Diverging duties have split up Aranya and Halenvar, but will the return of a man who has always possessed pieces of her heart and soul complete her happiness at last? Will they remain together this time? Originally finished March 12, 2017. This was a GLORIOUS and passionate RP like no other I've ever had! Rhovin's writer was and is amazing. 3
Timeframe: A couple weeks before Kil'jaeden attacks Dalaran and the forces of Azeroth return to the Broken Shore to besiege the Tomb of Sargeras.
His relentless search was done. her maneuvers from one area to the next proved to take its toll on the Captain and his Black Rose galleon, but his insistent need to see his former lover and question her reason for giving such information to Asharri kept him awake and pressing forward more than he'd like.
Looking for the right people to give away any information they knew was no easy feat. However, there was one thing that lead him to the right path in every turn - her power. His connection to her still strong, still familiar with her habit of tapping into his arcane potential during their moments of pleasure. all he had to do was feel a hint of it and knew he was on the right track.
That track was Suramar.
The Black Rose made port by undisclosed sea side where it could not be seen by any Alliance, Horde, or anyone that was hostile to rogue ships involved in piracy. He commanded his men to wait until sunset. If he did not return, to sail back into their island hub and keep guard on the medic in his home.
He had found a personal space of hers. He knew it was. The energy surrounding it, the luxury and taste of the furniture screamed what the mage always enjoyed. And the scent. Her perfume. Had she been here already? He looked around the dark room, looking for anything useful, though he wasn't subtle in his trespass. He went to the desk she likely used for business and rummaged through scattered papers. He looked for something, anything that would lead him to her.
Aranya's last bittersweet moments with Halenvar were still fresh, weighing on her chest. Her stride through the shadowed halls kept by Suramar's rebels were not careful, not precise, and as brisk as a wind that simply wanted to blow away and be elsewhere in the atmosphere. The scuffling sounds from the chambers she had claimed as her own might not have even registered to her ears, were the silence not so thick in this wing.
Now the Ver'Sarn heiress quieted her step, approaching cautiously. The tall, lithe, and well-built form with hair as dark as her own was not one that she had thought to ever see again. She stood totally still, blinking for a moment, dumbstruck, until her head slid in a steep tilt to one side, regarding the rogue in her rooms. "Well, this is unexpected," she said, breaking the silence. She couldn't help how the corner of her mouth pulled up into her characteristic lopsided smile, her typical blitheness taking place of the somberness she'd had but minutes ago before coming to this room, as the master assassin reacted to her presence quick as a bolt of lightning. "Reflexes still as on-point as ever, I see. Not bad," she remarked. "Who would expect any less from the Red Son, after all." There was something in her tone that pricked.
Aranya strode - slow and easy - into the room, so as not to trigger any kind of reaction to pounce from the man she knew had as much potential and propensity for feralness and predatory instinct as herself. "So... don't tell me, let me guess," the sorceress drawled. "You're either here because of Asharri, and how she put some person whom she sought insight from squarely between you and herself in the crosshairs." Her mellifluous voice grew more edged. "Or, you're here because I let it happen, I did nothing to back out of it, and the fact that it was me upsets you." She gave an affectedly nonchalant shrug as her smoldering eyes flashed with a glare. "But I'm finding the latter option the harder to believe, after all this time..."
The look over his shoulder, to the direction of her voice, could burn the unfortunate in a fel rained blaze of fury. His eyes fiercely burned under his glare as he tossed the papers in his hand aside. He followed each of her footstep, perfectly synced, in the opposite direction. A methodical encircling, a hunt perhaps. He had found his prey. "Do you know how many magisters had to die to get me and the Black Rose from one continent to the next? You move a lot, Ver'sarn." His voice was calm. His face was not. "So much, in fact, that any other person would've given up hope..." he shook his head. "But not me."
Slowly, he revealed a pistol, tight in his grip. He stopped, directly across the woman. "You told that woman things I would have never expected you to say. Things I trusted you to keep quiet about." He stood eerily still. The pistol's hammer was then audibly locked. "You betrayed me..."
Aranya's darksome head slid into that tilt again, some of the silk strands of her hair falling back behind her shoulder with the motion. She regarded him, her burning eyes never leaving him. "You really think you're gonna use that?" she murmured oh-so-softly, like the warning hiss of a serpent. She slowly began steeping forward, towards him. "Because if you are..." She walked straight up to him, until the end of his pistol was just an inch from her smooth forehead. "You should at least..." Aranya's hand moved up to Rhovin's, softly, lightly grasping it, barely exerting much pressure at all as she moved his hand holding the gun down, down, until it was at her chest, aimed squarely at her heart. "Get. Your. Aim. Right."
