The Princess and the Blade

[Emora Deen]

Laurius frowned, but didn’t lift his arm from his eyes. “I didn’t mean it,” he said softly. “Do they not have hyperbole where you come from?” He didn’t want Ren to go away. He didn’t want to travel across the border to a place he’d left for good reason, and was unlikely to return from, leaving him behind. “And no, I suppose neither one of us have been very open with each other. What about you? Tenara didn’t even know she wasn’t your Yuviris until Ren broke the news to her. Perhaps pots shouldn’t call kettles black, aye?”

[Soran Nightblade]

"Hyper what?" Havi cut back. He backed off a step. "It does not matter that we never had the opportunity to forge a Bond. That was not the relationship she wished for anyway. But she is my Yurivis." He pinched the space between his eyebrows. "And somehow, you seem to be his."

[Emora Deen]

“You might know less about what Tenara wants than you think,” Laurius muttered. He was quite certain that Tenara did want to be Havitharon’s Yurivis in the way of his world, but not for the reasons the women in his world would want to be. “Well hopefully neither one of you go into a rut while we are on this little adventure. As attractive as you are Havitharon, I don’t want to fuck you, and I’m certain Tenara has no interest in Ren, or he in her. So, let’s go and get back before any of that can come to pass, okay?”

[Soran Nightblade]

Havi dropped his hand from his forehead to give himself a clearer view of the merchant. Was what Laurius said correct? Did he miss something in his assessment of Tenara's wishes? Laurius knew this world and its customs better.

It occurred to him the man might be able to answer some of his many, many questions. He was beginning to prioritize them when the man's commentary about ruts slapped his mind blank. "What the hell makes you think you could fuck me if you wanted to?" He twitched. "How do two males even..." Actually, how did two men even do that in the first place? He hadn't thought to ask. No! Why would he ask???

He cleared his throat and his wild imagination and gave thought to what he'd said about ruts during their adventure. He wasn't in the habit of keeping track of other males' cycles. How long had it been since they left the island? It felt like ages, but it had been more like a few weeks. Not long enough for Ren to be due again.

As for himself... the Hydris made predicting his next rut difficult. Some people skipped a cycle after an induced rut, but there were also documented cases of the body sticking to schedule. On top of that, his body might not be in rhythm in the first place, after using the ward to bind the rut all these years. If he were a normal Ivis, he would actually be due... very soon. It wouldn't be helpful to bring that up now.

"Let's go and get back," he echoed the man's words vaguely. Havi slung himself onto a bench, uncharacteristically haggard. A few hours of rest were all they had time for, and it sounded like they were going to need every minute.

[Emora Deen]

Lelana returned to her family’s side of the conservatory and delivered the merchant’s supply request, as well as his instructions for where he thought they should be dropped. “But if you miss and plop them into an acid pit, I’ll hardly complain,” she said, smiling too-sweetly as she snaked her fingers around Havi’s sword and took it to a different side of the table.

She looked the weapon over and then proceeded to raid the merchant’s office and hallways for materials, coming back with a collection of bottles; a mass of bundled cords, sashes, and string; and I knife.

Lelana looked over the messy table—it was messy before they’d arrived—and sighed. “This merchant is more than he seems. He has a store’s worth of magical ingredients and herbs. He could be a sorcerer if he had any talent for it.”

“Let us be thankful he doesn’t,” Tenele said, brushing fingers through her daughter’s hair and looking to the strange being nearby. She was tempted to send him off to fetch what his master needed, but he had also helped Tenara a moment ago, and seemed to know her mind when Tenele could not, so she stood and grabbed a basket from a shelf. “I’ll go see about this list.” As she passed Lelana she paused and leaned closer to her sister-in-law. “Can you make—“

“I have already collected what is needed,” Lelana said, rough and angry, waving her sister away.

Then, Lelana went about preparing what was needed, first, for ensuring the sword would not obey whoever’s hand it fell into. Nor did Lelana want it to obey Laurius. She laid out the red silk ribbon and smoothed it against the table, thinking she would give of herself and force the blade to be only under her control. But then, she looked it over and looked to her niece, and remembered how deeply the girl cared for it—for him.

She took up the knife and an empty vial, and went to Tenara, kneeling down next to her. She didn’t warn Vlad, as he had known her long enough to know she would not harm Tenara—except only if necessary, and only with reason. She took the girl’s hand, turning it palm up.

[Soran Nightblade]

Ren was seated next to Tenara's bed, looking every bit like an uneasy canine would beside its unconscious owner. "What are you doing?" he asked urgently when Lelana approached her with the knife. His head pounded as he wondered how much to confront her.

[Emora Deen]

Lelana angled her eyes on the being. “I need to bind her to the sword so that, if it is to ever fall into someone else’s bands, it will obey only her,” she said, uncertain why she was explaining it to him. “Her mother will fix it when she returns.”

Then she turned to Tenara and went to draw her dagger across the girls palm, but stopped short of it. She looked at the knife in her hand and then the girl, and sighed. Then, she pushed the vial into Ren’s uncertain hands. She took her free hand and smoothed it over Tenara’s brow, her fingers stroking the young woman’s head. “Sweety,” she said gently. “Sweetheart. I need to take something from you. It will only hurt a second, and your mother will fix it.”

