Chapter XIX: Cold Caress

Despite a large amount of the frustration around her being fake, Serana had not felt so different from everyone else for a very long time. She could not see another single person in the room that wasn't showing signs of distress or irritation. And if, like me, they don't feel any, they had better hide their satisfaction. Since the voice of the Moth Priest had ceased echoing in the room, the low whispers and the buzz had taken its place quickly. Some may be indifferent, but there are those who are truly preoccupied. They could be recognized easily because their gazes often lingered on her father's face.

Harkon stood right in front of the long table at the other end of the hall, his chin close to his chest and his hands folded behind his back. His lips were shut tight, the thin skin on the cheekbones stretched almost to the point of showing the white of the bone under it. Everybody there had known him for at least a few hundred years, and they knew extremely well that, in spite of his mildly cross appearance, he was incandescent. I can understand someone being worried of him exploding at any moment. I certainly am. There were few things he cared more about than his plan. Actually, it is the single thing he cares most about. No exceptions. Being so close to his goal and then failing to attain it immediately must had been quite a heavy hit.

'My lady,' uttered the Moth Priest by her side. His voice was soft, and ever since she had enthralled him it had taken on a honeyed, languid note. 'Why has everyone fallen so silent. Did I fail you?' His eyes were feverish with worry. It was somewhat eerie seeing such undiluted reactions on the face of such a seasoned man.

'No, not at all,' she answered, turning in his direction and giving him a gentle smile. 'You did you best tonight, and I'm grateful. The reason they're angry is in every way beyond your control. Your time will come to read the other Scrolls, but that time has not come yet.'

'Thank you, my lady,' he said, stepping back and timidly putting his folded hands on his lap. 'I was very worried.'

I'm sure you were, she thought with a sting of irony. She could feel the tension in the air taking its toll on her nerves, because now she too felt very anxious. The tense faces and her father's angered visage on the other end of the hall surrounded her, as if staring at her continuously. On the other hand, the more they were worried the more she was cruelly happy. This is a great obstacle. One of the two Scrolls is unknown even to him, and the other… Her train of thought stopped gradually. Actually, where is the other? Did my mother take it? Even if she hadn't, she would definitely know where it was.

The images of their escape from Castle Volkihar flashed into her mind. The day her mother had decided to flee was the exact day her father had found the second Scroll. They fled before he could have anyone look at it. She had always believed it so, but now she had confirmation. Why is he so crossed that this Scroll didn't reveal anything, if he had? Her mother and her had fled in the late afternoon, before any members of the court would dare go out and face the sunlight. They had two Scrolls. Serana carried one, and her mother another. She's not dead, and my father never found her. It must be with her still, but… where?

She had thought for so long about what she meant by, 'Someplace your father would never search'. It could mean so many different places, but she could narrow it down already. Her mother was smart, it was the thing everyone noticed upon seeing her, and she had a tendency to play riddles with everyone. She played one with me, but it seems she was also playing one with my father. But what place is at once so obvious and impossible that someone as obsessed with my father would never search? She tried to focus as much as she could, despite the noise around her, and started listing all the possible alternatives. First consider all solutions, then select the most likely, Azrael had told her once. She did just that.

What could hinder his research? What is someplace he would never search? Now that she thought of it, the list of his weaknesses was quite long. Irritable, close-minded, arrogant, needing control. She could trace two of three logical pathways that were useful. First, he had a strong sense of power over the things that were under his wing. However, finding his wife would surpass that. Likewise, he didn't not have the imagination her mother had, and it was possible that she found a hideout he had never even considered. Tied to that last point, he had quite an independent streak when looking for solutions to problems, and he might have missed on a court member's advice that could have proved valuable. He was fiery, and if her mother had thought of a place that required long, uninterrupted series of deductions to guess, she was safer than anyone could imagine at first.

However, she thought, her gaze shifting slowly to her father's left, I do know someone who is capable of that. A long, uninterrupted series of deductions. I do indeed. At Harkon's side, Azrael's frame stood straight. He kept his arms crossed against his chest, his hooded face was turned in her father's direction and was perfectly still. He has approached him while he was that angry, she thought. He either knows him very little or is insane. And on second thought, the latter is more probable. She stepped closer, listening intently. Her father was moving his lips slowly, and she was dying to hear what the tow of them were saying.

'And the other,' he was saying, 'as of the last time I heard of it, was lying in the bowels of a Dwemer ruin. It seems our work is not yet done, but I have waited this long, and we are so very close now. I can wait a bit longer.'

'You will wait significantly less than you expect, my Lord.'