Two sets of blazing, fel-washed eyes mirrored each other, their gazes locked so hard they could have seared one another.
"And when you do it, you do one thing after," continued Aranya, her tone low, severe, but deadly calm. "You go to Shattrath. You find Valéria, and you tell her to her face that it was you who did it." The phoenix-mage's jaw was squared, head high, her hand steady, never leaving from where it rested on his. "You watch her eyes, looking at you, as you tell her, why her minn'da isn't coming home, why she's dead. You own what you've done, and you tell it to my little girl's face..." Moments stretched tensely as she finished, "You do that, or else you're nothing more than the coward Asharri says you are."
Bitch... BITCH!
Admittedly, Valéria was the one thing Rhovin didn't think about in his moment of rage. In that immediate moment, his heart sank. His hand now trembled holding that pistol, his eyes welting slightly, yet he fought he urge to shed a single tear at the thought of breaking that little girl's heart. He swallowed hard, clenching his jaw as his head tilted. His eyes shut, a deep breath taken.
The pistol was lowered.
SLAM
Though he did not pull that trigger, his hand firmly gripped Aranya's neck and forced her back against the wall. "Why?!" he screamed, demanding to know, demanding her reason for giving him away so easily. "Why did you work with that woman?! Reveal so quickly, so easily?! I TRUSTED YOU!" His breathing labored, yet his stance kept firm. There was a broken moment of tone in his voice. "I would've never done that to you. EVER! No amount of torturing could ever make someone force me to give you away. I don't make excuses for my past sins, but I'll be forever damned if I turned my back on you for anyone!"
"You..." he paused, breathing deep before a sharp exhale managed to keep those tears at bay once again. "You mean..." he corrected himself. "You meant the world to me."
Aranya hit the wall, his hand firm but not crushing around her throat, it dazed her at first. All her mind could process was the sound of Rhovin's voice, yelling at her, angry with her... Hurt.
No... How...? Why? ... It couldn't be. She didn't dare think it, much less hope for it.
"Damned if you turned your back on me..." she echoed. The woman's voice was so soft, so quiet next to what his enraged yells had been. "You already did."
Aranya couldn't help how her eyes grew moist, fel lights shining all the brighter for it. She kept her voice at that soft pitch, not trusting that it wouldn't crack on her if she raised it much louder, and she needed to stay composed. "The last time we spoke-" fought, said things we didn't mean, yelled and snarled like we never should have "- you left with no uncertain terms, no words left unsaid to question, that you wanted nothing more to do with me."
Her jaw jutted forward, brow hard set, fel-kissed eyes misting with her emotions even as she refused to let tears fall. "Month after month, and no sign of you changing your mind since then. No word, no token, no anything to show that you ever thought of me or still cared." Now her voice did start to rise a step or two, grasping onto anger of her own to keep it steady. "Our anniversary came and went. Winter Veil came and went. Valéria's birthday came and went," she said. "But not you. You never came after you went, and I had to hear from rumor and whispers of your exploits and things you'd done. Rumors I couldn't even follow up on, because if I did, I risked you catching notice of it and withdrawing further into the shadows, and then I might hear nothing at all of you."
It became too much. Aranya's breathing grew as strained as his. "Months, Rhovin... of nothing. How can you even suppose that I could hope I still mattered to you after all that?" She shook her head. "Your back was turned to me long before this."
"I had to!"
The rogue captain shook his head. He was losing to his emotions. The trembling growing, the sweat in his brows, feeling his heartbeat in his throat. Even the slow exhale shook hard enough to give him away. "I had to go..." His grip loosened and shifted from her neck to her shoulder. "I did what I thought was right. We were in two different worlds, Aranya. Worlds that couldn't collide, regardless of how much we embraced one another. I left... knowing what I would leave behind and losing everything I knew I should never have. You... Valéria..." He bit his lower lip. The battle was lost. The tears quickly fell. "That was my world. I didn't deserve it, but I had it... and I left so it wouldn't burn before my own fucking eyes."
He let her go. His hands resting at his hips. He slowly moved away with his back turned and his head down, shaking in defeat. "Then one day... I see you and some punk with a broadsword, holding and kissing each other." He chuckled, but forced from instinct rather than any sense of humor. "I thought you saw me at first. I stood there, out in the open like an idiot because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. That's when I knew..." He looked over his shoulder, and that gutted pain felt at his throat showed in his eyes. "...that I had completely lost you, and there was no taking back what I had done."
