Solaufein lay on the floor of his quarters and tried not to think or feel. Anything to blot out the pain of his back, torn to shreds by the priestess's snake whip. Not his priestess, but another that had decided to take him to bed and been infuriated by his refusal. Really, it had been idiotic to say no and he knew it, but he'd become bolder over the past few months. Not that it was any consolation to his tortured back and half of his face. He knew bone was visible, but the worst part was the venom. It burned in his veins and left him with a fever and quivering muscles. He heard the door open and muttered a curse against the stone. It was probably Nizana coming back to laugh at him.
Instead, he heard a rustle of fabric and someone knelt down next to him. He recognized the scent, soft and pleasant like a surface wind that always seemed to calm him down and bring him back to center. His priestess. If he hadn't been in so much pain, he would have said her name. Instead, he let out a hiss when he felt her shift him ever so slightly.
"Oh, Sol," she said. He wasn't certain if she was angry or unhappy or both. "Who did this to you?"
He groaned and then felt soft fingertips touch his hand. Healing energy flowed through him, flooding across his tortured back to slowly mend muscle and knit skin closed. There was so much damage, but she was an excellent healer even if that was not her general affinity. "Thank you," he managed to get out. It was painless. That had never happened before—normally the healing spells of priestesses left him in agony as punishment for being stupid or slow enough to be injured. Instead, there was just a pleasant feeling of warmth and a tingling through his back. He gingerly picked himself up when the healing had finished, swaying slightly.
His priestess was there to steady him, smoothing her hands across his bare back and tracing her fingertips along his spine. There was not a trace of scar tissue left and she surely knew that. All the same, she seemed intent upon making sure for herself. "What happened?" she said more softly. He knew the query for information couldn't really be counted as a request, but he didn't want to tell her. Not when it would throw her right into a power struggle with another priestess. Nizana Zolond was not a noble, but only barely. She was still the most influential matriarch in the House short of the Matron Mother herself.
Why did he think there would be any trouble between them? Maybe his priestess would find his insolence earlier just as aggravating. After all, a male did not say no to a priestess. Or maybe she would just laugh and take amusement at his pain. That didn't explain why she'd healed him, of course, but he was operating off of everything he'd experienced in the past.
"It's not important," he said, ready to sweep the whole incident firmly under the rug. He stopped before he could say more, stilling when she cupped his cheek with a hand and brushed her thumb over his lips.
"Solaufein, what happened?" she said more firmly. She did not look like she wanted to argue, and that meant he was going to lose. Immediately. This was one of the few situations he'd ever been in where he couldn't feign ignorance. His thoughts started to move quickly. How could he talk his way out of trouble? Was it worth it to lie? She wouldn't be happy if she found out, which was virtually inevitable. He stopped himself, fully aware of what he needed to do: tell the truth.
"I said no," he admitted, gaze immediately dropping. He didn't want to see anything in her eyes, and even more than that, knew the privilege would be revoked if he made her angry. Well, he assumed. He'd never managed to anger her sufficiently to reach that point, which was a blessing and something he aimed to keep that way.
"And who, exactly, tried to get you to bed?" she said. He could definitely hear a note of anger and the hand against his cheek stiffened abruptly. He didn't think she would hurt him very badly, but he wasn't exactly certain. After all, he'd had many a priestess vent on him and it had never been pleasant.
"Nizana Zolond," he said, tensing in expectation of a blow simply because of her tone. But instead, he heard her make a soft noise of anger even as her hand stroked his cheek. It was soothing. He found himself leaning into her hand a little bit, letting his eyes drift half-closed as he relaxed. After the healing, he felt better than he even had when he first woke up. It was late now and he knew that meant that she'd come in from some kind of patrol. Or perhaps not. There were times where she came to see him, exhausted and in pain, where she had never left the city. Something sometimes happened in the rites of Lloth that he didn't understand. Perhaps it had something to do with the darkness he occasionally saw moving behind her eyes. It had never frightened him, but it did worry him sometimes. Whatever it was set an invisible weight on her shoulders that he didn't always have the power to remove. But he could make her forget it for a while.
