Written from Feb 16, 2015 - Jan 14, 2016. A long but legendary arc! The Thorne family characters belong to their owner/creator/writer and I LOVE HIM! He is SUCH a heck of a guy!
Timeframe: Takes place over the course of events during the Warlords of Draenor expansion.
A hair-raising tingle passed through the air in the shadowed halls where strode Lutero Thorne. Just to the side of him, embers of light winked into existence, swarming and clustering into a shape... and then dissipating to reveal a person. A familiar one at that.
Lutero had only a fraction of a second to react as Aranya collapsed right next to him, nearly hitting the floor but for the fact that he caught her just in time. The air around her reeked of raw fel power. Her breaths were coming in hard and ragged. One of her sleeves had somehow been completely torn away, leaving her whole arm and shoulder bare. Other sections of her robes had been utterly rent as well, and there were lacerations on what he could see of her side, back, shoulder, and part of her neck, where a section of her hair seemed to have been torn or burned away.
Aranya blinked at Lutero, eyes struggling to focus. "Rhovin..." she gasped, chest heaving.
Ignoring her erroneous identification of him, Lutero asked, "What happened?"
Aranya tried to speak, but then choked, as if on some hidden noxious vapor in the air. "Sh-shadow council..." she managed to rasp. She looked as if she wanted to say more, was trying so hard to stay with the world of the waking. But her eyes lost what little focus they had and she blacked out, going limp in his arms.
Lutero gave an irritated exhale. It was obvious that he going to have to take care of this. The shadow lord hoisted the unconscious mage away from the floor, taking her to the nearest available couch that he could lay her on, and once he had done so, he looked her over, appraising her state.
She looked... terrible. Weak and sickened. No doubt from the sheer power of whatever fel magic had done this to her. Vulnerable.
He was actually gratified to have the chance to see her like this.
Her wounds were vicious and ugly. Given the circumstances by which they'd been sustained, they would never heal on their own. But mending them properly would take care and time that she didn't have. She would fade away in a matter of hours like this.
The priest summoned the light, and the light came to his bidding, washing over the woman, suffusing her form with its radiance.
Bit by bit, Aranya's wounds closed, flesh knitting itself back together. Some color returned to her cheeks, and she seemed to breathe easier. The regrown section of her hair slid through Lutero's fingers like black silk. Her scars - while prominent - were smooth when he touched the ones on her bare shoulder. Doubtless she would have them erased once she had the chance, but not before she would have to explain the nature of her unannounced appearance here to the other lords in this house - his father and brother.
Another sense of gratification came to him at that thought. Her past triumphs and defeats were erased from her skin, no one had ever seen them, yet the sight of her scarred was his to keep in his memory now.
Not so unbreakable as you would like everyone to think you are.
His fingertips slid down the line of her collarbone to where the necklace that his twin had given her rested at the hollow of her throat. His eyes narrowed at it, the fel lights in them smoldering. He looked up at Aranya's pretty face, and saw that her eyes were still and motionless underneath their lids. No dreams, no nightmares. Yet, once she was recovered enough, her dreams would be pleasant ones. Some treasured joy for her to re-live. His brother had seen to that.
Lutero looked back at the glimmering trinket, eyes narrowed once again. If anyone had been around to observe, they might have remarked that there was a hint of a scowl in the way that he looked at it.
Suddenly Lutero straightened up, eyes glittering and a smile drawing itself over his handsome face as he was struck with a most brilliant idea to distort his brother's gift to the sorceress. His fingers moved caressingly up her neck to the side of her face. "Rest," he told her quietly. "Rest and dream." His hand slid down over her bare shoulder and along her arm. "Dream of all your greatest sins," he said, as he took her hand in his. "The ones that you know in your heart you'll never be truly sorry for."
Shadows coiled delicately into Aranya's mind. Her necklace gleamed brighter, as if alert to something wrong - something not supposed to be - but then became subdued, as if realizing that it was not being compelled to defy its purpose by triggering thoughts that were unwanted. Aranya made a small sound in her no-longer-dreamless sleep, the corners of her mouth pulling the tiniest bit upward in slight semblance of a smile. She seemed content.
Lutero laid a soft kiss on the back of her hand, as if playing the gentleman to a lady, and leaned down to whisper right by her long, pointed ear, his tainted eyes still glittering wickedly, "Sweet dreams."
Steam rose into the air from the surface of the frothy water that Aranya sat bathing in. Her hair was haphazardly pinned up and out of the way, her boots and clothes lay discarded by a rather convenient chair. Water ran in forked rivulets down her back and shoulders as she poured some of the hot, soapy liquid over her scarred skin.
She hadn't found the chance to have those damn scars removed yet. She had only just gotten the chance to explain to Lord Kethron why she had sought him out - torn to shreds and almost half-dead - and arrange for when she could show him what was so important.
Aranya's ear twitched and her spine went rigid as she heard Rhovin come in. The water inexplicably felt cold and her heart beat harder with sudden self-consciousness.
She didn't succeed in stopping herself from flinching when she felt his hand on her bare, wet shoulder, his fingertips sliding smoothly over her soapy scars. Her head bowed. She wanted to shrink inside herself and disappear. She wanted very much to pull his hand away, but instead found herself laying her own hand overtop of his without even thinking, holding it there. Holding onto him.
After pulling in an unsteady breath, Aranya finally spoke to him. "I didn't want you to see these," she told him very softly.
Rhovin had more than half a mind to know why. He decided to ask anyway. She needed to hear it. "You said you erase them for deception's sake," he pointed out. "Is it still so terrible if I see them when I already know how you got them?"
Bingo.
Aranya huffed a short little laugh at herself, one corner of her mouth pulling up in a wry, sardonic smile. "Pride," she muttered, a little more to herself than to him. "Some snippet of pride that I don't know how to let go of." Aranya may have been rather lacking in what many recognized as the famous Thalassian arrogance, but she was still an elf, and all elves were inherently proud creatures to at least some extent.
Rhovin gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "You're marked by your mistakes. So am I. Don't feel ashamed of that," he told her. "And for whatever it's worth..." he continued, as he knelt so that he could look her in the eye. Aranya looked up and was met with his smirking gaze. "You're still most beautiful."
There was that smile of hers that he loved to see. Aranya ducked her head bashfully.
After a moment she met his eyes again. "Thank you," she told him, gratefully. For his compliment. For his honesty.
For everything he'd ever given her and then some.
"She almost died for whatever she found out there."
