World of Warcraft®

When evening falls on Silvermoon in muted colors (gold, scarlet, subtle auburn), he remembers home. Trisfal autumns, the parched scent of leaves, cool dusk. He wonders briefly if he’s grown tired, and knows she must have. Clair Laurent’s deep, chartreuse-green gaze flits sidelong, regarding the fragile girl at his side.

Nearly the entire day has been spent in the Bazaar. A morning at several clothiers (A-line dresses and Empire silhouettes) was followed by a brief brasserie lunch on a balcony overlooking the Royal Exchange; and as the afternoon wore hot into evening he’d chosen a rosewood vanity to be delivered (via the clanking mindless strength of a fel-driven automaton) to a quiet set of quarters that (little by little) has begun to appear less like a wayfarer’s temporary stop, and more like proper accommodations. Still—it isn’t home, Clair thinks, and he wonders vaguely whether it ever will be.

“For the young lady?” the shopkeeper had asked, looking up from the coins Clair had offered as payment to scrutinize his wordless companion. Undoubtedly, yes, the dressing table was fashioned for a Sin’dorei woman (or a very young girl): a fanciful affair, elaborate, exquisite, very much like——But the man had become suddenly aware of the distant hardness on Clair’s features. He had noted more closely, too, the Blood Knight initiate’s simple scarlet livery, and the sheathed blade girded pragmatically on his right hip. The rest of the transaction had been conducted in silence.

Now, in the shade of evening, the palm of his broad hand is dry and fever-hot when he reaches for hers. He takes unhurried, measured steps as he guides the girl toward the Bazaar’s southern end. There are delicate notes of splashing, and he watches for a moment as the Bazaar’s fountain spouts thin streams of water in impossible shapes before falling to the stone basin: whorls and loops and spirals, a prettily fanciful sort of magic. The spray cools the air here, and he stops when they reach the wrought golden benches in the fountain’s shadow.

“Are you tired, Prisca?” he asks. A low, rough-edged voice. Aristocratic pronunciation, but with a certain (decidedly unmusical) hoarseness. He orders her gently: “Sit.”

Among the Children of the Blood, this Sin’dorei towers a hand’s span (and occasionally two) above other men. Broad-shouldered, hard-boned, there’s a strange stalwart quality to Clair Laurent’s frame belying the slenderness of his kindred. But somehow, improbably, he retains every modicum of elfin grace in even the simplest motion—like the act of kneeling, as he does now, before her. Clair lifts his face upward toward the girl. His preternaturally-lit stare rests on her, soft but steady.

“Did you have fun?” Smiling isn’t something he manages often. There’s a thin, delicate little quirk at the corner of his mouth.

Along the periphery of the Bazaar’s walls, a series of lampposts and lanterns flicker to life with pale blue witchfire. Several of the merchant carts lie closed for the evening, and he can almost sense a hush begin to descend as the last lingering traces of sunset continue to fade toward night. A relief. The hint of a smile on his mouth deepens more easily.

It takes three of her steps to compensate for just one of his strides; she has kept pace by his side, looking straight ahead in the decided yet unfixed way of the city dwellers here, pausing only to consider the most appropriate things (a silver sliver ring set with a cabochon stone the color of the sea). She has refrained from stopping to stare and stare for much too long (as she does) at the not here, not now things, not the whispering heavens, not Clair.

In the dress shop, she’d remembered to converse with the women attending her, and she had not once shrunk from their coos and caresses, even when marveling at the minuteness of her form (Wouldn’t you know, I got my start by hand-sewing dresses for dolls, the tailor whispered as if in confession) gave way to carelessness, and the girl felt the prick of a silver needle against her rib. She remained ever so still and smiling as they adorned her with their best lace and ribbon, thinking of the doting tailor’s pearl-lined neck and Clair’s heavy hands.

She has been very good, but she is waning with the day and her white hand is cool to the touch. Her exhaustion manifests as a haze that settles over her corporeal vision and the drowsiness of her dark bloom heart. The more telltale sign is the way she shakes her head with a porcelain-cast stiffness, a stubborn denial to his all too knowing-- Are you tired, Prisca?

And yet she sits as he commands (as gentle as he is), perching on a gold-wired affair, even as she insists--“No,” she says, out loud this time. “I can stay out. I want to stay out.”

To the uninitiated, her voice can be a startling thing: oversouled and songful (enough for two). A flesh and blood guard pauses in his mechanical route past the fountain to inhale sharply. He dares turn his head long enough to observe their starlit hair--to focus on her perfect pout--which gives way to a close-lipped smile at something the mountainous man with her has said.

