Heirot

Tenara's eyes widened. It had happened so quickly. One moment Laurius was there and the next he was gone, and all she could see was Havi standing in the door, gold eyes blazing. She lifted her hands, coming forward. "Wait!"

Laurius wheezed out an unintelligible word.

She wasn't certain what Havitharon thought was happening behind the door, or what he had heard. She treaded carefully, curling her hand gently over the wrist pinning Laurius to the wall. "He just came to talk." But she was standing there in her nightgown, all posed for tempting Havitharon. It didn't look like just a talk.

Another unintelligible wheeze from Laurius. The man's fingers pried at Havitharon's hand. His legs flailed, struggling to find purchase even though they were firmly on the floor.

Tenara touched Havi's cheek. "He asked me to be Artisuren's Yurivis when he needs one again, and I said no. That's all. Please, let him go."

Havi's hand released as if she'd thrown a switch. He took in the sight of her, and the way her clothes appeared to be pulled halfway off. Something unfamiliar ached through him. She was lying. She was lying to him? Why? He lowered his arm and took a deliberate step backward from Laurius's coughing form. What really happened? Why did she look like that? "Where is Artisuren?" he stared at Laurius, trying to figure out what he'd missed. There had to be something he'd overlooked that would explain what was happening.

Tenara saw his gaze sweep over her and she felt heat burn in her cheeks. Her hand went to her gown and pulled it back over her shoulder. She'd forgotten, with Laurius's silly questions, she'd forgotten how she'd made herself look.

Laurius wheezed a breath, rubbing his throat. "His room, I suspect," he said, the words inking out roughly into the air. "What the fuck... was that for?"

"He probably thought you were being a womanizer," Tenara said pointedly, examining his neck. He'd definitely bruise. There was already a red ring staining his skin.

Her startled reaction as she remembered her state of dress only drove Havi's understanding of the situation further into a corner. He felt numb as he watched her hide her body from him and then worry over Laurius's neck. An icy feeling started in his stomach. Had he misjudged, and she actually didn't want to be interrupted? "I heard, from outside... If I've intruded, I..." he couldn't quite make his brain finish the sentence.

Tenara's gaze shifted from Laurius to Havitharon. "Intruded? Havi, no... He really did come to ask about—"

"Tenara says your her slave." Laurius rolled his eyes up to Havitharon.

"That is not what I said!" Tenara released Laurius like he'd burned her, nearly shoving him back into the same wall Havitharon had pinned him against.

"No, I suppose not those exact words... She thinks you'd do anything she asked of you, if you thought it would please her," he said. "Is it true? Is your bond with her like being enslaved? Do you have a choice?"

"Laurius," Tenara warned, eyes burning. "Stop."

"Don't you want to know whether he loves you or if he's enthralled?" Laurius asked, genuinely confused by her reluctance not to have all the answers.

"He doesn't love me," she said, shaking her head.

"Look at his eyes, Tenara. Look at my neck! He clearly lov—"

"He doesn't love me!" The words burst out of her, her chest splintering. "He cannot love me. He doesn't know what love is." Laurius was still giving her that pleading look. A man who needed the answer to an equation at any cost. She shook her head. "I will not ask him to do such a thing to prove a point."

Havitharon went still. Enslaved? Enthralled? That was how she perceived his service?

"He cannot love me. He doesn't know what love is." The agony in her eyes was so glaringly obvious that he wondered why he'd never realized her unhappiness before. Had he been completely blind? Did he just interpret everything to his convenience?

He took a controlled, deliberate breath. "Will not ask me what?" he asked woodenly.

Tenara winced at the question but reached out and took his hand. She kissed his palm. "If I asked you to hurt me, would you? Would you... have to, because I asked it?" She wanted to believe with every fiber of her being that he wouldn't. "Am I wrong?"

Havi's reality crumpled in on itself. She was talking about bending his will on purpose... not just knowingly, but for its own sake. To test him. He never imagined she would consider such a thing. It was the whole reason he'd chosen to serve her.

