Chapter 24

The weight of memories, long since passed into the relegations of musings-past were brought to the forefront of Ursa's mind. As the woman listened to her son's diatribe his words faded from her ears, and she drifted off to a place she had not allowed herself to visit since she was still a maid. A time when she was filled with fresh wonder of the world, and the story of her life was still unwritten.

So many possibilities had been in front of her, it seemed. She had been carefree, unconcerned with the plots and maneuvers that befell the Lords and Ladies of great Houses. None of that had mattered to her.

She had laughed a great deal more in those young years of hers; much more so than she did in these years most recent. She marveled more, and felt more passionately than ever she had in these years she existed in presently.

With a sigh, she reflected upon her thoughts, and her recollections, and how her son –now a man, had come to be so like his father in countenance. Filled with righteous indignations, heavy concerns and notions of propriety. They were not incongruous to the requirements of any Lady, certainly. But how uncannily he reminded her of Loren shook Ursa.

The faction of her mind that knew-well what rules governed the lives of young Ladies nodded in agreement with what actions were certainly required to come, following this unveiling of truth her son had brought. But there was a part of Ursa that still existed within her consciousness that clung to a long-forgotten folly in her own young that rung so alike to what her ears were hearing right now.

Words like 'secret rendezvous, impropriety, dark places, ruined reputation' all rung through her head as though it were her own mother's mouth speaking them to her all over again. It was the past come back to haunt her for her own indiscretion.

Only this time, it was her daughter, and not herself.

This time, she sat in the seat of decision and action, and the fate of her daughter hung delicately within her own hands.

Despite the weight of what it seemed was transpiring, Ursa fought a smile that wished to grace her mouth. Her daughter was in love. She realized, and tears started to form in the well of her eyes.

Seeing his mother come over with emotion, her son leaned to her and took his hand with his own, kissing it affectionately. Her reverie evaporating at their contact, as his eyes looked desperately upon hers.

"Do not cry, mother. This can be made right. We can end it before it can be allowed wings to fly, before we even have to tell father!" He exclaimed, and Ursa cleared her throat.

Oh, Gods. She realized. If Loren found out…. He would run the lad through on a sword without a second though. She was certain of it. Ursa shook her head slowly. Confused as she might be, she knew with certainty that news of this….. Revelation must not reach his ears. He would tear the House asunder with rage at the thought that his daughter could allow herself to become so involved.

Ursa chuckled a little, but darkly. It seemed Loren had misapprehended the hearts of both of the women in his life. She mused, comparing again the predicament she found herself navigating. The Lady shook her head in the negative to her son, and squeezed his hand.

"You speak wisely my son. It is best that your father not be brought into the fold of this knowledge." Tyt'o nodded gravely. "However, we must work ourselves around this situation in such a way that we do not insert ourselves into an argument with your sister." She counseled. "Until we are forced to make it known that we have knowledge of your sister's interests in your fosterling, we must simply find ways to occupy any free time she might find for herself." She looked at her son sharply. "Do you consent and concur with this method?"

Tyt'o's expression was dubious, but he nodded his head slowly. "I see reason in unspoken redirection, mother, but what of the vision that I have had-" His mother held up her hand, stopping his rebuttal.

"Know you your sister well, for you were nearly mates of my womb." She reminded him. "How do you presume then, that your sister will accept us in telling her what she can or cannot do? Whom she can or cannot love? How far do you think away from the Keep will her caterwauling be heard?"

Her son chuckled and nodded his agreement; Hermione would not be one to accept such a correction. But he countered lightly. "Perhaps we do not bestow her the credit she deserves, mother. She is nothing if not rational." Ursa sighed.

"I fear, my son, that while you and I share a mind attuned to vanquish the great puzzles of life, your sister quite shares in your fathers' hot-headedness. Though, perhaps unlike your father she can be schooled as she ages to scheme more, and erupt less." Tyt'o gave his mother a knowing look, and she to him in return. It was a noble idea, but highly unlikely, they both knew.

Ursa spoke truly; Hermione, while smart and undeniably able to rationalize, was entirely reactive and instinctual. A creature able to indulge in any whim of her desire, and therefore unwilling to be bound by structure or limitation. It was, Ursa knew, a great disservice they had done to her as parents as she had never been grounded or forbidden from anything.

