Three
Restless in Silence
In the coming months, they are submerged in war. Bodies blanket fields, blood-soaked snow crunching beneath her boots. There comes a time when burial plots are too gratuitous to dig, yet the Empire's troops are burdened by brotherhood and insist. Acacia watches fresh dirt cast over their gaping mouths and transcended eyes, and with absent thought, she ponders what their last goodbyes entailed. If they had time to reconcile with what they will never return to. What children are left fatherless? Motherless? Orphaned?
It's better when their faces are swallowed up by the weeds and soil so that they can only haunt her in the places untouched by waking hours. It is worse when she cannot differentiate between her army and his— as the men and women are still so young.
That youth is now encased in perpetual silence.
Their solemn stillness sinks its teeth in her soul.
It is better than their screams.
With every overturned patch of grass, she buries herself in shallow graves. Each battle waged and the village charred she becomes more disenchanted with the world on fire. He must know. How could he not? Her Dovah seized and devoured his warriors, limb from limb.
She cannot sleep.
For when she does, she only knows the plague of ceaseless warfare— their phantom shrieks dredging open the earth below, as she takes to the sky on the backs of her kin. In flight, amidst the clouds, she can no longer make out that they are human. They are mere specks, roaming in reckless abandon.
Sometimes he visits her in the vacuity of one-off Inn stays, caught in the pale moonlight, stalking in the corner, watching her. Taunting her. His alluding figure, shoulders hunched as he approaches, hands reaching for her throat.
When he strangles her, it is almost relief.
Sometimes he cradles her neck, his lips slipping over her shoulder, his breath a gentle draft in her ear. She smells the winter blistered into his being. Charcoal smoke, pinecone incense.
When he touches her, she no longer can breathe.
She wakes in bed, clawing at her throat and smoldering in her body, fumbling out of animal furs.
A carrier bird soars East past the horizon, through storm, and throughout several dawns. she knows where it will find him, shacked up in a tent positioned outside a major city, regrouping with recruits to negotiate deals. Her inside knowledge of this event happens on a whim, Tullius' blind trust in her blooming with each black and blue bruise she bares beneath her armor. His regard for her resounds as thunderous as the lightning she calls upon the weather to strike their enemies with. The scent of their flesh still burns her eyes, and she blinks back the thoughts as he pays her no heed.
He is all pride.
His pride echoes in choirs of cacophony, the Empire's boisterous warriors too brazen to admit the trepidation boiling up in their stomachs every time they approach the trench of battle.
Acacia tries to avoid their presence, their drink, their lousy folksong rallying.
For it is when they look at her with their displaced faces, their shifting glances, and stilted speech, that she is reminded of how she is no longer a stranger in the crowd.
It is not a look of pride, but fear.
I'm not one of them.
I am Dovahkiin.
Despite this, she finds herself in between a drunkard spilling out his septims over the bar, and a recruit for the empire peaking at her in fidgeting glimpses, nursing the same bottle he purchased an hour ago. Being outside of her room causes the rest of the soldiers to gawk and spoil any reprieve she could find in drinking. Still, she knocks back another bottle of mead.
Its Nordic signature taste of honey leaves her laconic.
Those Nords. Those Stormcloaks. With their senseless plights of casting aside families and cities, all in the pursuit of faith.
Ulfric.
If only he would set aside his pride. If only he would reign in his cattle. Then we wouldn't be positioning our men for slaughter.
Chapter Four
The Mistress of Mist
Entrenched in the night, before another battle begins come that sunrise, she finds herself sneaking out of her room, and out into the forestry. A neighboring babbling brook beckons her, and she disrobes. Stepping down into the bitter cold waters, the ritual of rinsing their spirits from her skin commences. Acacia scrubs her skin raw, the water lapping at her shoulders. The moon is half-lit, a faint candle in the sky. Its hues engloom the surrounding forest in wax yellow.
Paarthurnax's words resonate within her.
"The will to power is in your blood."
She curls her fingers through the strands of moon dew. She remembers his wheat blond hair slipping underneath her nails, the ticklish sensation it left. Sinking below the surface, she holds her head underwater.
When she returns to her room, her dreams are fluid, flowing over her, carrying her in one seamless direction.
It is before the monotony of morning. A cawing bird rouses her from slumber. Opening the window seal, the carrier pigeon lands on her wrist, tipping his head. Strapped to his leg, above the bird's talons is where she finds it. She unravels the parchment paper, and his words are in a scrawling script. Ink blots from each letter, smudging syllables, yet she can still make out the exact coordinates of his location, a place not too distant from her.
Below is a command.
Come to me.
She reread it too many times.
A command? A plea? Does he mean to negotiate or…something else?
Combing a hand through her locks with a sigh, she begins to dress in all her armor, strapping her potions and daggers to her hilt, fingers twitching at her helmet.
What am I doing?
