Naeda17

Now, she sat in an unforgiving chair with her chin in her hand and her heart threatening to bash through her chest. Discomfiting heat burned up her neck and face. Unlike all the bodies, penniless fools, and broken families she’d left in her wake, she’d known this was wrong from the start. Known it was wrong yet been utterly powerless to fight it. How could she kill something without a soul or body? How could she stand to kill her desire for the only person who’d ever made her feel alive?

Somehow, as she discreetly looked up from her book to watch Lucien at the library’s smaller table, her desires seemed to stain her more deeply than any blood or mud. Seemed to carve a hole in her belly that burned and burned and burned, begging to be quenched. Her mind’s eye sketched the lines of his body beneath his drab black shirt. From training with him, she knew he was fit, but not bulky or bony, a handsome balance of muscle and just enough fat to feed it.

Her mouth turned dry as desert sand. Sipping the dregs of her lavender tea, she retreated into the darker, briar-choked paths of memory, searching for some means of blunting her lust. If she could starve it or twist it against itself, the world would be right again. Avoiding him entirely would’ve been the wisest option, she supposed, and had been easy enough in the Sanctuary. Now, though, with it Purified, she had nowhere else to go. Thoughts of returning there knotted her throat and guts. From experience, the taverns and boarding houses were either too loud, lice-ridden, or brimming with idiots she’d struggle not to strangle. Considering the week-long journey to Benirus Manor wearied her like the ride itself would.

So in her flight from lust, she dove into memories of recent days, prodding every bruise she could along the way.

As its overseeing Speaker, Lucien had visited Cheydinhal’s Sanctuary on a near-weekly basis, and before long, they’d struck up something of an acquaintanceship. They began training together, both privately and alongside other Family members. His dark smiles and praise, his austere features and lethal grace, all sparked her infatuation with him. Antoinetta Marie, who’d been her closest confidant, learned swiftly of it—undoubtedly because she shared the attraction. They’d often caught each other glancing longingly at him as he drifted through the halls.

Weeks and months passed. As she climbed the ranks of the Family and Lucien’s favor, an insidious paranoia began to creep through Tatiana. She feared Marie would spread her secret in the hopes of discrediting her and snatching Lucien’s approval and potentially affection for herself. But despite the occasional hints of jealousy in her eyes, the sprightly Breton never spoke ill of her, let alone betrayed her. At times, she was Tatiana’s only sun, bright and warm even when Tatiana felt cold, driving rain from all else. Tears coming unbidden during the Purification, she’d cut Marie’s throat after the soporific dragged her under. Just as she’d done to Gogran, Telaendril, and the others. Just as Lucien had instructed when he ordered the ancient rite. As an offering to Umbra, she’d even killed Schemer, the tame rat that snuffled about the Sanctuary, seeking breadcrumbs and ear-scritches.

And Vicente, the kindly vampire with both sadism and softness in spades. He’d been like a father to her and so many others, schooling her in blades, manipulation, and history, anything and everything that could aid an assassin in their work. Umbra screaming for blood, she’d hacked off his head with one of Gogran’s axes as he slept. Only after it thumped awkwardly to the floor did she remember how she longed to do the same to her own father, and how cruel fate was for demanding Vicente’s life and not his. Surely, Vicente hadn’t been the traitor. Then again, no one suspected the best turncoats, just as she’d never suspected her father or sister. Adrenaline and bloodlust fizzled out as they always did. Left her cold, weak, and painfully alone in the tomb she’d made of her home.  

After Purifying the Sanctuary, she’d dragged herself back to Fort Farragut, blood plastering her gold hair to her cheeks, tears smearing the kohl around her eyes, and a hard knot wedged in the pit of her throat. She hadn’t known such grief since her months in the Imperial Prison, abandoned by her parents, betrayed by her sister, and abused by a handsome, two-faced guardsman. That emptiness and sorrow broke even Umbra’s defenses terrified her, each a weighty thing dropped unceremoniously into her lap. The sword’s magic, like some natural instinct, urged her even now to vent them through slaughter. As she’d trudged up the winding forest trail, she groped for the wrath that had spurred her through the Crisis, trying to hate the mysterious traitor that made the Purification necessary. Trying convince herself that she’d done a good thing and that Sithis and Lucien would be pleased. She found only sodden ashes and deeper loneliness. There wasn’t even anyone within reach to kill. As bloodied and disheveled as she’d been, she couldn’t risk the local brothels for a distraction, and a bandit hunt was out of the question, too, for she hadn’t been blind enough to forget her orders.

Return to me when they lie dead.

It was the only time she’d hesitated at the fort’s ironwood doors. From gossip and firsthand experience, Lucien had proven himself a fiercely private and uncompromising man who reviled all weakness. He’d inevitably hear her report, glower at her messy makeup and trembling lip, then shoo her off to a safe house to gather herself. To smother her upset and remember who and what she was. It’s what her father would’ve done. It’s what her Thieves’ Guild master would’ve done during her training. Why should Lucien be any different? He knew talent, as Marie had said, but he could smell frailty from across the county. She’d deserve his disdain.