Much like her own self, it seemed. And when Ursa's time had come to accept the realities of her life as she had moved into adulthood, when her own wings had been clipped, her fall from the proverbial sky had been sharp and fast, and had shattered Ursa's heart and spirit completely.

She sighed and nodded to him once more. "The vision you have had does tell tale of…. Unspeakable evils. I will not dispute that you have been greatly disturbed by its influences." Ursa gave Tyt'o a reassuring smile, but spoke to him with a serious tone. "We will not banish its portents. We will keep it in our minds together, as a barometer of events. A warning, verily. But we shall not allow fear to infect our decisions over it." Her son nodded slowly.

The Lady stood and bid her son to embrace her. She uttered words of assurance, and reminders of patience; they would collude to come up with some plan to set right this course without Loren being any the wiser. Her son seemed mollified by her reassurances and her willingness to seek the honest course of action together.

After Tyt'o had left the room, and the doors were shut once more, her privacy restored, the Lady poured herself a great drought of cordial and flopped back into the chair. Her heart felt heavy, and her mind was burdened and swimming.

Oh, those forgotten years! She mused again, and sipped her warmed drink. She smiled deviously as she looked at the glass with its burgundy liquid and played with her magic though her free hand, lifting the liquid out of the delicate glass and into the air. It swirled and played, and danced as she commanded it to. Easily manipulated under her masterful order. With a swish and wave of her elegant fingers, it rolled and curled and danced for her as she willed it to and she remembered the merriment she would feel when she would play with objects, devising dances and games, pranks and spontaneous shows of a braggart.

Her older sister had been totally un-interested in continuing her practices once she had reached ten and four years. Her basics mastered, Annora had haughtily concluded that her efforts should be best spent in tutelage with their mother on womanly arts such as embroidery and dancing. Ursa sneered, thinking of how she had been in absolute consternation at the idea that a pupil would relinquish their chance to study under the greatest Masters that gold coin could afford to hire.

And the Masters that taught her were great indeed. Her father Aurelius had spared no expense where the quality of education was concerned. Though, for his part, she knew that her father wished that her mother had born him all sons first, and daughters after, he had been blessed after three daughters with his only son and heir only eight winters after herself. Her father's pride and joy, Nero was.

But it was Ursa who showed the fiercest control of her magical talents. She, who studied until her eyes were blurry. She who practiced her spells and crafting until she was forced to sit on the floor, or had to shake her hands back to life because her fingers were numb. She, the unremarkable second child of the great House of Allerton, was more powerful and skilled than any other of her line, and yet here she sat. Alone in the study of her Lord husband, nothing more than a married Lady of the House, expected to do no more than spend her days reading, balancing accounts or embroider pillows and nightdresses. Her life was an endless parade of entertaining dignitary visits and arranging her husband's schedule.

It was the life expected of most Ladies. For all her privilege, and all her advantages growing up, she was nothing more in the great game of life than a commodity. Sold off to create an alliance, at the price of her womb and the pleasure she would give in the bed of a man.

In the very least, for his part, Loren had tried his best to be an attentive husband to her. She was his Lady wife, and the Lady of the House during the days. With expectations and tasks to accomplish; all formality and decorum in her rich fripperies. But at night, when they were alone together in the quiet of their chambers, the man had shown her tenderness that a Lord was not required to give while she lay in his arms. He had shown patience and care of her, spoken true words of love and tenderness to her. And she, in time, to him as well.

Why then, after all the years of their marriage, did she now look back to the love of her youth and question all these years in between? The authenticity of them, now, as she considered them, seemed a falsehood of sorts. Did she love Loren because she loved him for who he was, or had she simply accepted it eventually out of obligation?

The liquid she directed with the control of her magic danced furiously now as her mediations turned to long-buried enmities. With a brutal stroke she sent it, and the glass she held, sailing across the floor in a chaotic whirl and it crashed along the stone floor.

The Lady looked at the mess she had wrought blankly. The destruction was senseless and stupid, and she sighed as she summoned another glass, and filled it again as she calmed her thoughts.

Her decisions had been made for her following her parent's discovery of her own young dalliance was brought to light, and she'd been whisked off from her House without so much as a word to her young paramour. Her mother had pranced her around for near 6 months through nearly a half dozen Houses. A 'summer tour', her mother had called it.

