Thank you so much for the reviews! They are thoughtful and very motivating. Angelacm, you are so generous, and just too clever! Your feedback is always so spectacular! StellarWing, I hope you will enjoy this interaction with Lyndon as much as his introduction. ;) Auriel, you are too sweet, as always, and Ahab88, I will definitely draw something soon! CommisarFish, thank you so very much for the input and sharing tales! I am honored that you enjoy Iona and I hope to continue to please you. Enjoy, everyone! We're very close to the Star, at last! The next chapter may come faster than this one did, too! Thank you once again!

7

The Huntress and the Scoundrel

"The hunter is a willing slave to Balance. Hatred is the sword of the hunter. Discipline is his shield. Pain is his sire. He is birthed in hellfire, torn from the very womb of death by the strength of his will or the tides of fate. But the lifeblood of the hunter is love. Without love to keep your pain fresh, your hatred will die a slow, pathetic death. When it does, it will take you with it; your usefulness shall end. Never forget why you chose to hunt, Iona. Your loss is a wound which must never be allowed to fully close. But you must not allow it to fester, either. What you do as a hunter, you must do out of love. Compassion belongs to humanity. Leave your hatred for the demons. They have sown chaos in every field…and you are the reaper. You must care for the wheat with all of your heart, even as you burn the chaff to ash. To do any less is to become the very thing you hunt."

- Li Xia

Lyndon let out a long, painful wheeze, drawing his eyebrows together in an expression of wounded confusion. "Hell's teeth…! What did I do?!" he groaned indignantly. "Are you some sort of mad, wandering vigilante?" Beads of rain quivered on the tips of his lashes as his sharp, dark eyes flitted quickly over her body. Once. Twice. Three times. He blinked and the waterbeads broke over his sophisticated cheekbones and raced toward his ears. "Erm…by which I of course mean a stunningly beautiful…very heavily armed…peace…keeper?" he amended hopefully.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Iona had to bite her lip to suppress a laugh. He thought she was a lunatic, and now that he had seen her handiwork, it was no stretch of the imagination to suppose that she might intend to kill him here in the mud. But her good humor evaporated quickly. She could not feel the ancient crown anywhere on his body. In fact, the pockets of his shabby coat were completely empty. His only possession seemed to be the plain crossbow strapped to his back, which was very likely digging painfully into his spine at the moment. The weapon would be useless to him until he had the time to clean the mud from its delicate mechanical parts. He was now essentially disarmed. Iona sighed inwardly. The miller will likely kill him himself long before anything else can if I leave him here. He may be a cad, but he is not an evil man. I deprived him of his weapon and I must take responsibility for his life. But only until we reach Tristram.

Lyndon frowned. He seemed to dislike being ignored even more than being beaten and sat on. "Also, do forgive my rudeness, but why exactly do you even have grenades? I know the contents of a lady's purse are one of life's great mysteries, but I would at least like to know how you manage to throw high explosives so well with such slender…arms…" He trailed off as a new thought dawned on him. Rain was dripping from the ends of Iona's hair onto his face, and he shook his head briskly and squinted at her. "Wait, wait…I know you. That angelic face…those shimmering gree—er…brown? Brown! Eyes! Oh, darling, it is you! Thank the High Heavens! I swear to you, I was coming back for you. I simply had to acquire the funds necessary to give you the comfortable life you deserve, my little princess." He offered her a beseeching, slightly terrified grin.

Iona rolled her eyes skyward, searching for patience.

"This is not personal, Lyndon," she said evenly. "We have never met. But you are an able-bodied man who somehow slipped out of Tristram during the worst siege in Khanduras in twenty years…after gathering information from a grieving man with a sick wife for personal gain."

He laughed weakly. "Yes. Yes, that does sum things up rather neatly. Good gods, you're strong. I admire that in a woman. Would you mind terribly shifting your lovely bottom about hand's length lower? You are sitting on my diaphragm and it is always better to interrogate a prisoner who can breathe."

"You clearly possess a degree of skill that could have been very helpful to the people you used, but you left them to die instead," Iona continued, wrapping her arms around his neck. Their faces were mere inches apart, and she felt herself paling with anger as she thought of the burning bodies in Tristram. The awful reek of those fires was washing away with the rain, but she felt as though it would linger on her skin and in her hair for the rest of her life. It would serve him well to taste it for himself. "I would very much like to know why," she whispered fiercely, hoping that every last drop of the smoky water streaming from her cheeks and chin stung him. The ends of her hair lay in the mud, making a black curtain around them.

"Please don't make me hurt you," Lyndon gasped. "My mother told me never to hit little girls."

"I am not a little girl."

"Well, I never had a mother. I think that may be at the root of my troubles—I simply wasn't breast-fed. If I had a copper for every time I found myself lying beneath a strange woman…losing…air…" He tried to cough, glaring at her. "Are you really going to choke me to death?" he hissed furiously.

"No, one chokes on food. What you are referring to is called 'strangling', but that is not what I am doing. I am depriving your brain of blood until you lose consciousness. I am not going to kill you. I am going to search you. You will have a terrible headache when you wake, but you will have your life and all of your legitimate possessions. It should only take another four seconds."

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've woken up naked in the wilderness. Go on, then…" Lyndon stopped struggling, either because he was resigned or because he was purple.