“I did, Clair,” she responds. “Very much.”

The guard wills the doe-eyed creature to look his way, but the girl remains unmoved, attentive only to the man kneeling before her. For reasons he will grasp at (to little avail) just before he sleeps, the guard blushes and turns away from the scene. He does not witness the way the girl leans in, to rest her forehead against the man’s, nor does he hear the way she sighs and concedes--Fine. Take me home.--to his devout stillness and silence.

The guard will, perhaps, dream of them this night in worlds before unimagined.

((Achingly beautiful.))

Kneeling before her, the hideous strength of that man's muscle and sinew, the tenacity of his bones, are all for naught. There's a timeless legend that the Sin'dorei have never heard: about a world-eating wolf and a chain. Clair cannot know that he recalls that story now, staring up at this girl-child with eyes lit more by adoration than devilish fel. But the chain binding that wolf was of intangible, impossible things——the noise of a cat's steps, a bird's spittle. Intangible and impossible, like a girl who wanes the way ghosts do in sunlight, even after the sun sets.

In the close space between him and her, the neophyte Blood Knight's mouth begins yielding into a more natural smile: and when Prisca's cool forehead touches his own (two star-kissed crowns bowing together), his lips answer (slowly, in delicate stages) with a lean grin. Even Clair Laurent's teeth recall those of a beast. Stark, impossibly white; sharp edged; gracefully vicious incisors. “Good,” he tells her: I did, Clair and Fine. Take me home. “Good.” The coarse warmth of that single word recalls midsummer rain against granite.

Under the tranquilized fringe of Clair's thick, pale-blond lashes, the chartreuse green of his stare shifts briefly. Fever-struck and sick. The edge of the man's aristocratic jaw tightens with what might be equal parts fury, disgust, amusement——directed behind him, in the wake of the Child of the Blood who (but a moment ago) passed through their joint shadow. Do you think yourself worthy to gaze on a creature this beautiful, mongrel? Worthy to hear a single word from her mouth?

No. Be silent.

He exhales, and carefully tilts his head away from Prisca's own, examining her face. In the intervening moment, Clair has again composed his expression into something more tranquil, though hints of tension haunt the corners of his eyes. “Tomorrow we'll be meeting with the Magisters,” he tells her, low raw voice a murmur. “I’ll be with you. But tonight is for good food, and plentiful sleep.”

He raises with a slow, easy fluidity back to his full height, raising his hand to the brooch clasping his livery’s scarlet mantle around his shoulders. Unfastening the cloak, he draws the warm Embersilk garment securely around the girl’s bird-boned shoulders before pinning it in place: his brute fingers somehow infinitely more careful than a half-dozen tailors and seamstresses. The light garment will fall far too long on a girl of her stature, enveloping her, but he seems unconcerned with the prospect of the red train that Prisca will leave behind her as they walk. The fabric smells of him, the scent muted and soft: male, simultaneously clean and viscerally animal.

This writing is addictive. Not a single line unbalanced or wasted.))

The darkness is deeper where he lies. She has but to reach out to feel him there.

Here is the hard plane of his musculature (a body built to defy mortality), here--the hard line of his jaw, and here--his warm mouth that presses prayer against her fingertips.

I’ll be with you.

She is awake and he is not. In the sanctum of witching hour, the white-gowned girlchild turns his words again and again like a string of smooth small beads. It breaks her heart, more than anything, that he has learned to recite such words of faith. Some things need not testifying, as she understands that the air they breathe is an infallible thing by the way it carries the scent of him.

I’ll be with you.

Once upon a time, they had shared a scent. Milken and honeyed, mothered and longing. As they grew to face a world in which most souls are laid to rest without ever comprehending their own perfume (even ghost girls who have been touched by the gifts of the First Kings--mournful, floral, ethereal), she came to define everything by the bastion of him.

It is a blessed, divine clarity to have one’s world grounded in a figure so solid. And theirs is a curse that his prayers back wound her. She knows, in her infinite knowledge, that he alone will bear the weight of their book of psalms.

I’ll be with you.

Prisca Laurent closes her eyes. She keeps them closed so he will believe her this way, peaceful and at rest.

Don’t stray far and Be home by dark: they’re cautionary warnings for both flesh-and-blood and fairytale children. Caught in the deep forest gloaming (fragrant with the heavy carpet of pine needles crushed under the children’s every step; a green, sharp smell), the boy-child has every intention of returning before sunset. But until then, he is determined not to hurry. And he’ll lead them a little further than last time, into the quiet where tall, white-barked trees serve as their temporary guardians. The hush is almost absolute here, broken only occasionally by a pair of whistling thrushes perched high overhead. They sing intermittently: wandering notes that drift slowly through the mist-haunted woods.

