It did not matter which way the ruby turned – its velvety glow caught beautifully in the light from all angles. Protected by a garrison of stunning prismed diamonds, the precious jewel sat comfortably on the owner's finger; its painful squeezing of her heart, however, was harder to bear. The heir to Noxus stoop atop the Bastion, her golden eyes staring regretfully into its luscious gleam. Initially annoyed at how much she liked the gem, she now loathed herself for loving it after its former owner explained how it had fallen into his possession.
'It was your mother's engagement ring. Your father wanted to bedazzle her with Demacian sapphires – can you imagine! Ugh! Cheap, nasty things,' the High Commander sighed, mentally berating his late son-in-law for his incompatible taste. He leant forward, a rare twinkle glittering in his satanic gaze as he watched for his granddaughter's reaction. 'I raised my girl properly though. Beatie insisted on a native blood ruby from my son-in-law to show that he was serious about marrying a purebred Noxian. I'll hand it to Crownguard – he carved out that stone himself from one of the uppermost ruby deposits in the Dalmor Plain. Had a hell of a job keeping the jeweller's mouth shut when he came in with that rock.'
'Why didn't she take it with her when she left Noxus?' his granddaughter had asked curiously, hating herself as soon as the probing words had trickled off her careful tongue.
Sensing her genuine interest in the ring's history, Swain leant back in his office chair as a smile tickled his sunken, whiskery cheeks. 'When Crownguard and Beatie fled to Demacia during the ceasefire, she had been pregnant with Caleb, as you well know. She'd had to take off her engagement ring because her fingers swelled so much with the pregnancy – something that I'm sure gave Crownguard a lot of pleasure,' he added darkly, tutting and rolling his eyes as the heir fought to suppress a laugh. 'I hope to God he didn't give her some tacky replacement, and who only knows what the eventual wedding ring was like. Perhaps it's just as well I missed the Demacian nuptials. Anyway, she left it behind the night she fled. The diamonds come from the Tempest Flats, which are located between Noxus and Demacia. Beatie told me they were supposed to represent a future where both sides could meet down the middle, but, well…that never happened, obviously.' The archmagi awkwardly cleared his scratchy throat, aware that his explanation of the gem's belongings had strayed too far into sentimentalism, but he could not suppress his pleasure with his granddaughter's evident love for the ring. 'Beautiful, isn't it? It fits you like-'
'A glove,' she finished at the same time, unable to look at the shine of pride and love rippling in the commander's eyes. 'Thank you for saving it, Jericho. It's beautiful.'
As Quinn looked down upon it now in the setting sun, it turned her stomach that she was somehow enjoying its reassuring weight on her ring finger. Its meaning in this moment of time, however, could not be further away from its origins: greed, ambition, sacrifice and guilt. She felt violated that her brute of a fiancé had chosen such a personal ring for her, as if the family history would sway him towards accepting their pact; in truth, she knew Darius had chosen it because he did not give enough of a shit to bother getting her something new. She fought the instinct to flinch whenever the Hand of Noxus strode into a room, his frozen green eyes rooting her to the spot, and his smile unsettled her more than the usual scowl he reserved for her. The proposal had taken place two weeks after their pact, the hulking Noxian dropping to his knees in the middle of a routine dinner party. She had feigned surprise and delight, though her heart was minced by the look of shock on Yasuo's face, whose silver drinks tray had clattered to the ground at the news. Perhaps the ranger would have found Cassiopeia's outraged shrieking at the sticky wine invading her bosom more humorous if she had not wanted to sob. She channelled her desperate tears into droplets of joy as she wrapped her arms around Darius' musclebound neck, his rough lips scraping against hers as he held her in his arms. She caught sight of Swain, bemused but beaming, but buried her head at the sight of the warrior, whose chest was heaving in fury.
'Hello, Ms. Bride-to-Be,' a man called out to her, and Quinn instinctively shuddered as she turned away from the balcony. Plastering a false smile on her face to greet her future husband, her jaw dropped as her eyes fell upon the dishevelled exile.
'Yasuo,' she acknowledged quietly, too ashamed to look at him as she cradled a sorry drink in her hands. She braced herself for the verbal onslaught, wrapping one arm around her fluttering stomach to suppress the growing nausea at the imminent torrent of hatred from her former friend, but was stunning as he took hold of her free sweaty palm and held it.
'What are you doing?' she whispered fearfully, even more unsettled by the kindness over cruelty. 'You should be shouting at me. This is all my fault. I'm sorry ever I thought it was yours.'