She had been paraded in front of eligible Lords like a prize to be bought at auction. And indeed she had been bought. There had been new dresses tailored and new scented oils she had never heard of before. Her mother had bathed her every day taking such cares with her long hair, and her perfect skin. Each day was a sort of pageant held to display her as some great trophy.

When the betrothal had finally been accepted, she had cried for days. She felt as much a betrayer as she felt utterly betrayer herself. Her heart belonged to one, and yet a contract for her body and life was held in the hand of another. She had been forbidden even to write him a single letter. The only time she had tried to secret one away to him, her mother had slapped her so hard, Ursa had seen stars in front of her eyes. The bruise it left had kept Ursa in her rooms for nearly a week after that, 'For what young Lord wishes to look upon a blight such as that?' Her mother asked.

Ursa took a long sip of her liquor, and it warmed her as it seeped into her belly. It was no wonder Lords enjoyed such a drink as this, when nights were cold and your thoughts were dark it felt as though the warmth would warm away all the ills you suffered.

What would her life had been, had she been able to make away with her love, she wondered? So very different from that which she lived now, she knew. Would their tenderness have survived the certain hardships they would have faced? Where would they have gone, where would they have lived? Would there have been children together-? Ursa chocked up as the last word stuttered her introspective to an abrupt halt.

Loren had forbidden her from further children after Hermione had been born, and she had nearly bled to death following. Her own terror, still so recent once she had recovered, rendered her unable to consider arguing with him and she had accepted the potion he had brought to her, and no more children had come. Though she had her monthly bloods, there were no more children.

It had been when Hermione had pushed away from her mother's arms to demand to be let to walk on her own, that Ursa had broken down into tears. Every moment of every day beyond this one, her baby would need her a little less. And there would never be another.

Would he have done the same? She wondered of her long-forgotten love.

When she closed her eyes, she could recall how his laughter had always made her skin tingle, just behind her ears. As though the very sound of it resonated with her most sensitive parts. As though their connection had been intrinsically part of their very make up. The way his eyes considered her sharply when she cast as spell for him to pick up the mop and bucket he had knocked over once, righting the cleaning water back within, and he had smiled for her. How, the day following he had brought her flowers that she had found never-wilted.

When it was discovered that his magical talent was nearly as great as hers, she had fought so fiercely for him to be allowed to learn alongside her, and her younger sister Elspeth. It was the first time she had defied her father's decision. Determined to prove that, despite his low-birth, the young man obviously hailed from some long-forgotten line of Lords. She had spent weeks in the library gathering parchment, and notating from books she had located. Tireless hours and hours she had spent gathering as much as she could through the genealogies until she demanded an audience with her father to prove she was correct.

Things had changed after that. Her stern father had been so taken aback at his daughter's fierce defense of their coachman's son that he had simply waved away the concerns held by the Masters attending his children lessons, and allowed the young man to participate as well. The way he had smiled for her when she rushed to him to tell him, grabbing the scrubbing brush from his hand with a gusto and flinging it away, she pulling him along with her in her own elation. She he entered their family's library for the first time, she realized it had been a smile borne of hope.

For all her life, she carried with her the certainty that her own romance had taken root as a result of a life-long friendship. They had schooled, studied, practiced and perfected together for nearly five years by the time he'd lain his lips on hers for the first time. And, oh, how she had stunned she had been in his interest of her! Completely unable to wrap her mind around the subtle parlays of man and woman, that she hadn't known how to properly return the gesture, her mind had simply gone bland and she had wandered away stammering.

Ursa sighed and closed her eyes. She was glad it was not with Loren that she ruminated in these thoughts. He would not see his daughter's romance with this young man as anything more than another slant in a long line of harms that have been done against his House.

After a long, deep breath, the Lady unceremoniously gulped back the last of the warming alcohol she had nursed for most of the eve following her son's departure. Feeling emboldened by the tingle through her blood she rose and snuffed out the candle as she exited the study for the evening. While she passed the mess she had made earlier, she waved her hand as she neared it, and discarded it with the power of her will, and the aide of her magic.

Sweeping back to the desk, she swiped up Loren's large bottle which she had been nursing through the eve, and corked it. She smirked as she took it with her.

As Ursa ascended the stairs she conceded to herself that she felt thusly relieved of her burdens, and she smiled. Perhaps the Lords had it right, after all, with their silly late-night contemplations and cogitates. While all the Ladies lounged in wait for the Lords, they were the ones secreted away having all the enjoyment while the women faded away in their boredom.

