Quick Pre-Note: Ok so last night I tried to combine to earlier chapters and that ended up shifting some reviews to chapters they didn't belong to and generally just making things messier, so I'm reposting this as chapter 9 and returning things to the way they were... Sorry for the confusion guys! First time posting on fanfiction, so I'm learning this posting thing as I go. ;)

Author's Note: Hi guys! I re-updated this chapter because there were a couple of conversation things I wasn't very happy with. Don't worry, the plot hasn't changed, and really not much dialogue changed either. Really minor changes mostly dealing with feelings and character interaction. Nevertheless, it is there.

Also, I'd like to tell you this is going to be finished soon, but I feel obligated to level with you guys. I'm going through an unexpectedly busy/stressful time right now, and I am not able to dedicate as much time to Sub Rosa as I had been able to before. I thought I could hammer out the last couple chapters (including this one, which I thought kind of fell flat compared to the others), but that mentality is not helping me write good fiction. So, unfortunately, it might be some time before I can really return to Sub Rosa and finish it with the effort it deserves. Don't worry, I don't think it'll be left alone for any crazy amount of time like a year (even half a year seems too long), but I just wanted to give you a heads up that I would be able to do my week and a half updates I'd been doing. Thanks for understanding! :)

It was amazing to Lux how, even after reading all that one could wish to know about what a fëa was and the particular sort of magic that went alongside binding it to a sword, she could still have more questions. The mage had spent nearly five hours, from six until ten in the morning, muddling through Absolution, when eventually her mother poked her head in the room and told her it was time to leave for Demacia. Lux and her family left the Du Couteau residence relatively quickly, keeping Lux from spending an undue amount of time with an assassin she was sure wasn't happy with her, and allowing her to get on a train to spend more time on her newest obsession.

What Lux had found was particularly disturbing. Now, she had expected some of this. With the earlier knowledge of Darkin influence, and even her own experience with binding spells, she knew the blade Talon intended to craft would be a cruel one by nature. She just hadn't been expecting a sword of absolution. Upon using the dictionary to dissect the name of the sword Talon hoped to forge, Faercrist, composed of the words "faer" meaning spirit and "crist" meaning cleaver, Lux fully began to internalize what it was Talon was hoping to accomplish.

At first, when opening Absolution, she had been rather surprised to find so much talk of souls. In her own experience, Lux had come to know the word to mean "a release from guilt" or "forgiveness of sins", not "the act of ripping someone's soul from their body". But, she supposed, in some way, ripping the soul from someone's body was a sort of release from guilt. As she continued to read, she found the book talked a rather lot about how one would go about stealing souls and the kind of consequences that came with the territory, and while most of it seemed like a manual on particularly dark magic, there was a section about creating weapons to have similar effects.

The theory behind creating such a sword as Faercrist was that one would imbue a soul within a weapon and then, upon using the weapon to strike a foe, the imbued soul would be powerful enough to attack the enemy's soul, effectively ripping it from their body. For the most part, it sounded like the sword's greatest achievement would be to kill people, rather similar to how normal ones worked, but altogether much more swiftly. A simple cut with Faercrist on a weak-willed person might bring death instantly. Of course, there were some serious catches with the weapon.

As far as Lux could tell, the effectiveness of the sword had a great deal to do with the wielders affinity with the imbued soul. For example, if one was to bind the soul of a stranger to the weapon, it's soul ripping capabilities would be limited to working on already disheartened people or people who had suffered a great blow from the weapon, in which case they'd die anyways. However, if one was to say, bind their own soul to the sword, the power of the weapon would be unmatched, easily cutting down the most fearsome of foes.

And that was were the reading got particularly disturbing. Binding a soul to the sword doesn't kill a person. If anything, it makes them slightly harder to kill, for one would have to destroy both the sword and the body in order to truly rid the world of a person. But there was a certain sort of corruption that came along with not only binding your own soul to a physical item, but using it to wrench the souls of others away. Horrid stories in the book talked of men growing increasingly bloodthirsty and insane from just one use of the sword, eventually leading them to kill even their own families, until they were rightly dealt with. In some cases, the person's body would be destroyed, but not the sword, and as such, the soul would live on within the weapon, haunting the next person to pick it up.