Deflating onto the bed, she watches as the abyss of night eases into amber twilight. she gets up, donning her helmet and disheveling the bed, gentle in opening all the drawers of her nightstand, and plucking out any septims she finds.
The distressed room eats at her as she pushes open the window, momentarily relieved she is on the first floor. Everything is in disarray.
Acacia leaves knowing they will postpone the attack, as without her – they wouldn't stand a chance.
What am I doing?
She saddles her horse and makes her way down into forestry, having to get deep enough into the woods and far enough away from the Inn and surrounding settlement.
Days and nights are elusive, the passing hours pull at her, cascading her down hillsides, and back up to the mist of mountains. She ruminates in her head, a lineage of thought –
This is the only way.
She grips the straddle tight, gritting her teeth.
Vengeance churns within her stomach.
Something else swelters and conspires in her soul.
A dense mist spills over the mountainside, an eerie cast of white coating the night air. Cricket chirps and lightning bugs hover in a fuzzy glow. She had traveled this way before, mapped it out many months prior. Like a nocturnal animal, closing in on its prey— she even knows where his men hide.
Snow trickles from the heavens, her vapor breath obscuring her sight. His men tuck themselves into the shelves of mountains. Their dwelling was a cluster of tents scattered out across the area below her, a firepit placed in the center. Its orange haze illuminates the ground, yet it casts no shadows. Everyone is asleep.
Cloaked in an invisibility potion, she makes her descent, heart in her throat, smoke building in her lungs. She traverses behind the brush, listening in for voices, yet none come.
There, an adequate distance from the rest of the tents is that of a modest shed.
A place fit for a king.
Four
Transpiring in the Dark
The door isn't latched, and when it creaks open, she half expects him to be in the midst of sleep. She slithers in, sealing the door behind her, before taking in the surrounding room. It is quaint, with a makeshift bed burrowed against the left wall, and a desk positioned up at the back wall. The air is fragrant with notes of nightshade and thistle, as a flickering candle casts the room in sashaying silhouettes. Ulfric is hunched over his desk with his back facing her.
Acacia let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
His shoulders stiffen, and she remains still.
"So, you have come to me so soon," he sneers, wheat hair tangled in the catch of his fingers, his posture upright and rigid, anchored to his chair. He sets down a quill pen and lets it roll from his grasp.
She has gone all of this way, and it is as though she is encased in a dream. Except now she is the creature of the night, creeping into his room.
Offering no immediate response, he shifts in his seat, elbow propping the hand over his mouth, holding his chin. Her potion has run dry— and she knows she is caught in his sight.
He leers at her, mouth tightlipped and jaw clenching. Her gaze follows as his other hand reaches down, grasping the handle of an axe near his bedside. He grips it, yet doesn't move, and she takes in the entirety of him, disheveled, chest barren in the dead of winter, adorned only in his undergarments. She dares not take her eyes from him, her hand feeling for the dagger at her hilt.
It is unnerving. His presence resounds within her like that of her own voice.
He stands, and they watch one another like territorial predators.
The candlelight dips and streams over pale skin, into the hardened fine lines of his temple. It bends over the blunt of his nose and the rift between his brows, casting a shadow over his stare, before revealing the gleam in his emerald eyes. There are phantoms in his glare.
The golden incandesce slips down his throat, past his sinewy shoulders, and slinks over the veins of his arms. His prodigious hands were calloused and strong, their size dwarfing hers. His chest rises and falls, ringlets of his chest hair traveling down to his navel, disappearing beneath the band of his sleep trousers.
She feels her breath become heavy, looking at him with half-hooded eyes. He lets the axe handle release from his fingers, where it rests back against the wall with a dull thud.
Dangerous.
"I am here to speak to you."
She means this to be blunt, yet it comes out in a languish of syllables. She bites her tongue, steeling herself to no longer glance below his chin. He relaxes his shoulders but deepens his brow.
"You snuck in," he replies unkind, scrunching his nose.
"You told me to come," she mutters unbothered, and he huffs, dragging his hand over his face.
"I expected I would not be conversing with you, with that on." He imposes, gesturing towards her helmet.
Donned in Dovah boned armor, it is different from that in which he saw her before. However, her helmet still shields her countenance, and she wavers. The helmet weighs on her head like the dead that weighs on her shoulders, and she stretches her fingers again towards the dagger at her hilt.
I could spring it on him, delve it deep into his throat.
Her fingers splay and curl, motioning.
Acacia lifts her helmet over her head instead.
Ulfric watches in strange intrigue, sage meeting ice as his stare widens if only by a minuscule, his apathetic demeanor shifting if only for a fleeting moment. Without warpaint slathered black over her skin, he finally sees her. He takes her in for the first time in months, and though he offers nothing in reply, his eyes tell her countless stories she cannot yet comprehend.
