A/N: A surprise kiss is pretty much everything that could require a warning here.
Griffin is determined to stop Valtor from taking the scroll he'd been sent to steal for his mothers. Even if it means giving him a piece of herself.
"Give the scroll back, Valtor," Griffin said as she cut off his path. He may have gotten away from the ambush but she knew how he operated. He couldn't get away from the memories in her head. She knew him and he'd never escape from her if she didn't let him. She hadn't managed to.
"You can have it," Valtor said as he extended it towards her, giving her pause and startling her. She'd never expected that. "If you do this one small thing for me."
That was more like him. A trade made some sense even if it was still off. Especially knowing that he didn't get to make the calls. His mothers did, and the thought of the punishments they so readily laid on him made her heart ache every time he left the battlefield with empty hands but she couldn't let him make them more powerful. That wouldn't make him safe. It would just threaten everyone else as well.
Griffin held his gaze, accepting his deal as long as he wouldn't try to include anyone else in it. She would give him anything he wanted from her but she couldn't drag anyone else into their madness. It was unthinkable to share it with someone who wasn't him. It was theirs and theirs only. No one else had any business touching any of it or living in it.
"Kneel." The word echoed off the walls of the stone chamber and the insides of her mind.
She couldn't. She shouldn't. No matter how much she wanted to. She couldn't admit she still craved the deep intimacy and trust between them that following that direction would require. She couldn't allow herself to display the vulnerability he was demanding from her no matter what her heart was screaming at her. Even if he already knew, if he'd heard the cries in her head and seen the flames in her gaze that only ever burned for him.
She closed her eyes, preparing herself for the cold of the marble floor biting at her skin through the thin fabric of her dress. It reached her in seconds and still not fast enough to beat the feelings rushing under her skin and trying to get to him as her heart wanted to love him openly. Not again, since she'd never stopped loving him.
"Griffin," the terror in Faragonda's voice laid heavy on her eyelids, forcing them down even as she tried to open them. Or maybe it was the shame of being caught in that position. The shame she'd let someone else see them like that. When it had had to be sacred to the two of them and known to no one else.
Valtor's hand found it's way in her hair, stroking it, and any other thought left her head, dragged out by the fingers threading through the purple. She couldn't think about Faragonda and how her heart probably raced in fear of the damage Valtor could bring when her own heart was pounding for him with excitement at the touch of his hand. It was all she'd dreamed of and she finally had it again, not even the price she had to pay for it registering in her dreamy haze.
"Good girl," Valtor spoke, his voice so soft it reached her soul and tugged at it, drawing tears to the surface, all that hadn't been shed when she'd been safe and out of his hands. It all spilled for him, for the man she loved, for the one who loved her back. And even the knowledge it was all a cruel joke couldn't hold her tears back. He had all of them.
She held out her hands, palms turned up, waiting to get his mercy at least, since the blessing of his love was lost.
He left the scroll in her hands, his skin never touching hers just like she'd expected it wouldn't. His fingers weren't in her hair anymore since he'd gotten the water drops he'd been looking for and now that they were all over her cheeks he had no reason to touch her. He had no reason to want to dry her tears, only to spill them.
Valtor's lips crashed on hers without any warning, startling a whimper out of her as she had no way to defend herself while she felt the magic coursing around them into a sphere protecting them from Faragonda's attempts to get through to her so that he could steal all of her breath and take it for himself. It wasn't fair. And it was so foolish to expect anything fair from him. But put in context perhaps it was more fair than she'd thought at first. Because she'd done the same to him, and that thought was what wouldn't spare her for a moment ever again. Just like her betrayal had cursed him for eternity. It was a fair trade.