He doesn’t know the name of this forest, or whether it has a name at all. He only knows that once you leave the rustic manor-house and the handful of smaller buildings that orbit it like satellites, you’ll come across several carefully-maintained farm plots and vegetable gardens. Stout fences built from ax-hewn lumber surround every field, and Obrecht has erected a scarecrow in the center of each one. When he works the earth with a spade or a sickle, his thin spine bent (deceptively powerful), it is sometimes easy to imagine that the tall dead man is really one of those scarecrows brought to life.

“Mind yourself and the girl,” Obrecht had said, when the boy asked. “You see anything amiss, you run back straight away. And don’t tell Sister Francesca. She’d kill me—” A careful, restrained smile across his black lips lights the Forsaken’s watery amber eyes with humor. “—again.”

Beyond the fields, the edge of the woods rises with a sudden uneasy beauty.

Once, he would have brought her here to chase rabbits or spot birds in the swaying branches, using a tattered field-guide that Francesca had given them from her little library (delicately-inked illustrations on aging parchment). He would have called “Watch, Prisca!” and climbed the nearest cedar tree (glancing over his shoulder now and again, to make sure her eyes stayed on him) before crowing with laughter on reaching the top. But he’s not laughing now, and his not-quite-adolescent mouth is soft with thought and fear and a strange eager clumsiness. His fingers laced with hers occasionally shift, allowing the boy to stroke one fragile-boned hand with the pad of his thumb.

When he stops in the shadow of a high white pine, Clair turns her carefully toward him. The boy has yet to begin growing truly tall, but he’s taller than the girl-child; enough that he raises his free hand (purposeful, clumsy) to lift her chin with his bent forefinger. The tip of his tongue licks the space between his lips dryly, just for an instant. Aching somewhere in the center of his chest and wondering vaguely if he’ll die, the boy angles her face upward toward his, craning his neck to——

• • •

The first time he wakes, Clair Laurent isn’t certain where they are.

But he knows the beat of his own heart, a ferocious thing hammering like an engine in the dark. He knows the beat of hers: if he were to cup her left breast, the pulse against Clair’s palm would share a closer kinship with music boxes. Delicate, spring-wound. Her body is a deeper shadow on the expanse of their shared bed; in the chaos of the sheets, even her silhouette is a slight thing.

He knows, too, that he has roused from sleep with the fragrances of pines and girl glutting his senses thick enough to taste; and there’s a sweet phantom of pressure across his mouth that lingers even after his eyes open—fully awake—in the darkness. The sensation doesn’t lessen when he touches his fingers carefully to his lips, or when Clair drags his tongue across them, wondering if he’ll find (swallow) some dewy traces of her spit.

In their witching hour, he pulls himself forward to sit and stare at the way her hair falls across the pillows; and how, with her features relaxed, she looks like a child. A sleeper would be unaware of how Clair Laurent lifts himself, carefully bracing one hand on the pillow beside her head to support his juggernaut weight. A dreamer would not know how this man presses his knees to the goose-down mattress to either side of the fragile stems of her legs, an incidental brush of his thigh rumpling the equally fragile fabric of her white gown’s lace-trimmed hem.

Tension wracks Blood Knight Laurent’s immense and inexplicably elegant shoulders. It crawls along the hollow of his throat and dances over the contour of his jawline. His spine is bent softly, and his posture directly above her makes it impossible to tell if Clair intends to shield her with his own indomitable flesh; if he is bracing to receive a whip; or if he is on the verge of a pilgrim’s prayer.

Or if, when he kisses her, he intends all three.

A girl slumbering under him might not feel the way he presses his mouth to hers: finding the precise, intimately familiar angle where his and hers fit together. Like a lock and a key. Like fingers interlaced in a mist-haunted wood. When he draws breath inaudible through his nose (like a submerged man breaking the surface to gulp air), Clair finds that he cannot keep himself from shaking. A girl slumbering under him might not understand that he is memorizing (again, already indelible) her texture and her taste, desperately, as if these are the things keeping his unnatural, monstrous frame alive.

But then, a girl awake under him might.

• • •

The second time he wakes, the eastern sky is washed with the moody, early lavender tones before dawn.