"I'm aware of that," said Kethron in a deadpan tone of voice, utterly unmoved by the point his son was trying to make.
Rhovin leaned forward where he stood, both hands on his father's desk, glaring at the warlock. "She came to you for answers."
"Your command of the obvious grows by the second," retorted Kethron, all lordly composure and making the office chair that he sat in seem like a throne, for all the natural imperiousness that he exuded.
"Just..." Rhovin grit his teeth. Glad as he was that Aranya still lived, what she had invited almost rankled. Why did his father, of all the rotten luck, have to be the one whose counsel she needed? "Help her however you can," he finished.
"What I do with regards to whatever she shows me remains to be seen, son," replied Kethron. That last word was spoken with not an ounce of affection, but rather was said with a sneer and a tone of utmost authority, reminding the hunter of his proper place.
Rhovin snarled quietly under his breath and straightened up.
No promises. Not from Kethron Thorne. Least of all when it remained undetermined how the situation was to his advantage or lack thereof.
"OLD HUNGERS" happens here.
"TOO EASY" happens here.
If Kethron was becoming impatient to finally learn whatever it was that Aranya had promised to disclose to him, he made no show of it as he welcomed her and Rhovin, returning from their extended stay at the Ver'Sarn villa, with little Valéria at his side. If anything, he seemed more impatient to know the arcanist's state of being - her health, her mind, how her recovery from the incident with Draenor's Shadow Council had progressed - and only seemed satisfied once he was certain that no lasting harm had been done.
No one questioned why. Most already had a pretty good idea of his reasons.
It wouldn't take long before the pair would be getting back to life-as-usual - Rhovin leading this, or Aranya investigating that - and once again it would be uncertain if or when their paths would be going in the same direction, and for how long they might be together. At the very least, they had come to a long-desired understanding between them, and wouldn't be apart or out of touch for too long anymore.
Tonight, however, was a night to settle in, take a breath, and for the moment Rhovin was spending the evening in unusual company.
He stood at a low balcony with his twin. Neither of them spoke, neither of them even looked at each other. The brothers simply stood in easy silence, their eyes directed out towards the fireflies drifting across the fields and the stars spread across the night sky, but not really seeing them. One of the servants might have said that the twins were brooding in the same space. It was a moment of some strange sort of peace between the two men. It was rare, and it was fragile.
And it was inevitable that one of them just had to ruin it.
"You should have seen how she looked at me," Lutero's words broke the silence, laced with something poisonous, "when she thought I was you." There was a very slight, sidelong smirk on his face.
Rhovin scowled, but did not speak right away. When he did reply, his cool tone of voice didn't quite match the sparking fel embers of his eyes. "If she thought you were me, then I didn't miss much," he said calmly. "I know how she looks at me."
And what a look those eyes could give. He had seen the fierce light of determination in them, the radiance of magic, the sparkle of wonder, and he had seen how often Aranya's eyes would drift to the skies, gazing at the heavens and all their lights... and then he would watch how she gazed at him, how the starry lights still caught in those eyes would dissolve in them and ignite in their depths, and for a moment he'd forget how to breathe.
Lutero shook his head, his slight smile becoming a tad more apparent. The hunter's eyebrow twitched up, questioning. "She was dying, Rhovin," explained the shadow priest. "Fighting for breath and choking on almost every one that came to her. Weakly clutching to the one thing she didn't want to lose sight of as the blackness swallowed her." His expression gained a distant look, as if recalling some fond memory. Then, sounding eerily like he might have been reading Rhovin's mind, he said, "Almost poetic, the way those burning lights flickered so dimly in her eyes."
Rhovin's teeth gritted and his fists clenched. It took a tremendous amount of control not to just throw punches at the other man standing there wearing his face and mocking him with it. The fact that Lutero had been the one to save Aranya (wonder of wonders) was the only thing that the ranger even cared about on the very short list of reasons why rising to his brother's bait right here and now was probably not a good idea. "Is that so..." he seethed. "Well, 'romantic' as I'm sure it is to be her last dying thought," said Rhovin, his voice dripping with a caustic tone, "I think I'd much rather be what she lives for."
"Is this the part where I say 'you're welcome' for the fact that you both still have that chance?" Lutero said dryly and with no small amount of sarcasm.
"Is spite the only feeling you have left in you, little brother?" Rhovin asked, glowering, the tone of his voice rising.
Lutero's smile suddenly became more sardonic and jaded, rather than venomous. "No, not the only one," he answered, "but certainly the sweetest."
"Father would call you petty," pointed out Rhovin.
That seemed to hit a nerve. The younger twin's smile instantly evaporated and gave way to a dark glower of his own. "Since when do you care what Father thinks?"
The two brothers glared at each other in silence, matching stare for stare. Lutero was the one to finally break his gaze away first, staring at nothing as he softly inquired about something that he had suspected for a while, "She didn't tell you what she found, did she?"
Rhovin swallowed, not looking at his twin. Not looking at anything, really. "No," he answered. Not that he would have told him if she had. There were dangers that came with the things that Aranya did, beyond just the tasks and the undertakings themselves. The arcanist knew how to keep quiet about secrets that weren't hers to tell, and this made her desirable to the right (wrong) people seeking to employ her expertise. Telling anyone about certain things that she was aware of carried a very real risk with it, and Rhovin had never pushed her when she told him, "I can't."
Just what was so dangerous, so incredible, that she would turn in desperation to his father, but not him? The thought was maddening.
"She'll be going back to snoop around those haunts of the Shadow Council again, won't she?" Lutero asked.
Rhovin offered a noncommittal half-shrug. "It's likely," he answered in a flat tone of voice.
The shadow lord gave his older twin a peculiar sort of look that was difficult to describe. "Back into the fel-drenched jaws of a beast from the Void with the hope that she doesn't come back in too many pieces to put back together again," he said, with something lurking underneath his voice that made the hairs on the back of the archer's neck rise. "And you're going to just... let her go?"
Rhovin knew judgement when he heard it, he also knew when his manipulative twin was just trying to pull his trigger. "I'm not a damn puppeteer to put strings on her," he snarled back. "I'm not like you."
A twinkle rekindled in the priest's eye all of a sudden, and all smiling spite and venom returned. "Noooo, what was that allegory she had for it?" He pondered aloud. "'A phoenix and a falconer,' was it?" It was hard to tell if the expression on Lutero's face was more of a smirk or a sneer as he chuckled derisively. "Spirited creature that you've coaxed to your arm, brother. Resilient, too," he remarked. "Tell me, how was her rest and recovery, since her last encounter with the Legion's pawns?"