Something shifts— his composure diluted in the space between them. she feels herself being cornered. One step forward, one step back. Yet she can't afford to reveal the heightening of her pulse. He steps closer, his body building like clouds before a storm, cast above her. She looks at him like a Dovah in the sky; determined to subdue, yet persistently in awe. She holds her breath.
"There is only one reason women come to my room," he declares, inching nearer, to where his chest grazes the boning of her armor. She suppresses a wince, clenching her fists, her stomach churning.
A sneer etches itself into the corners of his lips, and the hostility in his tone turns to gravel.
"You wish to bed me, Dovahkiin?"
It is contorted, a jeer. Acacia tilts her head at him, derisive in response, playing coy.
"You forget who plead that I come," Acacia taunts, ignoring the heat that's begun to seep between her thighs as his stare wares down on her.
"I came to negotiate."
The word riles him, and his insincere smile dips. He doesn't touch her, yet his fingers curl in as if to keep from doing so.
"Negotiate," he parrots, balancing the word on his tongue, peering down at her, and meeting her eyes with an intensity like that of the river, running cold over her skin, threatening to drown her.
"With words?" He inquires.
"How else will she have you listen to me?" She baits back, chest bumping his own.
His stare darkens.
"By showing me," He goads, using his height as leverage as her back knocks into the wooden door. Acacia tilts her chin up at him. He is domineering in the blade of his timbre, provoking her into silence.
This is what he wants.
Acacia doesn't speak, and his palm touches her cheek, his thumb cascading over the plush of her bottom lip, and she hardly resists the urge to jerk away in shock. Her heart thumps in a deafening manner, heightening the hazy slur of light surrounding them. He watches her with unraveling resolve, brows pinched, dragging his fingers over the side of her temple, over her chin. His countenance is chiseled moonstone, brushstrokes of crow's feet and the scruff of his beard, the indents of his frown. His hand moves down her jaw and splays over her neck.
It's there— the enduring spectra of his fingers, the way he pressed in before. It is coiling inside her tightened and on the verge of snapping.
"You are deliberate in undermining me." His eyes harden. "You have been countering all her efforts with defiance— aggrandizing the empire."
His stare dips to her lips. He hunches over, his warm breath fanning out over the incarnadine flush of her cheeks. He leans in, cupping the underside of her jaw, lips a slight gap from hers. She looks at him beneath her lashes, waiting for something—
"Torture me with what you wanted to say," He murmurs.
She swallows, and he can feel it under his thumb.
"Unless your intentions haven't yet been made apparent."
"I have been trying to reason with you," she insists, trying to settle what has begun to grow inside her. However, out of her peripheral, she once more notices his desk, where the candle's feverish dance continues. There, a stack of clandestine parchments is spread out in disarray, and it is with an immediacy she realizes what he had been reading.
His letters she had burned.
All of mine he had kept.
Acacia dares not betray this boiling uncertainty, this wavering acknowledgment of something she was not meant to be privy to. She looks back to him, and his gaze is unreadable.
Her fingers coil snugly around his wrist.
"Call a truce," she mutters back whilst broadening her shoulders and straightening her posture, as he contemplates her.
His face contorts, and he smears his other palm across his saturnine expression, a humorless chuckle forming deep in his throat.
"Ulfric," she admonishes as she begins to pull at his hand, prying his fingers down. It even sounds patronizing to her, yet she must insist.
"No one else will have to die—"
Incited by fury, he tightens his grip around her throat, her head softly bumping into the door behind her.
"I should kill you," he bellows out not willing to capitulate and holds her still.
He holds her voice in with his fingers pressed over her skin just as before, meaning to contain her power. No one else can do this— get close enough to live another day, can subdue her even from their knees. The thought causes compunction to fester in her chest— and her nails bite into his skin.
"Conniving woman—" The vein at his temple pulses, and a conflagration consumes her as she drops her hand to her hilt, plucking her dagger from its holster. He catches on too late, as she presses the sharp tip of the curved blade against his own throat, right under his chin. It does not yet pierce the skin, yet he releases her in an instantaneous motion. She edges him back from her, inhaling deeply, evoking the rise of a dragon's tongue. He backpedals, the back of his legs knocking into the bedframe. He loses his balance, stumbling and thumping down on the bed as she crawls over him. Acacia straddles him, white-knuckling the blade as it grazes his throat once more, the weight of her armor stifling his movement.
Regardless of this, his contentious glare is fixated on her own, offering his restraint in the way he flares his nostrils and grinds his teeth. His eyes flicker to his axe, cast aside by the bed, then back to hers. She follows his stare. He opens his mouth and yet she places her palm over it, silencing his speech.
"You'll regret that," she warns, as he seethes behind her hand.
His muffled language falls on deaf ears. She takes a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back and exposing his throat.
I need to kill him.
I need to end this now— and forevermore.
Acacia pulls the dagger back and feels him flinch beneath her, yet she doesn't plunge it into his pulse. She stabs the wall beside her, sheathing the blade into the wood.