Serana almost forgot that her father was there for a moment. Her eyes shot up towards Azrael's hood, instinctively, even thought there was nothing at all she could see from the back of the cowl. And here we go again… she thought, and despite the exhausted tone that her words had in her head, she was a shard of icy fear rising in her body and gripping her strongly, almost choking her. Not a week ago he was seemingly helping the Dawnguard, and now he's volunteering to help my father. She could see no connection, not the smallest one, in the things he was doing. Seen from the outside, they appeared completely left to chance. Which is the pinnacle of manipulation. Following a plan so precise and carefully crafted that nobody has any clue of what to expect.

'Truly?' her father said, as surprised as she was but hiding it a lot better, 'and how soon do you think you can bring me my Scrolls, Azrael?'

'In a fortnight.'

Serana felt the same choking sensation as before, but she forced herself to focus on her father. Harkon had simply raised an eyebrow, but he seemed significantly calmer now. 'It's an arrogant claim,' he said, 'finding in two, short weeks what I have been unable to find for millennia. But you have proven able to do things impossible to others. I will give you this one chance. Search the Scrolls. If you keep your word, than It shall be immensely grateful. If it takes twice that time, I will still be impressed. If not, you shall still search the Scrolls until the end of your days.'

In a fortnight? As it often did, her mind split in two branches of reasoning. A factual one and an emotional one. On the one hand, she wondered how close he thought the Scrolls actually were. He shouldn't even know where they are, in truth. Even considering he did know, two weeks was hardly enough to cover less than half of Skyrim and back again, considering he had Shadowmere. And both of them? How does he think it possible? There wasn't even enough time to send letters and instruct someone else to fetch the artifact for him. For once, I agree with my father. That's an arrogant claim. But how many times did I think he had crossed the line, and he hadn't? On that, Elisif was definitely right. There was no end to the surprises he had in store.

The other branch of reasoning was a lot more chaotic and unorganized. If he manages to recover them… Images of possible help, betrayal and all the possible outcomes of the mess they were in all panned in front of her very eyes, from the plausible ones to the more outlandish ones. At once she saw Castle Volkihar conquered by the Dawnguard and the Dawnguard destroyed by the Volkihar, with him as their leader in her father's place. What is he planning? The question hammered her mind, mixed with the guilt. That last time I mistrusted him, I almost got both of us killed. Sometimes, the two lines of reasoning intertwined, wondering where he wanted to go next. As if you could figure it out on your own… a voice said in the back of her mind.

An eerie feeling drew her out of her preoccupations. As he eyesight focused, she found herself staring forward, and quite precisely in Azrael's direction. She quickly tried to understand what had happened. I thought… I thought I would hear him say something before he took his leave from my father. His voice was the cue she was expecting, but that hadn't come. So he left my father's side wordlessly, and… He had stepped forward, towards the other and of the hall, but at some point he had fund her looking fixedly at him. She was thankful once again for being unable to blush. Azrael was looking her way too, with a strange intensity in his eyes.

The Dunmer changed direction and moved closer to her, not moving his gaze away. Every time she noticed the lack of noise made by his footsteps, she was caught off guard. His imposing presence and the material that made up the external protection of his suit of armor suggested heavy, metallic footsteps, but that wasn't the case. He moved without making a single sound. In noticing this, she had to focus back on her senses once again, and found Azrael closer still.

'Pardon me,' Serana murmured, unable to stop herself lowering her eyes. 'I was just…' she said, trailed off.

'Lost in thought,' he completed, in an even tone. 'I know.'

She raised her eyes, not knowing exactly what expression was on her face. She felt so many things at once that she could hardly keep track of all of them herself. She looked for one more moment at the black void hiding his face. We pay so much attention to a person's face, but in the end it means very little. She almost didn't mind never having seen it, because that had not stopped her from associating endless different meanings to that blackness that was now so familiar. She realized that she had stopped trying to image how he looked like under the hood by that time. Who knows, she thought, perhaps now that I no longer care, he will know there is no danger and lower that cowl.

'I imagine,' Azrael continued, 'you want to talk.'

'No, it's nothing—' She cut herself off right before finishing the sentence, and this once the conditioned instinct was stronger than her normal way of behaving. It happened in Solitude twice. Never again, she thought, recollecting her thoughts and batting her eyelids. 'I meant yes, sorry.' She felt a shy smile creeping on her lips. 'I think there is something important we should discuss.'

He tilted his head in the direction of the door leading to the wharf. 'Outside,' he said. 'There's too many avid pairs of ears in this room.'