Tenara’s heavy blue eyes blinked open, fluttering and looking around with unfocused sight. She seemed to have a hard time keeping her eyes open, but she nodded anyway, and her hand shifted a hair toward her aunt.

“Hold that vial under her palm. Do not waste a drop, do you understand?” Lelana said to Ren.

[Soran Nightblade]

Ren's hand twitched around the vial. "Laurius won't be able to control him?" he asked. It sounded more like a plea than a challenge, but his complexion had gone stone-gray. "What if Thvoros turns on him?" The memory of Laurius gored and bleeding out on the floor was still only hours old.

[Emora Deen]

“Who?” Lelana asked, not connecting Thvoros to Havitharon until a moment later. She shrugged as she angled the point of the blade toward Tenara’s palm again, now that she had some vague awareness of what was happening. “They have a common goal. If the merchant wants you back, he has to be nice to Thvoros and if Thvoros wants to see her again, he will need to be nice to the merchant.” Lelana slid the blade across Tenara’s palm, deep enough for a trickle of blood and a sharp hiss from the young woman’s throat. “Catch, Spikey the Second.”

[Soran Nightblade]

Ren tilted the vial carefully against Tenara's hand. The Yurivis's hiss of pain, and his participation in it, sent shame and horror twisting through him. He watched Tenara's lifeblood gather in the glass and was grateful he'd already emptied his stomach outside. And in the midst of that sin, he was still worrying about Laurius.

If he wants to see her again? But you told him he couldn't see or talk to her again, he thought sourly, but kept his worries to himself. These people were not Laurius's allies, and technically Ren served no purpose to them either. He was in no position to negotiate. All he could do was pray Thvoros didn't decide it would be easier to protect the princess by himself.

As soon as the vial filled, he set it aside like it was molten and pressed his hand over her wounded palm. A wild thought made him wonder if he should use his venom to relieve the pain, but that conjured the image of what her father had done to her mother minutes ago, and his throat convulsed. "T-that's enough, right?" he begged Lelana.

[Emora Deen]

Lelana took the vial from him and went back to the table. “Hold her hand until her mother returns,” she instructed the being.

Lelana took the blood and poured it over the red ribbon she had stretched across the table, whispering a hellish chant as she did. She saturated the ribbon and took the sword, and began to weave it around the hilt. “Blood to iron, steel to soul, bind this weapon and bind it whole. Tethered spirit, master’s hold.”

She tied the red ribbon in a knot, with two strands handing free at the end.

“There,” Lelana said, smiling at her handiwork.

[Soran Nightblade]

Havi shivered awake. He'd felt something strange pass through him, a familiar heat, but then the sense of female authority at the other side of the connection faded. *Tenara?* he asked curiously into the ether. He felt somehow sure she wasn't holding him, but there was an odd sense of her there anyway. When no response came, he closed his eyes and focused on the remote sense of connection, however faint. Sleep claimed his exhausted mind almost instantly.

Ren held Tenara's hand obediently, using careful pressure on her wound. He couldn't tell if the princess had fallen back to sleep, so he didn't risk waking her by checking on her. He monitored her for any sign of pain. "What you were discussing," he said softly to Lelana. "She has already... taken something." He hadn't missed the heated exchange between the two Yurivie, and could more or less imagine what they'd discussed. As hard as it was for him to understand, he could tell it was important on this world. "She is not with child."

[Emora Deen]

Lelana’s gaze snapped from the sword to Ren, sharp and quick as a dagger slice. Then, her gaze shifted slowly to where Vlad was, because she had not been able to tell if the vampire had retained Laurius Marr’s confession to his alter ego. A bud of nagging guilt turned her stomach sour, because she couldn’t help but remember what she had done to him and how it had broken him.

“Nevertheless,” she said, clearing her throat as she moved on to the herbs she’d gathered. She angrily corked vials and shook the contents into a mortar bowl, taking up the pestle to grind her uncomfortable feelings away. “A second fail-safe won’t hurt.” She focused on how the herbs grinded down but didn’t powder, trying not to think of the child she’d abandoned in the desert when she was only a child herself. “It will do nothing if the problem has sorted itself out already.”

About that time, Tenele returned to the room with the supplies collected into the basket.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad had been silently watching his sister work. Taking Tenele's blood had returned his energy, but his daughter's state had him uncharacteristically subdued. That was, until he realized what Lelana and Spiky II were talking about. He stiffened in his chair and stared at his sister in law. "Who?" he demanded. Was the person he needed to kill in the next wing, the next kingdom, or through a portal to another realm?

[Emora Deen]

Lelana’s angry grinding eased. The sound of the pestle resting against the rim as she dropped it and placed it on the table felt like a gong. She hesitated, meeting Tenele’s eyes.

“The Arken brat,” Lelana said, her throat dry. “As for his accomplices, I don’t know.”

Tenele shifted towards her husband, moving slowly with her hands raising as if she were trying to calm a feral animal. “He is dead, or is thought to be dead… They trapped him in that place.”