Her body vacillated slightly as she reached the top step, and she smiled at her light-headedness. The weather was still nice enough outside that she could open her balcony if she wished it, she realized.

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The wretch at his feet moaned a bit as she lay there, her arms bound by the wrists behind her back, and the angle she lay at appearing terribly harsh, which made Tanner's thick mustache twitch slightly. He didn't mind very much at all.

He knelt down again, getting a gauge for her awareness of her surroundings once more. "This doesn't need to go further than here, lass. It ends at your word."

Her brown hair, now much darker than it had been before, obscured her eyes, but he could see that she had stirred to the point where she would likely understand him well enough to answer. He stood again and paced again back to the wall near the door where the light was strongest, and leaned against the wood casually. The low light highlighted the streaks of white coming in along his temple through his dark hair, and dashed through his neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He sniffed as she made to roll over, to make sure she knew there was someone waiting here. She looked back at him, at how his eyes hardened over her form.

"Did you hurt her?" He asked. "My Thea?" The girl coughed as she sat up, and the man looked her over now that her glamour had faded. She shook her head.

"Nay, gave her a drought of sweet wine and a little belladonna. She'll be up in the barn, in the stacks." He nodded to her in thanks that the girl hadn't been hurt, and kept his eyes cold. He had taken Thea in when she was only a young thing, and Tanner had come to care of her as a father would.

The one in front of him rolled her head over her neck and waited for him, still sprawled on the floor. Her eyes were brown, and very dark, and they reflected no light in the dim room. He regarded her features, how unalike his young ward they were; it spoke volumes as to how much power had gone into changing her appearance.

"Fair bit of a spell you found for yourself to look just like Thea." He kept his tone casual, but she made no move to reply. He nodded again, and uncrossed his thick arms; burly and ropey from the years he'd spent hauling hay into the barn every fall, and caskets of wine and ale into the Inn cellars. His body was no stranger to hard work, and his calloused hands clapped together once as he continued undeterred. "Then it looks like we do this the hard way, lass."

When Tanner reached behind him and brought out the long silver knife, he watched closely at her face for signs of fear, and saw nothing. No panic, no reaction. Very interesting. He thought to himself, and approached her with caution.

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It wasn't until the next morning that Loren awoke, though not with the light of the dawn. The light blinded him, causing searing pain when he merely parted his eyelids. He lifted his hands to his face and groaned through the agonizing feeling. "The light…" he croaked out, and attempted to roll himself away. His body felt leaden, and weak, as though he hadn't risen in many moons. He was feeble and shaking as well.

There was a creak of a chair, and the light dimmed as a curtain was pulled across. A younger lad, Doran, stepped closer to Loren and crouched down. "We weren't certain you would wake this 'morn, My Lord." He said, softly. "The men been takin' shifts to be certain you kept breathin' through the night." The young man sighed. "The captain, he be speakin' to Tanner, Lord. Tanner questioned the wretch night-last after ye' been attacked by her. Said she used some manner of spell to look like Tanner's young-thing what live here with 'im. The one he raised from a lass."

Loren tried to nod through what the young lad said, but his shortened words made it difficult to follow along through the pounding in his head. The Lord lay a hand out to Doran. "Water, my boy." And Doran nodded eagerly, fetching an earthen goblet and pouring from a pitcher at the side of the bed. He grouched back down and gripped Loren by the forearm and pulled him up slowly. The lord grimaced as the pain shot through his skull.

"Healer's been come and gone." Doran said and handed Loren the water. He drank slowly, but it felt good washing down his throat. He finished in a few gulps and Doran refilled him. The lad knelt down and looked into Loren's eyes one, and then another. "Ach-" he growled. "Whatever spell she used, she meant ye harm, good sir." Loren nodded. "Yer eyes may neh recover for a few days." The young man noted that many of the blood vessels in the whites of his Lords eyes were broken, leaving them red as his blood.

"That she did." He agreed, swallowing again down the water. His head still throbbed in a way he had not felt since his very first Lammas festival, when he had snuck his father's large goblet of mead and greedily gulped it down. The morning following had felt much like this, only with a great deal more stomach colic.