He is unaccustomed to the sight of the balcony, its door drawn open to admit the city’s perpetual summertime. When the breeze (warm, laden with the honeyed scent of blossoms) shifts directions, the gossamer curtains shiver in layers. They allow traces of muddled light inside; enough for Clair to distinguish the shadow of Prisca’s rosewood vanity, an armoire, a writing desk. Carefully arranged near the master bedroom’s door, a set of handsome antique steamer trunks (a gift from Obrecht) contain the few personal effects the two had taken from the Trisfal estate. Among them, Clair made certain they did not forget Francesca’s illustrated field-guide.

Today, he does not intend to rummage through their old clothing. Today is for new things, tailored things—Wouldn’t you know, I got my start by hand-sewing dresses for dolls. Like a doll, he will feed her, he will dress her, he will pay particular attention to her hair (brush in hand: centuries old and chased silver, exquisitely gentle bristles). Such things must be observed in order: first to rise, then to ready, and then—

“Then the Magisters,” he murmurs, both to Prisca and the rising sun.

In the black expanse of their iron-clawed bath, she is a pearl in the mist-veiled waters. (There is no hiding that the core of her is a flawed thing. Who knows when the music box melody of her dark bloom heart will simply stop?)

“The magisters, the magisters…” The soft singsong of her voice is enough to convey the stirrings of her discontent. She is especially far away today. He can tell by the slowblink of her eyes and the too perfect stillness of her like she must be reminded to breathe.

The trace of her anchored here (only by the grace of his gentle hands) is aware enough to know that she has been gowned in muslin the color of their eyes. (Nevermind that on days like this, her irises are shot through with a shadowy violet tincture; only some alchemy gone wrong, surely. She is here, isn’t she--not lost still to that darkening forest.)

He (bless him, her sweet Clair) seats her at a vanity (hers, she must remember) and presses a fine-tipped brush in her hand. He uncaps a row of carefully laid out porcelain pots, all shaped and sized to be cradled in her palm. (There is a song in itself to the uncapping of porcelain pots, like the rubbing of doll limbs, the chink of a perfect baby hand against a miniature teacup.)

The movement of her hands is practiced--artful yet methodical. She must be painted to show her age. With enough kohl and gold dust around her eyes, she can almost pass as a woman ripe enough to I do--forever, always (but too young to die).

But she stops at her lips, which are left bare (a pale and breathlessly precious pink--the secret inside of a new rose bud). She closes her eyes and tilts her head to him (like he is the sun, the whole of the sky), leaving him the last of her task (to stain that mouth blood red).

“Where he is,” she whispers as his hand nears (he will touch her with his ring finger, hooking his broad thumb beneath the point of her chin).

“And if he lives.”

She pulls from him words unspoken, with the ease and recklessness of a child undoing the inner-workings of great machines. When she sweeps her hand over the vanity table (hers, she must remember) sending every porcelain and precious thing to a terrible crash, it is a similar gesture.

She rises to stand before the pile of bone china, ash, and gold dust. Her gaze is fixed to her small grave (hers, she must remember) as a hand flickers in the air above in a mark of blessing (for the dead and gone, for the most beautiful woman to ever walk this firmament--at whose feet they sat while she danced her last dance--swinging this way and that and at last--spinning slow, slow circles).

She turns from him (from where he is and if he lives), and walks to the bay window where she curls herself onto the cushioned sill. She brings her own hand to her lips (painted, perhaps, she does not remember) and kisses a ring spun so fine from a pale yellow gold, dotted with a dewdrop emerald.

I do--forever, always.

She is too young to die.

The witch woman is beautiful beyond reason. Her visage is an obscenity, her body heretical. She is a wanton, wanted thing and it is a terrible force indeed when, at last, a man is righteous enough to stake his claim, to possess her and possess her again and again, a man, a righteous man.

And when he burns her, it is without mercy.

It is not the cowardly fire that kills her, but the ferocity of her rage. And when she goes, every inch and every step of her own volition, she does so with two star-kissed children huddled in the shadows of her skirts--so that innocence will bear witness to the injustice done unto her.

They do not know enough to even weep for her, only to drink in the chill of the air with baby mouths softly agape. Their eyes are wide and clear--one gaze kindling with want for answers and the other receding with the greying daylight, into the darkness that swallows the room.

[For C. Shine on, sisterstar.]

The man before her (hers, she should remember) is no prophet, and only occasionally a dreamer.