Rhovin stared hard at his twin, whiskery black eyebrows furrowing in a suspicious frown. He knew his brother far too well. Why would Lutero give a damn about anything else that had recently happened to Aranya since the incident, unless...?
... And then it clicked. "What did you do?"
A wide, malicious smile spread over the shadow priest's face. "I wonder," he said, smoothly, tauntingly, "is it still you she dreams of?" He paused for effect. "Or maybe-"
He was abruptly cut off as Rhovin suddenly grabbed him by the collar with both fists. "What did you do?!" He demanded.
Lutero grinned, looking his brother straight in the eyes as he viciously hissed, "Nothing she didn't want."
Fury blazed in the eyes of the Farstrider, but before he could do anything, the priest dispersed into shadow and disappeared, eluding his grasp.
"Lutero!" Rhovin roared.
Nothing answered him but the loud, shifting echoes of his brother's laughter from the night's shadows, and Rhovin was left alone, his fel-touched eyes blazing with rage, searing the darkness like poisoned fire.
Aranya stood in the grand, shadowed halls of the Thorne family home... Yet was barely aware of how she still stayed on her feet. One arm against the wall kept her propped upright, the hand of the other one covered her mouth, subconsciously forbidding any of her tumbling thoughts and emotions to escape her by some telltale sound. Her heart beat at a rapid pace that she couldn't grasp the clarity for to slow it down.
She had just heard everything that transpired between the twin brothers on the balcony.
Aranya had meant to seek out Rhovin, but once she was within earshot of him and his brother on the balcony, she hung back, curious. She couldn't bring herself to move once she heard the hunter's anger beginning to simmer at his twin's insults, and fixedly kept listening to the two of them. But curiosity and strange fascination turned to stark horror with what Lutero insinuated.
How?... HOW?
The arcanist replayed the words of the shadow priest in her mind, over and over again, frantic to discern their truth. What did he mean? How could he have violated her somehow? Was it a trick? She felt certain that it was not. What had he done?
A silent gasp caught itself in the sorceress' throat as her focus snapped alert with the sound of Rhovin's steps... Yet when the form of the arch-lord presented itself in the hallway, there was no one else to be seen. It seemed that he was alone.
She should have known better by now than to think that he couldn't find her, always. Magically invisible to even the keenest elf eyes, but he could still hear the pounding rhythm of her heart, struggling to be quiet, and smell the subtle floral essence of dreaming glories on her skin. "I know you're there," said Rhovin, when it was clear that she wouldn't be forthcoming.
No response, no change, just quiet.
"Aranya..."
Still nothing.
His rage at Lutero was still cooling, but now something else - something sickening - crept its way in and left him with the feeling of a bitter taste. Rhovin slowly pulled in a breath and let it go, grasping for what little vestiges of composure that he still had left at the moment, if only for her. "Please, Aranya..."
Illusion fell away to reveal the mage sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, staring at her knees in front of her. She didn't look at her lover as she gestured for him to sit beside her and he proceeded to act on that invitation. For a while the two of them just sat in a thick silence, as though they were somehow choking on things that they couldn't bear to say or ask.
"I think I know what he's done," finally whispered Aranya, though she might as well have hollered, with how even that soft sound seemed to fill the space from wall to wall as it cut apart the suffocating quiet. "My dreams..." She finally glanced in Rhovin's general direction to catch the sight of him watching her in her peripheral vision. She still wouldn't look directly at him. "Ever since I escaped to here from Draenor and Lutero..." She seemed to stumble over the words that she wanted to say. "I think he did something when he healed me." She swallowed. "I think he might have... touched my mind."
The arcanist saw the ranger's fists tighten and his jaw clench.
"Ever since the incident, every time I dream," said Aranya, "it's always some old memory." Her hand went up to the enchanted necklace that he had given to her, and elaborated with a slight smile, "Some incredible rush, some glorious thrill." It was the nature of the trinket to bring such happy memories so vividly back to life for her while she slept or was lost in thought. Yet, her half-smile quickly faded. "But these memories aren't worth re-living like this, not with what they do to me."
A perplexed head-tilt from Rhovin, silent, concerned, and anxiously listening for her to go on.
"Every time I close my eyes-" the sorceress finally looked up and met the hunter's burning gaze, the fel-fires of his eyes still seething his barely-contained wrath, though Aranya's own fel-kissed look was all a-glimmer with distress "-all I see are pieces of myself that I thought I had mastered. All I feel is relentless hunger," she admitted. "Of one sort or another." She looked away from him again, resting her forehead on her knees. "And I wake up questioning myself," she sighed heavily.
The silence rolled in to swallow them again.
With another heavy sigh, the mage came to a decision. She sat upright, reaching behind her neck for the clasp of her necklace. Once it was unfastened, she moved one hand below her chest and let the jeweled treasure fall into her grasp, clutching her fingers around it. "I can't wear this," she murmured.
Rhovin looked as though she might as well have struck him hard in the gut and knocked the wind out of him.
Aranya looked him in the eyes again. "Not until whatever he's done has run its course and left me," she explained, hoping to make him understand. She shifted from where she sat on the floor to face him, on her knees, grasping his arms and never letting her eyes break from his. "I would rather trade nightmares with you, than spend another night with what he's done perverting what you've given me," she told him.
She leaned forward and Rhovin's arms came around her, pulling her close, holding her tightly.
"I don't want to sleep tonight," she whispered desperately, her face tipping up to kiss him fiercely. "Don't let me," she pleaded against his mouth.
"So good of you to be punctual, Arcanist Ver'Sarn..." addressed Lord Kethron Thorne to the sleek black cat that he saw sitting at the open window of his office, as he strode into the room to sit at his desk.
The green-eyed feline did not move or meow. It did nothing but calmly blink at the elf warlock.
Kethron steepled his fingers together, looking directly at the cat. "Yet, bold of you to make a trespass such as this for an entrance," he added.
The cat hopped down from the window, but instead of soft black paws, it was a pair of sturdy, well-worn boots that touched down on the office floor. "Apologies, my lord," answered Aranya, now standing in her true form. She was well aware that any other person might have ended up dead for stalking around the home of her host in magical disguise as she did, yet he was quick to recognize her. Aranya had expected no less of him, he had centuries of experience with magic, and he was familiar with her particular magical signature by now. "The nature of our meeting, however, would be better off with as few as possible knowing that I'm here, discussing anything with you at all," she said.