Aranya couldn't move. Couldn't think. Couldn't breathe.
The hurt in her heart from her too-recent split with Halenvar made her feel heavy, her thoughts grey, but this? This threatened to break her. "All that time..." she whispered. "All that time...?" Aranya repeated, louder. The silent look that Rhovin gave her in reply said it all, and she choked on her own voice as she gave it words, "All along." Aranya shuddered, losing her fight with the tears held captive at the rim of her eyes.
All along.
This was no trick. No lie. Rhovin was many things, but one thing he had never done was lie to her. Nor she to him. Some power of the universe had made them incapable of such a thing since the beginning that they knew each other.
He had cared, and loved her, all along.
Aranya felt both a sense of burning, screaming agony and a feeling of being lifted up, soaring into the sky. Was love itself a phoenix, too, then?
Yet she continued to stay where she was. Couldn't seem to move herself forward, hovering on a thread that kept her restrained, from going towards him.
Scrubbing away the tears on her face with furious motions of her hands, Aranya turned away to her desk. She sounded every bit as emotionally exhausted as she felt. "Asharri came to me, she knew I was associated with you. When she started to ask for insights about you..." The sorceress trailed off. She turned around, facing the rogue again. "What's your aim with her? I want to understand."
"Does it even matter?"
It did. It mattered to her, and he knew that. Everything, every action, every thought, every plan, each detail she would always remember and always cared to be in the know. His life, like hers, meant everything to this woman.
Rhovin sat at the edge of the table and felt his back slouch in some sort of defeat. His head lowered, and a deep sigh soon followed. "Lutero is dying, Aranya." His head motioned to her direction, but his eyes couldn't meet hers. "My little brother, my own flesh and blood, withering away like some fel-addicted Wretched. For months, I've sat and watched, and for the first time in my sorry excuse of a life, I felt helpless."
He licked his lips, shaking his head. "I didn't know what to do." The long silence was sure enough detail that Aranya was just as shocked as he expected her to be. There was no friendly terms between her and the younger Thorne, but she knew just how much he meant to the rogue. "I tried to find every help I could get," he said. Standing, taking some steps away. His back to her as his hands would rest on his hips. "No priest would come near him, neither would any Blood Knight. I found a shaman and he..." He turned, now looking at her. "A life for a life, Aranya. I don't care who it belongs to, I'm not gonna lose him." His shoulders lifted, his breath caught at his throat, before he sharply sighed. "He's all I've got."
He's all I've got.
Aranya swallowed thickly. It stung to hear him say that, but so much time had been burned away between them. Of course Lutero was all he had now.
"A life for a life," she echoed. "So that's how it stands, then?" But if Rhovin didn't care whose life, then why Asharri? Why not some waste of deck-space he ran into in a port somewhere? What made her special? Caitira was her medic, once wed to Lutero, and from the brief encounter with the woman Aranya'd had while still at Rhovin's side, it was clear the blonde archer had some past connection with the shadow-master as well. What exactly made this all fit?
The arcanist's feet seemed to move with a will of their own, stepping right up to him. But as he turned around, she felt that maybe approaching him was a mistake, because he closed whatever distance was left with a step towards her, and there they stood. The air seemed suddenly and subtly charged with how their auras overlapped.
The sorceress held the assassin's gaze, her voice was quiet enough to fill just the immediate space, yet felt loud enough to shatter stars to her own ears. "I told Asharri I wasn't going to help her or anyone put you in a cage, or put you in the ground, she understands that."
This was a bad idea. He was too near, his face too close. But she couldn't back down.
"But as much as I know your brother means to you, Rhovin," continued Aranya. She closed her eyes, black lashes sliding down over green embers. "You have to understand..." She could taste the way that his breath touched her face, could feel the warmth radiating from his body, smelled his skin and sweat and leather clothes. Her eyes opened and her smoldering look pierced his. "I'm not going to just let you kill her."
A heartbeat passed and she tore herself away from his presence, turning and striding back to her desk. She gave a tremulous inhale, and said without looking back, "You're free to go out that door..." Aranya gestured to the way out. She hesitated before adding, "And to walk back through it again..." She turned to look over her wing-motifed shoulder at him. "IF that's what you want."