As he finished, he turned towards the set of stairs leading upwards towards the portal. In turning, his cloak flapped upwards and waved for a moment above the armor. In that moment, her eyes fell on the cuirass, drawn by the two large cracks. The one of the shoulder and the one of the thigh. He has fixed them as best as he could, she thought, seeing some of the pieces in different places than when she had seen them after the fight at the Holdout. She remembered the armor being bent inwards, probably grazing his flesh. He had bent those parts either straight or outwards to prevent it. I don't doubt he will repair it at some point, but it doesn't look like he has much time now. He only has a fortnight.

The cloak soon fell back on the cracks and they disappeared from her view, but it had been enough to summon a storm of memories. She had not realized it during the fight when the bloodlust had its hold, but she had been so frightened when he had killed those free man so savagely. He reminded me of my father… She had seen him kill with that brutality too, although never in a situation where his life was at stake. However, there was something about vampirism that made it different in every person. All vampires were extremely strong, but she had always relied more on her deceiving and nimble capabilities, whereas Azrael and her father clearly incarnated the more brutal, beastly side of the curse. He had not merely killed those men, he had massacred them. She had seen an enjoyment of the suffering of others in what he had done. It's normal for a vampire, especially when his life is on the line, but still… It was fierce. True to their dual nature, there was a monster hiding inside them, and Azrael had made it surface at the right time to save his life. He uses every tool he has. He doesn't judge, she reminded herself.

She had almost failed to realize that she had made her few steps in his trail, following him. Sometimes, she really felt like his shadow, following him everywhere even without thinking. Now that I think of it, I wonder how it feels to have me always standing by. There was a blend of a deep desire for appreciation, but also a pure and unspoiled curiosity. When they had departed to find the Moth Priest, he could have left her behind, ignoring her request. Instead, he had agreed to have her behind. Somehow, I make a difference. He didn't mind having her around, and aside from the ball at Solitude he always asked her to follow him no matter where he went. As long as she had her hood on and behaved, instructions that she always followed, he seemed unworried by having her by his side. She truly was his shadow, by that time. Even now, when distracted, her first priority was following him right in tow.

Which makes out stance towards one another seem even more confusing. When remembering the time they had inevitably spent together on horseback getting back from the Holdout, Azrael hadn't said anything about what Serana had done. He had remained completely silent. As much as she tried to remember, making way through the clouds of the guilt that had nibbled away at her for the vast majority of that journey home, she could not remember him saying a single word. When he wanted them to stop, he stopped himself. When, on the fifth day after the incident, she had finally found the courage to ask him something, he had kept quiet almost as if he had not heard her. I don't even think I could live without saying a word for more than a few days. And he didn't for more than a week.

In between everything else that had gone on in the last few minutes, she had almost forgotten that the words he had heard him say to her father were the first she had heard since the battle. I'll be outside, she remembered him saying just after the battle, and the sound of that still made her chill to the bone. Although, he has talked to me now. And he had done so like nothing had ever happened. I cannot understand. A dynamic nature was the norm with other people she knew. They grew angry, time passed and they gradually went back to normal. He had gone from utterly silent to normal in what seemed a few minutes, without any transition. To make matters worse, his normal way of behaving was quite enigmatic on its own. I should consider myself lucky to bear its ambiguity. My father decided for himself what his normal demeanor means, and he might be wrong. It didn't matter if that coldness was intentional or not, it was still a black canvas on which everyone could picture whatever they wanted. Even though you have to consider that the canvas is framed in dark, ominous black.

The change in lights made her realize that they had passed the low arch that separated the hall from the anti-chamber with the gargoyle statues. She swept her gaze around, but there was no one there aside from Azrael and herself. The watchman wasn't there, even. The Sun had gone down three hours before, more or less, but the sky was clear and the stars were shining brightly when they had entered the castle. Now, their light glimmered weakly through red blood red stained glass.

She turned at the sound of the wings of the gate opening. Azrael was a few steps ahead of her, pushing the portal open. He does enjoy his enhanced strength. Their journey from Solitude and onwards had taught her something. Especially their investigation of the scene of the Moth Priest's abduction. She had seen him having a semblance of fun for the first time since she had met him. After that, she had managed to find a few smaller things that he probably did for personal enjoyment. They were very simple things, and they could be found simply by identifying which of the things he did were not painstakingly perfected. The way of opening those gates that requires less effort is using the chains, but he opted to part the two wings himself. There was a good chance he had done that for the sake of doing it.