"'Tis a good thing the Lady did nay come with us!" Doran laughed suddenly. "Me things the Lady would have set the wretch a-fire for trying te take ye as she did." The lad chuckled, and Loren nodded his agreement. He was pleased to hear that his company still thought of his Lady as a woman of conviction for her husband, despite his recent….. Follies. If one could call the debasement of his wife such a frivolous word.

"Can you bring Tanner for me, my boy?" His voice was gravelly, and he made to clear his throat.

"Aye, my Lord. You stay an' rest while I fetch 'im!" Watching Doran's exuberance was like watching a hound pup run to chase its tail; all legs and glee and merriment over the smallest of things. Loren smiled, though it hurt to do so. He was a fine lad, with certainty. Stalwart and steady, and damn enthusiastic with a sword for a lad his age.

Loren leaned back into the bed, closing his eyes and raising his elbow over them as he waited to hear the thumping of boots along the wooden floor. His breathing had slowed and the paid in his head had begun to lessen by the time the door creaked open slowly.

"Lord?" Tanner's low and rumbling voice queried. Loren breathed in as he made to sit up, removing his arm to find purchase along the bed. The older man chuckled as Loren struggled a little. "Still unsure yet, are you?" Loren nodded, and Tanner sighed. "I couldn't find out who sent her, sir. But no doubt she mean to bring an end to your life."

The Lord struggled to look at Tanner just then, but managed to meet his gaze after a few beats of his heart. Tanner's hard and gray eyes met his. The man's graying hair framed his face, and gave him a gruff and imposing look about him, but the acts of kindness Tanner was known for spoke of a different story to Loren. Thea, the slip of a girl who helped Tanner around the Inn, had stumbled into Brandwell sickly-thin and covered with dirt and fleas, and fallen beside the road in her exhaustion, no more strength in her little body her to keep on. Tanner had scooped her up from where she lay without a word to anyone, and brought her to a healer to be cleaned and given droughts and herbs to bring her back from the brink of death. He had gifted her a room of her own, and clothes to keep her warm, then later the option to leave when it best suited her. The young thing attached herself to him as soon as she was well enough to speak, and had never left the inn. That was nearly a score ago now.

"I gather as much." Loren croaked again and winced as he swallowed. "What of your young one, then? Be she safe?" Tanner's face revealed no relief, but he gave Loren a simple nod. Loren nodded in return. "Good, then. The Gods smile on her, and keep her safe." Tanner grunted, not having much care to speak of Gods, which Loren knew. "When the time is reliable, can you uncover whom might have sent such a foul gift to me?"

The large man shook his head slowly, the veins in his temples bulged in suppressed embitterment. "Nay, my Lord. She writes that her position continues to remain precarious. Her husband's temper is vastly influenced by how successfully his ploys come to fruition. This failure will set her back." He paused, and for the first time that Loren could recall, Tanner looked forlorn. "It's never a surety with men such as he that the one thrashing will not be her very last." His last statement was eerily calm, and quiet. Loren felt a great shame in himself, reflecting at his own treatment of his wife.

"I pray then that she can slip through his hands long enough to find herself to safety." Tanner's dark, thick eyebrow shot up and he looked directly at Loren.

"Then in this we can be in agreement, for she last wrote that she has appealed to your House to abide a visit to her son for Yule."

Loren nodded slowly, knowingly. Tanner had yet to disclose the name of his 'contact', which had provided much intelligence to them over the last few months at the behest of Tanner himself. The many years that Loren and Tanner had known each other, Tanner had closely guarded the secrets he kept about the correspondences he maintained. The Lord had respected this as Tanner had proven himself loyal to the town, and the people who resided here. Though there were only three sons under the roof of his House presently, and one of them had a mother who already lived there. The Lord nodded, understanding well what Tanner had told him; the identity of this person was of great import indeed.

Tanner had arrived in these lands before even Loren had met and married Ursa. A man with no past, no surname, and no explanation as to why he arrived to the town of Brandwell. Only that he wrote a petition to Loren's father to open an inn, and that he wished to submit his fealty by oath of magic to the Lord Gresham.

The sheer strength and control that Tanner wielded over his magic spoke volumes without the man without having to utter a single word about it: The man was of noble birth. Whatever deportation, or shame, or wrong he had committed, he was no longer an acknowledged member of the line of his birth. The veracity of Tanner's wording as he had taken the oath in perpetuity of his service to the causes for the Gresham family, and his dedication to the flourishing of the town was more than enough. To break such an oath would be a punishment unspeakably painful.