He immediately reacted and darted towards her direction. Hooking his hand on her arm, he pulled and forced her to face him. "No, that's not what I want!" he growled, now holding each of her arms in both grips. His breathing was rapid, his senses were running amok. It had been so long since he had her this near, and just as she breathed him in, he did the same. Her scent, the soft clothing in his touch, the exposed skin of her neck. What willpower he had to keep him from taking what he always knew was his. "I want..." he swallowed, shaking his head, shaking the thoughts away as rapid blinks began. "I don't know what I want. I don't know what I've become or what I'll continue to be, but..." He stepped closer, his grip now loosened. His face fell in a vulnerable gaze only she could bring out from him. "I know that I don't want to walk away from you anymore."
Aranya's heart twisted. She couldn't stop herself from lifting one hand gently to Rhovin's face, her fingertips lying at the edge of his ever-glaring brow, her thumb softly brushing back and forth on his cheek. Her arm tingled where his touch at the edge of her robes' short sleeve also made contact with her bare arm, with her red mana tattoo, the corrupted power inked under her skin responding to a connection that had never been lost between its host and her erstwhile mate.
The sorceress lifted her other hand to lay over the pirate's heart. She could feel it racing, hard and fast, like the rapid beat of a crow's wings wanting to be let inside from a cold winter storm.
But that's what he was saying - asking - wasn't it? To be let in.
There was a well-known, old saying that if you love something you should set it free, and if it returns it is truly yours. She had never stopped loving him, though she bitterly let him go, and now he was back... and didn't want to leave.
If she would let him in.
Aranya closed her eyes and touched her forehead to Rhovin's, inhaling deep and then letting go, over and over in steadying breaths, letting everything else cease to exist as she breathed his atmosphere. "Are you putting me at the center of the wheel, then, instead of at the rim?"
There were waves of shivers running down Rhovin's arms, his back and his legs. Aranya's touch was an instant trigger to his senses. It had been so long since her hand touched him that way. His eyes fell shut as he leaned into that hand. "That depends..." The captain's own hands lowered to rest at her hips. The gap between them existed no more. The wolf and his mate were connected once more, but this alpha male needed to know one thing before he conquered. "Is someone else spinning the wheel..." he approached. His eyes lowered to her mouth, his loose locks of black hair falling against her neck and shoulders. His lips near enough to just barely brush against her own. "...or am I?"
The blood in Aranya's veins pulsed loudly in her ears. Her heart was running away from her, in so many ways. "I don't know," she whispered, truthfully. "I don't know if it's fate, or choice. Only that..." She shook her head just a little. "It's so dizzying," she said, helplessly. "And I don't want to fall off." She opened her eyes, catching his, and coming undone at last. "Please, don't let me."
And then she let it all go. The months of pain, tears, confusion, all the things that left her heavy and fragmented, lying to herself and everyone around her that everything was as fine as it should be when it wasn't. Not with this piece of herself missing, out of reach.
She let it go, fall away from her, and held on for dear life to the man who had come back to her. Tears trickled down her cheeks, fel mist seeped up from her eyes. Every part of her pulled toward him like the irresistible pull of gravity, her chest and stomach pressed against his, her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, her mouth tipped up towards his teasing lips...
And those teasing lips closed the gap to embrace and truly reunite with the missing piece of his soul. Rhovin felt the rush down his spine from the instant touch of her lips. His tongue smoothed on hers. A growl at his throat from her taste, her touch, Taking her body in his arms and squeezing just a bit, lifting her to her toes just to bring her that bit closer, wanting more than this. Always wanting more.
Even in the heat of passion, that inhibition of a wolf, as she would call him, appeared. He bit her lower lip, then captured those lips again, forcing her back against the wall. "I missed you," he whispered between kisses, lowering down to capture the nape of her neck in his teeth. The world around him lost now that he had what he felt was truly his again.
And yet still, it wasn't enough. His desires for her, his needs for her skin against his erupting in his mind. His hands worked as they would, reaching to undo the hooks of her robes, biting hard at the flesh caught in his teeth. "More..."
"Yes," gasped Aranya, eyes winking and rolling in and out of focus, as fire erupted through her and her blood turned to lava. It seemed Rhovin remembered all too well, exactly which spots on her skin he could kiss to send sparks down her spine; which curves of her neck and shoulders made her knees go weak as his teeth reminded her who it was she had always belonged with.
The phoenix moaned against her mate's mouth, angling her shoulders to help the top-piece of her robes fall away to the floor. The red mana tattooed in a flowing band around her upper arm glowed as bright and hot as she felt, as her hands went to tear at Rhovin's leather vest, his shirt, relentless until she could run her hands over his chest, his broad shoulders, and feel his heart racing against hers - skin to skin.
