moonshadows

“Dinner was delicious,” he says in a tone normally reserved for detailing methods of torture about to be inflicted. “The pie was unlike anything I have ever had.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Evie replies, voice and body language declaring the opposite. “I’ll bake it again next week,” she continues, making it sound like a threat.

He smirks. “Unfortunately, we most likely won’t be back from the delta in time for dinner.”

The older woman harrumphs; he’s won this round, and she knows it. After a moment, she changes tactics and turns to her adopted granddaughter. “You behave yourself on that trip, you hear me?” she chides, hugging Tessa melodramatically, then taking her cheeks in both hands. “I don’t want to see on the news that Grandma’s little girl murdered the entire city.”

The half-demon grins, expression slightly squished. “I make no promises, Grandma. If my Lord commands me to do something, I’m going to do it.”

The older woman turns back to the smug Warlord. “Her innocence is in your hands, mister. I want you to think twice before you tell her to do anything, and ask yourself if you really need her to kill anyone, or if you can just have her frighten them a bit. And you might try doing your own murdering, you bloody butcher.” She glares at him, unafraid, arms crossed.

“It was good to see you again, Tessa,” Donald says, completely ignoring his wife to hug the grinning girl.

She returns the hug. “Good to see you again, too, Grandpa.”

He steps up beside his still-glaring wife, unsure of whether he should offer the Warlord a hand to shake, or just bow. After a moment, he settles on a half-bow. “It was an honor, my Lord. If your business in the delta is concluded early, feel free to join us for dinner again.”

Startled by the honesty and lack of hostility, the Warlord nods at the older man. “Should the opportunity present itself, I will. Come now,” he says to his Champion. “We will be leaving quite early.”

She hugs Joshua and her grandmother before obediently standing at his side. He almost snakes his arm around her, but at the last second he grabs her by the wrist and pulls her abruptly out of the room.

The walk back is silent. His mind is filled with abrupt motion, structures lurching into bursts of activity only to jerk to a stop as the intent that had powered them is aborted. His sense of responsibility is dashing around madly trying to keep things from devolving into the swarm she saw last week, and everything is too fast, too brief for her to make out what he’s thinking about. Despite this, she’s certain that it is tomorrow’s trip that is whipping his mind into a seething mess. It takes considerable effort to not do anything that would reveal what she’s seeing, either to him or to his guards. If they were alone, she wouldn’t hesitate to do something to distract him and ease the anxiety currently gnawing at him so badly that she can feel her own mind itch in sympathy – but he would have to be dying before he would permit anything less than the appearance of absolute control in front of anyone else, and so she bites her cheek and walks, silent and blank-faced, behind him. When his defenses twitch and slam closed, she isn’t remotely surprised – nor when the jagged slivers of his rage boil out to swarm around him. He doesn’t want her seeing how bad he is – the fear bleeds in spurts from his mind and infects her.

By the time they reach her door and he half-shoves her roughly inside, she is so distraught by the thought of the damage he’s doing to himself that she wants to scream, or destroy something, or burst into tears. She does actually find herself crying as she strips out of her dress, but when she reaches for stretch pants and a loose top rather than pajamas, she realizes that frustration, not misery, is driving her to tears. She zips the bag she’s packed for the next week and carries it to the door, but there is no brooding Warlord waiting for her, nor does he appear and angrily demand physical contact. That kicks the frustration into determination; she knows he was miserable, but it has to be really bad if he’s not coming to see her under any kind of flimsy excuse like he did last time, when he supposedly came to see…

…came to see why she hadn’t…

Her lips peel back in a rictus of slightly-hysterical glee. I didn’t take my hour in the gym today! Ha! I’ll take it now, and if he doesn’t like that I’m not sleeping, he’ll have to come tell me in person – and then I can hopefully calm him down some so he’s not in a bad mood for the trip…

Mind made up, she steps into the Twisting Nether and begins tracing the path of her earlier trips to the gym. The chain of magic that binds her to him is overlapping her earlier trails rather than leading off at an angle, indicating that her star is already at her destination. That just makes her more determined; if he’s there instead of in her rooms or his, that means he needs her that much more.

She steps out onto the rubber mats in a state of mind somewhere beyond merely fearless, the muddiness of such emotions discarded for the crystal clarity of truth and the knowledge of what she must do. The fact that she is about to deliberately attack a very dangerous man currently blinded by his own fury and pain, without being able to give a reason for such a foolhardy act, doesn’t even register as something that should cause apprehension or so much as a moment’s hesitation. There is only the iron certainty that he needs this, that what she’s about to do is the only possible course of action.