That simple thing, finding a hint of liveliness, had added to the sense of familiarity that she had towards him. While in many respects she still thought that a machine would almost be closer to him than another person would, there was always something. Even though there was always a sense of misconnection in between the various things he did, she could see him having some small pleasures sometimes. In fact, it was in excellent accordance with his character. He was one who could analyze the same object to no end and still find something new. That ability to find new things everywhere could very likely translate to an enjoyment of very small things, because he was capable of making them count as much as great things. What a wonderful and fascinating person he would be if he wasn't… Well, if he wasn't himself. Or, as Elisif had claimed, he was indeed that person and she still had to see it. I do hope she's right.

Azrael stopped drawing the gate's wings outward when they reached the length of his arm. He then placed a foot on the right side to keep the right wing in place and placed his left hand slightly above his head, across the space and against the left wing. There was a space large enough for Serana to pass through under his arm, which was clearly what he intended her to do. She walked through under his arm, flashing a weak smile his way as she walked beyond the gate.

'Now,' Azrael said, slowly, taking the hand away from the left wing and moving his foot away too. The portal began to close behind him, the hinges squeaking and the lower parts scratching against the ground. 'No one will disturb us now.'

Serana was still, looking at the closing gate with her chest muscles contracted as if she was holding her breath. The two wings closed shut with a hollow thud, which waked her from her sea of doubts. 'Why… Why did you let that close? We have no way to get back in now, not until they sent the watchman out again.'

He glanced to the side, to the parapet that bordered both sides of the arching road leading to the gate from the wharf. He stepped towards it, also casting a quick glimpse at the statue that linked the parapet itself to the castle wall. Placing a hand on the nose of the creature, he drew himself up and turned with his back towards the castle wall and his feet towards the sea. The bulwark was almost three feet wide, and so he could it on it comfortably, letting his cloak fall to his left. He sat with his back against the statue, letting his right leg dangle down the bulwark. He bent his head to the right and then to the left, cracking his neck. A habitual thing, that didn't really serve any purpose to a vampire. 'If every goes as I foresee,' he said, 'we shouldn't need to get back inside for a long time.' With slow movements, he brought his hands to his face, grabbing the rim of the hood with three fingers and pushing it backwards.

Serana felt her throat muscles move, this time trying to swallow even though there wasn't any saliva. At the same time, she felt her eyes sizzling intensely, casting more light on his face. His skin was pale as the snow, colorless, and barely grey. His mixed nature was clearly seeable in his features alone. The high cheekbones were elven, and the straight nose would have been perfectly aligned with the wide forehead hadn't his bushy eyebrows been so prominent. His chin was square. The left cheek was marked by a long, gaping scar that went all the way from the long and pointed ear to the dimple, just below the thin lips. It was barely visible under the full, thick black beard. His hair were long, falling over on his shoulders. They were black as coal, much like the hood they were usually hidden under. The strange gracefulness of an elf's face lingered strongly in all his features.

However, he was as much an elf as he was a vampire. Some signs weren't in plain sight. When he kept his mouth closed for instance, one wouldn't have noticed anything unusual. However, she could imagine his fangs blinking as soon as he started speaking. Other changes were indeed plain to see, mainly the eyes. They were sinister, baleful, terrifying. Two flaring vermillion abysses, in which igneous streams never stopped flowing. The pupils were black pits, slim ellipses that stretched vertically across the entire iris. The thick eyelashes gave his impenetrable, ice-cold gaze a mysterious intensity. All those elements, give or take, molded his expression. A glacial, unfeeling but intense expression.

'Princess?' His voice snapped Serana back into the present moment. 'What did you mean to tell me?' She was feeling strange, as if all of her attention had fled for a moment, captured by his visage. She didn't remember ever experiencing such a concentrated absorption of her focus all at once. She had been so captivated by that scrutiny that she had lost the perception of both space and time for a very brief moment. Her gaze raised quickly, but quivered in meeting directly the gaze of his cruel vermillion eyes instead of the familiar black void.

There was so much to see in that face. It had changed slightly from the moment he had first focused on it, and it took her a few moments to see it. His eyes had barely narrowed, the lines around them wrinkling. The mouth had stretched faintly, and the hint of a sneer played out on his lips. He was keeping his eyes firmly fixed in hers, almost to the point of being unsettling, but it had a meaning. He was trying to understand when what he was saying would have her full attention again. It might be a while, she thought, not able to look away.

One of the strangest things was that the feeling of uncertainty that she had believed to be caused by his face being hidden was still there, and in full force. The hood must be strictly a practical thing, she thought, since he wasn't any more communicative now that he had all of his facial features exposed. The faint frown that marked it wasn't him moving any muscle, it was his normal appearance. However, of all things, his eyes were the objects where her attention gravitated towards. I wonder if it was like this before he was a vampire, as well. It wasn't impossible, because of their size, but she couldn't know.

