moonshadows

"They'll arrive sometime tonight," State says.

The Warlord frowns. Tomorrow morning - Week's Dawn - would be the most auspicious time to meet with the small delegation from the delta, but it would mean sacrificing his bonding session. Again. Rescheduling it for after the meeting will be risky; he does not want a week's worth of built-up irritation potentially fouling him up. On the other hand, rescheduling it earlier would mean depriving Tessa of her visit with her family. While she would likely give it up in a heartbeat at his command, he does not want to ask her to do that.

Her gentle touch brushes the edge of his mind and he banishes his churning emotions before inviting her in.

I don't mind rescheduling our bonding session. Am I coming with you to meet them?

Of course, he snaps at her, simultaneously bristling and drawing her deeper into his mind. After a moment, he loosens his reflexive mental grip and offers wordless apology.

"I will meet with them in the eleventh hour tomorrow morning," he says coldly before State starts wondering where his attention is. "You are dismissed."

The chubby minister retreats.

Before he can move, she is behind him with her hands on his shoulders, kneading gently. His surprise dissipates under the soothing contact, both physical and mental. Yes, it makes sense that she should substitute this act so that both their illusions may remain intact. Just in case.

Who's the next appointment? she asks silently, and it all becomes clear to him.

If you are willing to sacrifice our sparring session-

Of course! A pulse of devotion and adoration accompanies the thought.

Her hands withdraw, as does her mind, and he strides out of the room as though nothing had occurred. Instead of heading straight to the gym, he detours into the office of his secretary. For all that she's followed him around for the last week, this is someplace she hasn't seen and she pays close attention to everything. Drifting thought-motes from the guards indicate that the ancient, withered woman's name is Gladys and that she was the Prime Minister's secretary before his untimely death. She is sour and disapproving to everyone regardless of station or disposition, and the Warlord's office is just on the other side of the wall. The guards have never been allowed inside.

Leaving the task of scheduling in Gladys's cold, gnarled hands doesn't take very long. It also doesn't take long for her to realize that they're not going to the gym, and she chides herself for not seeing it sooner. Of course they're not going to the gym, they're holding their 'bonding session' now which means her rooms so that she can oil his horns. At her door, however, he keys in the lock sequence and pauses.

"This station will be removed," he announces. "There is no longer any need for outside monitoring, as my demon now obeys my wishes exclusively. You will remain to ensure that her quarters are secure."

"Yes, my Lord!" the two guards chorus, saluting smartly and with some relief.

She follows him inside, the door closes, and she drops the illusions as she goes for the oil. Before she can get more than two steps past him, however, his arms go around her - wings and all - and he pulls her back against his chest. Uncertain, she checks his mind – but everything is whirling too fast for her to be able to tell what’s going on beyond ‘not hurting himself’. After a minute, his arms tighten, then relax.

“Fetch the oil,” he growls almost into her ear, his breath stirring her hair.

Even implying slow, painful death should she not obey, his voice sends a shiver of excitement down her spine that flares out to the tips of her wings.

“Yes, Kal’shan!”

At her fervent reply, he lets go and watches with amusement as she dives for the desk drawer where the bottle of oil is kept. The reassertion of his control over her quiets the trembling uncertainty that had gripped him, and he lounges insolently in the armless chair as she applies oil to the soft cloth. The faintly spicy scent of the oil is beginning to soothe him by association before she even touches cloth to horn, and he makes a mental note to find out what’s in it. If the association gets strong enough, he may look into wearing the scent as a way to stave off irritation without needing to make himself vulnerable like this. In the meantime, however, he fully intends to enjoy every second of the devotion she is lavishing upon him. With the soft cloth caressing his horns, he relaxes into the luxury of not thinking.

As soon as the anesthetic has taken effect, she leaps into action. There’s a lot of work to be done, and not nearly enough time. First, she creates the elastic ties her evenings have been devoted to developing, and binds together the pieces that keep breaking. With how violently his mind functions, she dares not try to keep them from snapping again, but the resilient nature of the ties will bring the broken halves back together and let them keep functioning. Hopefully. If last week is anything to go by, he will be waiting for her to return from Week’s Dusk dinner, and she will be able to check and see if the experimental ties served their purpose. As a control subject, she leaves one problem area untouched. If the elastic ties work as intended, she will need an unaltered pair of matched halves to see if breakage even occurred.

Once the usual damage has been seen to, she turns to the pieces of machinery she’d marked during her mornings and promptly stumbles to a halt. Thousands of years of being broken and forcing himself back to functionality have resulted in a twisted conglomeration of parts that are unlike anything she’s seen. Tentative nudging only proves that she can’t even predict how the various sections move. How is she supposed to fix this?

One deep breath. Another. One step at a time. Focus on what can be done, and do it.