'I'm being here when you need me…for once,' he responded calmly, his wild locks flapping in the autumn breeze as he rested his head onto hers. She stiffened for a moment before closing her weary eyes and nestling into the warm crook of his neck.
'He's forcing you to marry him, isn't he?' Yasuo asked her gently, both warriors gazing down upon the jagged skyline of their imprisoned city. 'I could tell by the look on your face when he gave you that ring. What are the terms?'
'If I marry him and give him control of Noxus when my grandfather passes, he'll leave Demacia untouched as part of the country's imperial policy,' she mumbled into his tangled hair. 'He threatened to kill everyone I love, to lay all of my fellow countrymen and women to waste, if I didn't agree to it. But he promised he would spare everyone if I did.'
'And you believed him?' the exile asked incredulously, letting her hand fall loose. 'Don't you get how these Noxians think yet, Quinn? Maybe you're more Demacian than I thought.'
'I haven't got a choice, have I?' she sighed heavily, peering up at him with wide, resigned eyes. 'Maybe he will go back on his word, Yasuo, but it buys the boys time at least. Not that they'll even realise it. They'll all think I've been a Noxian whore all along.'
'Your true friends know who you are,' Yasuo protested, pulling away from her before placing his strong palms on her shoulders. 'Sona, maybe that Xin guy. I know I do. You're not one of them, kitten, even if you think you are. You're so, so much better than them. Than Noxus.'
The ranger swallowed hard, bravery massaging her heart as she forced herself to meet his earnest chocolate brown eyes. 'You're right, Yas. You're right. And I'm so sorry I threatened our friendship. I didn't know what I was thinking. I shouldn't have kissed you, that was-'
The Ionian waved one hand dismissively, an amused smile caressing his gaunt cheeks. 'You don't think I didn't consider doing it when I first met you, did you? Because my rejection of you wasn't a comment on what I think of you, or how attractive you are.'
'You did?' she asked curiously, her eyes dropping to the ground as a blush tinged her face.
'Quinn…you know you're a very pretty girl,' Yasuo began, and she was puzzled at how uncharacteristically ruffled he seemed. 'Alright, I admit that when I was pursuing you in Ionia, it was partly because I wanted to make Irie jealous. I'm not proud of it, although I sense you were doing the same thing with the Prince. But it was also because I thought you were really cute – and the more I got to know you, the more I found you beautiful. But that's the problem. That's why I don't want to go any further.'
'What do you mean?' she asked in confusion, her satin brow wrinkling at his unfavourable words. 'If you liked me, why wouldn't you just say so?'
'Because we're too similar,' Yasuo admitted, playing with a rogue strand of her hair as he tucked it behind her pink clam shell ear. 'There's two kinds of people in this world, Quinn: fighters and thinkers. Both are equally important, and both can be beneficial, but we need both to keep the planet spinning. We connected immediately because we're both fighters – we march to the beat of our own drum; we chase heart over head; we may love hard, but we fight hard too. And look where we always end up – in chaos or danger. Normally both.'
'But this wasn't your fault, Yas,' Quinn protested softly, her saddened golden eyes flitting back to him. 'It was mine. I'm so sorry. I should have never taken off on my own in a land I was unfamiliar with.'
'No, you should have never ended up with an Ionian who should have known better than to take a fugitive to an island of gossip,' the warrior corrected her, wrapping one lithe arm around her narrow shoulders. 'It's my fault, kitten. You were in a vulnerable situation and I didn't want to see you go just yet – it was just me being stupid, impatient and selfish. I'm sorry. But look at us. From day one, we were with each other for bad reasons - using each other for the wrong things – getting into trouble at every turn. We've spent more time mad than glad for one another's company in the short time we've known each other...and that can't be healthy.'
'So what are you saying?' she asked tersely, pain tinting her eyes as she stared reproachfully at him. 'That we can't ever work?'
'Yes, Quinn. It'd be too toxic,' he replied seriously, avoiding her emotional gaze. 'I'm sorry if I made you have feelings for me, but we both know our hearts lie elsewhere. We could end up resentful down the line because we're not the person we want one another to be.'
'What if I want that person to be you?' the ranger whispered sadly, trying to meet his eyes directly. 'What if you've made me feel the most free and alive I've been in so long?'
'Oh, Demacian. Come here,' the warrior sighed, pulling her into a hug on the balcony as she slumped against his shoulder. 'I didn't do that. It was you who woke yourself up, forging your own adventures and stepping outside that stuffy royal life to take a breath. And once you took that brave, independent step, you couldn't get in enough lungfuls of air away from that place. You were already free and alive before I ever came along. I just made you aware of it.'