Aranya made a loud sound in her throat, head rolling back, as Rhovin's kissing and nipping trailed to her breasts. Her hips went forward into him, reacting without thinking, pressing where she could feel his desire matching hers. She couldn't help how she moved and rolled herself against it a for moment, until her hands went for his belt and gave it a tug, demanding his attention. "Get this damn thing off," she ordered, her voice low and husking from her ragged breaths. There was no time to process this demand. He knew, almost instantly, and quickly did away with the buckles and leather padding of his lower armor.
His pants were pulled down just to his knees. As he stood bare, his breathing labored. He was fully prepared and literally oozing with excitement as it already dribbled down a thin line. Mimicking her actions, her robes were torn, leaving her body open and vulnerable for him to devour.
He was famished.
The hunger to feel her body grinding against his was one he always underestimated. No matter how much she gave, he wanted more. Craved more with each night, and this was no different. Hooking one long leg of hers around his waist, with his free hand, he reached down between them. He took a firm grip of himself and pressed against those warm lips. Even as much as he was ready, she was, if not more.
Slick and smooth as he twirled and teased, coating himself properly until he gave one push and he quickly slipped inside. A groan soon followed them both, a shiver in his breathless moans once he pushed his hips further until he was completely within, slowly beginning a rhythm as her gripping walls held him in snugly. And his eyes - those green fumed hues. They never left hers.
Though Aranya practiced the habit of keeping her nails short, she still left red marks trailing over Rhovin's tanned skin, ad her fingers flexed and gripped at his shoulders while he teased her, and dragged and clawed down his back as he rocked her. She could feel his gaze on her, watching her, as acutely as the day he first caught eyes with her - the day they met - and how his stare had gone right through her and pinned her to the spot like a butterfly. But in this moment, Aranya's own eyes kept opening and closing like window-shutters buffeting in a storm. She couldn't help it. He felt so good. Smooth and hot at her center. She flexed around him ravenously. "Ungh... More..."
And more he gave her, until her flexing was no longer a conscious thing within her control anymore, and her gasps and moans filled the whole room and echoed off the walls.
But Rhovin wasn't done. Frankly, neither was Aranya. They had lost time to make up for, bodies and souls demanded it.
Boots, pants, and whatever else was left to clothe them was discarded, Aranya directing her beloved to the boudoir with a nudge of her chin and a "That way," as he carried her in his impressively tattooed arms. The bed was not as generous as the ones at Quel'dal, or the Thorne estate, but it was not small. It was large enough to fit them both, cozily.
Rhovin took her with her back pressed into the bed, lying beneath him, her hips never still as she writhed under him. Then Aranya had her turn and rode him, slow and teasing, flexing and gripping, watching him with pleasure as his tainted eyes blazed and flashed, his hips bucking and rolling as she slowly brought up the rhythm on him. Rhovin made her pay for it when Aranya was rolled over to lie on her stomach on the bed, the assassin pinning her wrists to the mattress beneath his hands as soon as he had moved her silken black hair aside to leave her neck and shoulder exposed to him. He rutted her like a wildcat, and that was exactly how she mewled and squirmed for him, her fingers clawing and flexing in the sheets within his grasp. At last Aranya was on her back again, her toes sliding up her lover's stomach to stretch past his shoulders, and Rhovin went as deep as they had both desired for too long.
Even once Aranya was too sore to take him anymore, it didn't end. Rhovin took her sunlight-fair thighs and held them wide for his mouth to devour her, tasting what their time apart had denied them, while Aranya suckled him likewise, teasing with her lips, tongue, and breath every so often to kiss and softly lick at him, inch by inch. Even when it seemed they might both finally be spent, after all they had done in these past hours, there was one more thing missing from their reconnecting.
Rhovin slid his fingers gently but firmly through Aranya's slick, engorged folds, and from that point of contact Aranya drew on the arcane energy that resided in his blood, his essence, her hips rolling as she gasped and twitched, her center buzzing with the sensation of the sweet magic she had so missed tasting. Her back arched and her eyes rolled blindly up into her head with her last climax, gushing under his hand.
They finally lay embraced in the dimness, exhausted, panting, caressing. Over and over again were whispers of "I missed you" and "I love you" between them, for both emotions were felt so deeply by them all this time, no matter what they told themselves or anyone else.
And not the Legion, not the Old Gods, not Sargeras or Aman'thul, would ever set them apart again.
