She had always known this day would come; she'd just hoped it wouldn't come so soon. The inevitable clashing of two stubborn wills, demanding submission with no hope of compromise. They were just too different.

Two months. She had be given two months. She never should have listened to Vex, never should have gone snooping around in his bedroom. It was no longer funny.

They are having dinner together, in her home atop the city of Markarth. Argis had been relieved of his duties and had chosen to spend his night down in the inn, reveling with his companions instead of serving the Thane he so despised. There were candles and incense, because she'd always been a romantic in denial, and she had bathed in rose water that afternoon. She knew she was lovely, but he put her to shame.

At least until he opened his mouth.

Ondolemar's green eyes are narrowed slits, his fork clenched tightly in his left hand and his seasoned steak only half eaten. She meets his glare with her own, breathing deeply to calm her boiling Beast Blood, and with it she can smell his rising anger, hear his thrumming heartbeat. She does her best to keep the gold from her eyes.

"You are so quick to dismiss your heritage," he tells her, white-blonde hair flickering like fire in the low candlelight. "To turn away from your own people."

"My people," she says, only barely keeping the growl from her voice, "Are those of Skyrim, kinship or no."

He snorts. "You sound so much like them," he accuses. "Men. They are beneath your notice."

Her nostrils flare and she cannot keep her snarl locked away. "No one is beneath me," she retorts, digging her nails into the edge of the table. She wants to throttle him. "No one man is greater than another purely because of the circumstances of his birth."

"We are the firsts, Elismyra," he snaps, tossing his utensils aside so he can fold his arms over his broad chest. "Tamriel was ours, from the beginning of time! Why should we not be proud? Why should we let the true outsiders rule our lands, claim themselves our equals? We -"

"The Aldmer would be ashamed of the Dominion, Ondolemar," Elismyra hisses, and the candles at the end of the table sputter and flare dangerously. "Your impossible narcissism, your cruelty, your overwhelming need to prove your hollow superiority!" She closes her eyes, inhaling deeply to quiet the wolf, to force the dragon down. "Are you even aware the Altmer outside of the Dominion loathe you?" At his incredulous scoff, she bares her teeth. "It's because of you humans look at us and see the people who slaughtered their families, the ones who forced them into submission, who stole their god from them."

"You don't even believe in Talos!"

"Of course not," she snaps. "He was mortal. But I share his blood, and I will not deny his existence." And a mortifying thought suddenly occurs to her. She swallows the fear in her voice when she says, "Would you have purged my line, if I had been in the Isles, knowing what you do? That I am dovahkiin, a Nordic hero, descendant of Tiber Septim and not one of your precious Aldmer?"

Ondolemar remains silent, and he could not have cut deeper if he tried.

Her eyes prick and the dov inside is furious, bellowing its wrath and demanding he acknowledge her power, her strength, her will. She lets it, lets the anger consume the throbbing ache like kindling, and she can feel it when her eyes bleed to yellow. "Am I tainted in your eyes, Ondolemar?" She snarls, and shoves away from the table so she can stalk about the room, tremors shivering down her spine. "Do you think of me as a filthy half-breed, a traitor to the race I claim?"

"No!" he retorts, leaping from his chair so he can block her path. "You are the best of us, the pinnacle of what we strive to achieve!" He snatches her chin in his hand and she growls, but he is undeterred as he forces her to look at him. "And you would throw it away for those who spit on you simply because your ears are pointed! Your own housecarl cannot bear the sight of you!"

"Because of you!" she bellows, ripping away from him lest she strike him. "Because of the Dominion and the hatred they have spread! I lived in the Imperial City for centuries, witnessed the Oblivion Crisis with my own eyes! I was never reviled there, never seen for anything more than I was, until you and your thrice-damned Thalmor bludgeoned the rest of us into submission!"

"We saved the Isles!" he roars, and lightning sizzles over his skin. "Without us, our people and the Empire would never have survived the daedra! We deserve the recognition, the acknowledgment that we are greater!"

"At what cost?" she spits, and her teeth are too pointed in her mouth. "So the rest of us would be trampled underfoot, so you could pitch the world into a war and soak the ground with the blood of innocents?" She advances, getting in his face, and he snarls at her fanged scowl. "So hordes of Altmer children would be raised in fear of men, because they had the misfortune of being born with golden skin? So women would be beaten and raped by Nords on the roadside, trying to stamp out the 'inherent arrogance' and show them exactly what they think of elvenkind?" Her vision is going dangerously red. "So Dunmer and Bosmer can be treated like filth when they have done nothing wrong? So they can be exiled, humiliated, broken down and scorned because they might be Imperial spies?"

Ondolemar's face is pale but his snarl is venomous, and Elismyra's beast is howling in her head so loud she almost doesn't hear his reply. "Such is the price of reform," he barks, fists clenched, and it feels as if he has punched her in the gut. "Their suffering is for the greater good of our people."

For a moment there is nothing but silence, save for their ragged breathing and the hiss of barely controlled magic, and Elismyra cannot believe what she is hearing. The ire boiling in her gut vanishes, and instead she is filled with nothing but cold disbelief. She feels her teeth blunt and her eyes widen, and her voice comes out in a hoarse croak. "How can you say that?" she whispers, bewildered and aghast and so, so hurt. "How can you say they don't matter? How can you not care?" She turns from him so she does not have to see his flaming eyes, the conviction in them, the unfaltering belief in his own words. "What good is a government that cares nothing for the lives of its people?"

He tries to touch her but she shakes him off violently, letting the electricity crackle across her skin so he is forced to back away. It is like a yawning pit has opened in the place of her heart with the realization of his callousness.