'You still love Irelia, don't you?' Quinn muttered into his solid shoulder, winding her arms around his waist. 'Even though you can cut through that toxicity with a knife.'
'Perhaps,' he admitted gravely, holding her close. 'I'm sorry I can't be the kind of partner you need, Quinn. I don't think I can rest until I eventually clear my name and give Irie the choice to come back to me or walk away. Perhaps too much has been said and done.'
'At least you have a chance at happiness,' the ranger lamented, closing her eyes as he rocked her in his arms. 'The one man I wanted is now married, and I don't reciprocate the feelings of the decent man that does love me. My life is a mess.'
'You'll find the right one, Quinn, I promise,' the warrior assured her kindly, giving her another big squeeze. 'Darius is not him. He never will be. This won't be forever.'
'I beg to differ.'
The ranger and exile were startled by the sudden appearance of the former's fiancé, who promptly stomped into the room and ripped Yasuo off Quinn. 'Hey, Darius, it's not what it looks l-'
A sickening crack and hot spray of scarlet blood drenching the ranger's arm signalled the punch that the powerful commander landed on the warrior. Winded and dropping to the floor, Yasuo grabbed his scrambled jaw and moaned as Darius kicked his dislodged tooth over to him. His foot paused on the ivory peg as if he were about to grind it into dust.
'You won't touch her ever again. You won't speak to her ever again. And if I catch you so much as breathing in her general direction, Ionian, I will have you strung up on my axe and paraded naked through the streets of Prime,' the Noxian snarled, snapping his fingers as two guards flanked him. 'Take him away, men.'
'Stop it!' Quinn shrieked as his cronies seized one of Yasuo's arms each and dragged him out of the room. She made to pursue them, but Darius clamped his vice-like arms around her chest and lifted her back, kicking the door shut behind him.
'Let go of me, Darius! Fuck!' she yelled hoarsely, her face flooding red as she tried to headbutt his chin. Dodging her attack, he threw her down to the velvet sofa below and sat on her chest heavily enough to restrain her, but not so much as to crush her.
'We had an agreement, Demacian!' he growled at her, pinning her jaw shut between his fingers and turning her chin to look at him as she tried to bite them, 'and this is how you repay me? If rumours of adultery start swirling around, this plan is finished!'
'He was just comforting me!' the ranger spat as she snapped her jaw open. Her golden eyes blazed with hatred as she clocked the spark of annoyance in the Noxian's frosted eyes, slapping his powerful hand away from her face. 'Something you wouldn't understand.'
'Comforting you would imply that I care about you,' he muttered, curving menacingly over the arm of the sofa and refusing to break eye contact with his future wife. 'And we both know that Valoran will implode before the day comes that I love you. No one loves you, Demacian, so I suggest you stop believing in it. That sort of thing will get you killed around here. The fairy-tale dream is over - wake the fuck up. No one's coming for you.'
Quinn finally looked away, tears dribbling from her ducts as fury burrowed under her skin. Never had she wished death on an individual before in the way she did for Darius. She fantasised about ramming a razor-sharp knife through his abhorrent heart, savouring his final heartbeats playing music to her ears; 'til death do us part, she thought bitterly.
The ranger then snapped out of her dark fantasy in disgust, saddened that the Noxian had dragged her down to his bloodthirsty, primal level. Darius cleared his sandpapery throat to speak and she turned back to look at him with a pained expression, refusing to wipe away the crystal tears from her reddened eyes. He reached out for a second, but let his hand fall away.
'Go and see Cassiopeia,' the Hand of Noxus sighed, though Quinn took pleasure in the fact that even the brutal commander could not quite look a weeping woman in the eye. 'She's chosen some outfits for our public engagement announcement before the Fleshing; pick one and send me the bill. I'd make you pay for it yourself, but you've nothing left to offer.'
Quinn ignored the jab at her powerlessness and heaved herself off the sofa, wandering back over to the balcony to stare at the dying sunset. She played with the empty glass between her slender finders, the delicate bones tapping incessantly against its glimmering surface. Darius called her name a couple more times, but sensing that she was done talking, he swore under his breath and thudded out of the room. The ranger did not look back as she heard the dense oak door slam and rusty hinges squealing in protest at their rough treatment; all she felt was relief that he would be gone for a few hours. She pressed the cool glass to her flaming forehead and let her shoulders shake as trepidation pooled in her stomach.