Iona loosened her grip, eyeing him curiously. His cavalier sense of calm was odd. Was it the fruit of despair? Or had he been actively trained to resist fear? His composure was remarkable. She arched a fine eyebrow. "What is your profession?"

"I am between jobs at the moment," he said stiffly. "Your four seconds have passed. Are you quite sure you know what you are doing?"

"You admit that nothing you own was obtained legally…honesty is an odd trait for a thief."

"You will never meet a more honest thief than I. And I admitted that my clothing was not obtained legally. The crossbow is actually mine, and I'd like to keep it that way, if you don't mind. Yours are much nicer, anyway."

Iona felt the flame in her heart go out. Her anger with him for his selfishness did not give her the right to harm him. What he did, he did to survive. It was only human nature. She slowly released him and got to her feet, offering him her hand. He took it gratefully, massaging his throat. Immediately, he slung the muddy crossbow off his back and let out a groan of dismay as he held it tenderly in his hands. Iona, bristling with weapons, might have been a tree, for all he cared.

"Don't worry, sweet Sophie," he murmured, scrubbing at the muck with his sleeve. "I'll have you clean and shining like—well, not like new, but…oh, balls, this is a fine mess! It's still going to take a good smith to fix you, and the damned relic was worthless!"

Iona stared at him, then at her own hands, appalled. "Your weapon…was already broken," she said flatly. She had not disarmed a potential threat; she had assaulted an unarmed man.

"Of course she was bloody well broken! Normally, Nigel Cutthroat and his idiot toadies would have been dead before you got there, Sasha Miller would have given herself to me in the hayloft, and I would be on my way to a nicer, drier country with more taverns and fewer walking corpses. I only stopped in Tristram because I needed a smith, and your one isn't up to doing his job much at the moment, is he? I need a lot of money, and a good thief never puts all of his eggs in one basket. I found the crown you're after in the smith's family crypt—but the damn thing was cracked in half and covered in rust. And all after only twenty years in the ground! You would never see that kind of disrepair in a Kingsport cemetery."

Iona pinched the bridge of her nose in bewilderment, warding off a headache. "You made your way in and out of New Tristram, through the Weeping Hollow, into the Eamon crypt, through the Fields of Misery, and arrived here completely unarmed?" she asked wearily, though the answer was clear enough.

Lyndon dug a clot of dirt from around the trigger of his crossbow. "In a word, yes. And the fact that you people even have a place named The Fields of Misery speaks volumes about this place. Why don't you all just move?"

"How?"

"It's rather easy; you just pack a bag, choose a direction, and walk."

Iona ground her teeth. The man was impossible. "How did you survive, Lyndon?"

"Why do you think I fight with a crossbow?" he answered affably. "My brother gave this to me because he knew I needed a weapon that would mesh with my special talent for running away!"

"Crossbows," Iona said quietly, clenching her fists. "Are not. For cowards."

"Gods, you're beautiful when you're angry."

She sighed. "Where is the crown, now?"

"New Tristram. I tossed it into a cart full of rubbish with a broken wheel. It wasn't going anywhere and I thought I might have another look at it if my other prospect turned out to be a complete failure…which," he sighed, "it did."

Iona felt all of her weariness come crashing down upon her shoulders. The crown had been in the mayor's cart the entire time. Precious hours had been lost. Her body was trembling with the need for food and sleep. She was filthy, and she had killed five living, breathing men.

Carelessness makes monsters of us all, she thought desolately.

"Here, now," Lyndon said, half-alarmed. "You look miserable. What's wrong? You can have the crown—it's not as if I can prevent you, you know. We'll go together and get it. It's the perfect plan, really. You can protect me, and I can do my best to seduce you, break your heart, and steal all of your things. It'll be fun!"

The flagrantly beguiling invitation in his eyes told her that he was absolutely, unblushingly serious.

"Take my hand, Lyndon, and do not let go," Iona sighed.

He smiled and teased her glove from her hand by its fingertips, then put it in his pocket. He slid his fingers between hers and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, slipping his other arm about her waist. "There, you see? You're getting the hang of it already! Now…why don't you tell me your name? I have never been ambushed by a more enchanting creature."

She swatted his seeking fingers away from her pouch of coins. "Iona. And I will leave you here if you do not behave yourself."

"You won't, Iona. I can see it in your eyes."

Shameless man, she thought disapprovingly.

Observant man, Li Xia's voice corrected. Despite her exhaustion, her training still held firm. She knew he was more than he seemed. She was not disgusted with his antics; she was impressed, and it startled her. He steals gold, but I steal life. What right have I to judge anyone? He is fighting to survive. I am fighting to fight. I spill blood that I might spill more blood.

Iona raised her hand over the muddy ground and felt for New Tristram. It was more difficult, this time. She was so tired, and her mind was trying to wander. She marshalled her discipline and forced herself to straighten to her full height, reaching out with all of her will for the town for which she had come to feel so responsible. New Tristram…Leah…Deckard Cain…Haedrig Eamon…Tansy… Their faces and voices filled her like sweet air, and she let out a long, slow breath. In that moment, she felt the truth of Li Xia's teachings wash over her like the soothing cerulean light of the Star, and it gave her new strength. I fight because I love. That is my purpose.

Beside her, Lyndon had time to cry out, "What in the name of—?"

Then they were gone, leaving only their footprints, the rain, and a ring of blue light as bright as the Star behind them.