Therein lay another point of dark magic. A certain link formed between the wielder and the weapon, and it seemed to be that in time, even if the sword was never used, the wielder would grow to gain the soul's attributes, and given how easily corrupted the soul within the sword was, that hardly seemed to be a good thing. In fact, none of the information Lux had gained was a "good thing". More and more, Lux began to wonder if she would be travelling to Shurima at all, given how not on board she was with forging a sword like Faercrist.

But a very strong part of her wondered why Talon felt the need to forge such a weapon. It was true, he was an assassin, he killed people, yes this was something Lux had accepted in her time knowing the man. It was just that he didn't seem very bloodthirsty. He didn't seem like the type of person to sacrifice all of this, his soul, his sanity, just for a weapon. Sure, the man was a little flawed, but power hungry seemed just too out-of-character, which conjured the question why Faercrist?

Then, of course, regardless of his reasons for wanting to have the sword, whose soul was he intending to use? And how did he expect to have Lux bind a soul to a sword without her knowing? All of this left unanswered, and she was supposed to meet Talon at the Institute train station the following day, ready to leave for Shurima. Ultimately, Lux decided to proceed with the plan she and Talon had already decided on. Of course, there was no way she'd be binding any sort of soul to a sword, but, perhaps in her travels with Talon, she could get a few of her questions answered. That, and, she was not going to let him keep the Book of Sorcery.

Lux arrived the following day at platform four, only with a large backpack, one medium sized duffel, and one small duffel, the smaller one of which she was supposed to dump, by order of Ezreal, once she got to the desert. She approached a waiting Talon, dressed in his assassin gear, something she had not had the pleasure of seeing in a considerable amount of time. He wore his usual hood and cloak, coupled with accents of protective metal gear and a blue skin-tight bodysuit. As much as Lux hated to admit it, his rough and tumble ensemble entirely suited her fancy.

Talon's expression was the same fierce one she had grown accustomed to in her time knowing the man. As she drew near to the assassin, Lux swore she saw a small flicker of anger flash across his face, but his facial muscles soon returned to their resting state. She wondered what it would be like to face him again, especially after their last encounter. She wondered if he'd be enraged, if he'd be moody, if he would even talk to her, but most of all, she wondered if he still held feelings for her.

"I hope you enjoyed your reading." His cold voice rang out as she set down her belongings next to him, waiting for the train to arrive. Clearly, he was not happy about what she had done.

"Did you get my note?" She asked, hoping at least he'd known her intentions had not been that dubious.

"I didn't do it for the books." He repeated, articulating every word precisely, as if her statement was something to be ashamed of.

"Don't act so hurt, Talon." She scolded. "You knew why I was there. And still you left them unattended."

"Yeah, like I was going to stop fucking you just to hide away a couple of lousy books." He ground out angrily.

Initially, Lux was caught off guard by his vulgar phrasing, but, as the tense pause continued, Lux began to understand the assassin's feelings.

"Are you mad I stole them, or are you mad I slept with you first?" She asked coolly, glaring back at the assassin.

He said nothing, leaving Lux to infer.

"I told you I didn't sleep with you to get the books." She repeated, hoping she could get her point across.

But the furrowed brow and lips pressed into a thin line told Lux that her statement had done little to calm the man. One of his quotes from an earlier library encounter slipped back into her mind.

"You still don't trust me." She said, realization dawning on her.

"Should I?" Talon raised an eyebrow, knowing he was obviously correct in his skepticism regarding the mage. And, given all of the tricks she had played on the man, Lux supposed he shouldn't. Then again, Lux didn't trust him either. But she did like him.

"Can't we at least be civil about this?" She asked as the train pulled loudly into the station.

"Since when have we ever been civil?" He shot her one last fierce glare as the train doors creaked open, and immediately the assassin boarded, leaving Lux without a word.

Trailing behind, Lux struggled to keep up with the brooding assassin, and quite honestly, she was rather pissed herself. She knew she had hurt him, his ego was probably bruised, but that didn't mean he had to act like an immature little twit. If he'd only say "I like you Lux, please don't betray me again" or something of the sort, she'd fall willingly into his arms like a love-stricken teenager. But as she sat herself in the seat across from Talon in their compartment, the assassin still sulky in his demeanor, Lux knew that scenario was not going to present itself.