But he needs no clairvoyant gift to see the girl has flitted like a shadow into a dark Far-from-Here. He needs no warning when her delicate hand sweeps the vanity clean, porcelain shattering across the bedroom's stone tiles. Among the ash and crushed antimony dust, the pieces jut like fragments of sun-bleached bone. Clair Laurent holds still, eyes half-lidded and glimmering their soft pale fire as he thinks of graves and battlefields. With an unexpected degree of care, he balances the long miniver brush off the dressing table's edge (smooth virgin-white bristles stained the color of blood: his, or hers, or theirs).

Barefoot, he crosses the room with the slow effortless grace of dancers and (gargantuan) hunting-beasts: and though the soles of his feet are covered in ash and gold-dust when he reaches her, not one of the knife-edged china shards has touched his skin. Sunlight through the window bathes the left side of Clair's face, flashing from the clear, unblinking surface of his golden-green eyes. His presence is a study in immediacy: not a dream or a vision or a memory, but a here-and-now force whose skin (the hollow of his throat, the sober line of his jaw) still smells of their black-iron bath.

His defined collarbones and his fair backswept hair remain slightly damp, and Clair has left his linen shirt (its hue matching her painted mouth) unbuttoned. When he shifts, the open garment offers brief bare glimpses of the man's brutal abdomen, tiers of warm muscle like plates of armor. The girl will be intimately familiar with each mark and every scar. She will know, too, the broad surface of his palm and the strength of his fingers as he reaches now to take her tiny hand.

Although the bay window's seat is both comfortable and generous, it is not made for a creature of Clair's height or the powerfully-built broadness of his shoulders; and so he perches awkwardly on the edge, leaning toward her. A few stray strands of his hair (liquid sunlight) brush her knuckles as he bows his head, presses the soft heat of his lips against that same emerald ring. Lifting his face, his angles closer to her still—close enough to press a second kiss against the very corner of the girl's mouth, where only a trace of the blood-red rouge will transfer onto his.

He resists the agonizing urge to stroke (muss) her freshly-brushed hair, the impulse to thread his fingers through it the way one might scratch behind a cat's ears. Instead, he sits mutely beside her, holding Prisca's hand in his own (a curiously-fashioned ring in matte yellow gold and deep black jet on his finger). Finally, he murmurs: “You don't want to go.” A simple observation. It is followed after a moment by a second:

“I can't go without you. I need you.”

I do—forever, always.

The corner of Clair's mouth turns upward, a gesture subtle enough that he himself might not realize it. When he raises his eyes again to look for hers (even the lashes are identically pale starlight blond), there's a quiet spark dancing in his chartreuse gaze. An exchange, he thinks: this for that, quid pro quo. But this girl, this ethereally beautiful girl more fae than flesh, will not be swayed by material things. He gently offers birdsong and the night sky:

“I'll take you bird watching in Eversong Woods. I'll build a bonfire and wrap you in furs, and we'll spend the night stargazing from the fields of Lordaeron.” He thinks of Obrecht, Francesca, and wonders if they'd come, their haunted and beloved faces bathed in firelight. “—I'll take poetry from the Royal Library and sing to you until I lose my voice.” There is something strangely vulnerable about the way Clair Laurent's smile widens, showing the edges of his stark white teeth.

“Just tell me what I can give you.”

((I have been searching around for a new role play server and came upon your thread. Both of your writings are simply incredible. Is there room for another to join in on this? I have been role playing for over seven years and was the guild leader for a reputably large guild on WRA. If you give me a chance, it would be an honor to write with you. I already have some ideas in mind around Prisca's character, especially. Let me know if you're interested in taking on a veteran player.))

(( Hi there Iachimo——Thanks for the interest and your extremely kind words! Prisca and I are keeping the storyline between the two of us for the time being. There may be room for additional players as the plot progresses in the future; and if so, we'll definitely make an announcement in the thread. Thanks again; it's nice to know folks are enjoying it so far! ))

[ Wanted to chime in and say I hope you do give our server a try anyway! It's a small, but wonderfully tight-knit community with devoted RPers. Clair and I are hoping to get out to some RP events soon, which are well-advertised on forums, so hopefully we'll catch you there! Also, Iachimo--what a great name! ]

...and sing to you until I lose my voice.

She comes back to him slowly. But she comes back to him. She always comes back to him. Hers, she remembers. She wraps around her finger, like a starlit ring, a strand of his pale mane. (Once upon a time, there was a witch who believed it to be a curse to turn a man into a beast, because no precious girl could possibly love him with the whole of her soul.)

She comes back to him, for him, in the same quiet manner she slips away from this world. And it is better than--I’m sorry--with her darling pout. It’s better than--you are a terrible singer--with her coy smile.

She only whispers his name, again and again.