'I…' she said, bringing her eyes up one last time and remaining steadily locked with his. 'I thought I could help in regards to the location of one of the Scrolls.'

'Your father told me your mother made off with one, and not the one you carried on your back.'

'Yes, exactly,' she said, realizing he was as once again one step ahead of her. 'I'm sure she knows where it is, and if we're lucky she still has it herself. The problem is I have no idea where she went, but maybe you could help with that. She had a passion for riddles, and one of those is all I've got to go on at this time.'

Azrael's eyes seemed to brighten softly at the mention of a riddle, but she wasn't sure if it was true or just her imagination. Nothing else on his face had moved. 'Tell me,' he said.

'She said she would go somewhere safe. Somewhere my father would never search. She marked the wording of the latter of the two. Somewhere my father would never search. It was cryptic, yet she called attention to it. I have no idea why she said it, or what it…' She let go of her words, feeling a surge of hope rising in her chest.

Azrael's lips had stretched again, and this time there was faint but real sneer on them. Not unlike before, the eyes and the mouth were the main things that had moved visibly. 'I quite like your mother already,' he whispered deeply.

'What is that supposed to mean?'

'That I understood what she meant perfectly. The more you tell me about her, the more it seems that she doesn't think that differently from me. You can't quire realize it because you've probably only seen your mother building schemes, and you've only seen me unraveling one.'

The surge was becoming more and more powerful. She could hardly refrain herself from doing something silly. 'And you know where she's hiding, then?'

'Yes,' he said reflectively. 'In her chambers. In this very castle.'

The garden… Too peaceful. The lonely thought that being right there in the castle was too stupid to be true was in turn overwhelmed by the amount of things that would have made sense if it were true. Her father had told her a few days before that he had never went back to her mother's quarters. Of course, all the sentimentalism he manages to repress comes out in this forms. He searched everywhere, but not inside the castle. The garden had probably went to ruin, since the entrance was completely barricaded by the amount of rubble that was in front of it. Nobody knows the way I got in through the tunnels, not nobody has gone there in all this time…

The joy of the discovery was only tempered by her mind's efforts to put all the pieces in their place now that she had the solution to the riddle, and by the amount of surprise she felt. He actually did it. He guessed the thoughts of the wiliest woman I've ever known in moments, with only a few scraps of information about her. Serana looked up at Azrael, but now the sneer had partly faded and there was close to nothing showing in his features. There didn't seem to be any pride or anything similar, and if there was, he kept it carefully concealed. There was still only the blistering intensity of his gaze, which meant too many things for her to understand all at once.

'How did you do it?' she asked, conscious that her face was probably a mask of joyful disbelief. 'How? You don't know her and there's only so much I have told you.'

'Both you and your father,' he said slowly, 'continuously stress her scheming side, but she didn't seem to be after personal gain and didn't seem a person consumed by vanity. Thereof, I could assume her being either a person guided by strong principles, or by a desire for an objective greater good. The former is improbable, because she accepted the turning of her entire family into vampires. Continuing with the latter, you mentioned she was a skilled alchemist. A learner then, perhaps a thinker, but one who enjoys putting her talents to use. From these elements emerges a person who is an acute observer of her surroundings because of a want or need to learn, and those traits together logically make for quite a tactless and private character, which fits with what you told me.' He looked at her more intensely for a moment. 'Was I right this far?'

'Yes…' she said pensively. 'Down to the smallest of details. Go on, please.'

'From what I know thus far, she also seems quite distant. She prefers to never let anything get to her, and to this end she structures knowledge in a very purposeful way. She probably knew your father just as well as she knew her potions. She knew that Deathbell extract mixed with pulverized Nightshade petals makes for the deadliest of poisons just as well as she knew that Harkon couldn't stand seeing anything belonged to her again after her departure. So she hid in the part of the castle that belonged to her.' His eyes flickered. 'I'd find it strange to physically find her there, but aside from that detail, I'm sure quite of my conclusions.'

'They…' she hesitated again. 'They make a lot of sense. You described her perfectly.' She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the storm of questions and trying to focus on the matter at hand. 'Anyway, I remembered something. The way to her quarters is blocked, and we can only get through by the garden, which is also blocked. We can get there without my father noticing though. There's an unused inlet use by the previous owners to bring supplies into the castle, and there's on old exit tunnel that connects with it. That should be a safe way in.'