"It won't happen again," she said firmly, grey eyes studying his. They were familiar now, so much so that he could see the faint suggestions of stress and exhaustion around them that she'd tried to hide so well. She'd come to him for some reason even though she didn't seem particularly in the mood for the game they always played. For months now, he'd been her lover and every time seemed better than the last to him. He had no idea what his priestess was thinking so much of the time. She kept her world closed to him in many ways and he was grateful for that. It put him in the place where her secrets were not for him to know and that meant there was nothing for the Matron or his sisters to wring out of him. It protected him from all the things that troubled her. But when she was with him, she seemed to let other walls fall low. He thought of her mind as a gem with many facets, some hidden and others revealed by a soft light.
"Thank you, Revered Llolfaen," he said quietly, a wave of relief flooding over him. When his priestess promised something, she always delivered. And he was grateful that he wouldn't have to suffer under Nizana's hand again. How she would manage that, he didn't know. But his priestess was resourceful if nothing else and powerful as well. It was likely she could simply intimidate the cleric into staying away. Few were willing to pick a fight with a daughter of House Duskryn, if only for fear of a terrible wrath being visited upon them. Even Nizana would not cross that line in the sand. Not with his priestess.
Her delicate fingers ran down his chest, leaving a tingle in their wake. "You're mine," she said with that familiar, almost teasing smile. But there was something else in it today: concern. "No one else's."
He shuddered pleasantly at the touch. "Always, Revered Llolfaen. You seem tired."
She sighed. "And sore," she admitted. "Patrol was unpleasant." He noted she had stopped at least long enough to clean up and change before she came here. Did she care what he thought of her or did she just want to was all the dirt and discomfort from the wilds away?
"Let me take care of it?" he asked, gently drawing her into his arms until her body was pressed against his again. He never tired of feeling those curves. He had a plan that would keep his hands on her as well as taking some of the stress out. A massage rarely hurt anyone—and really, it was the dagger to the kidney doing the hurting, not the massage itself. She would have to trust him, but he'd been in her bed often enough to know that she did to some extent. The drow were supposedly promiscuous, and maybe were to some degree, but they were also very discriminating about their partners because anything could happen with armor and clothes off. That was why so many encounters ended with one party limping off and the other victorious. Even a female could occasionally run afoul of a less than obedient male, though she would never admit it. That never happened to nobles for fear of the reprisal, but in the lower echelons of the Houses and city itself, he knew it was an at least occasional problem. Sometimes a more powerful male wanted to vent after being a priestess's toy. He remembered feel that way not so long ago, but since he'd been with his priestess the feeling had faded away. He no longer felt used and thrown away.
"I'm not going to say no to that kind of offer," she said with a laugh, shedding clothes and lying down on his bed. She knew what he was planning and actually seemed secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't hurt her. Solaufein realized it was the first time she'd been in his rooms and smiled a little to himself. It almost made an even better picture to see her like this in his own bed. "You can tell me about this new sword and shield of yours that you mentioned before I left."
She always picked safe topics to talk about, things that wouldn't get him in trouble with the Matron for revealing them. Sometimes he slipped up and said something that might have been protected information from his position as Weapons Master, but she never said anything about it as far as he could tell. His priestess tended to hold onto secrets, both her own and other people's. It was an advantageous trait, because then she could always bring them out when she needed the upper hand. But he wasn't really worried about being left in that position, no matter how foolish that was.
He was more than happy to fill her in about the metals and techniques that went into forging his new armaments. He knew that she probably didn't actually care about the details but just wanted to hear the sound of his voice. He didn't understand why it reassured her, but he supposed he felt the same when she spoke to him. It was as enrapturing as any enchantment. As his hands started to work on her back, he found dozens of knots in the muscles there. His priestess must have been in serious pain. He heard her hiss a little as he rubbed them out methodically, but she didn't snap at him or complain. "I've seen fewer knots in a whole rug," he said ruefully. "What happened?"
