rey meeting with the rebels. I mean, stuff like that happened, with one famous example being when Richard II agreed to meet with the leader of the Peasant's Revolt peacefully. But that ended with Wat Tyler being stabbed (so it didn't work out great). But ah well, my story, my rules.

I had to look up "shut up" because it seemed like such a modern phrase, but apparently "To shut (one's) mouth "desist from speaking" is recorded from 1340". The more you know.

Medieval witches seem like they were having a blast. Curdling milk, making livestock lame, chatting with animals, having loads of sex with the devil, all that good stuff. What a life.