Kethron noted a hint of insistence as she spoke, a subtle gravity in her voice, which he honestly could not deign to empathize with, as yet. She felt the need for secrecy, but he would be the judge of what this matter's true importance was. "Let us be clear on all points of why you are here, arcanist," his lordship began. "Whether by Horde sanction or the private interests of whomever you render your service to, you sought out the secrets and sorcery of the Shadow Council in Draenor..." He looked very pointedly at the young woman before him. "And you succeeded," he said.
Aranya's eyes shifted down before she brought them back up to meet his again, her head still high.
"But you were discovered by the enemies of that world, and this one," continued Kethron. "And in what looked to be your last moments of life, your last desperate action was to escape and find me." His eyes narrowed, his voice became softer. "What you found, you thought should be left in my keeping, even if it was the last thing that you ever did," he said. "Does all of this sound correct?"
"You have it all correct, my lord," she answered, her voice still clear and confident, having no fear of him but not lacking respect.
"Which begs the question," said Kethron, sitting back in his chair. "What exactly did you find?"
Aranya reached into one of the pouches on her belt, pulling out a small bottle of what looked like a fine greyish powder. "My clothes from the incident had to be incinerated, as they were damaged beyond any hope of repair, and they were saturated with lingering fel energy, as you no doubt recall," she explained. "But if you will allow me, I would like to make use of their ashes to show you... what it is I sought you for."
Kethron canted his head, and gestured with one hand over the surface of his grand desk, inviting her to proceed.
The arcanist stepped closer to the desk. After removing one of the fingerless gloves from one of her hands, she uncorked the bottle of ashes and poured the powdery substance into her bare, open palm. She lifted them to her face, and whispered a spell of divination over them. Kethron surmised that it was an old spell. The dialect of Thalassian that she spoke it with was archaic, and one that he did not hear so often among younger casters. Aranya's breath stirred the grey dust, and it soon whirled into a hovering pattern over the desk, made up of concentric rings of runes, glyphs, geometrically placed lines and cyphers. A final word from her ignited the pattern, and the ring stood as she must have seen it when she happened upon it. Fel and foreboding, even if smaller in scale.
Kethron stood and examined the sight of it awhile, expressionless, before he at last spoke. "What am I looking at?" His lordship asked, in a tone that made it difficult to intuit what he was really thinking.
Aranya blinked. "My hope was that you could tell me," she said, trepidation creeping into her voice.
"And perhaps I might," said Kethron, looking up to hold her eyes. "Now answer my question, arcanist," the warlock made a point of stressing that last word. "What am I looking at?"
Aranya blinked again, looked at the pattern, gathered her thoughts into words. "Uh, my best guess would be-"
"Your best guess?" Kethron cut her off. There was no mistaking the underlying inflections of incredulity and amusement at her expense in his voice.
The mage closed her eyes and took a deep breath, grasping for patience. She felt that she must have seemed like a child playing with fire to him, and by comparison, she was. He had vast experience where she simply did not, whether by lack of years or lack of knowledge. She had nothing but the hope that he might listen and take her seriously... Regardless, she would not let him knock her down. "You see the glyphs along the rising concentric parts of the pattern?" Aranya pointed out, "And the intersecting cyphers across the base pattern there, and there? What this all looks like, to me, is very similar to what I call a 'spindle.'"
"'Spindle?'" Kethron echoed. Curious, not mocking.
The sorceress nodded and continued, "A term I came up with in my apprentice years, for patterns that are meant to be used to draw from multiple channels of magic - whatever their sources or types may be - and weave them into a single purpose, like a spindle weaving fibers into thread."
"Mm," was the warlock's response. "And what purpose do you discern this particular 'spindle' to have, arcanist?"
Aranya made a vague gesture. "I don't kn-"
"Guess, then," he ordered, cutting her off again. "Indulge me."
The mage was beginning to feel frustrated. She looked at the pattern again, its soft fel light mirrored by the taint of her eyes as they scanned over the runes and glyphs. She thought of what she had seen and endured when she happened upon the enclave of warlocks that had been using it. "Binding power to the weaver," she conjectured. "But whether by invocation, siphoning, or imbuing and to what end I don't know," she said, her frustration coming through clearly in her voice. "It doesn't make that much sense to me, I'm too unfamiliar with it."
"You wish to become familiar with it," said Kethron. Said as a statement, implied as a question.
It wasn't hard for anyone to know what that question really was.
"No," answered Aranya, frowning ferociously, her head snapping to meet his lordship's gaze with her glare. The thought of apprenticing to a warlock revolted her. Not on the principle of wielding dark and fel magics, but she knew herself and her limits too well to deny what temptation having that kind of power carried with it. The person that she would become was not a person that she ever wanted to be.
The warlock's eyes could have driven nails into the woman with how piercing his gaze was. His composure seemed deadly and imperious as he asked, "Then why, sorceress, did you bring this to me?"
Aranya breathed in and out for a count of three in her head before answering. "Your considerable experience and skill in your craft has never been lost on me," she explained. "In the time that we've been acquainted, I've come to discern that you have what I perceive to be as a certain... intimate familiarity with powers such as these." She surprised him by saying, "There are too few people that I would ever trust with such merits as yours," she indicated the ring beside them, "and with these workings in the shadows..." She made another vague, at-a-loss gesture with both of her hands, and searched his face for something, anything, other than stoicism, before at last saying, "I seek your wisdom, my lord."
It took little effort for Kethron to stifle the superior laugh that wanted to leave his mouth.
He watched the depth of earnestness in her burning eyes, the entreating look on her lovely face, replayed the subdued sound of her clear voice speaking those words to him in his brain, almost like music to his ears. He might have thought that she was doing it deliberately - speaking fair to him, trying to win him over - yet she had never been guilty of insincerity to him before, and gave him no reason or indication to suspect it of her now. She had reacted with immediate scorn to the very idea of being one of his acolytes - not that his implied proposal of such an idea had been at all genuine - but it left little doubt about the authenticity of her intentions. She sought his counsel, not his favor.
Despite his questions, his gauging of her understanding of what she was dealing with, and the intuitive grasp that she displayed of it, she was indeed quite ignorant. Kethron circled the desk, taking in the sight of the Shadow Council's work from all angles. Spindle indeed.
It should have killed you, he thought, gravely.