"Your confidence in me is a great honor." Tanner inclined his head, and folded his great arms over his broad chest. Loren reflected that for a man of high birth, Tanner had taken to the toils of a working man with a great deal of acceptance, for it would be a trail to find another with the same sheer mass of muscle upon his person. Even to compare against himself, a man who saw regular exercise and maintained his skills in combat, Loren was dwarfed by this man.

Loren changed the subject. "What of the wretch that was set upon me?" Tanner glanced at him, almost as though he was looking down his nose imperiously. The man shook his head once in the negative. Loren's eyebrows rose in surprise. The fact that he appeared to have no compunctions about ending a life was astonishing. "Truly?" Tanner looked mildly incredulous then.

"Aye." He stated firmly. "She gave my Thea belladonna and dumped her down a hay chute. Could have overdosed her and stopped her heart." Tanner had a manner about him that seemed distant, and nearly cold. But where the safety of his foster-daughter was involved, the man was a fierce as any Lordly paterfamilias would be.

Loren once again sighed and gulped the last of the water down. Tanner refilled it one time and clapped one of his calloused paw-like hands atop Loren's shoulder. "Your body demands you rest it, my Lord. We can send a man hence to bring word to your family, but you are of no condition to sit astride a mount."

The man couldn't find it within himself to argue as his throbbing head picked up its painful regiment of beating at the back of his skull. "I'll have one of the lads bring up a warmed sleeping draught with a little porridge and mulled wine." Loren's stomach turned audibly and he automatically brought his hand to his mouth as a little wave of nausea swept over him. Tanner chuckled lightly. "No wine then."

As the Lord lay back into the bed, he had one thought as Tanner made to shut the door behind him. "Tanner-" He managed to wheeze out, and the inn-owner hesitated. "Thank you." The larger man nodded and closed the door as quietly as possible.

In the quiet of the room, with its unfamiliar dimensions and scents, Loren lay looking at the wooden beams in the plaster ceiling. The last weeks had been a series of unfamiliar beds, and a rigorous political dance that had ended with little favor to his House and his lands. Nevertheless, he had managed to survive by the skin of his heels. He groaned and wiped his palms over his hands.

The sheer amount of political jockeying was something Loren had never cared for, and had frankly never excelled so greatly at either. It had only been by the grace of having the counsel of Goldoduur that the Lord had ever been able to navigate the proceedings with any modicum of success. The absence of his Dragons counsel and wisdom had been much more than a dull pain within the core of his being; it had led to a landslide of political mishaps and disasters that was likely making the corpse of Loren's father come back to life to claw at the back of his marble tomb to break free and wring his neck.

He closed his eyes and began to still his breathing so he could slip in to a torpor, and control the incessant pain in his head. Our here at the border of his lands, Loren was alone and in the care of his company. Good men and lads overall, but he wished fervently then that he were then in his rooms, laying in the large martial bed, warmed at the side of his wife.

The memory of her smiling eyes brought warmth to his heart. Ursa would have drawn the curtains and gently lay there with him, stroking his temples with perfect pressure as she palpated his scalp. His perfect wife. He sighed.

His own foolishness had cost him. He saw that clearly now. His impetuousness and insecurity had been misguided and imbecilic, and what he had done to Ursa that day in his study demanded that he make restitutions to her. Emotionally and physically. His mind traveled to thoughts of her smile, her laugh, her perfect hands and he remembered what it felt like to hold her body in his arms, to feel her breath on his chest, and how she would murmur with happiness when they lay together in the mornings, warmed by the presence of the other. He missed her so much.

A soft knock at the door broke into his affectionate musings and he grunted as audibly as he was able. Doran again stepped through the door carrying a tray. With Thea in recovery under Tanner's watchful eyes, the lads would have stepped up to help the inn-owner, what with the very cause of his daughter's illness a direct result of Loren's presence.

The Lord accepted the warm draught first, feeling that his stomach would not be able to abide anything solid. The mug was nearly too-hot to the touch and it burned at the perfect temperature to scald away the lingering rawness in his throat as he gulped it down. Loren replaced the mug and thanked Doran before he lay back down, and allowed the dark to claim him.