“Clair,” she says, shifting into his lap, her knees on his hard thighs, resting her forehead against his. “Clair,” she murmurs, softer still, her little hand splayed against the apple of his throat. One must wonder at the brand of strength she does possess, this ghostly girlchild, to rein (and reign) the beast that is Clair Laurent.

She calls for him once more, the clever girl, “Clair…” she says, like a song.

Name the beast thrice.

“You must not,” she commands. “You must never lose your voice.”

Her smile is hidden; her lips are pressed to his ear now. Her hand has traversed the feverish planes of him to press like a seal over his roaring heart. But he will see the precise curvature of Prisca’s smile in his mind’s eye, like a creature possessed.

“Lest you wish me to give you mine... All wrapped up in a pretty, pretty little shell for you to string around your neck.” She sinks her teeth into the lobe of his ear. Her teeth are not as sharp as his, but there is the little sting of one of her pearly little canines, like a miniature of exactness crafted from one much larger.

And all this time she has been flitting around him, her poor Clair has had to hold himself like both the cage and the caged, so iron-wrought and painfully patient. She knows, more often than not, the limits of his restraints. So, the girl rises, gliding just one, two--

--three little twirls away from him. “Take me, then,” she says, “to your wretched magisters.”

A palace that pierces the blue noon sky: this is the lair of his wretched Magisters.

The Sunfury Spire rises from the flagstones of the Court of the Sun, its alabaster gables gleaming pale in the daylight. Here, when an eastern breeze shifts through the golden-leafed trees, the air carries an intangible scent like ambrosia: the fragrance of sweet early summer. But it fails to compare (Clair Laurent thinks) to white pines and to the fragile perfume of her skin (this little witch, able to leash him with naught but a strand of his own hair). Still, I’m the one leading you here—aren’t I, Prisca? Clair’s unnaturally sharp gaze shifts to watch her sidelong, the savagely tall man’s eyes momentarily hooded and unreadable.

The veiled glances greeting them near the white marble stairs to Silvermoon’s inner sanctum are easier to discern. One young, crimson-clad Guardian’s face bears a vaguely stricken (heartsick) look before the boy pulls his eyes from her and fixes them forward again, grip tightening softly on the haft of his ceremonial ranseur. Several poised ranks of these guardsmen stand at attention along the tree-lined boulevard terminating at the foot of the royal palace. One among them—older, judging from his bearing and the badges of rank gleaming from the man’s breastplate—steps forward, inclining his head almost immediately in a deferential bow:

“Blood Knight Laurent. Lady Prisca.” He gestures in the direction of the grand Spire: “Lady Odeline will receive you now.”

The Spire's interior is artificially lit by lanterns of cerulean mage-light, and the elder Guardian guides them through this strange gloaming into the palace’s western wing. The metallic echoes of Clair's spurred boots drift toward the high vaulted ceiling, muted by shadows. He walks to the girl's left and one pace ahead; and every now and again, when the silk of Clair's (blood red) mantle shifts with his stride just so, she might see that his right hand is tightly clenched. His knuckles—and the old scars cutting across them—are blanched white.

He isn't sure if what sets his blood on fire is anticipation; the quiet fury slowly circling his heart; or the dull ache where one tiny tooth pierced his skin. There is a part of him (gnawing and urgent) that wishes to simply open his fist and reach across the few inches for her bird-boned hand. But——

“We've arrived.”

From the face of a tall oak door, a phoenix (its body shaped rather than carved from the surface of the wood) stares ahead blindly: wings spread as if readying to fly, its curved beak soundlessly open. Their escort knocks (once, twice, thrice), and offers a parting salute when the door opens: “Selama ashal'anore.” Justice for our people.

That word sets Clair Laurent's teeth on edge. Justice.

Beyond the door is a library; but he knows immediately that the room occupies a warped space. The realization follows the vague sense of vertigo that surges over Clair Laurent when he crosses the threshold, taking a single step inside. He's aware of Prisca behind him, and extends his arm to gently arrest her (reflexively, protectively). It's only when that sick sensation begins to subside that he lowers his hand, taking in their surroundings:

Like the inside of a tower, the walls of Magistrix Odeline's study rise upward several storeys before reaching the frescoed ceiling: a painted sky crowded with birds so convincing that Clair is certain they’re moving. Spiraling staircases provide access to the upper levels, each gallery’s railings fashioned to resemble the twisting shapes of forest branches. And everywhere Clair turns his attention, books of every conceivable description meet his eyes: leather-bound grimoires, papyrus manuscripts, histories in rich vellum. A faint, antique odor of faded ink and aging paper greets his nostrils, and Clair Laurent thinks reflexively of Francesca, and the way her dead but beautiful features invariably brighten at the prospect of expanding her (meager, poor) library. Where space permits, cartographers’ maps of Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend—even Pandaria—grace the walls. Elegantly-appointed chairs sit dispersed across the study, a few nearby tables still cluttered with signs of the occupant’s latest research.