"I see." He turned to her, darkness kindling in his eyes. "If you wish to test your authority as my Yurivis, your experiment has a flaw." He reached past her side and placed a hand on the pommel of her scabbard. Electricity danced along his skin as the weapon rejected his touch, and it vibrated in its sheath. "We already know this sword's wielder can overpower my will. However, there's an easy way to remove that variable." He looked coldly at Laurius. "You two simply have to trade weapons."

Tenara almost shivered at the dark look in his eyes and the splinter in her heart turned heavy. It all seemed to be spinning out of her control, and she wanted to pull it back in, to let it go back to what it was.

Fuck Laurius and his gods damned curiosity.

"You simply have to trade weapons."

She shook her head. "I don't wish to test it," she said, feeling the knot in her throat tighten. "I don't need to test it. I—"

"We should test it," Laurius said. "It is part of our better understanding of the weapons and them, correct?"

Tenara shot him a hateful glare. "I... I don't want to."

"Its temporary, Tenara. I'm not taking him away from you."

Tenara frowned, watching as he reached beneath his tunic and pulled the blade free from the sheath he kept there. He passed it toward her. She seemed frozen, so he took her hand and pressed the hilt into it. Then, he reached for the sword at her hip. She flinched, seeming as if she were going to dance away from him, but she stilled, clenching her eyes as he took it and held it.

"There," Laurius said. "Ask."

Tenara shook her head.

"Ask him, Tenara. He isn't going to hurt you."

"I don't need to know this, Laurius—"

"Ask him."

He was so confident. He believed so fully that Havi wouldn't hurt her, that his feelings for her were beyond the trappings of whatever a Yurivis was, that it made her believe to. This was foolish. She was foolish.

She looked at Havi and before she could second guess it, she said, "Slap me."

Havi took another step in toward her, towering over her, and looked directly into her eyes. "No, Yurivis. You cannot make me slap you, because I am not in rut, and you have not yet bonded me. And you never will."

He turned on Laurius. "And you. Do you think Artisuren can be tamed by anyone who will have him? It would serve you right if he left your side for hers, but it won't happen. You don't have the first clue what it means that he survived that rut under your guidance."

He went to the damaged door and said, without facing either of them, "Why should I understand love, when both of you understand our devotion even less?" He slammed the half-ruined door behind him.

Tenara wished he had slapped her. It would not have cut so deeply as his words. Her heart wrenched inside her chest, her belly twisting. He had not looked at her so coldly since he’d believed Rami’s words. She could see him again, standing in the cabin…

She’d made a mistake. She’d misunderstood… But how was she supposed to know how it worked if he didn’t tell her! And how was she supposed to understand how he felt…

She’d made a mistake.

“Well, at least, now you know for sure…” Laurious began, but even his voice was weighted differently, laced with understanding.

Tenara shoved his dagger back at him, coming apart as she snatched Havi’s sword and clutched it to her. “Go,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Tenara… He didn’t mean—“

“Get out!” Red light flared in her eyes and a force shoved him into the wall near the door hard enough to crack the plaster.

Laurius scrambled out of the room, closing the door behind him swiftly. A crack spread through it, almost splitting it in half.

Tenara felt her passive hold on her magic slipping, felt that ache in her chest when it wanted to be free. Stupid. Stupid magic. Stupid body. She sobbed and started pacing the room. She rubbed her chest, trying to rub the ache out but now she didn’t know where it was coming from, a broken heart or her cursed emotionally-driven magic.

She felt hot. Like she was burning on the inside, and it was breaking out of her pores. But calming down felt like an impossible task when all she could see were cold gold eyes and hear cold words. Never will.

So easy. It had been so easy to break. Of course it was. The emotional part of their connection had been in her head. Things looked a lot like love when there was sex and kindness involved. She should have known that already. Rami had confused her with the same.