The machinery is rusty; that’s where some of the damage comes from. She can start fixing that, at least. Most of the subjects she worked with in school were badly damaged – that was part of the challenge of the assignment – and while most of her classmates just muscled their way through the rust and corrosion, she’d always lacked that brute strength. The thin, oily substance she found a pattern for deep in the archives was developed specifically to lubricate rusted mental machinery while also dissolving the corrosion. Applied regularly, it would eventually help the subject’s mind recover. She’d only ever used it sparingly, a secret weapon held in reserve that her classmates never detected in her work. Now she sprays it liberally over the dry, scratched metal, taking special care to get it into every crack and crevice. It will need to be applied as often as possible, and until she can figure out the motions of his strange mental machinery, this is as much as she can do.

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He comes back to himself gradually, the pain-free haze not quite hiding the feeling that something is out of place. As reluctant as he is to resume what passes for his normal thought processes, the lack of…something…nags at him and he shoves the pleasant haze aside. Immediately, the problem becomes apparent.

Tessa is gone.

Panic surges through him, power flaring at the tips of his clawed fingers, ready to incinerate her kidnappers, but there is no sign of forced entry. The physical world fades out – partially because he wills it to, but mostly because fear has temporarily wrested control from him – and he checks for signs of recent spellcasting. Nothing. Just as he is about to step into the Twisting Nether to follow the chain that binds them together, a dark-purple cloud of living energy hurtles out of her bedroom and wraps slender arms around him.

The instant her fingers touch his skin the panic starts bleeding out of him. Without fully realizing how it happened he is holding her tightly, both in his arms and inside his mind, while her frantic apologies wash over him like a summer rain.

I didn’t mean to worry you!

I know, my Champion.

I’m sorry, my Kal’shan!

“You’re safe,” he murmurs into her ear, one hand lightly stroking the ridged surface of her horns. “That’s all that matters.”

She subsides at feeling his touch, still bleeding agonized apology into his mind that conversely reassures him. How can he fear that she will ever abandon him, when she is so distraught over being unexpectedly out of sight for a few minutes? Despite his blind panic, he is calm long before she is and the unique experience of giving tactile reassurance further sooths him. When she finally stirs and withdraws from his mind, he loosens his embrace enough to tilt her chin up, smiling faintly at her tremulous expression.

One thumb brushes her lips and she looks at him, calm and adoring, willing to submit wholly to his will. If he were to…surely, she would forgive him? But no, she is a child, such things would not be proper.

“Finish your preparations,” he growls, forcing the tender moment back into the familiar territory of master and servant. “Joshua will arrive shortly.”

Her cheeks flush a darker lilac as she remembers that she is half-dressed, something that didn’t even register while she was pressed against him in frantic apology. His lips curve into a slight smirk as she retreats to her bedroom, and the illusion of modesty. Yes, he could watch if he chose, and she is no doubt aware of that – but there was no hesitation when she offered to let him watch her from afar through the monitoring node. No, she laid every iota of privacy at his feet as a gift, a measure of her devotion.

Does she want him to look, he wonders? Is she hoping that he will be a shameless voyeur, spying on her in her most vulnerable moments? Perhaps, in the future, he will selfishly claim every second of her life as his, but not today. She’s just a child. It is enough to know that he can; that very fact negates the need to.

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Preoccupied with thoughts of the histrionics sure to come, Joshua doesn’t notice Tessa’s guards giving each other nervous looks – nor the presence of the Warlord’s guards. He knocks on his niece’s door, and it is only when his Lord calls for him to enter that he realizes something is different. With more than a little trepidation, he pushes the poor open enough to slip inside, and shuts it carefully behind him. As he turns back to the room, he is forcefully struck with the realization that he has never seen Tessa and their Lord together outside of the public eye. Somehow, even with the hints he’s seen, he didn’t expect his niece curled up on the couch like the teenage girl she is, snuggled up against a very smug-looking Warlord who has his arm around her.

“Hi, Uncle Josh!” she chirps cheerfully, looking for all the world like an ordinary teenager in love. When she makes a motion to stand up, however, their Lord’s arm tightens and holds her still. Cheeks lightly flushed, she snuggles back into his embrace.

The Warlord’s grin widens, the proprietary self-satisfaction of a film villain who has the girl on his arm, the world in his clutches, and the hero at his feet. Slowly, somehow afraid to break eye contact, Joshua nods. That seems to have been the right thing to do; the predatory aura softens and the Warlord gently brushes Tessa’s cheek with his other hand, expression now a mixture of awe and adoration. The message is clear: regardless of the time she may have spent as part of his family, she belongs to the Warlord now, and he will do anything in his considerable power to ensure that she comes to no harm.

Mother’s going to have an absolute fit, Josh thinks with resignation. No matter how many times it’s explained to her, she refuses to accept that Tessa isn’t the thirteen-year-old she appeared to be when she arrived. The idea of her “little girl” dating anyone sends her into throes of melodrama. I dread what will happen when she sees them together…

“I expect you to return by the tenth hour,” he says in the language of his birth, and his Champion beams at him.

“Of course, my Honored Star!”

The encircling arm retreats; she stands up, smoothing out the ruffles in her yellow sundress, and throws one last look of delighted adoration at him before following her uncle out the door.