I I
'Did you hear something?' a man suddenly whispered under his breath, each drawling vowel saturated with worry. 'Goddamn, Sarah, I sure hate these streets. Why did we have to come here of all places? And do we really need the slimeball with us right now?'
Xin's protective instincts finally kicked in and he pressed himself and Jarvan closer to an adjacent wall in the alleyway. Flinging a barrier of an arm across the Exemplar, the two Demacians sucked in a quivering breath as they overheard the terse conversation in the street ahead.
'You know why, Tobias,' came an exasperated reply, and the two men's ears were surprised at the twangy female Bilgewater accent wrapped around it. 'Even the Slaughter Mafia dare not tread in Prime. They'd never believe that we could survive a day here on our own. But, of course, they don't know about our deal with the demon. We'll be fine.'
'Noxian, Demacian, Frejyordian – you humans have the same fear of mortality no matter where y'all spawned,' a gravelly, disgusting voice gargled back, its owner wheezing with laughter; Jarvan and Xin traded perplexed glances with one another at the unfamiliar, ethereal sound. Peeking out of the alleyway as far as they dared without getting discovered, the Demacians caught sight of the trio's slick faces gleaming in the humid twilight.
'Many a secret's been spilt to me here, Fate,' the demon continued, his rancid, sludge-grey skin causing the Demacians to shudder. 'And I'll let that slanderous comment slip by this time. Just be grateful that Little Miss Fortune was willing to pay the highest price for my services - and also that I am rather fond of that Ionian scallywag.'
'Huh. Maybe Gangplank's punch packs so much power because he's so damn tight-fisted,' Tobias chuckled, absentmindedly twirling a rogue playing card underneath his slim fingers.
'Careful, Cardmaster,' the demon warned gravely, though amusement rode over the jagged waves of his awful voice. 'You don't know where the Cap'n could have ears and eyes.'
The card mage shrugged, idly flicking away the card and stunning Xin and Jarvan as it burst into flames and curled into ashes on the cobbles below. 'That tie's been severed now, so it doesn't matter what they hear. I was the one who stunned him when he tried to turn over Sarah and Quinn to Talon. He'll have my betrayal seared into his memory forever now.'
The Seneschal and Exemplar's ears pricked up in shock at the mention of the ranger woman, with the former mouthing the word 'Quinn?' to his superior. Jarvan shook his head in bewilderment before they leant in as far as they dared to continue eavesdropping.
'I wonder if Yasuo's still with her,' Sarah mused, nibbling anxiously on the fleshy pad of her inner cheek. 'He seemed quite serious about her compared to his other conquests.'
'His heart don't lie with the Demacian,' the demon chuckled, hacking up a slimeball and turning to spit it out on a stubbly patch of grass. It was the only thing that was able to distract the two Demacians from the stunning news that these people knew Quinn, and Jarvan tried to look away from the disgusting blob that had begun to crawl on its own, his stomach spasming. 'And I don't believe hers belongs with his, either. They weren't running away with each other to somewhere - they were running together from someone, I can tell. For all humans go on about being complex specimens, y'all are simpler underneath flesh and bone than y'all realise. Why d'yall fight your innermost desires so much? Why have 'em if you don't act on 'em?'
'Really? We're getting dating advice from a slime receptacle?' Fate sighed, slipping his fedora off his clammy forehead and wiping off the night's humidity. 'Sarah, darlin', let's go somewhere else. The quicker we do this, the quicker we don't have to put up with him.'
'Tobias,' Sarah cautioned softly under her breath, her gooseberry-green eyes glinting with hope in the sepia glow of the Noxian gas lamps above. 'We're not going anywhere until we find Yasuo.'
'We know where he is.'
Sarah, Twisted Fate and the demon halted, the breath of the human and mage hitching as they heard a strong, baritone voice reverberate into the smoky night. Sarah whirled round first, spinning her polished guns at the alleyway, before Twisted Fate called out into its swirly depths. 'Who are you?' he demanded sharply, a crimson card flitting erratically between his knuckles as he stepped protectively in front of Sarah. 'What are you doing here?'
'We're enemies of your enemies, by the sounds of things,' Jarvan continued firmly, striding into the dim streetlight with Xin to his right flank. 'And that makes us your friends.'
'I said who are you?' Twisted Fate demanded once more, the card igniting in his hand with his anger until he had to drop it and let it cinder beneath his foot.
Sarah, however, emitted a little gasp as Xin moved into the light, clocking his pained eyes and tumbling hair with familiarity. 'Wait…no, it can't be…Viscero? Is that you?'
