Fire Ch. 10

"You haven't even offered a name." She stared at him from under the hood, deciding.

"Thea. I have money."

"Can I ask why you want him?"

She paused again.

"It's better if you don't know." He would figure it out soon enough, one way or another. He gave her a humorless laugh.

"No need to be so obvious. Where's Jairus." His eyes narrowed again, and she steeled herself forcing hers to narrow back. She didn't know...she didn't want to know. Cold, horrible thoughts, memories, visions, started clawing their way out of her mind, filling her throat, and mouth, and eyes. She couldn't stop them.

"Where is Darius?" she whispered huskily through the ash in her mouth.

He just watched her. She could feel the trembling in her hands, the burning behind her eyes. Why wouldn't he answer her? Damn it, speak!

Nothing but hard, calculating blue eyes. She wanted to reach across the table and rip them out. Something in her reared up, like a bucking horse trying to tear itself free of its guidelines, furious and terrified, wild eyed. She stood, too quickly, and he reached for something.

"Don't..." she whispered, her voice raw and tight. He stilled but his hand hovered out of sight, ready. She pushed her cloak slowly to the side and drew out her purse so he could see it. She threw it on the table and waited. He didn't look at it. His eyes were still glued to the belt she'd taken the purse from. Her eyes followed his and fell upon the dagger.

She looked back into his eyes and found them staring back up into hers. The expression she saw there was impossible to read, but it made her hands shake even harder...even as she tilted her chin and clenched her teeth, hardening her expression against his questioning eyes. "Well...?" she asked, the quaver in her voice betraying her.

"Is....he dead?" She blinked and inhaled sharply.

"Who are..." his face softened slightly and he almost smiled, causing her to break off.

"Of course not. Of course he isn't. He gave you that then? Or you took it?" She didn't answer. He smirked slightly. His eyes flicked to her hip and back again. He tilted his head, that calculating look returning to his eye. "Keep your money." He reached out slowly and pushed it back across the table to her. "Don't do this thing."

She frowned. "What..." he shook his head cutting her off.

"Don't. He wants you dead."

She wasn't sure what to say to that. So she said only, "I know."

"Let Jai..."

It was her turn to shake her head, shutting her eyes, fighting the burning. "No. It's mine...he's mine...he..." she swallowed, "where is he?" She opened her eyes into his, seeing the winter sky staring back.

"The Wolf's Head."

**

A beggar told her what she needed to know, and for a coin, led her there. Another sign, a recently painted door, forest green, standing loudly in the gray of the alley. The beggar lingered, watching her with small dark eyes as she hesitated. Thea glanced at him then back at the door, her hand pulling away sharply as is opened. A large man stepped out, tall and dark, nearly colliding with her. She froze a moment, then shifted to the side, allowing him to pass. He glanced at her and she turned away, muttering an apology as she slid past him and into the inn.

She made for the back of the place, veering towards a side corridor, feeling as though everyone in the room were watching her. They weren't, but the sensations still drilled between her shoulders like a dull knife. She wanted to pause, catch her breath and decide what it was she was doing, but it was too late. Three men were talking at the end of the hall. One was giving orders. The others were accepting them. The master glanced at her, his eyes giving her a curious look before he turned away and entered one of the rooms. The other two passed her in the hall. Her feet moved beneath her, and she followed them mindlessly.

She felt cold and hot at once, sick, and alive. Terrified. What if anger wasn't enough? She reached under her cloak and wrapped her fingers around red silk. She let the flames come back to her, let the visions crowd into her sightless eyes, let her body move, watching it from a distance, like some indifferent observer. She would know soon enough. If not she would be dead, and it would be over. One way or another...it would be over. The thought gave her some ease, calmed her...the hand on the hilt stopped shaking, and was steady by the time she laid it on the cool metal of the door knob.

He didn't turn around. She locked the door behind her.

"Did Othwyn send you?" His voice made her stomach jump. It was low, dark, and smooth. Familiar. The wry smile on his lips as he turned was also familiar. That sick feeling twisted her stomach once more. She pushed back her hood as an answer. She wanted him to see her face. Needed him to.