'Good. I'll depart soon enough, but I should be back here by Midnight. We'll go there then.'

He's leaving, she thought. He will be back very shortly, but he's leaving again. Who knows where he'll go. She was assailed by her usual doubts, but this once there was also another option. I could jus ask him. Considering it made her shiver faintly, but when looking at him it was quite clear that he was of a fairly good disposition at the moment. This may be the best moment. She was unsure nonetheless, but she decided to try.

'Azrael…' she tensed her face muscles one last time to gather the willpower. 'If I may, what do you need to do while you're gone?'

His eyes were lost in the horizon now, looking in the direction of the northern coast of Skyrim. 'I need to send a letter. Shadowmere will take care of it, I just need to write it.' He paused, and his eyes moved back towards her, meeting hers once again. 'The mare will return in a fortnight, and will carry an Elder Scroll with her.'

It wasn't the first information big enough to force all of her viewpoint to shift and adjust, that evening. He has one, she said to herself, having to spell the words in her head to keep herself from getting distracted. He already has one of the two. With that being the case, the promise he had made to her father seemed ever so slightly less insane than before. Two weeks to search for one Scroll was a very short time still, unless… She considered what alternatives she could think of, in a manner of deliberate ambiguity that Azrael had indirectly taught her. He did teach me to think, to a degree, she thought, but tried to discard it. It wasn't the time for introspection. There was a more pressing thing demanding her attention.

What if… she wondered, he somehow already suspected the Scroll was here around the castle. Her father had told him that the other Scrolls had been stolen by her mother, of that she was sure, but with what information had he risked asking that short of a timespan? There was no way he could suspect the Scroll was here in the Castle before I told him my mother's riddle. She couldn't decide between the two options. Mastermind or insanity? The two went together to an extent, but Azrael's insanity was a very strange one to say the least. It never seemed a reckless kind of insanity, but a callous and calculating one. He does indeed have some similarities with my mother, she thought.

Again, she mustered a good deal of courage and looked right at him. 'When you promised my father those Scrolls… I mean, you are helping him and you are assuring that he receives his help quite quickly. A fortnight is nothing to a vampire, especially one who has lived that long. I can't imagine you're helping him for the sake of it,' she said, and lowered her voice saying those words, distancing one from the other carefully and looking intently at his face to pick up any sings. He remained completely still, at which she felt safe to continue. 'However, I really don't get what you gain from doing that. Aside personal influence over him, but you wouldn't do something that difficult.'

'Your Moth Priest, Dexion,' he said evenly and cryptically. He would have surely explained further, but Serana was glad for that answer on its own, since that tone was his unaltered, slightly frosty one. It meant that she wasn't wrong and he was still on her side. 'Under your spell,' he continued, 'he read the first Elder Scroll he laid eyes on in all his life, without training and with all the internal turmoil caused by your presence. By tomorrow, his eyes will begin to weaken and in a few more hours he will have gone completely blind.'

Great, she thought, the irony covering the hint of guilt. I've made a great man and a great scholar lose his dignity and his eyesight. Possibly his life, too. Abducting the Moth Priest was something her father had ordered, and it had been a long time since she had done that. It was a task that reflected his brutality, one she would have rather not done. She had her doubts she would have been able to do it with a clear head, but in the moment she had done it, her mind had yet to stop feeling the crushing blame. The guilt for not knowing the consequences for Dexion and of not stopping him were accompanied by a faint feeling of contempt towards Azrael himself. You knew, so why did you not tell me? You are as responsible as much as I am for this, maybe more. But then again, calling him out on the harm he had done to others never really worked. Just like my mother, she thought one again with an internal, sad laugh, he cares for the bigger picture and the greater good, if there is any good meant in what he's doing.

She was also quite busy keeping up with all the mental steps Azrael had taken in designing his plan. He had let the Priest go blind for a reason, one might have been intuitively obvious to him but that she knew would take her a few moments deciphering. The Priest reads the Scroll, she thought, so my father thinks to have that solution in his bag and focuses on another problem. Finding the Scroll, that was the priority. When the Scrolls were found, they would suddenly discover that the solution they took for granted was no longer available. So it irritates my father… But what else?

'And once we come back with the two Scrolls only to find the Priest blinded, my father will be frustrated and furious,' she said, almost thinking aloud. 'But I don't see how that helps us in any way.'

Azrael leered her way, but the mockery wasn't meant for her. It was more likely he was having fun at the thought of the people he would trick. 'In one way or another, I'll be able to sway your father into handing the matter to me. At that point, I will have the three Scrolls for myself.'