She practically froze when she reached his chambers. He’d been hunched over the controlled, uncharacteristic chaos of his alchemy table—pages of notes and recipes haphazardly tacked to the mirror above the desk, a pulpy root minced with sharply fragrant herbs on a granite slate next to a jar of honey and a mortar filled with ground bone. He’d caught her reflection in the mirror and immediately rose to meet her. She’d only been gone a week, planning, curing her poison, and waiting for all the Sanctuary members to return from their business, yet Lucien seemed to have aged a decade. The candles and orb of mage light revealed a disheveled recluse. Insomnia shadowed his dark, bloodshot eyes. Much of the warmth had drained from his olive skin. The lines sketched across his brow and the crows’ feet clutching at his eyes seemed deeper than before.

She knew then that he grieved the Sanctuary as she did. He’d just been better at hiding it until she was gone.

In a coarse whisper, he’d asked if it was done. She reported everything in wooden tones. Hated the few, but damning catches in her breath. But she held her head high and braced herself for dismissal like a hound bracing itself for its master’s boot.

He listened in pensive silence. When she finished, he placed his hands on her shoulders, gaze turning disarmingly soft, and insisted she stay in the fort while Black Hand contacts cleaned and refitted the Sanctuary. She nodded, wondering if it was out of true kindness or a bewildering need for company. He showed her to a tiny guest chamber down the hall from his own and furnished its cot with his spare linens. It was where the other Speakers stayed when they visited, he’d said. She nodded halfheartedly and bathed in his washroom, biting back tears until her lip bled as she scrubbed the sweat and rusty red from her hair and face. Later, they ate together in silence. If he’d heard her smothering her sobs into her pillow that night, he made no comment of it. Silence and each other, it seemed, was all they had left, and they’d not so deprive each other.

Days died, nights dragged on. One week, then two. They lived and mourned together yet apart, training and dining together, sharing chores and tending their personal pursuits with increasing proximity. Tatiana forced her attention back to notions of power and vengeance and finally managed to sweep her grief under the proverbial rug, for whether it was warranted or not, it was a distraction, and distractions were an assassin’s bane. The Purification was merely another scar for her collection. No different than the one curling around her brow and temple or the ghastly one streaking down her hip and thigh. Similarly, Lucien appeared to repress his pain. He’d raked his hair back into its neat, swept-back queue, and his black robes and day clothes were no longer rumpled like a vagabond’s rucksack. He looked like he was sleeping at least somewhat better.

Some semblance of normalcy found them. While he waited for word from the Listener, they began to collaborate on alchemy and crafting projects. They began to chat over meals and chores, indulging each other in stories of past kills and close-calls rather than professional banalities. They sparred daily, venting their hidden pains through sweat and singing steel. He showed her the fortress, taking endearing pride in his weapons hall and library. The latter was a veritable trove of books and scrolls on everything from weaponcraft and alchemy to treatises on history, culture, and magical theory. With a lingering gleam in his eyes, he told her how he’d had it renovated from a dilapidated storeroom, then killed the designing architect, stole her blueprints to prevent anyone from learning of the project, and had Brotherhood contacts refit it. She’d smiled, he’d smiled back, and they held their gazes a moment too long to have been mere colleagues or friends.

That had been the beginning of the end, Tatiana now knew, the kindling of mutual grief and loneliness, of seeking and finding connection, that ignited her lusts.

She dragged herself out of her head, brow pinched. As it often had, digging through her past only sent her spiraling downward, looping and looping until she or something else snapped her out of it. She refocused on the book she’d been trying to study for the last hour. It was a tattered, but informative text on Cheydinhal’s geology, and as absorbing as it had been the night before, it was now tantamount to drying plaster. Gneiss and schist, a dead volcano and suggestions of gold veins swimming through the Valus Mountains, none of it mattered while misery and Lucien warred for her attention. When she avoided thinking of him, her dead Family haunted her. In avoiding thoughts of them, Lucien’s warm, heavy hands seemed to settle back on her shoulders. Then she’d wonder what they’d feel like on her bare skin. Gripping her waist and backside. Cupping her breasts and the crook of her neck. Teasing the warmth between her legs.What did he look like with his hair down? With it dangling in his face as he fu-,

Oh, just go to bed, she thought bitterly and drained her tea. Read that filthy book in your pack, have a little fun, then sleep. Lovely and wicked as he is, he’s just a man. No different than the others you’ve bedded. Starve this out, and you’ll want someone else before long.

Easy enough. If push came to shove, she could change clothes and slip into town for a night at whatever brothel still had an open bed or sofa. It was late, but not that late. Besides, since diving into personal research over the last few days, Lucien had grown distant. He’d most recently regarded her like she was an unsolved puzzle or a bizarre insect he’d trapped in a jar. She doubted he’d miss her much.