Darius had sensed something amiss with the figure as soon as he'd seen him in the hall, and had been unsurprised to hear his quarters breached. In fact he'd left the door unlocked on purpose. 'Confident fool' he'd thought as he listened to him enter and lock the door.

He was expecting an assassin, but he stared with curiosity at the pale woman standing before him. She was Huroth, though no one he knew personally. Yet...there was something familiar about her. He tried and failed to place her face. It was unimportant.

She was not unattractive, despite her pallor. Wisps of auburn hair framed the strong lines of her clear unmarred face, and her lips were full and soft looking. He couldn't see much of her figure, but her posture spoke of a tall, lean, strong body. Her eyes made him wonder though. They spoke volumes, and nothing they were saying said anything about a good time.

They screamed hatred. The golden brown depths swam with a turbulent mixture of pain, and fear, and rage. He braced himself, but she was as still as stone and just watched him. He shifted under her stare, suddenly annoyed.

"Well girl? Cat got your tongue? Is there something you'd like to say?" He smirked at her, trying to goad her into action, or at least into words. He was curios who this pretty girl was, and why she was staring at him like she was thinking of gutting him. But he was not a patient man and his mood darkened rapidly. He tuned his back on her, thinking that might goad her, but he could still feel her just staring that drilling stare.

"If you've nothing to say, then leave, I'm a busy man...rebellions to quash, wars to fight."

"People to murder..." she offered finally, her voice a soft whisper, but steady and cool. He glanced over his shoulder at her and sighed turning back to face her and taking a step forward. He gave her another smirk and cocked a brow.

"Someone you knew I take it?"

He watched her fingers tense and his smirk grew. "Ah, so that's it then. Well it happens woman. War is war." Her calm face broke as the fury in her eyes finally spilled over into the rest of her. She practically shook with it.

"You took everything."

His smile faltered a moment...not from the words themselves, but there was something beneath them which made his spine twitch. It was a desperate, hopeless sound, and it sobered him. He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering again who she exactly she was and why he felt so keenly that he should know her.

Her eyes caught something, drawing her attention violently away, and he watched curiously as she moved slowly to the little table, her face a strange new mixture of emotion. She fingered a necklace she found there, one of silver and coral, one his men had brought back with them. Her hand tightened around it, abruptly, and shoved it into her waistband even as she whirled on him once more, black fury repainting her face. She looked like wrath incarnate. He must have really pissed this one off.

That thought was followed swiftly by sudden recognition. It was her mouth. She had her mother's mouth...and the red in her hair which was caught and reflected by the dim lamp light confirmed the suspicion. This was Maria's daughter. It was a mouth he'd known well...as so many men had. His ease and smile returned. Foolish chit, what did she think she was going to do?

"Did you come so I could finish the job?" He eyed her up and down, imagining what she looked like under the cloak, wondering what else she had in common with her mother. She really didn't look like her supposed father...but that was hardly surprising. His smirk became a leer. "Or perhaps your more like your mother than you appear and hope to buy your life with your body." He chuckled, "You'd be selling it a lot less cheaply than she ever did." He watched the flare of hatred in her eyes twist itself into something unrecognizable.

She took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them. There was a momentary pause.

"Bastard" she hissed and lunged at him, her left hand clawing towards his face. He caught it easily and laughed as he pulled her towards him. She was feisty like her mother too. He wondered if he should kill her right away or keep her around for a bit. His thought was interrupted by a sudden pain in his wrist. His eye flicked down just fast enough to catch the glint of silver before he found himself reaching for his throat, suddenly unable to find air. Choking, pain...blood. He stumbled and fell to his knees, clutching his throat, his wide eyes staring up at the woman standing over him. Her marble face was marked with a single delicate ribbon off blood across one cheek. Her cloak was steeped in it.

Her eyes gazed hotly from her hard face, a curved dagger in her bloodied hands. She loomed over him, transcendent, like a spirit. Impassive and furious at once, terrible to look upon. She was a vengeful wraith, or goddess, or demon.

In the end she was only one thing. She was the last face he saw.

**

Thea watched as he crumbled, felt the damp heat of his blood against her skin, and trembled. She was still alive. He wasn't. She looked from the body to the door. She was still alive. Now what?