Suramar's insect life took over the silence of the night. An open walk-through with a breathless view, just like she had always loved, was there for the captain of the Black Rose to stand and watch the full moon radiating in front of him. He was bare, still, and Aranya slept with just a thin sheet drake over her, legs exposed.
She was spent. Her body giving him every ounce of energy she could muster. That was one thing he had a slight advantage over her. Though she dominated the arcane world, stamina was a little more on his side, though he truly felt she didn't mind that one bit.
He enjoyed this night, enjoyed this reunion, enjoyed having his mate - his one, true love - reconnect with him, joined in mind and spirit. But the thoughts of his younger brother now lingered.
Lutero was still dying. The rogue crossed his arms and couldn't help but close his eyes and envision how his brother looked nothing like him now. He looked far beyond his actual age, a more twisted version of the common Wretched. Lutero's addiction to the shadows had finally caught up to him.
Rhovin's nostrils flared, his lower lip quivered, caught in these flashing images of caring for the shadow priest, feeding and bathing him like he was some helpless child. He couldn't stand the concept of losing his younger brother.
He had to do what he was set to do, with or without his lover's blessing.
Stirring from her slumber, Aranya blinked her eyes, stretching and yawning with content. She felt amazing. How long had it been since she felt this happy? Rhovin was not in bed with her, but he was not far. Aranya joined him at his side, watching the moon and stars.
"Look at us now," she said. "What we've become." Aranya laid a hand on the pirate's shoulder, caressing over the inked skin she so admired and loved. "You've supplanted your mentor, taken his place. That was ballsy, y'know. That made me smile when I heard about that." And indeed, a twinkle lit her eyes as smiled wickedly. "I, too, have taken someone's place," she went on more seriously. "Opheron retired as head of the Eclipse Syndicate, and I was made his successor. I've expanded operations since then."
She stood in silence with him awhile. This wasn't going to be easy, for either of them. Rhovin would do what he had to for Lutero. Aranya would do what she could for Asharri. Someone was going to get hurt again or killed in all this.
But Aranya wasn't going to let this go for any of that.
The phoenix pulled closer to her mate, her arm snaking around behind his waist, her lips playing along the side of his throat and beneath the edge of his jaw. "Stay 'til morning," she whispered. "We'll be captain and trade boss tomorrow. Let's be just Rhovin and Aranya for the rest of the night."
Her words and reminders were enough to make him smile. Her lips on his skin only widened that smile, and he wanted nothing more than to continue what was left of the night.
But he couldn't shove away the truth, the harsh reality of what was coming. He wouldn't. "I'm going to end her," he said. A calm tone as his eyes looked up at Azeroth's night sky. "You need to know before morning," he continued, locking his gaze with hers. "That once I'm gone, I don't know when I'll be back... if I'll be back. I end her, I'll have to stay as far away as possible. And if I fail..." He looked away, up once more to the moon, with a head shake and a shrug. "She'll either kill me or imprison me. Either way... I likely won't come back."
Aranya snorted softly. "And do you suppose that I'm just going to accept that?" She fixed a wry look on Rhovin and shook her head. "After all you've said and all we've done tonight, you just fly away from me again to be killed or locked up? No."
She brought up her other hand to the side of his face, making him look at her. "We're dangerous people who live dangerous lives. The longer we live, the more dangerous we become, and the more dangerous it gets." She brought her face closer to his, peering into the fel orbs of his eyes. "This will always be true, even without each other. The last seven months showed us that well enough."
Aranya brought her lips to the side of his ear, soft as she whispered, "And if you or anyone thinks the phoenix will suffer you to be in a cage-" she said a short phrase in Amani that equated to fuck that "- I don't give a damn what it takes or who tries to stop me, I'm coming for you."
The arcanist turned and said some gestures and words. A couple of objects zinged from another room into her grasp. When she opened her hands, a small moonstone was in one and a bottle of captured mystic essence was in the other. Uncorking the bottle, Aranya took one of Rhovin's hands and laid it overtop of hers with the moonstone. A bit of the essence rose up from within the bottle and wove and shimmered around their joined hands, and then its path wove tighter, until it bound them like a cosmic ribbon and disappeared.
Aranya's palm pushed up lightly as their hands parted, prompting Rhovin to take the moonstone. "Mount this in a wristcuff or a ring, or whatever you need. You'll be able to connect to me as I can connect to you and others, even without the same arcane acuity." Her arms came up around his neck, holding him close, never wanting to let him go. "Do what you think you need to do, but no matter where you go, I am there with you."