The two sat in silence for the better part of the day despite all the questions lingering. And Lux wasn't the only one with questions, she was sure. Talon would have to be pretty oblivious not to wonder why she was still helping him on his sword forging mission after she had read what she had in Absolution. Even Lux wondered why, but, to her way of thinking, she'd never let them get even remotely close to creating a Faercrist. So, she might as well enjoy the adventure into Shurima.

That, and, travelling to Shurima was her only opportunity to feasibly retrieve Parfuin Gúl. She didn't need Talon to give the book to her, she only needed to find it. And, if her suspicions were correct, Talon would be keeping the book with him for reference, and, once she had searched his things, Lux could find it, disguise it (magically, of course) as an inconsequential item, stuff it away in her belongings, and be on her way. But that required the assassin leaving her alone with his luggage for a good few minutes, and the only time Talon had left the train compartment had been around noon to go to the bathroom. He had been only been gone five minutes, maybe less, and Lux had just began to search his bags. She'd found nothing before she had to scramble back to her seat and pretend like she wasn't up to anything.

Fortunately, the assassin hadn't questioned her about it, rather he just gave her a sour look and went back to staring out the window. Lux had gone back to plotting, and ultimately decided she might have better luck either when the man was asleep or, if push came to shove, when they got out in the desert. With that resolved, the mage gazed quietly at the landscape for for far too long. The two said nothing for another six hours until a train attendant came around to take their dinner reservation time, and even then, all that Lux had been able to get out of the man was a simple grunt. Then it was back to neverending quietness. Eventually, just as they began to see the spikes of Mount Gargantuan jutting out on the horizon, boredom overtook the mage and she took it upon herself to break the silence.

"You're a surprisingly good dancer." She offered, hoping that she could trick Talon into engaging in a civil conversation despite his unruly attitude.

The assassin looked up skeptically, as if curious about what had caused that sudden spark of a compliment.

"You watched me dance?" He asked in a tone that, if his voice weren't so gruff, Lux would have said was almost teasing.

"When you danced with Katarina during the parent's waltz."

Talon just grunted in response, clearly not terribly interested in the conversation. Once again, silence filled the compartment. Sitting in quiet contemplation, the mage let her mind wander until, shortly after Talon had let the discussion drop, she found another topic to talk about.

"I bet Swain is behind it." Lux mused.

"Behind what?" Talon's rough voice questioned.

"Your father's disappearance." She explained. "I watched him give Katarina away at the wedding. He seemed far too smug about it."

"It's not Swain." The assassin replied definitively.

"How do you know?" She asked, curious about his decisiveness. "He has everything to gain."

His dark eyes stared into hers, intense and sincere, all at the same time. After a short pause, the assassin seemingly deciding how much he felt like telling her, Talon asked, "Do you remember when Swain set us up?"

"Yes, of course." She replied. "He had wanted to interrogate you too, if I remember correctly."

"He wanted to know where my father was." Talon stated. "Apparently he had been pressing Katarina for information as well. It wasn't until about a year later when one of his set ups finally did work that our theory was confirmed."

"Curious." Lux thought aloud. "If he's not behind it, I can't imagine who is."

"Not a lot of people can." The assassin replied cryptically.

The conversation halted a moment after Talon's ambiguous statement, but it wasn't long before Lux resumed the small talk.

"Who taught you how to dance?" She asked pleasantly, returning to a lighter topic.

"Cassiopeia." He replied evenly. "Before she went to Shurima."

"Are you close to her?" Lux wondered. Talon and Katarina seemed, for lack of better phrasing, thick as thieves, but she had hardly seen Talon and Cassiopeia interact.

"Why are you asking so many questions?" The assassin turned on her, clearly annoyed by her attempts to get him involved in a conversation.

"I was just trying to make small talk!" Lux cried in defense of herself. "We've been sitting here for nine hours. Nine hours, Talon, and we haven't talked! Did you really intend to go the whole trip without conversing?"
"No, but we don't have to talk about my family." The assassin replied coldly, intense eyes firing back at the mage.

"Fine!" Lux said in exasperation. "You make the small talk then!"

Another small pause elapsed as Talon struggled to think of a subject to talk about. He turned his attention back to her once he had been stricken with a topic.

"I was surprised that you weren't a virgin." He stated simply, as if that sentence should be an acceptable start to a conversation.

For a moment, all that Lux could do was stare at him with a wide mouth and even wider eyes. A second later, she found her voice.