“After all this time,” she says, her voice dark and richly melodic, “you finally decide to show yourselves. Prisca. Clair.”

The sharp, measured tap of the Magistrix’s heeled boots sounds from somewhere on the level above them. There is something elusive about the sound, rendered insubstantial by the tower’s distorted dimensions. When the woman emerges moments later from one of the spiral staircases, Clair struggles to calm the sudden inescapable wrench deep within his chest.

Dark hair, an improbable and absolute silken black that defies every last trace of light. Loose waves fall along her face and brush along her jaw, twisting into loose curls near her graceful shoulders and the middle of her back. The man—the boy—has seen hair like that once before, and the memory of it is etched so deeply into him (though he knows not how or why, like a dream half remembered) that for a moment Clair Laurent loses of his voice. There is a word swimming through his mind and pulling on his tongue, but his throat is constricted shut.

(He’s promised, and she’s commanded that you must never lose your voice, and Clair begins to force the sound through his parted lips:)

“—M——”

But the woman turns to Clair, and her face—though undeniably beautiful—is one Clair knows he has never seen, awake or asleep. Her agelessly girlish but sharp-edged features have little to do with sweetness: she is the quiet dangerousness of preying birds, her large eyes staring for a moment at the hulking Blood Knight before her. That luminous gaze betrays her age: hers are a woman’s eyes, and their distant heaviness flits away from Clair and toward the slight-framed girl standing just behind his right shoulder.

“You,” the Magistrix murmurs softly after a moment, the corners of her mouth hardening.

“You look just like your mother.”

That’s twice now, so you can’t blame a boy for thinking this is fate. By the end of his shift, the young soldier has convinced himself that he saw her smile at him. Fleeting, but a sure thing, a small sign of her blessing reserved just for him.

As the fresh-faced guard makes a round through the city, he etches her imagined smile deep into his young heart. Maybe she recognized him from that night, when he first heard her voice rise--a clarion call above the charmed water of the golden fountain. Maybe she’s been dreaming of him, too.

And Sen’thar Duskweaver is a man worth dreaming about. He is sure of this. Young and proudly built, he can say with certainty that he has known heartbreak profound enough to give him that coveted veil of mystery about a man. One might write incredibly profound poems about the deep dark shadows of his bloodied heart. And it does count as his own heartbreak, doesn’t it? He had promised the world in the jewel of a ring to a desperate and faithful girl. When she accepted him, he tore her asunder. She had been pretty enough.

But not beautiful--truly, artfully, heartwrenchingly beautiful enough to hold his attention for long. Not as beautiful as the girl of the starlit hair who had a secret smile to spare for him. As Sen’thar looks up at the sky, he prays that he will witness his--yes, his--lady’s departure by the time he returns to his station on the bridge. Lady Prisca, Prisca--so that was her name.

They say love can blind you to even the gravest of dangers, even a mountainous beast that has claimed eternally the place in the shadow cast by a girl.

***

You look just like your mother.

It is perhaps the one thing anyone could say, regardless of the hardness of tone or mouth, to move Prisca so. The girl smiles in full and embraces the woman before her, kissing both of the magistrix’s cheeks chastely. This is how Prisca Laurent injures.

“But you have her hair,” chirps the girl, curling a strand of the Odeline’s pitch dark hair around her finger in an all too familiar and intimate act. “My dark bloomed ode,” Prisca adds in a whisper, so quiet that even her Clair may miss it.

It must be terrifying, the way a little birdsong can so perfectly echo the razor-edged voice of that truly devastating man whose living ghost feels so very much in this room with them, even before this mere girl’s incantation conjures, too, a faint breeze bearing the exact musk of him.

The whisper of his intoxicating scent stirs through the library, sifting through the papers on the desk of the magistrix, careless and irreverent with her life’s work--just as he would be.

This madness of the Laurent girl's is surely a gift in these moments when the very elements of unnatural order express what would carry less weight in words: that there is a man who brought Magistrix Odeline to the brink of ruin--and dangles her there, at his whim, to this day.

And that this girl before her--this is the girl who inherited his powers.