Yet, she had survived it. Barely.
It spoke much of her resilience that she had lasted long enough to reach the safety of his realm and be healed by the younger of his two sons... Which brought an idle thought to the forefront of the lordly elf's mind on another matter, specifically regarding that younger son of his. Lutero's mischief with the girl would have to come to an absolute and unarguable end, since it seemed apparent that he didn't entirely learn from that transdimensional fiasco that he had been responsible for. Whatever the state of animosity between Kethron's two sons was, he scarcely cared anymore, but the future of this family's legacy could not afford for the woman to become a casualty of it - in any way.
As to the matter at hand...
"What you surmise is inaccurate," stated Kethron, and then he glanced sideways to look her in the eye. "But not altogether incorrect." He turned back to the ring, peering at it as he leaned over the desk. "Have you told anyone else of this?"
"No," replied Aranya. "The Kirin Tor are aware that there was an incident, however. They've been trying to win me into some kind of relationship of mutual confidence with them ever since some old names among demons that have been dead for years were found very much alive and thirty-five years younger, stalking this other Draenor," she said. "Demons that I was personally responsible for the demise of, in Outland. The wizards have invited me to their outposts in Northrend, offered their resources, as a gesture of good faith."
"No doubt my son will have words to say about that," said Kethron.
"Oh, he already has," replied Aranya, a twinkle in her eye. "Several, in fact, and not one of them fit for polite company."
The corner of Kethron's mouth twitched up with mild amusement at that. "You will need to return to Draenor for anything that you discover to be of any use," he said, straightening up, turning to hold her fel-kissed eyes with his. "And despite whatever word you give them, my dear, the wizards and archmages can't help you. Not in this. Make whatever promises or appearances to the faithless humans and quel'dorei that you must, if only to silence them, but give them nothing." He briefly gestured to the still-glowing pattern, "Whatever you return in confidence to me stays with me, and I will aid you however you need. Do we have an accord on this arrangement?"
Aranya blinked slowly, reminded herself to breathe. It was still easy to forget in the commanding presence of this powerful man. "We do, my lord," she agreed, and belatedly wondered just what in the world it was that she had brought to him, that he saw such value in it.
"I will contact you when I have more to say to you on this matter," he said, almost as if he had heard her thoughts. "You may go," he dismissed her, turning back to regard the ring again...
Wondrous. Power unadulterated by time, war, error, and alterations. Exactly as it had been thirty-five years ago, when it tore its own world apart. His acolytes were almost useless to him if a sorceress that his firstborn son had grown so fascinated with could bring such treasures to fall into his lap.
He would have... great use for this.
"Aranya," the warlock called after the woman before she could exit his office. The mage stopped, thoroughly surprised that Lord Kethron Thorne had for once addressed her by name. "Dark sorcery is afoot," he said to her over his shoulder. "As you fly headlong into its path... Do attempt to be more careful with yourself."
The Ver'Sarn heiress found a lopsided smile spreading over her face, and said, "I will keep that under advisement, my lord." So saying, she quietly incanted a transformation spell, and left the way that she had come, padding out the window on four furred feet.
Pools of fire boiled and spat sulfur into the sky. Biting frost swept in driving, tundrid drifts over the ground. Frostfire Ridge was a land of extremes, savage and intense, but balanced, one element as mighty as the other... Yet, for all of their might, the spirits could only snarl in disoriented disgust and contempt at one dark and tainted soul, who even now worked to twist this land that they were born and bound to.
"We will finish what Gul'dan did not..." growled the orc warlock. His green skin was too vibrant against the surrounding landscape, his eyes burned into the icy twilight like no fire pool ever should. Chill winds blew through the snow-covered crags of the region's northern terrain, but sheltered by rocky walls and spires, he felt no such chill in his fel-touched veins.
The warlock's prisoner shifted on the ground, the chains on her shackled ankles clanking, her tusky mouth grimacing at the discomfort they brought to her old bones. The voices of the elements were muddled to her senses. She could not draw strength or comfort from them - despite her skills as a shamaness - with the many times that the warlocks had drained from her what vitality she could muster.
Her captor continued, gazing up at the stars as if criticizing their design, his gravelly voice solemn and sinister, "The elements will be sundered. The bonds of the clans severed. Shadow will cover the world..." He turned and knelt to look the old she-orc in the eyes. The depth of her living link with the elements was his asset in these aims, the object of focus by which he and his acolytes wrought their perverted magic. "And the fires of the fel shall be the only light."
The shamaness spat in weak defiance. "Do not think that I haven't been listening, warlock," she growled, her voice cracked. "I hear what you say to your disciples. I hear you tell them to 'salvage what can be used to rebuild.' I hear your muttering over singed and half-destroyed scrolls, your cursing over loss, and frustrations at the inadequacy of what powers you have at your disposal." She leveled him with her clear, though tired gaze. "Someone brought you low," she assessed, in a shrewd, low tone of voice. "Before you stole me from my clan, you were dealt a blow which - even now - you bleed from."
The warlock's lip curled in a snarling sneer. "Didn't need your precious Sight to surmise this, I suppose?"
"No," the orc woman answered. "You made certain of my vision being clouded," she pointed out, a flicker of her wounded spirit showing through her proud eyes. "And yet even through the dimness of clouds, I am not blind," she said more quietly, her hand closing around a fistful of snow on the ground, which strangely did not melt.
The warlock frowned, narrowing his eyes. "What have you seen?"
The shamaness simply scowled and turned her head away dismissively.
The warlock shot out a large hand to grab her head, forcing her to look at him as fel sparks leaped from the veins of his hand to crawl under her skin along the side of her face. "What. Have. You. Seen?" He demanded.
"Fire," she gasped, her fist clenching tightly about the unmelting snow in her hand, the pain forcing her to comply. "Fire, almost snuffed out... But s-still living..." She grimaced again. "Shadows gather in the l-light she casts... The sh-shadows come for you... They come on wings." Another gasp, this time in relief as the warlock released her from his grip.
"Wings," echoed the fel caster questioningly, prompting his prisoner to continue.
"Wings of shadows in the dark. Dark as ravens and crows," she responded, trying to steady her breathing. "One to stalk your footsteps, another to stalk your thoughts." The intensity of the she-orc's eyes seemed emboldened. "Both of them omens of death."
"Going on a hunt, brother?" Came a voice from over Rhovin's shoulder.
The assassin's reaction was to greet his twin by wheeling around with a fist aimed at his face.