Just like that? Her efforts to keep everything hidden from her features was taking its toll, but she considered it worth it. I can hardly believe him, but… His gaze, that intense stillness it had, suggested her that he wasn't lying. He seemed different, and that had never been good until then, but she really couldn't remember a time when she had seen him like this. He has taken off his hood, for once. Maybe there has never been such a moment. 'So what, we'll have the Scrolls for the two of us? What could we possibly do with three Elder Scrolls? Open a museum?'

'The Moth Priests in the Imperial City would sell their very lifeblood in exchange, for one,' he said pensively, but still with a mocking grin barely touching his lips. He was joking.

She didn't know what game he might have been playing, what were the untold rules or what were the things he was trying to get out of it, and she didn't care. She just wanted to play. 'A museum seems better. Imagine, a large hall with the three Scrolls in it,' she said stretching her arms forward to represent the length of the image that had emerged before her eyes. 'At the very end, a statue of you resting against a rock.'

'A statue would make me more recognizable then cautionary in my line of work.'

'But how worth it would it be?' she insisted, laughing. The last voices of reason telling her she was being carried away were being silenced one by one, and she hardly herd them by that point. 'I picture it… Stay there!' she told him, putting both hands on the parapet and jumping up on it. Her eyes went towards the side, trying to reconstruct clearly what she had imagined. However, she was distracted. She felt as if she had lost her balance and was falling forward, down the side of the parapet.

What in the… Her head darted to the exact spot where she felt the void beneath her foot, and she saw what had happened. She had not looked carefully, and she had placed her left boot in a crack in the stone and lowered it, thinking she'd find solid ground. I won't fall, she thought, feeling a surge of energy but the tension diminishing. She raised her suspected foot and extended her hands backwards to grab the other side of the bulwark. Neither of her hands reached the stone.

She felt herself being pulled strongly and very quickly towards the castle walls. Her hands were close to one another behind her back, held in place by something cupping them. Something cold and hard to the touch. There was another point of pressure on her stomach, at the height of her waist. Quickened by the previous sense of danger, her eyes moved fast to the spot and she could make out the outlines of a hand. A gauntlet, black, barbed, which she recognized very well.

The pull didn't last long. When she stopped, she could feel her back against a solid surface. 'Careful,' Azrael said, but his voice came from above her rather than behind. She quickly reassessed the position of everything around her, trying to remember. The sea was in front of her now, the portal on the right.

I'm lying in his lap… she realized, feeling a strong impulse to move away. You fell, she told herself. Right in front of him. He wasn't holding her hands any longer, but still kept his hand on her stomach. 'Sorry,' she said under her breath and hesitating, 'I'll go down.'

She moved, but the hand didn't move. 'Stay,' he said slowly. 'I don't mind.'

The contrast between the intensity of the feelings and the unnatural stillness of the body was distressing. How many years has it been since my heart has beaten for real, and I'm still checking if it's racing or not. It would be, now. So many things would be very different, but when the game was about trying not to show too much, an undead body did help. Not that he wasn't guessed. She moved her pupils up as far as she could, and she caught a glimpse of his vermillion eyes. He sees mine, then, it I bet mine showed something amusing indeed.

As the momentary tension settled down, the bigger picture was coming back to her. Unlike usual scenarios, where a contextual view of events makes them look more normal, this was the contrary. What is even happening, right now? She was positive he would be still keeping his distance, and yet there he was, grabbing her to avoid a free fall that she could have avoided anyway, and letting her rest her head on his chest. The only way this could seem normal is if he stuck a dagger in my throat this very moment. But he wouldn't. She knew well enough that he would not do it. Still, it's… strange. Very strange.

She couldn't even tell what she was really feeling. There's layers, she thought, after paying attention for a moment. There was a layer of strong suspicion and tension, covered by one of pleasure and enthusiasm, covered in turn by embarrassment. That last one is making me numb, she understood. It was blocking her, preventing her from really feeling anything. She could think, but she could not feel. All the world only seemed to exist inside her head, as if a dream or a hallucination. Embarrassment, she thought, remembering the one time Azrael had advised her to name and brand with the fire of the mind everything she wanted to understand.

It worked. She could feel again. How much time has passed? Seconds, minutes. They all seemed the same. She could clearly sense the texture of Azrael's armor on her back. And my head… That was lying on something softer. A piece of the cloak. The darkened sea and the starry sky, despite having been in front of her all this time, had been away from her notice. She glanced at Azrael's hand, still on her waist, sliding slowly as if caressing it. A cold caress. How strange, she thought. I think him selfish, but I am right? My priorities may be outside of myself, but my attention is nearly always directed inwardly. He's the opposite. His priorities are directed internally, but his attention externally. A selfishness of goals and one of attention. She grinned.