A deeper sob racked through her and the heat felt painful beneath her skin. Sweat poured off of her, and she threw open the windows—every one—letting the bitter cold blow in. It dampened the fire behind her, poured snow onto the floor, but she sank against the open window, taking deep breaths of frozen air.

Eventually she curled on the rug, around the sword because she could hold part of him at least. The snow blew in, cold an instant before melting against her skin. Eventually, mercifully, miraculously, the pressure eased to just the ache of a twisted up heart. But by then Tenara was exhausted from fighting herself and had no desire to get up to close the windows.

When the maids arrived the next morning, bewildered by the splintered door, they found her sleeping like that, surrounded by a ring of snow, her body still boiling just enough to keep frostbite at bay. It was easy to fake illness when it looked so much like fever.

They closed all the windows, restarted the fire, and helped her into a new dressing gown. She told them to make excuses for her at breakfast, that she was still feeling off from the fruit yesterday, and that Laurius would know what she meant. She just needed a little more rest, she’d said. She would try and be down later, she’d said.

In truth, she couldn’t face Havi. Not yet. She couldn’t look into his eyes and see the person she’d known before giving her heart and body to him, knowing she had hurt him and had been so easy to learn to hate again.

Once he was in the hall, he was confronted with the sight of Artisuren running towards him. The other Ivis slid to a halt at the sight of the great Thvoros looking pale and shaken in the center of the hall. "What the heck's happening?" Artisuren asked him warily.

Havi stared the other man in the eyes, looking lost. He was panting, but he couldn't seem to get any air. Of course, Ren would have noticed when the weapon changed hands, just as Havi felt Laurius's unfamiliar mind at the other end of his connection to the sword. "Not right now," he said without thinking.

"Yes, now. Oi. Thvoros."

Havi just turned away from him and staggered into his room. The other Ivis followed him relentlessly. "Oi! Breathe properly. You're hyperventilating."

Havi didn't have the presence of mind to stop the man from forcing his way into his quarters. He vaguely noticed that Ren was correct and he was, in fact, hyperventilating. His stomach churned angrily. He threw a hand over his mouth.

"Ugh, don't puke all over the place!" Havi's legs gave out just as Ren caught him beneath the arms and hauled him toward the bathroom. The other Ivis dropped him to his knees in front of the toilet, where Havi immediately emptied his stomach. Artisuren waited impatiently while Thvoros retched. "Good. Now what the hell are you-"

He froze as he caught a glance of Havi's face in profile. "Are you crying?"

"I lost her."

In a way, Thvoros's hoarse whisper was worse than if he'd lashed out and shouted it. "What do you mean, you lost her? Where's Laurius?"

Both men stiffened as the swords traded hands again in the other room. They each felt it clearly through their links.

*Master?* Ren tested, shoving Thvoros back toward the toilet as he became sick again.

Laurius paused in the hall as he heard Artisuren’s voice travel through his mind. He began rubbing the ache from his shoulder, *Ren. I’m here. I’m heading back from Tenara’s room, if you’re looking for me.*

He glanced back at Tenara’s splintered door, and could hear the soft cries beyond the wood. Guilt was a weight in his belly. Had he really needed to know the control of a Yurivis to understand the sword? He wasn’t certain. What he was certain of was he had made a mistake, and that those tears were just as much his doing as they were Havitharon’s.

Ren glanced at the door. Laurius had been with the princess? Just now? He looked back at Thvoros, trying to put the story together with his uncharacteristic behavior. I lost her, he'd said.

*Are you okay?* he asked his master. *Something's wrong with Thvoros.* He wanted to go to his master.

*It’s my fault,* he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. *But, I’m certain he didn’t mean it. They’ll be fine.* They had to be fine. He couldn’t consider he had ruined something that appeared so genuine and beautiful… It couldn’t be ruined so easily. It was just an experiment. It hadn’t meant anything beyond knowledge, and she certainly hadn’t meant her request. She hadn’t even wanted, truly, to ask it. He’d pressured her. *Fuck. If I had known how upset he’d be, I wouldn’t have pushed her so hard.*