'I'm sorry - I don't know who that is,' he responded curtly, though apprehension flashed through his dark eyes at the unfamiliar woman.
'I was paid to track you down after you escaped Noxus,' she explained, placing her hand gently on Tobias' card-throwing arm as she moved to catch a better glance of him. 'The Noxian High Command had a massive price on your head…they felt so humiliated that the Demacian king had rescued you, and they had such little trust in their assassin ring, that they hired a poor Bilgewaterer on one of her first bounty hunter jobs. You look very different compared to your case file – bigger, more powerful, better kept. I barely recognised you.'
'You were paid to kill me?' Xin asked stiffly, feeling Jarvan shift behind him; he knew his superior had drawn a knife behind his back in case they needed to fight their way out of here.
'No, not to kill you!' Sarah assured him quickly, concern glinting in her widened green eyes. 'I capture fugitives and hand them over to the authorities to do what they must with them. I wouldn't have killed you.'
'But they would have!' he barked indignantly, causing Twisted Fate to bristle at Sarah's elbow and the demon to lift one sludgy eyebrow in surprise. 'Have you no conscience? You knew my story if you were sent after me – you knew what I'd been through under them.'
'I needed to eat, Viscero,' Sarah responded sharply, though she was unable look the enraged Demacian in the eye. 'I had to do whatever I could to survive in Gangplank's Bilgewater.'
'Leave Sarah out of this,' Twisted Fate thundered, his eyes swerving from the loggerheaded Seneschal and bounty hunter to a tense Jarvan. 'You know Yasuo?'
The prince nodded shortly, not once taking his eyes off the affronted trio. 'Maybe we can be of some help to each other. You know Quinn, I hear.'
'What's it to you?' Sarah asked dismissively, pointing one gun at each of the two Demacians. Their movements slowed but their anger flared at her threatening posture. 'How do we know we can trust you?'
'How do we know we can trust you?' Xin retorted hotly, shrugging off Jarvan's disciplinarian pat on his bulky shoulder. 'Maybe Sarah here will sell me back to those Noxian scum the first minute she gets so she can make her fortunes.'
'I know what they're like now!' she hissed, her coppery curls quivering in fury. 'Trust me - Twisted Fate and myself hate the Noxians just as much as you do. I was just a young girl doing what I could to live from one day to the next – you'd know about that, right?'
'Yes, but no thanks to people like you!' the Seneschal growled, his dark eyes firing up like coal. 'Opportunists who prey on the down and out to your own benefit and at our expense!'
'Stop it, both of you!' Jarvan growled through gritted teeth, throwing a stern glance between the hot-headed Bilgewaterer and Demacian. 'None of this is helping any of us. Listen – we're looking for Quinn because she is a Demacian and she belongs with us in the Vanguard. You're looking for Yasuo because – well, God knows why anyone would look for that bird-nest haired scoundrel, but we know he was last seen with her before they were captured. So let's behave like adults and pool the information we both have together.'
'Kench?' Twisted Fate enquired, pleading silently with his eyes as he sought his wizened opinion. 'Can we trust these two?'
'I don't sense no malice in their souls,' the demon judged huskily, his lemon-shaped eyes blinking twice in quick succession. 'Plenty of conflict and desire, but no danger.'
'They're in the Immortal Bastion,' Jarvan revealed in a hushed voice, signalling up at the Gothic spirals towering above the haunted landscape. 'At least, Ionian intelligence believe they are. We've been checking in case they've escaped and crossed the border, but we've not been able to get close enough to the inner core to find out.'
'You mean Swain, the doofus brothers and the Du Couteau clan?' Sarah asked thoughtfully, one thin eyebrow cocked in thought. 'I have a bit of history with Draven…let me think.'
'Is there any man you don't have history with?' the demon cackled, causing the bounty hunter to roll her gemmed eyes expressively. 'Sorry, Miss Fortune…pray continue.'
'There's a Fleshing on tomorrow; I know he'll be at it,' she continued impatiently, wrinkling her nose in disgust. 'We could all attend. I could seduce him after the show, and bam – he's ours. If we capture him, we can interrogate him and see what he knows about the current situation without immediately alerting the guards. He's not part of the imperial forces and is known for his unpredictability, so his absence would not cause any suspicion.'
'That sounds good,' Jarvan responded keenly. 'Myself and…Fate, wasn't it?...can come in and seize Draven once you've got him, Sarah. Will he really fall for that?'
'Draven only thinks with his blades and his dick,' the bounty hunter assured him, smirking at his upcoming comeuppance. 'He doesn't take much disarming, believe me.'