"The Dominion -"

"The Dominion," she cuts him off, whirling on her heel so he can see the wild hurt in her eyes, "Is a fucking blight; a putrid, disgusting disease." She hears him inhale sharply, knows she has struck a blow, and she is not sorry for it. "I am not one of your people, Ondolemar. Not if that is how you see them."

"Elismyra," he says, and he sounds like a man at his wit's end. "You know how I see you."

She laughs, and it is a hopeless sound, entirely hollow and with no hint of mirth. He flinches to hear it. "Yes," she says, venom dripping from every word, "Dispensable, a tarnished coin to be used as payment for the 'greater good.'"

He is silent, and she does not know whether she wants to laugh at finally having rendered him speechless, or sob because he is not the man she had hoped he could be. "I thought…" she starts, and wants to pull the words back in as soon as she says them. He jerks in surprise, staring at her in such open dismay she is almost convinced he means it. "I thought you were different." And she feels her shoulders slump, the fight ooze from her muscles and her wolf howls its grief into the void in her chest. "I thought you could feel."

"Of course I do," he tells her, and if he sounds a touch desperate, she is sure she is imagining it. "I joined the Aldmeri Dominion because the High Elves had given everything to ensure the people's safety, had fought to keep us from extinction. Because they were the only ones doing a damn thing to keep Tamriel from falling apart."

Elismyra snorts. "And yet you dismiss the people you fought for as beneath you," she tells him, and he has no answer for that. "You condone the suffering of your kin to further your own ends. What if had been me, Ondolemar?" She ignores his sharp intake of breath, her green eyes snapping up to meet his own. His jaw is clenched so tightly a muscle feathers in his cheek. "What if it were me in the slums, beaten and abused? In Elenwen's dungeons, as Rulindil," she spits the man's name, wishing she could kill him again, "Flogged me for no other reason than he could?"

"Never," he vows, but she does not believe him. "I would never allow it."

"But you would for someone else?" she bites back, desperately trying to keep the tears from her eyes. "You would let it happen to another? What makes my suffering any more important than theirs?" And she presses forward, because she can see his jaw working and knows she finally has his attention. "Whatever the hell I am to you, one of your prisoners was for someone else. The elves you purged in the Isles, the human men and women you lock in your dungeons. They all had lives. Family and friends and lovers and people who cared about them." Her next words come out in a snarl, poisonous and sharp. "And you killed them because they had the spine to disagree with your fanaticism."

Silence.

"So what about it, Ondolemar?" she challenges, stepping into his space and looking him square in the eye. His pupils are dilated, his beautiful eyes narrowed to slits. "Here I am, spewing blasphemy about your precious Aldmeri Dominion. Every officer in your organization wants my head on a platter, Altmeri blood or no." His nostrils are flaring and his fists are clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Are you going to drag me off to Elenwen and subject me to your interrogations? Your loyalties say you should. Or are you going to let me be because you're too selfish to give me up, because you can't bear the thought of losing your trophy," She spits the word, hating the truth of it, "Even though you've dragged thousands of innocent people to their deaths for far less?"

Ondolemar says nothing, his breathing heavy and his face flushed with either rage or horror; she doesn't know. As the silence drags on and he continues to stare at her blankly, as if he cannot possibly fathom her, Elismyra makes a choice. One that rents the very breath for her lungs, rips what little there is left of her heart to tattered ribbons.

She will not continue this sham of a relationship with a man so caught up in his own ideals he cannot see what they have done to him.

Throwing her shoulders back and valiantly ignoring the wetness on her cheeks, she steps away from his heat. "Get out," she commands him. "Leave my home and do not return, if you cannot see the truth of what you have done. I will not share my bed and my heart with a man such as you."

That, at least, draws a reaction, and he finally speaks. "And if I refuse?" He steps toward her, ignoring her attempt to distance herself from his person. "If I say I am yours, just as you are mine? If I renounce my allegiance to the Dominion?"

Her startled bark of laughter makes him jump. Elismyra smiles with no trace of light. "You must take me for a fool, if you think I would believe that." She crosses her arms, stubbornly meeting his hard gaze. "You have served the Thalmor for centuries, Ondolemar. I am not so arrogant as to believe I have the power to sway such loyalty."

He merely stares at her, empty and silent.

"Report me to Elenwen, if you wish," she tells him as she turns away, so he cannot see the heartbreak in her eyes. "I will be gone before the sun rises. You needn't worry about hiding my identity; I won't speak of our courtship to anyone who would hurt you."

His hands are on her arms, and she does not have the energy or the will to throw him off. So she closes her eyes and bites her lip, praying he cannot feel how her shoulders shake. "Myra," he pleads, and what little willpower she has left in her begins to crack. "Do not do this."

"I have to," she says in a voice barely above a whisper. "Before I am unable to let you go. I cannot share my life with one who believes such vitriol."

He turns her swiftly, his mouth on her own before she knows what has happened, and she does not have the strength to push him away. So she lets him kiss her, lets him sweep his tongue into her mouth, lets his hands clutch at her so tightly she knows there will be bruises. His white-blonde hair slides between her fingers like fine silk, and she focuses on the sensation, trying to imprint it into her memory. The feel of his calloused fingers on her neck, the softness of his lips and the urgency of his kiss.

She pulls away first, taking his sharp face into her hands as she forces herself to step away. He grasps her wrists in his fists, bracing his forehead on hers as he attempts to hold her in place. His breathing is labored and he will not look at her. She is not surprised.

Gently tugging her hands from his own, Elismyra turns away, moving to her pack where it rests against her bedroom door frame. She slings it over her shoulders in silence, knowing if she does not leave now, she might never muster the will again.

"Goodbye, Ondolemar," she tells him, without looking back, and steps into the frigid midnight, leaving him alone and silent in front of her roaring hearth.