It's been too long. The two previous chapters were flashbacks, but we are now back to the present. Please comment if you like it. Not so confident with this one.
He watched. He waited. What else was there to do? He was tasked with this, with bringing her into the fold, overseeing her initiation; he never thought she'd actually go through with it. She had changed. She went to Cheydinhal, so close to the sanctuary, and she'd charged head on into the Oblivion Gate. For someone whose face he once knew so well, she was a stranger, a wild and unreadable thing, and he didn't follow her. He wasn't a fool, and she was capable. She'd dove headfirst into enough of those things to handle herself.
She'd been gone for a surprisingly short amount of time, and she waltzed right back into Cheydinhal, dragging the count's son by his shirt sleeve into the keep, storming out as fast as she could and mounting a horse. The rain began, a torrential downpour for which she should have stopped, but she pushed on as though daedra were at her back. If she'd known he was there, known that he was dogging her every step, she'd have pushed harder.
He saw her get thrown from her horse, watched while he sat safe on Shadowmere, but she was tougher than she was as a girl. She stood and watched the horse gallop off in a panic, and then she trudged through the wet and the muck, going exactly where he'd told her to go without even realizing it. The Inn of Ill Omen. A pleasurable shiver thrilled up his spine, the excitement before the kill. He could taste it on his tongue, even if it wasn't his blood to draw.
He dismounted, let Shadowmere wander the woods; she never strayed far from him, no matter the circumstance. Elisif was wet, shaken, and delirious with the cold, but she slumped in a relaxed stupor as the innkeeper bustled about making a bath, hauling pails of water down a ladder. The man was trusting, leaving the trapdoor open to the nicer suites below, and Lucien climbed down quickly, silently, crouching in the shadows at the end of the hall and refreshing his chameleon spells as he waited.
Then she climbed down the stairs, shutting the trapdoor, rubbing her bright, pale eyes and staggering down the hall. She missed her room, pushed open Rufio's door by mistake. He watched, his heart pounding with anticipation as the doomed man inside screeched at her, begging for his life, talking his way into death. The anger she displayed, the disgust that she expressed, the tears that rolled down her cheeks at his confession of rape and murder, the way her body flinched when he talked about his victim's teasing, her pretty face. She told him he deserved it, and she killed him. She didn't hesitate, didn't flinch when the blood poured all over her face and clothes. She calmed, breath even, hands still, and she wiped her dagger on the dead man's tunic before slowing walking to her room. Normally he wouldn't follow, wouldn't watch an initiate's every move, but he needed to know her reaction, needed to see her face. When he made it over to her open door she was naked, stepping into the tub. Her back was to him, head resting in her hands for a moment before she started scrubbing furiously at her skin, pouring water over her hair and face. It wasn't bright, but he could see well enough, see the scars crisscrossing her back in addition to the new wounds, wounds that were furiously red and hinting at infection. He longed to get closer. He needed to see her face, see her eyes and know her past. It became as vital as breathing. Slowly he started to creep forward, but she stood, dripping water all over the floor, drying and dressing with a fury. She paced, stopped, and then she fled the inn with enough speed that she nearly lost him.
He stalked her to the Imperial City, watched her slither into the Mage's Guild dormitories where she knew he wouldn't enter. For hours she stayed in the safety of the guild, but then she sped from the dorms to her private chambers, and she was again ensconced where he could not hope to follow.
Through the countryside he followed Elisif and Raminus, too far away for either of them to hear or see. He waited outside the ruins of Miscarcand, dozing as day became night, shuddering awake as the two of them staggered out into the darkness. They climbed into a shared bedroll, sleep claiming them immediately. A stupid mistake, but he supposed they were safe enough. Still, he couldn't explain the anger that clenched in his gut when they woke the next morning, when she let him lay his hands on her, heal her wounds and take her confession. Bile rose in his throat when she received his kiss, and his hands went for his dagger as their arms wrapped around each other.
They headed north, making camp another night before taking a room at an inn. A single room. He wanted to just leave, to try again in a week, but she was flighty already, and if he was going to catch her alone, he'd have to be vigilant. That didn't explain why he lingered at their window, invisible to any who might look up, watching her smile and laugh and hold his hand. It didn't account for his inability to move when their clothes came off, when Raminus touched her body as if it belonged to him. Her breath came out in husky little moans, back arched, her hands clenching at the mage's hair as he buried his face between her smooth thighs, delving his tongue into her-
The assassin turned away in disgust, choking back his fury as the sound faded away. It wasn't what he had expected. He had wronged her, and he feared he had hated her for nothing. What business was it of his anymore if she took some idiot mage as a lover? What right did he have other than having known her from childhood? They had shared a life together, created a life together, but it was snuffed out long ago. She was broken, haunted by a past of which he knew little, and if Raminus Polus laying claim to her body helped her forget, who was he to judge? The things he'd done in the name of forgetting her, the amount of people he had slain to stamp out her memory were no small number.
He had to stop this irrational rage, had to control himself. His duty to the Night Mother didn't account for this, and it certainly didn't afford for him to get torn between his obligations to the Brotherhood and a fervent desire to rip the spine out of Raminus Polus.