Sorry for taking so long, homework is death! Next chapter might also be a little long in writing, all apologies and I'll write as fast as I can… Happy Christmas everyone!

-o-

The summer sun was warm, warmer than it had been all year. Cayri had taken advantage of the early summer warmth to go out to gather various plants that the healer-woman had requested. Cayri had always been a lover of the forest, and she disliked being shut up inside, so she had quickly volunteered. She had expected nothing of the day past the ordinary.

Cayri usually stayed on or in sight of the road, but that afternoon she spotted a thick growth of one of the plants she wanted, and wandered off. She knew the way—she'd be able to find her way back. When there was more off the stuff than she would possibly be able to gather, she kept wandering, searching for the best specimens to add to her basket.

That was when she had been surprised.

She had meandered far from the road when she was confronted by a pair of strangers. A pair of surly-looking, armed, male strangers.

Cayri's little gasp as she saw them alerted the two to her presence. The first one, a tall but muscular man bearing a sword almost as tall as she was, noticed her first. He nudged his partner, a rather short though lean man bearing a pair of shortswords.

"Keyras, look," the first one said in a low but smug voice. "What were you just saying about wanting a decent woman? Look what just walked into our hands!"

The second, Keyras, smiled nastily. He looked straight into Cayri's emerald eyes and spoke to her. "Hello, young lady." His voice, though superficially pleasant, held a sly pleasure, and dripped with a snake's venom. He knew, as Cayri could clearly tell, that this was no polite introduction as civilized people made. This was only an indulgence to his whims. Nothing would change. Cayri didn't know what was happening or what would happen, but she knew enough to be very, very scared. But she was frozen with fear. She made no reply.

"No answer?" Keyras said, sounding offended. He strode forward until he was less than an armspan from Cayri. His partner followed, but at a sligh distance. Cayri shrank back, but she could not bring herself to run. "But how else am I to learn the name of the beautiful young lady?" he went on. He looked closely at Cayri's face, then spat into it. She winced back involuntarily, and Keyras, suddenly angered, delivered her a harsh slap. Cayri whimpered pathetically, but he ignored her as he turned to his partner.

"Reshta, do you see who this is?" he asked, fury written in every line of his face. "This is the girl who's supposed to wed Lord Courem—" he spat the name out as if it were poison, "in a few months. The same bastard son of a street rat who denied us any work." The same look of hatred appeared on Reshta's face.

Keyras's expression grew pleased again after a moment of consideration. "What say we pay Courem a little favor here?" he asked, a sick sort of delight in his voice. "Let him know how we feel about being turned down. I'm sure his fiancée will make an excellent messenger, don't you agree?"

He didn't give Reshta a chance to answer as he turned suddenly and hit Cayri full-force in the jaw. She fell with a cry, and Keyras fell on top of her. She tried to block out everything that she experienced then as Keyras, then Reshta proceeded to rape her, but it was almost impossible. Neither man noticed her tears or cared about the bruises and cuts they dealt at the same time. When they had finished, they dragged her to the side of the road where she was not likely to get lost and be unable to find her way home, and left her.

It was bliss, then, to have fallen unconscious at that time. She drifted in and out of nightmares, some involving long-dead childhood fears, but most recollecting the events of a few hours previous. As if drugged, it took her a long time to regain consciousness, and she felt drained, as if all the energy she had once possessed had spilled from her body like blood leaking from a fatal wound. For several minutes after she had come to and recovered what was left of her wits, she had only the strength to lay there and keep breathing. Even tears would not come.

Suddenly she heard the muted clop of hoofbeats, saw for an instant a deep, endless, sapphire eye against a coat of purest frost, then saw another figure, a dark, bronzed young man who peered into the bushes where she lay. He met her eyes for a long moment, and she made the only noise she had the power to, a desperate but pianissimo moan; then he turned away and started to head back to his mount, leaving her, it seemed, to die alone, in agony and shame.

-o-

"I never!" Josef snarled in outrage, revealing his hitherto unseen position in Cayri's room. Cayri seemed shocked to see him there, far more surprised than when Kuviay had revealed his presence.

"You!" she hissed, astonished. "It was you!"

Everyone in the room turned to look at Josef, who still looked enfuriated. "I never did anything like it!" he growled in insistence, aiming his words to Cayri, and only her. "I never saw you. I never saw you," he repeated, enunciating every word carefully. "My Companion never saw you. If we had, we would have helped, I swear it. I looked, you know that. But I never saw you, even when he could see me. I never knew you were truly there."

"How could you not know?" Cayri cried, her eyes glistening as she stood, making sure not to place weight on the injured ankle. "I saw you and looked straight at you! And—" she faltered, clenching her fists tightly and gritting her teeth, appearing as if she were about to give up a long-kept, prized secret. "I—I am a projective Empath, Herald Josef," she declared at last. "That day—when you turned to leave, I—I sent you, and your party, everything I was feeling."

Revelation was clear on Josef's face. "So it was you... I thought—"

"They were marked as mine, you fool," Cayri interjected, her voice choked with tears. "They weren't yours, they weren't supposed to be! You could see how everyone else was feeling them, how could you think them yours?" She sank down onto the bed, hot tears once again falling freely. "How could you not have known?"

Kurrem's interjecting mind-voice was emotionless. :Continue with your tale Cayri.:

-o-

Somehow, after the Herald left, Cayri mustered the energy to stand, to stagger onto the road and inch along until finally a Watch spotted her. He must have taken her for a vagabond, for his shout was accusing at first until he clambered down from the watchtower and recognized the young Lord's fiancée, the beauty of the Hold and the envy of every young woman. If not for her fiery bright hair, she might not have been recognized at all.

The watchman swore his shock and anger, realizing what must have happened to her. Knowing that Cayri could not make it back to the Hold by herself, he picked her up—she shuddered at his touch—and broke out in a jarring trot, uttering soft profanities with every breath.

He didn't set her down until he'd reached Courem's hall, where he was unerringly at this time of day, and deposited her in Courem's arms. In an undertone he explained what he had guessed happened to Cayri. Courem looked enraged and held Cayri protectively; she was stiff in her betrothed's arms but welcomed his comfort nonetheless. Only her future husband and her only true love could keep her safe. But she had to wonder if her devotion to him, or his to her, had caused this afternoon's events, and she felt a dark cloud of guilt wash over her.

Courem told one of his bodyguards to go fetch the Heralds. "They were on the road today, they might have seen who did this." The man hurried off without a word.

"Who else was on the road?" he asked, his voice kept under tight control.

The watchman had to think for a bit before answering, and even then he hesitated for a long moment. "My lord," he began, "There was no one traveling within Sancta Forest today—"

The Heralds entered the hall with an ominous boom as the doors slammes shut.

"—except the Heralds," the watchman finished.

Courem quickly put together what the watchman was inferring. In truth, it seemed only logical—Cayri shrank away from the two Heralds when they approached.

His gaze fell on Josef. Blood seeped across his Heraldic Whites, fresh blood. Courem lifted a hand sticky with Cayri's own blood where she had received the bite of a dagger. Cayri started to shiver and refused to look in the direction of the Heralds.

Fury spread across Courem's countenance. How dare they? How dare they abuse his beloved and fiance? How dare they act in the name of the Heraldic right and go about acting like that!

"Get out of my Hold!" he roared. The guards made their way to "assist" the Heralds. The two white-clad men fled.