Lutero quickly dispersed and re-coalesced some paces away, unharmed. He laughed as a dagger immediately went flying towards his head - which he very narrowly dodged - and then another one aimed at his groin. The shadow priest dispersed again and re-appeared on the other side of the table spread over with maps of Draenor that his brother had been staring at with a critical eye moments ago.
"Calm yourself, Rhovin," urged Lutero. "I'm not here for mutual antagonism."
"So what death wish brought you into this room, then?" Rhovin demanded, glaring, tainted eyes sparking. He was still furious with the shadow lord for the magical perversion that he had placed on Aranya's dreams, which had been slow to leave her over time. In was one transgression among many between the twins that would not be forgiven.
The priest looked at the maps on the table, not answering. Not right away. "How do you plan to track him down?" Lutero asked at last.
Rhovin's glower deepened and his teeth gritted. "I swear, Lutero, if you're sneaking around in my head-"
"I don't have to, Rhovin," interrupted Lutero, rolling his eyes, as though he found the accusation genuinely tiresome and affronting. "I know you too well to not know that you've long wanted the coven and their leader's blood, ever since your precious phoenix set a spark to their workings and got singed right back nearly to death for it."
The farstrider put both of his hands down on the table, leaning forward, looking his twin directly in the eyes, and uttered in a low, dark voice, "He has to die."
"True enough," agreed Lutero. "But I don't presume that you say those words for some noble cause?" A rhetorical question, spoken with one corner of his mouth pulled up oh-so-slightly in a wry, sidelong glance.
"Vengeance doesn't have to be noble," answered Rhovin.
Eliminating the coven and the Shadow Council member who lead them would be an action that aligned with the Redblade's purpose, true, but it was a fact that was utterly irrelevant. Rhovin Thorne sought no righteous reasons or justifications for his aims in this, and he wasn't going to dress it up like he did.
"Mm," replied Lutero. "Well, as long as we're being honest about your motivations, let's be honest about your odds, shall we?" The shadow priest directed his gaze up from the maps on the table to meet the eyes of the twin. "You won't survive," he said simply. "A warlock that powerful will still be a foe to reckon with even when he's weak. Father could face him, and likely best him, but that still leaves the rest of the coven and whatever they're capable of. Aranya was nearly killed." He made a gesture with his hand that swept up and down in the air to indicate Rhovin's half-armored self, clad mostly in leather and with more daggers on his person. Physical things, those were his weapons, not sorcery. "You have no significant magical skill of your own to go against him with, what chance do you have? Do you even know how to find him?"
Rhovin was getting irritated. "What are you trying to do? Dissuade me?"
"Not at all, brother," answered Lutero with the start of a smile. "I'm trying to tell you that I'm coming with you."
The sun was beginning to sink in the clear and cloudless sky. The light airs that blew from the south were cool for Uldum's dry, desert climate - matching the time of year - but they felt so warm as they rustled the verdant fronds of palm trees, gently rippling across the surface of the crystal blue waters of the Vir'naal Lake, and ruffled the dark hair and whiskery brows of a Thalassian man who waited for the woman he had asked to meet him here.
Rhovin was perched alone on the side of the Vir'naal damn. Brooding on recent events, mostly, but also admiring the view (which was perfect, he thought, congratulating himself for having chosen this place) when his sight wasn't turned inward to his thoughts.
None were left alive in the warlock coven that had savaged Aranya. None of their artifacts or writings remained. Everything that had ever held any kind of significance to them at all was destroyed, Rhovin's ingenuity had seen to that, but he couldn't have done it alone. He may not have liked admitting it, but Lutero had been the best ally that he could have ever hoped for. It was a fact that stirred something both strange and familiar - something he wondered if his twin was even still capable of feeling - something that the assassin had a sense he might find himself being better off without, but at the same time didn't know how to let go of.
A low, delicate rumbling by his ankle stirred the Captain out of his reverie. He looked down to see a sleek, jet black cat with vivid green eyes gazing up at him, purring so loudly that her little form seemed to visibly tremble. Rhovin smiled as she rubbed her head against him. "Making trouble for somebody tonight?" he asked the cat.
The form of the cat dissolved into something that could neither be called a cloud nor a puff of smoke - time, space, and reality itself simply seemed to blur where she stood - and the next thing he knew, Rhovin felt the soft touch of slender knuckles brushing against his own, followed by a mellifluous voice that always made him smile to hear. "Is that an invitation or innocent curiosity?" Aranya asked, with that mischievous smile of hers. She stood very close to him, leaning against the wall of the dam, as he did, their arms and shoulders touching. Quite at ease, for not having seen each other in so many days.
Rhovin replied with a wicked grin. "Since when has my curiosity towards you ever been 'innocent?'" he asked, catching those fingers of hers that were touching him and lacing them with his own, moving his arm to the other side of her, which gently forced Aranya to turn around, her back to the dam and one of his arms on either side of her as he leaned in close, taking the time to give her a smirk.
That smirk of his, where his eyes just seemed to pierce her, like pins through a butterfly, and Aranya would wish she could make her heart slow down enough before it burst.
And he certainly did have her pinned. The back of Aranya's legs pressed into the wall of the dam as Rhovin moved forward, his hands sliding from the stones they rested on and his gloriously tattooed arms winding around her, bringing the two elves close together, tightly embraced. The touch of his lips on hers was deep and tender at first, full of longing after so many days apart.
But as Aranya's slender arms curled around his strong shoulders and her fingertips trailed from the sides of his face to wind into his hair, and the sounds of her breathless sighs filled his ears, it all gave way to something rougher, hungrier, burning in both of them as they nipped and tasted each other. In their ardent need to devour one another, their teeth clashed, and a tiny drop of blood welled up where the skin of Rhovin's lower lip broke. But Aranya just went on kissing him, her tongue licking and soothing away the hurt.
The tainted essence of their burning eyes emitted a misty haze with their heightened emotions when they came apart for air. "I missed you," they both said at the same time, which provoked more shared smiles.
"You were gone a long time," said Aranya. There was a weight in her voice that made it only too easy to tell just how much he had been on her mind.
Rhovin pulled in a deep breath, letting it go in a not-so-steady exhale as he started pulling together the thoughts that had melted in his brain. "Well, y'know," he replied with a slight, roguish smile, "I had some trouble of my own to stir up."
Aranya's lips pulled into a wide smile, with a twinkle in her eye and a quiet chuckle, "I'll bet you did." After half a moment she noted, "You smell of fel. Were you in Tanaan?"