"That is NOT an appropriate subject for small talk, Talon!" She exclaimed, thoroughly outraged.

The assassin chuckled at her response. Well at the very least she'd done away with his surly behavior. It had instead been replaced with orneriness.

"Don't tell me it was that fruitcake?" He laughed, grin starting to show at the corners of his mouth. "You could have done so much better than him. Just think, if you had only waited, I would have been your first."

"What makes you think you're not my third?" She countered, annoyed with his smug behavior.

The assassin raised an eyebrow. "So you're a promiscuous girl."

Blushing, the mage replied. "Of course not!"

"Was I your third?" He questioned.

"No." Lux admitted shyly.

"Was Ezreal your first?" He continued.

"Why are you so interested?" She shot back at him, less willing to answer that question.

"I want to know how much you suffered before experiencing true bliss."

"You are so full of yourself." She commented, intending to insult him.

But Talon just laughed, seemingly unphased by her attack.

Lux took a small moment to calm down, realizing the discussion was not headed where she'd like it to be. Once her head was cooled, she reengaged with a question she suspected the assassin would not like to answer, but one she desperately wanted to ask.

"Why did you sleep with me, Talon?" Her sincere voice almost echoed through the silent compartment.

"For the same reason you slept with me, I imagine." He responded after taking a long moment to think about it.

"Does that mean you like me?" Lux could not hide the anticipation that swimmed in her eyes, nor the embarrassment that colored her cheeks.

Talon was seemingly caught off-guard by her question, seeing it for what it was, a declaration of her feelings. She had put herself out there, dared to be the braver person, at it was up to the assassin on how the rest ended.

After the longest pause in the entire time Lux had been trying to engage the man, Talon finally spoke.

"Yes." His dark eyes held hers in a strikingly fierce stare. "And more."

Of all the things that could have happened following Talon's assertion, such as a discussion about their relationship status, passionate kissing, and the unmentionables that come after passionate kissing, Talon and Lux ended up just simply getting dinner in the dining car. A train attendant had, rather untimely, interrupted their moment of intent stares and heated blushes, and had notified them it was time for their dinner reservation. Lux had forgotten completely about dinner, and when she was presented with the meal, she found herself decidedly not hungry. During the meal, the two engaged in actual small talk, Lux too shy to bring up Talon's previous declaration, and the assassin apparently uninclined to do the job for her.

Following that, the duo returned to the train compartment, and, much to the disappointment of the mage, went back to staring out of their respective halves of the window. Although the sun had set by that point, Lux still gazed out the glass pane, wondering if she should say something to the man, but ultimately deciding she had been courageous enough for the day. Something that Lux had learned in college, the hard way, she might add, was that just because a man liked a girl didn't mean he wanted to be in any sort of relationship with her. The fellow who had taught the blonde that lesson was long gone by that point in Lux's life, but his impact stayed nonetheless, and something told the mage what she had learned might apply to the assassin. Hell, even she wasn't sure she wanted to be in a relationship with him.

In the end, Lux and Talon never did engage in conversation before they fell asleep. The train was handy enough to have bunk beds, saving Lux the trouble of sleeping next to the assassin in the notably small enclosure. The mage fell asleep surprisingly easily, even despite having no pajamas to change into, something she had become accustomed to in her time on the road. She did bother to remove her breastplate, bracers, boots, and belt, leaving her in her blue body suit. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she cast a small inaudible spell on herself that acted in many ways like an alarm clock. She didn't, however, set the time for a reasonable hour, like ten in the morning, but rather cast it so she would wake up at three, in the dead of night, enabling her to conduct some suspicious business.

Lux woke with a start, as she usually did when she cast the alarm clock spell on her. The spell was useful in many situations, granted, but the one drawback was that it made the caster hear an infernally loud beeping sound that never made for easy awakenings. She had tried to alter the spell several times to make it more tender, but her experiments had never succeeded. So, Lux woke up startled and annoyed, but nonetheless she was awake, and, as such, she got to work.