She mechanically wiped the blood from the dagger, using a corner of her cloak...a corner not covered in blood, and sheathed it. It slid in so easily, contentedly. She gazed down on the body and waited for something to happen. There was no knock, no alarm, no panic, no horror. Nothing. There was nothing. It was worse. The nothing was worse. She should leave...find something, anything. The door seemed a poor idea, the thought of walking through the room of curious eyes unappealing. There was the window.

She removed her cloak and lay it over the body. It seemed to help.

The shutter swung open easily, inviting the cool air to seep in. She met it and slid out the window. Everything was ease and silence. The voices of the city soft and distant, a murmur of voices, the somber ringing of bells, all humming gently under the late morning sun. She glanced up to see it shining white and mute overhead.

The soft sound of a leather on stone made her turn. A young man in black, with flashing dark eyes, his hand raised...

**

Thea dreamt she was waking. There was a cool gentle breeze on her bare skin, pleasant in the heat of a warm summer's night. Had she left a window open? She shifted with a yawn, stretching languidly before searching for the blankets with a fumbling, half sleeping hand. She sighed when she couldn't find it, and opened her eyes groggily. She must have kicked them off the bed. She groaned in annoyance as she scanned the floor nearest her, then rolled to check the other side, sitting up slowly as she did.

She paused mid turn and found herself unable to move or speak, and could only stare in stunned silence.

Thea gazed up at the tall, male figure looming over her. He stood near her bedside, clothed in dark pants and boots, fitted like a hunters, and white shirt sleeves. His shirt was open at the collar, the ties hanging loose, and the sleeves were rolled back to reveal pale skin stretched taut over hard, tightly muscled arms. His short dark hair was brushed back from the dangerously angular lines of his face, and matched his sharp, near black eyes. Eyes that shone down on her and seemed to pin her to the bed, robbing her of both her will to move and the very breath of her lungs. Eyes that swirled with strange inner fire.

She let out a low animal whimper in the back of her throat, the only sound she seemed capable of making. Her arms snaked around her body and she curled her legs, trying to hide herself, her nakedness, from that fierce gaze. She wanted to cry out for help, demand to know who he was, that he get out of her house, but all she could do was lose herself those gleaming eyes, caught like a sparrow in a weir.

He broke the spell first, and she watched riveted as he bent slowly, retrieving the lost blanket from the floor and lay it over her bent legs. She snatched it up and covered herself, tucking it under her arms to shield her breasts from his view.

"Who are you?" she managed to rasp out finally as he turned and sat at the edge of her bed, his strange, handsome face in profile, gleaming pale and unearthly in the darkness.

"A dream, I suppose." He murmured softly, gazing out toward the un-shuttered window.

"A dream?" He nodded. "What sort of dream?" The strangeness of his existence, here in her room, with looks that no man she knew possessed...it made her believe it. Yes...this could be a dream. He didn't look real. She looked at him more carefully, less fearfully, and was not hard pressed to admit that, perhaps, he was something she might conjure up. A dark fantasy drawn from somewhere in the depths of her lonely mind. His lips twisted into a little smile. His lips were so deep a red.

"Well...I suppose that depends on you sweet one. What sort of dream would you like me to be?" He turned his gaze on her, his red mouth still twisted into a dark little smirk. She may not have spent much time in the company of men, but the promise held in that smile, and in his dark, smooth voice was too immediate to be missed. She felt her skin heat, and her insides melt. His eyes seemed to burn brighter and his smile broadened, seemingly in concert with the spread of the hot blush which snaked up from her throat to redden her cheeks.

"I'd rather it be pleasant." She whispered hesitantly, not sure how to respond to the expression on his face. A little whimper escaped her throat as he bent in towards her and she shivered as long fingers fluttered up the side of her neck to capture her jaw in a delicate vice. His mouth was just a hair's breadth away and she could feel the cool tingle of his breath as it ran over her parted lips.

"I will do my best."

He was against her before she knew what was happening. Her body clung to his instantly, unquestioning. He was hard and cold against her flushed and heated skin. He held her to him with an unbreakable grip, and she found herself welcoming it, reveling in it, in his insistence, in his almost cruel strength. Her own arms released the blanket which separated them and twined about his shoulders instead, gripping him just as tightly while his mouth sought hers and taught her through example how she should respond.