Prisca releases the magistrix from the tender cage of her thin arms and perches on a handsome crushed velvet armchair, leaving the chaise lounge for black-haired Odeline--and fair Clair (a punishment, perhaps). The girl is dwarfed by the gilded chair’s broad-winged back, but this only serves to further the impression that Prisca Laurent is enthroned.

She sits, serene and still as a saint.

Clair Laurent does not hear Prisca’s whisper, but the wrenching shock that creeps across Odeline’s delicate features tells him enough. Her lips part mechanically, habitually, but she cannot answer. The woman’s eyes (a prettily pale jade green) shine flat and blind in the study’s sourceless light; Odeline stares past Prisca’s fair crown, past the younger girl’s fragile shoulder, into empty space. She holds perfectly still, the heavy silk of her ink-dark hair wound around Prisca’s finger.

It is only when Prisca (Lady Prisca) releases her that the Magistrix stirs again, the near-porcelain complexion of her cheeks burning soft rose. Her fine-boned hand rises, reaching toward the seated girl with the languor of waking dreams: nails tapering like the gracile talons of a little songbird. Leveling her index finger, the Magistrix begins to whisper a single word——

——that dissolves into a strangled cry a moment after Clair’s massive hand envelopes the bones of her wrist. The eyes of the Blood Knight standing beside her burn cold as he twists, wrenching the Magistrix effortlessly to her knees. She yelps when they strike the floor. Where his skin touches hers, he can feel the electric warmth of Odeline’s spellcraft strangle like a sputtering flame. He briefly considers breaking the tiny wrist, watching the woman’s expression transform when she lifts her face toward him. Her grimacing teeth shine bright white, sharp and furious:

“You dare—!”

“It’s nothing but an echo,” Clair murmurs, and for a moment his voice shares something hauntingly in common with the man Prisca had mimicked moments before. There’s a dark, wordless imperative driving through his fevered stare, and down into Odeline with all the immediacy of a sword gently against her throat: Obey. The scent of that other man (still) in the air mingles with his. A few sheaves of paper slip nearly soundless from the edge of her desk.

“It’s only a shadow of the past,” he says. The rich, quiet bass-baritone of his voice sounds incongruously gentle. The Magistrix remains motionless for several moments more; but when she allows her arm to go entirely limp, Clair unlocks his fingers. Where they constricted her wrist and her forearm, the woman’s skin aches an already-bruised, dull red that in several hours will deepen to muted, moody purple.

“I should send you both to Durotar,” Odeline (Ode) sings with bitter notes. “Dry, crude wastelands fit only for savages and brutes—”

Clair smiles.

“Or Northrend. You can die where light and warmth are naught but a memory.”

The Magistrix has risen to her feet with the stiff, thoughtless reflex of clockwork. Smoothing the fabric of her slim-fitting robes (ivory and pale shades of gold like an early sunrise), she gingerly holds her arm before seating herself on the long chaise lounge. She offers no argument, her eyes opaque, when Clair Laurent seats himself beside her, the broad-shouldered knight as still and grave as the shadow of a mountain (when he is nothing but the shadow of a girl).

“Or you can call for the Guardians,” Clair offers (in a voice like raw wildflower honey, not entirely sweet): “Shall we see what happens if you do?”

There is a stretch of silence. Unbidden (perhaps driven by an enchantment that wakes when visitors arrive within the Magistrix’s tower), a lone silver tray bearing willow-pattern china teacups drifts through the air toward the little table between Prisca’s gilded chair and the low sofa on which Clair and Odeline has seated themselves. Hints of fragrant steam (rich black tea) drift from the mouth of each cup.

“Ridiculous,” Odeline murmurs, glancing at him askance. Clair stares steadily back.

“You knew Lysette?”

Now it’s Odeline who smiles, a slow, secret smile that reaches her eyes and brings her lashes down low, glimmers of jade-green flashing brightly at her two guests. “You want to talk about Lysette. After greeting me so crassly, you wish to ask questions?”

There’s a muted clatter of china as the silver tray (carried, one imagines, by an invisible servitor) settles carefully onto the table.

Odeline continues after a moment, as if conceding a point: “But you were just protecting the girl, weren’t you, Clair.” Her words bubble with traces of unvoiced (hard-edged) laughter as her eyes drift toward Prisca. “Like you always do. Maybe I’ll forgive you.” She lightly traces one of the marks left behind by his (monstrous) grip.

She watches the tea steam, and breathes in. She isn’t certain whether the scent of that man lingers like a phantom, or whether her senses simply betray her.

“Maybe, just maybe,” Odeline repeats: “If you agree to atone for your behavior, Blood Knight Laurent.”