Slipping off the bed easily, Lux crouched and rummaged through the duffels Talon had packed. She did not expect the book to be particularly difficult to find, given its notable size and age, but as she continued to look and yield no text, Lux became increasingly concerned that the assassin had not brought the book at all. Perhaps he had assumed that she could cast the spell without the aid of the text, or maybe he had made a copy only of the pertinent section. Just as the panic started to grip the mage, she found the book and breathed a sigh of relief. Quickly, she cast a transfiguration spell on the item, molding it into a necklace, which she then slipped around her neck. If her spell casting was as sharp as it had been in her college days, Lux would easily be able to transform the necklace back into the original book once she returned to Demacia. If not, well, perhaps the book was better off destroyed anyways.

Lux stuffed the duffel back under her bed and crawled back into the sheets, job well done. Just as she was about to pull her covers up and drift back into sleep, a startling hand pushed hard against her shoulder, forcing her back into the mattress. After taking a small second to regain her nerves, Lux tried to get a read on the situation, and it didn't take her very long to realize the man hovering above her, pinning her shoulders to the bed, one knee precariously between her thighs, was one unhappy assassin.

"Good grief, Talon!" She whispered furiously. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same question." Lux didn't have to be able to see very well to know that he was giving her an extremely fierce stare.

"I was just tossing and turning in my sleep!" She explained. "Or is that not allowed?"

"Tossing and turning doesn't involve spellcraft." His eyebrows pulled together. Even in the dark room, Lux watched as his eyes drifted down to her new necklace. A manly hand slipped underneath the metal and held it up before her.

"What is this?" His deep voice rang through her ears.

"A necklace." She replied dryly.

"It's the book, isn't it?" He wasn't fooled.

"Clearly not, it's a necklace!" Lux tried to fool him, but she knew it was futile.

Lux watched as the assassin took a deep breath, transforming into almost a content sigh, which eventually changed the attitude of his expression from dangerous to, dare she say it, impish.

"I don't normally like to admit when I've been bested," He began, low voice becoming almost playful. "But I know you're no ordinary thief."

"I'm not a thief." Lux denied the accusation. She was a respectable woman, and respectable women did not engage in thievery.

"Uh-huh." The assassin replied easily. By the way his warm breath bounced off her cheeks, Lux could tell the man was drawing nearer. "You're a tried and true book thief."

"At least I don't intend on stealing souls!" The mage retorted.

"Oh but hearts are perfectly acceptable." He countered fiercely, as if she had done him wrong, and, just as Lux was about to inform him that he was guilty of the same crime, she was silenced by a pair of shockingly familiar lips.

She had been waiting for that kiss the entire day, and even though it had been less than twenty-four hours, it had been far too long for the mage. In all the time she had stared out the window, nothing to do, Lux had had ample time to muse and wonder about what it would be like to be kissed by Talon again. Perhaps it would be wistful, like two lovers who had not seen each other in years, or sweet, like a couple on their wedding day, or, worst of all, dull, like a duo who had nothing to be excited about. But it was none of those. Wistful it might have been only by the smallest degree, sweet it most certainly was not, and dull could not describe any moment she ever spent with the man, much less that particular kiss.

As his hand moved up from her shoulder to cradle her jaw, tilting her head slightly to the side to allow him better leverage over her amenable lips, Lux released a small sigh of contentment, unintentionally encouraging him further. The hand on her jaw slowly slipped closer to her chin until his thumb was in position so that he could inch up the slightest bit to reach her bottom lip. Breaking the kiss, he pulled down on the flesh, Lux unconsciously opening her mouth the smallest amount, and, as she did so, Talon returned to the kiss, but that time introducing tongue. His muscle ran easily underneath hers, engaging the mage in a wildly steamy game of tag. Before she knew it, her arms were wound around the assassin's neck, pulling his body close, forcing the man to place his forearm on the side of her head in an attempt to balance himself.

The hand that had been at her chin slowly trailed south, tracing over the contour of her neck, almost tickling her skin, until it reached her shirt. From there it teased around the divide between her skin and the cloth, threatening to slip underneath, but never actually doing so. Casually, his finger moved across her chest and around to the outside curve of her breast. Being quite the skilled multitasker, Talon simultaneously moved his attentions from her lips to her jaw, kissing and sucking all the way back to her earlobe. As his hand circled around her left breast and his teeth bit at her ear, causing Lux's breath to hitch and a deep blush to form on her pale cheeks, the assassin spoke.

"Who knew Demacia could have raised such a kleptomaniac?" He breathed hotly along her neck.

"I'm not a klept - Aah!" The pad of his thumb pressed firmly into her taut nipple, interrupting her sentence.