While listening to those thoughts, something clicked. She recalled what Elisif had told her, and the whole conversation condensed in a few images that flashed in front of her eyes so rapidly that she hardly saw them. The meaning was clear, and she understood how much more she knew than the last time she had thought about it. 'Azrael,' she said, 'can we… talk about what happened at the Holdout?'

'Yes.'

She was taken aback, but quickly understood. He has nothing to say then. Well, the situations is clear to him and he knows everything that transpired. She didn't, and above all, she was the one who had made a choice. 'I wanted to apologize, first and foremost. I shouldn't have botched the plan, but… When I heard you say those things…'

'I was lying. I'm good at it.' He paused briefly, and the silence that fell was almost filled with the sound of his thoughts. 'However,' he continued, 'I should probably inform you on what I intend to do, next time.'

'It's my fault, I should have just done what you told me.'

'Blame…' he murmured. 'Such an easy solution. Don't be in a rush to blame anyone, especially yourself. Furthermore, I want a thinking individual by my side. A mindless executioner is of no use to me.'

'You do have a mind that is enough for two people at once, however.' She was looking forward, towards the sea, enthralled by the view. She neither wanted nor needed to look at him. Hearing was more than enough.

'Thank you, I suppose,' he said, tittering faintly. 'But nevertheless, you could never take my mind, use it to control your actions and expect it to work.'

'But how does it work, your mind? I cannot imagine what internal balance in which it fits.'

This time he scoffed silently. 'It's the first time I hear that question,' he whispered. 'It's a queer thing. I'm living in two worlds at once. A mental one and the real one. The latter is where everyone else seems to be living. The thing that connects them is my mind. I have lived for a very long time doing the wrong thing, which was dividing my time so that some would be spent caring for the real world and some for the mental world. A short time past, however, I have understood that there are some things that activate both. It's a dangerous path, and it makes for a ruthless traveler, but it's the one way to prevent my body from dying and my mind from rotting. There are very few moments when I feel alive, really alive.' His voice was changing, the intensity that was emerging from eyes was now permeating his tone. 'Usually, it's when I can destroy what stands in my way. Solving riddles is destroying the puzzle, thinking is destroying a problem and killing is destroying a life. The moment of the kill. That's when I feel alive.'

Serana recognized what she was feeling really well. Something begging her to move away, flee, get away from him and if possible kill him right there. But on the other side, she felt irresistibly drawn towards him. The sound. The sound of his voice was what carried that feeling. It was high-strung, completely emotionless but filled with energy. The fight between the need for closeness and the one for distance was making her freeze, leaving her unable to do anything. But he confessed this, he thought, trying to put an end to it. I knew something like this was true for him, and now he told me. That means I might be out of that picture, be somewhere else. I could exist outside of that pattern.

'There,' he said. His tone was very different now. It was dry, ironic, almost bitter. The raspy dunmeri accent made it even harsher. 'Now you know what kind of monster I am.'

'You're not a monster.'

'Am I not?' he said wryly. Serana could hear that his voice was taking on a slower rhythm and that it was going back to even and cold. 'Enough now. It sickens me to talk about myself. What about you? What kind of monster are you?'

Serana grinned widely, stretching the corners of her lips and baring her teeth. What kind of monster am I? It had been too long since she had been allowed to feel wicked. 'I'm strange too, I think. I'm not unique like you are, I'm only unexplored. I'm a follower and I'm a rebel. I want all the good and the evil in the world to happen to everyone. I want to know the rules, but then I want to break them. I want to be brave, but when I am I never really find anything to do with my courage. I both love and hate myself, sometimes separately and some other simultaneously. I don't know what kind of monster I am, honestly.'

'Because you're not,' Azrael said reflectively, his voice empty of all feelings, a husk that merely reflected the cold landscape of his mind. 'You're a pendulum. You swing from one end of the other, rhythmically, as if that movement was out of your control despite requiring your energies to work.' His tone was getting slower, deeper. 'But you're tired of swinging, are you not?'

A/N: I apologize for the delay, but it was unavoidable. Regardless, here it is. For those who don't have notifications and want to keep up to date, the one week postponement doesn't change the schedule. There will be another chapter next week, as if this one had been published on time. There might be some more delays in near future, because re-reading older chapter and comparing them to newer ones I have personally noticed a slight drop in quality, something that I'm aiming to fix but that could require some more time.