He tasted like so many things she had never know...yet she knew instinctively what they were the moment she tasted them. He tasted like fire, and sex, and desire, and need....but the thing that made her whimper, made her tremble with fear and longing as he pulled away and gazed hotly into her eyes, was that he also tasted like home.

And then it was gone, torn away and ripped from her arms, the dream broken and scattered, scattering into nothingness.

**

Thea came to with a start, her lungs filling quickly with cold, damp air. There was a loud sound in her ears, a gasp, and she realized belatedly that it was her own. The world was spinning, a dark shifting blur of blacks and grays cut sporadically by the slow register of dim torch light. There was a face, a hand on her cheek...it was an unfamiliar face.

She jerked her head back to escape the hand and inadvertently slammed it back against a cold stone wall instead. She knew it was cold, because she could feel the ice of it seeping through her clothes and into her skin.

"Careful," he admonished softly, his hand coming up to cushion the back of her skull. "You've already had a bit of a bump." He touched her forehead gingerly, making her wince in pain as his fingers encountered a tender spot. His own expression reflected hers, twisting in pained sympathy. His eyes were hazel green. They were also smiling softly at her.

She was sitting on the ground, she realized, and he was crouched down before her. Her hands were bound and resting limply in her lap. Her consciousness expanded once more and she registered other figures in the spinning room. Her eyes darted nervously away from his to the men at his back.

"Don't be frightened." He spoke softly, soothingly...as if she were some tetchy falcon in mews to be crooned onto a gloved hand. She ignored him, still watching the dark giants in the shadows. "My men were ordered not to harm you, it was the imperial who gave you the knock. I'm sorry for it. I hope you won't hold it against me."

He smiled and she turned her gaze back to him. The world was slowly orienting itself. The expression on his face was gentle and encouraging, his voice calming. She allowed it when he touched her throbbing forehead.

"A bit of a goose egg you have there."

He ignored her steady glare. It may have been a soothing touch...a gentle one, but it was the wrong one. Foreign.

"Who are you?" She rasped out. "Where am I?" She bit before he could answer the first question.

"South keep."

"Huroth." She coughed. The air was still damp, still cold. She glanced around to see they were in a stone room, a cell. A prison cell. She felt her eyes widen as the realization dawned on her.

The grim faces looming over them looked back at her with dark eyes. She recognized their hawkish, predatory faces, hard mouths, and granite jaws.

"Yes my dear, we've brought you home."

She frowned at him. His face was less hard than the others, handsome, but less severe, and the scattering of gray at his temples suggested he was also somewhat older. Yet there was no mistaking that he was one of them. She pulled away again, but he seemed to be expecting it and held her steadily by the shoulders. His grip was firm and she could feel the warmth of his hands through her shirt.

"There now, none of that. No one here is going to hurt you, you're safe." He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. Her legs trembled slightly with the effort of holding the rest of her upright.

"Then why am I bound? Why am I in this prison?" she muttered, looking down at her wrists. He reached for the knife at his belt and slipped it though the rope. She watched it slide to the floor. He smiled an apologetic smile at her when she looked back up. The smile didn't quite erase the concern and weariness she saw lingering in his eyes.

He chuckled.

"Well my dear, it seems we all of us had underestimated you. I didn't want to make Darius's mistake and give you the chance to stick me before I explained myself properly." His arm was still around her shoulder and his free hand took her elbow, guiding her out of the cell. "That was you who did Darius in, was it not?" she glanced at him then averted her eyes to the floor. She managed a curt nod, but her voice was gone.

He squeezed her shoulders briefly as he led her down the murky hall, the other men fanning out around them like a circular wall of flesh.

"Don't fret my lady. Enemy of my enemy."

"You're no friend of mine." She managed, her voice still rasping harshly in her ears.

"I'd like to be." He murmured back, seemingly unfazed by her petulance. She remained silent , watching the moving wall before her as it led them through stairs and halls and what looked like a barracks...if the large numbers of heavily armed men rushing about was any indication. They looked busier than they should. Some were shouting out orders.