He shook his head and answered, "No."
"Outland?"
He shook his head again.
The sorceress tilted her head curiously to one side, waiting for him to elaborate and explain.
"You remember the warlock who lead the coven that almost killed you?" Rhovin asked, and almost immediately he saw her face darken considerably as she drew back.
Aranya answered in a voice that was low, soft, and simmering with abhorrence of her enemy, "A better question would be when will I ever forget?"
Rhovin continued, "I tracked his filthy hide to where he was holed up in Frostfire Ridge, salvaging what he could." The corner of his mouth twitched up. "Seems he didn't have an easy task of doing that, after all the damage you'd done," he added with a little pride on her behalf.
The expression on the arcanist's face changed to one of surprise and alarm. "How?" she asked. "How did you find him? Where did you track him from? I never told you where I was when the altercation happened."
"You didn't have to," answered Rhovin, and he produced the necklace that he had given her all those many months ago for her birthday the year before. Aranya had been wearing it during the incident.
He had never known her to take it off, until...
"Scrying isn't exactly my strongest skill," explained Rhovin. "But since I couldn't start finding the coven or their leader the way that I'm used to tracking my targets, I had to improvise with some maps - and some patience - in order to find them using the necklace." He let the emblem swing on its chain lazily, like a pendulum, indicating the method by which he had done his scrying. "Damned son of a bitch was clever, I'll give him that. He had wards set to confuse his location for anyone trying to find him like I was. Sometimes the charm would swing and spin all over the map like crazy and other times it kept pulling from Talador to Nagrand to Shadowmoon and back, never staying certain for long." He caught the pendant back into his grasp and then held his lover's eyes. "Unfortunately for him, he wasn't quite clever enough," said the captain with a smirk. "See, in all the places that the necklace seemed pulled to, I noticed the one place that it never went to was Frostfire Ridge. Swung in endless wild circles like it wanted to be away from there when I held it over that part of the map to see what would happen."
A slow smile bloomed on the elf-woman's face as she saw how it all came together. "So instead of finding him by usual map-scrying, with an object being drawn towards what you're looking for, his own magic gave him away by being too obvious in repelling things away instead," she conjectured.
"Exactly," replied Rhovin. "After I had a general area to start with, tracking him down was a matter of using what I know, what I'm good at, and finding him didn't take longer than a few days."
By now Aranya was smiling broadly... but then part of that smile fell away just a little as a thought came to her. "You went after him," she said, brows furrowing slightly, a touch of concern in her voice, despite this emotion being well after the fact of what her lover and her captain had already done. "You tracked him down so you could confront him and his coven. How did you survive?" Her eyes swept over him up and down before coming back to his face.
"I wasn't alone," answered Rhovin. "Lutero went with me."
Now the mage went slack-jawed with utter shock. She stared at him dumbfoundedly for the better part of a minute before almost whispering, "You did not just say what I think you just said."
Rhovin just slightly moved his head, nodding in answer.
"Lutero?!" Aranya exclaimed.
"Mhm," replied Rhovin, still hardly moving. He had anticipated that she might react like this.
Aranya brought a hand to her mouth, as though desperately trying to contain whatever firestorm might come out of it. She turned away from Rhovin and began pacing directionlessly, trying to digest what she had just heard. At length, she turned back to meet the assassin's eyes with a glare. "Why?" Her voice was clear and hard as diamond, but there was another tone just underneath it that wasn't easy to describe, like a crack in her armor had just been vocalized.
There was more than one question in that single word that she had just uttered. Why had Lutero gone with him? What were his reasons? What did he gain by helping his twin to dispatch the warlocks? Why had Rhovin trusted a man who delighted in giving him grief, no matter who else he hurt, to help him?
Rhovin gave the only honest answer he had to all of those things, "I don't know." He turned and leaned with his arms on the wall of the dam again, looking out over the water to the distant docks and elegant ships of Mar'at. "I do know that I would have been dead or worse without him," he said.
After a minute or two, Rhovin turned his head to look over his shoulder at Aranya, following her motions with his eyes as she slowly rejoined his side, her boots barely making a sound with her footsteps. "We dismantled them slowly," he went on, his eyes beginning to smolder just a little more hotly as he recalled his memories of the last several days. "Death alone was too good for any of them. We made them suffer, sabotaging their supplies, their rituals, their peace of mind, driving them to the edge of fear and frustration before dispatching them one by one." He caught and held her gaze then. "Their leader was the last of them to die. You could say that we made him watch everything he worked for come unraveled before his eyes that way..." The rogue shook his head, his look going slightly distant. "Still, he was a damn hard fight."
"Why do I sense that that's a massive understatement?" Aranya asked, her voice having softened a little. The corner of her mouth pulled up in a slight, wry smile, but it wasn't really a smile of amusement. It was simply that she cared about him, sympathized with him.
Rhovin, however, smiled openly. "Because it is," he replied. He let his gaze settle over the water again. "After we'd killed them all, we took their corpses and artifacts on a raft off-coast, far out in the water. Every scroll, every talisman, every scrap of cloth and bone - lit it all up." He made a gesture with his hands and a sound that mimicked an explosion. "Made sure that whatever was left of them would be in pieces too small to resurrect them from, washed away along the currents of the ocean." He turned to face her fully now.
The smile that had spread over Aranya's face was so warm and bright that sunshine seemed pale in comparison. She closed what few inches of distance remained between them and embraced him, her arms encircling his waist, her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her in return. They just stood like that in each other's arms for a moment, seeming so natural with the sinking sun burning the clear sky over them in shades of gold and fire and reflected in the expanse of water just beyond them. There was gratitude and gladness written all over the mage's face as she lifted her head up to look her dear assassin in the eyes again. Her arms came away from his waist, her hands sliding along his strong forearms, until her thumbs softly brushed over his wrists and closed fingers to unfold his hands, still holding the enchanted necklace. She lifted her hair and gave it a single twist with one hand to move it aside, turning her head and shoulders just slightly so that her slender neck was quite exposed to him.
Rhovin felt himself smiling as he reached out and fastened his gift around her, his fingertips brushing over the line of her shoulders as the emblem glimmered and shone, finally resting where it belonged once again. It felt like something intangible - but no less substantial - had lifted, or come untwisted at last. For the moment, things seemed to be as they should.
Aranya cast a look over the lake. "Let's go for a swim," she suddenly suggested with a bright smile and a sparkle in her burning eyes.