"Derro," she said, shifting a little. He knew that the pain would fade now that her muscles were relaxing. Before he really realized what was happening, she had rolled over and he was being pulled gently into her arms. When he lay down with her and pressed a kiss to her temple, he heard his priestess sigh contently. "I've waited all week for this."
"Mmm," he hummed in agreement, more than willing to admit that he felt the same. She was too tired to do anything more than hold him and be held right now, which was fine with him too. He could wait. He would always wait if it meant that reward at the end. He pulled the covers over them and relaxed at the gentle, featherlight touch down his back as she lay with her forehead touching his.
As her finger smoothed patterns over his skin, he saw a little flicker of something in her eyes and a faint tightening of her jaw. "I should have been here to protect you," she said quietly.
Solaufein felt something warm in his chest at that. No one had ever wanted to shield him from pain or suffering before. He shifted and pulled her close so she was laying half on his chest with her head tucked under his chin. She couldn't touch his back now, so she sketched patterns gently on his pectoral muscles. "You were here to heal me," he pointed out softly. "That's all I could have asked for. Nizana got nothing she wanted."
"Brave of you," his priestess said. She let her hand lay flat over his heart as if it reassure herself that it was still beating. "Stupid, but brave."
"Oh, I know. But why give her the satisfaction?" he said, comfortable in their current positioning. He covered her hand with his own. "You have me now."
Her hand curled into a fist and he heard her pull in a deep breath, but then she exhaled slowly as if calming herself back down. "You're right," she said quietly. "Nizana can wait until tomorrow."
He felt his priestess press a kiss to his collarbone, then another next to it, then another. They seemed more for reassurance than like she was planning on starting something. They both knew she was much too tired for that. Divine magic warmed his skin, seeping out of her fingertips where she brushed against him. He heard and felt her sigh, his arm wrapped around her. "I should go. I didn't mean to intrude on your day off."
"I am glad you did," he said. When he felt her shift to get up, he added, "You can always sleep here."
She nodded against his chest. After twenty minutes or so of murmuring back and forth between them, her breathing began to slow and even out until finally he could feel that she was asleep. In her sleep she stayed curled around him, her hand still resting over his heart.
Now that she was no longer awake to laugh at his sentiment, he had courage enough to stroke her hair gently. She always seemed more fragile when all the masks she wore for the world were abandoned in favor of slumber. He let his hand shift downward, fingertips tracing the edge of her ear and then her jaw. He could still remember the first time that they'd kissed vividly. How long had it been? Two years now, or at least something very close. It wasn't every day that he saw her, but it was often enough that word had made its way around. Nizana's demand of him had been as much a power play as attraction, if not more so. It would have been a serious insult, had it been successful. But instead people were likely going to hear that she'd been refused by the Weapons Master. It was hard to keep anything a secret in a world so invested in ferreting them out. He didn't really care, no matter what awkwardness it caused between the Matron and Nizana. Not when he was here, his arms around his priestess.
Did she know that she held his whole world in the palm of her hand? Solaufein wasn't certain what love was. He'd heard the stories from human traders and the slaves around the House complex. At first he'd laughed, but now? He understood the appeal of holding tight someone who meant so much. And if this wasn't love, it would do.
She stirred in her sleep a little, lips moving. He heard her make a soft noise that sounded like a note of fear. Without even thinking, he smoothed a hand over her hair. "I'll protect you," he murmured. If she had been awake, she might have protested at the notion that she even needed protection. Particularly from a male. But right now, those words seemed to reach her in her dream and she stilled. His priestess was always plagued by nightmares no matter how tired she was when her head hit the pillow. She had mentioned once, offhandedly, that they were less vivid when he was around. He wasn't certain what to think about it. But at this moment, it worked to his advantage. He didn't want to see her suffer in her dreams any more than he wanted to see her suffer in the waking world.
Now that she was at peace, he gently drifted off to sleep.