"Shhh." He scolded huskily. "We don't want to wake the neighbors."

"You're the one who's…" Lux paused to inhale a shaky breath as Talon played with her breast. "Provoking me."

"Provoking?" Lux could feel him smirk as he kissed her neck. "You make it sound so devious."

"Well you…" She struggled a moment to think of the words she was searching for. The fact that his hand was moving south, dangerously close to the band of her pants, was not helping.

"You are a Noxian."

"You say it as if it's a bad thing." Talon mused as his fingers played along the trim of her leggings. "Your own brother married a Noxian. Perhaps it's a familial preference."

"The same must be true of Du Couteaus with respect to Demacians." She countered in a quick breath.

"What can I say." The assassin practically chuckled as he moved back to her lips. "There's not a woman in Noxus who moans quite like you do, Lux."

To prove his point, he pressed his finger into her womanhood, stirring up latent feelings that Lux had been trying to suppress for the entire train ride. He only let her strangled cry ring out for a moment, though, before he muffled it with a heated kiss. Lux returned the kiss desperately, nails digging into his back as she tried to remain in control of her body while pulses of pleasure shocked through her. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how she looked at it, the assassin slowly withdrew his hand and his lips, leaving the mage panting in need and altogether very quiet.

"Don't give me that look, Lux." He replied huskily.

"Why did you stop?" She asked in a nearly heartbroken tone.

"I've learned my lesson." He answered coolly, almost humorously. "I know better than to fuck you when book stealing is involved."

To that, Lux had no reply. Instead, she just lay there, unsatisfied and wanting, watching as the assassin crept out of her view and back up to his bunk. It took three hours before Lux could fully return to slumber, and, when she did, it had not lasted very long. She drifted in and out of sleep for the rest of the morning, altogether very caught up in her thoughts about Talon, not even able to escape him in her dreams.

Just outside The Capital gates, Lux and Talon stood quietly, watching as the train chugged back into the desert, making its way towards Kumungu. Sand whipped furiously around the pair, alluding to the tough and desolate nature of the sea of sand before them. Lux looked briefly up at the stoic assassin, wondering when would be the best time to tell him, politely of course, that now that she had stolen the book she'd be ready to leave. But before the mage had a chance to utter a word of farewell to the man, he stalked off into the sands, apparently ready to make his way to the Oasis of the Dawn.

Frantically, Lux picked up her luggage, ungracefully chasing after the dark assassin. By the time she had caught up to him, they were a good five minutes away from the train station, the markings of a makeshift waiting hut still barely visible in the distance. Lux wasn't sure if Talon had just expected her to follow and go to the oasis without making any sort of preparations or even just taking a night to regain some strength, or if he was simply hoping that by starting the journey she'd have no choice but to decline. Regardless of his thoughts, Lux was not going to travel any further without addressing the situation at hand.

"Talon!" She called out to the man.

He slowly turned around, dark look in his eyes telling Lux that he had probably predicted she'd make a fuss sooner or later.

"I'm not going to travel to the Oasis of the Dawn with you." She stated firmly.

"You'd like to think you aren't." He replied coldly, and then made to turn back around, but not before Lux could correct him.

"I'm not, Talon!" She declared. "I won't help you forge a sword like the one you intend to make."

"I figured you would feel that way." He spoke evenly. "Look, Lux, I really don't want to have to force you."

"Force me?!" She guffawed. "How can you force me? You've lost your bargaining chip!"

The assassin unsheathed sharp blade. "I have plenty others."

"You wouldn't!" Lux was astounded. How could he go from declaring his feelings for her to threatening to kill her in the space of sixteen hours?

"I wouldn't like to." He corrected, gaze intense as ever.

"What if I declined? Would you really kill me, Talon?" She questioned, testing his resolve.

He did not respond, and the dark shadows around his eyes told Lux perhaps he didn't even know the answer to her question.

Her eyebrows furrowed. She paused a moment to ponder his motives. "Why do you want to forge this sword? Who do you really want to kill?"

"That's none of your business." He replied firmly.

"I think it is if I'm to be forging a sword that rips souls from people's bodies." She countered.

Talon said nothing. Lux could tell, by his creased brow and pursed lips, that she was winning the argument. It was clear that he did not want to tell her anything, but he was being driven to extreme odds, something Lux had not seen before. She wondered what could possibly bother him enough to make him resolve to do such evil things.