Rhovin grinned wickedly. "Naked?"
Aranya returned his grin. "Is there any better way to swim?"
"You helped him." Kethron's voice was deadpan, spoken at a perfectly reasonable volume, but it was felt by every corner of the room as he talked with the younger of his twin sons. He stood tall, hands folded behind his back, not looking at the younger elf - a pose quite typical of him. "Dare I ask why?"
"He would have died, father. You know that," replied Lutero. "Or rather, death would have been the best possible outcome he could have met with, for going by himself against the coven. He would have failed." There were things far worse than death to be suffered, and both twins had given and taken more than their fair share of such things in their lives, but power like that... Few could stomach imagining, much less witnessing what the brothers had.
"That doesn't answer my question," said Kethron, turning to look at the shadow priest. "You can't possibly expect me to believe that after so many years of hostility and animosity between you and Rhovin that you simply wake up one morning with a sudden change of heart towards your brother?" He strode a few steps closer. "And the Ver'Sarn girl? Despite that you've obeyed, and ceased your attempts to damage her in order to grieve your brother, I can't imagine that any of this was to make amends for her." The warlock's eyes probed those of his son, scrutinizing. "What is your aim, son? What are you hiding up your sleeve?"
The corner of Lutero's mouth twitched up, briefly. "Oh, I've already made my play, old man," he answered, his tainted eyes and smooth voice smoldering with unrestrained spite. "By denying you a trump card of your own."
Kethron's eyes flared dangerously at such insolence, but the shadow priest continued before the warlock could move past the vagueness of his son's words to let loose his temper. A wave of Lutero's hand made the shadows on the wall take new forms, puppets to illustrate his point. "How would it have gone if you had been the one to see him first, hunched over those maps, instead of me?" The shapes on the wall showed a lordly shadow, approaching another with its hands open, and the other turning around, long ears perked up and attentive to the lordly shadow. "You might have offered to empower him, generously taking whatever cost that came with it onto yourself in his stead." The shadow that was meant to represent Rhovin pulsed, twisted, contorted, and was remade with faint red lights where its eyes were meant to be. "And in return he would bring back whatever spoils of the coven you sought. Perhaps the corpse of the Shadow Council orc who lead them-" The shadows shifted to show an amorphous mass atop a smooth surface, with a curled hand sticking up from it. The shadow that represented Kethron stood by, making complicated gestures, and a much fainter, wispier shadow hovered above these other two, writhing as if in anguish. "-and from that you would have had the means to rip whatever secrets from the Nether that you wanted from his cursed soul."
The shadows dispersed and returned to their natural forms, belonging to the shapes of the objects in the room, and father and son once again locked stare for stare. Lutero carried on. "It's hard to say if Rhovin really would have been fool enough to go along with such terms or not. He's hopeless when it comes to Aranya," he said. "He wanted vengeance for what they did to her, simple as that. He had no righteous reasons or motives for any of it, and neither did I." He was glowering at his father by this time, his voice was a low snarl. "Let power like that fall into your hands?" Lutero's lip curled in a sneer. "No," he shook his head. "We destroyed it all, left nothing. Not you nor anyone will ever have that chance now, no matter what you talk over when you summon her."
The warlock's hand shot forward and gripped the other man by the throat. He growled, "You defiant, spiteful little-"
"WHAT, father? What am I!?" Lutero spat. "Nothing? No more than a shadow?" His burning eyes smoked with his seething emotions. "Every last one of you looks at me that way. Everyone except the one person I hate more than all of you!" he shouted.
Kethron threw the shadow priest into a table not too far from the room's fireplace with a snarling yell. The table was knocked over as Lutero collided with it, and several parchments and papers that had been on it fell towards the fire. The warlock's breath caught as one in particular whirled much too close and nearly caught ablaze.
But Lutero noticed - as only elf senses can notice such things so quickly - and he reacted by shooting out a hand and snatching it - as only elven reflexes can do. Time stopped for a moment, and Lutero looked at the paper that had given his father such pause.
A drawing. Without refinement, without skill for depth, perspective, or gradients of color, just a notion of basic size and geometry. The scrawlings of a child, showing a little blonde elf girl and a larger dark haired elf with her.
"Little Valéria's work," observed Lutero, and then he looked up at the frozen, furious warlock. "I wonder how her innocent little eyes would see you, if she knew... just what it is that you're really capable of."
"Get out!" Kethron roared, and without another word between them, watched his son straighten up from the floor and leave the drawing on another elegant table as he strode from the room.
No sooner had a servant in the hall closed the door after the younger lord's departure when Kethron angrily went over to other table and seized the drawing from it, glaring at it, silently fuming. He was overcome with the impulse to destroy it, burn it, let the poisonous green flames at his command devour it.
But the thought of having to explain to an upset Valéria where her gift to him that she worked on to give him had gone stopped him. She wouldn't understand the truth, it would only hurt and confuse her, and it was beneath him to twist together a lie over so insignificant a thing to a little girl who still trusted him, who's loyalty might yet prove of value as she grew.
That's what he told himself as he carefully set it back down.
A moment passed as he re-collected his other thoughts, after which he incanted a spell in a demonic tongue, his Thalassian voice making the rolling, throaty words have a more hypnotic, melodic, and seductive quality to them. Green fire came to life in his open, upstretched palm, and within it images appeared to his eyes. He saw a woman and a man, naked, suspended in water. The man playfully tugged at the woman's foot from the shadows, while she smiled at him over her shoulder in the distorted watery sunlight, and for one brief, impossible moment Kethron Thorne could have thought that he was looking at an image of himself and his lost love. But then the pair surfaced for air, and the illusions of water-bent light fell away from the woman's beauteous form to show her falsely gilded hair to be as black as a moonless midnight, like the man with her, whose elaborately tattooed arms treaded water back and forth while he laughed at something she said.
More unearthly words from the warlock as he stared into the brilliant green flame. She would hear them, feel them, and come to his summoning. He made a point of omitting insistence from his call to her, however. It was not to his advantage to rush her from his firstborn's side at this moment, but she would come, regardless. They had things to speak of... And he had no trouble admitting to himself that it was gratifying to see the attentiveness and interest in her eyes while she listened to him speak of the things they consulted over.
You may have taken a kingly card out of play, son, he thought to himself, as he doused the fire in his hand and cast his gaze to the door that Lutero had exited. But I still have an ace or two up my sleeve.