The practice glaive lashes out at the target of his unprotected back, but halfway to its destination it is met by a curve of green fire. He bares his teeth in a feral snarl, the other warglaive darting towards her heart, but the motes buzzing around his mind warned her that he would do that, and their blades ring as she blocks. The fight is fast and dirty; she gives ground deliberately, leading him around the room rather than being chased, “cornering” herself on purpose only to slip through the Nether and emerge behind him – but he’s ready for that, and then he does chase her around the room, radiating bloody joy at his dominance over her until his rage is sated enough that the blades retreat. Lips pressed together unhappily, he parries her last attack and steps back. He doesn’t dismiss his glaives, though, and she does not relax out of her fighting stance. There is a fleeting impulse, easily ignored, to be uneasy at how unhappy he looks. He’s never ended a bout this way, but she’s never started one by attacking him from behind, either.

“I did not call for you,” he snarls. “Return to your rooms at once.”

The heat of his fury washes over her, thawing the shell of calm that had sheathed her but leaving her otherwise untouched. “No.”

“No?” The green glow of his eyes flares behind his blindfold like fel lightning, and his voice drops to a menacing hiss. “You dare defy me? I should kill you for that, for the insolence of attacking me!”

“If you do, I won’t have time to re-form and still get enough sleep before we leave.”

He shudders, looking pained. She wants to drop her glaives and step into his embrace, but he’s not ready for that yet. “Why are you here?” he asks, banishing his warglaives and pressing the heels of both hands against his eyes.

“You promised I could have an hour in the gym,” she answers in a small voice, hugging the practice blades to her chest.

That doesn’t explain why she attacked him, and they both know it. However, neither of them bothers to point out that he needed it, or that they won’t be able to spar again for a week.

“You should be sleeping,” he says, but there’s no bite to it.

“So should you.”

He laughs bitterly. Arms crossed, he looks at her as though weighing her worth. The bladestorm retreats, although his defenses are still closed tightly. For a long minute he regards her, and then suddenly he straightens and gestures for her to drop the blades. She does, standing at attention, and he nods in grim satisfaction.

“What are your duties as my tame demon?” he asks coldly. “Answer carefully; this is a test.”

She blinks. A test in more ways than one, certainly; he’s never warned her before. “I hear and obey the words of my Lord,” she answers slowly. They’ve never discussed what her position supposedly entails, but ‘whatever you tell me to do’ seems like a safe enough answer.

For just an instant, he looks surprised and hopeful, and then the glow of his eyes dims as he narrows them. “What are your duties as my Champion?” he demands.

She frowns, thinking hard. They’ve ever discussed this, either. Her mother never specified what a Champion is supposed to do, but somehow she doesn’t think he’s asking for an explanation. No, there is an answer he expects her to give, and the test is whether or not she’s clever enough to give it. “I see what needs to be done and do it,” she says with a confidence she does not feel.

The gratitude that screams momentarily from his mind startles her. He nods calmly, as if only this answer could possibly have been given, then clasps his hands behind his back and turns away from her. The bladestorm swirls around him like a school of fish, then submerges again. She watches in silence for a minute, unwilling to move or speak; he’s nowhere near as calm as he’s pretending to be, and she doesn’t want to push him. Another minute passes in silence, and she carefully threads a tendril through his defenses and peers at the churning chaos of his mind. Part of the fear-construct has broken off and, free of the jagged spike holding the rest stationary, is dashing about while the sense of responsibility chases it fruitlessly. As the fear-piece passes, she identifies it as I’m not stable and wraps it in a veil of I know; I don’t care. His sense of responsibility wastes no time in hauling the squirming thing back and impaling it once again on its jagged spike.

“You know that I am not stable,” he says suddenly, so quietly that the words do not echo. “Now that we are clear on your duties, I expect you to be less hesitant in performing them. You have proven yourself quite competent, enough so that you need not seek my permission or provide an explanation beforehand when you deem it necessary to do your job. I trust your judgment.”

Because I can’t trust my own, his mind cries.

Later, she will allow herself the luxury of emotional reaction. Right now, she has a job to do. A few steps brings her close enough to touch his arm, and in a heartbeat she finds herself crushed against his chest, her breath catching at the way he trembles.

“Do not fail me, my Champion,” he whispers desperately.

It dawns on her that although he’d seemed unbothered by his breakdown the time the shards in his Terminal Boundary got loose, she had mistaken hopelessness for a lack of concern. He’s just as terrified of his mind destroying itself as she is. She presses her cheek against the fel tattoos carved into his flesh, her devotion lapping at his defenses. They open, and she floods his mind with her wordless promise to pour all that she is into serving him. His fear stills as loyalty and admiration wash over it, and the sense of responsibility whines in relief and confusion. When his grip on her relaxes to something more normal, she slips back out of his mind.

“You should try to get some sleep, Kal’shan,” she says softly.

“Hn. So should you. We will be leaving quite early in the morning.”

Reluctantly, he releases her. Equally reluctantly, she steps away. “Good night, Illidan,” she says, cheeks burning, and quickly retreats into the Twisting Nether.

The barest hint of a smile warms his face as he stands in the empty gym.

“Sleep well…Jentessa.”