"Is this about your father?" Lux asked tenderly.

The twinge of anger present in his eyes told the mage she was correct in her assumption.

"You know where he is don't you?"

"I know who holds him captive." He finally spoke, hard voice carrying well even in the desert. "He is not a being who can be killed by normal methods."

Looking curiously at the man, she gestured for him to continue, hoping that he would.

After a moment of contemplation, the assassin spoke. "He belongs to the race of species that heavily influenced the book you hold as a necklace, the Darkin. He does not age, and he does not bleed for long. He seems nearly impossible to kill, but, I suspect that absolution would be a surefire way to rid the world of his filth."

"What makes you think you have to kill him in order to save your father?" Lux questioned, ever the peacemaker.

"What other way is there?" Talon shot back. "He holds him captive in his lair, only to create tension between the powers in Noxus! If I want my father freed, the Darkin has to die."

Sighing, the mage softly shook her head. "You assassins only think of bloody options. Going to extreme measures to accomplish what can be done with only a little bit of subterfuge."

Crossing his arms, Talon regarded the mage skeptically. "What do you suggest, then?"

"How about a little bit of magic? And not the malevolent kind." She offered easily.

"No."

"So magic when you want to create an evil sword is fine, but magic to save you from corruption isn't?" She argued.

"Corruption?" He raised an eyebrow. "What do you care about it, Lux? You have your book."

Well, he was certainly mistaken if he thought she didn't care. Since when did "I like you" mean "I don't care"? For all of his expertise in the bedroom, he was just about lost when it came to understanding her feelings. The mage took a moment to calm herself, inhaling a deep breath to keep herself from raging at the unruly assassin.

"You would sacrifice your livelihood to save your father when, after using the sword, you'd likely just kill him yourself?" She finally said.

"I have better control over my soul than the people mentioned in that book." He declared, focused eyes telling Lux he was intent of setting out what he had intended to accomplish.

"Fine, if you want to think like that, so be it!" Lux turned on her heel, fully prepared to face whatever extortion Talon thought he could do to her.

"Where do you think you're going?!" The assassin yelled, clearly outraged at her decision to leave.

"I'M LEAVING!" She shrieked back. "FORGE YOUR OWN DAMN SWORD!"

She only stepped two feet towards the train station before her upper arm was caught in a firm grasp. Talon turned her to face him, eyes fierce as ever. He said nothing for the better part of a minute. Instead, he just stood there, holding her arm and staring her down, as if debating on what he intended to do. Lux could see the emotions displaying on his face, no matter how hard he tried to hide them. First there was anger, as expected. But it was soon followed by a touched expression, like Talon finally understood that her reasons for denying the mission were less about the sword she'd be forging and more about the man she'd be corrupting. Lastly his facial muscles settled on the calmest expression she had seen that day, and soon after, the assassin spoke.

"Alright, I'll make you a deal." He said evenly. "I'll try it your way. We'll plan some sort of elaborate jailbreak, and if we manage to save my father then I won't bother you about the sword or the book anymore."

Lux liked the sound of that. Just as she was about to accept his terms, the assassin added, "But, if we fail in rescuing my father, then you will march your Demacian ass back here and forge me Faercrist, one way or another, got it?"

She couldn't help but pause to consider the offer. Not that she didn't like it, no she really rather did. Still, the but clause made her rather uneasy. After a few seconds of deliberating, the mage offered the assassin her hand. "It's a done deal, then."

Coolly, Talon returned the handshake. "The plotting is in your hands now, Lux."

Lux couldn't help but to say, "A tactical decision, I think."

In the end, the curious duo returned to the train station they had just arrived at not half an hour earlier, Lux excited at the prospect of a jailbreak. Sure, there was still a lot of information she needed to milk out of the man, but he'd be more willing to surrender it than he had during previous encounters. That and, with any amount of luck, she'd finally be able to see some real action for the first time since she had been a spy in Noxus. But, as Lux and Talon waited in the little hut, prepared to hop in an enclosed compartment and spend another twenty-four hours staring out of a glass window, the mage could not help but feel disappointed that she would be leaving Shurima so quickly, and, as the image of The Capital began to fade away, she promised herself that one day she would return to the desert.