Throat working, she slanted a hungry, parting look at him—only to find him watching her, and without so much as a drop of the fond, yet professional respect she’d come to expect. She froze like a thief caught with their hand in a safe. He stiffened like a duelist unexpectedly struck through the heart. They’d caught each other. Oh, fuck, she thought.

Umbra’s uncannily close parody of her voice flicked through her. ~ oh fuck, indeed ~

Shut up, she snapped back. This isn’t the bloody time. Tatiana resumed reading at a random spot on the page. Even the decidedly understated discussion of geode composition made little sense now. She crossed her legs and flipped a page. Tried to look casual and ignore her growing panic.

As usual, the spectral voice ignored her. ~ well, well, at least the imp’s out of the pantry now. if he hadn’t known you wanted him before, he sure as shit does now. but those bedroom eyes? a distraction, Tat. he’s wondering how to kill you for your stupidity ~

No he isn’t. Not under the Tenets.

~ then he’ll demote and toss you out like rubbish. if you’d sold the blade of woe and crawled back to the arena like the cheating whore you are, you wouldn’t be in this mess. they’d have taken you back you made them a lot of money you know and oreyn’s nose hadn’t been that badly broken… ~

Tatiana waffled. She could swat thoughts of him killing her, but not those of him discarding her. Depriving her of the praise and purpose and home she’d found as his Silencer. She flicked another page, hands prickling uncomfortably, then gave up and stood. It’s a thorn. Let him tear it out. The Purification is done, the traitor dead. Go fuck someone else and forget him. Get back to planning your rev-,

“Do you know what I hate most?”

Tatiana flinched to awareness. Lucien stood just within arm’s reach, hands pocketed and an unreadable mask hiding all traces of his lust and surprise. The chair creaked shrilly as she sat back; never had she felt so blind, so cornered, in her life. “Traitors. But something tells me you have a list,” she answered.

“As do you, I imagine,” he said, smiling slightly. “But do you know what I hate most besides traitors?”

She parsed through what she knew of his beliefs and personality, wrung out tales from their Siblings, all they’d endured as Speaker and Silencer. The answer seemed obvious enough. “Liars.”

“Liars,” he confirmed. His smile widened as he glanced at her lips and throat, only to vanish a blink later as his brow knitted. “Yet you so crudely attempt to lie to me.”

Shadow and ruddy torchlight dueled on his black hair and the angular planes of his face. She stood up and made a show of smoothing the front her tunic. “Speaker, I’ve never lied to you.”

“There are spoken lies and lies of omission.” He narrowed his eyes as if studying a complex alchemy formula. Or something foul he’d scraped out of a sewer drain. “Contrary to what you may believe, your studies of me have been far from subtle. Not here or in the Sanctuary. Antoinetta was no slyer. And I am, shall we say, intimately acquainted with the kinds of looks the pair of you were giving me. I’ve used them to gain my own pleasure. I’ve used them to aid in my kills and the pursuit of information. Whether out of simple infatuation, legitimate attraction, or some pathetic attempt at furthering yourself professionally, you want me.”

The certainty in his voice caught her like a noose left dangling. Of course he’d known. Lucien Lachance knew everything.

“I know of your feelings because you allowed me to,” he went on. “I’ve followed your progress quite closely, you know. The thieves and Blades taught you wonderful things. You’re a formidable alchemist. Your marksmanship rivaled Telaendril’s, and you move as shadows do. Your swordsmanship and bloodthirst are works of art. In the field and even to your former Siblings, you lie beautifully…” Lucien let his words hang, then stepped closer. “Yet in my company, you have always read like a bold handbill. So I ask again. Why do you lie to me?”

Tatiana set her teeth and held her ground. True to her training, she sat with her back straight and hands resting loosely in her lap, resisting the near-maddening urge to toy with her long braid or tuck her half-fringe behind her ear. Everything was a test with Lucien. Every word, breath, microexpression, or subtle shift in body language was an answer to be weighed. As in their sparring sessions, she struck before he could, willing steel into her voice. “With all due respect, Speaker, you weren’t exactly looking chastely at me.”

Lucien blinked at that. Smirked and leaned close; his breath was warm and smelled faintly of honey and bitter nightshade from his tea. “So I wasn’t. Though still you avoid my question.”

“Because you’re my Speaker,” she conceded. “It wouldn’t be safe, let alone proper. Even if it was, you should deserve-,” She bit off that thought at the quick. His type loathed self-depreciation, and she didn’t want to blacken both her eyes. “I’d been trying to ignore it and let it pass like any other infatuation. Mixing business and pleasure isn’t exactly wise.”

~ no matter how you ache for him with your hand between your legs? ~

That needled her. Tatiana wandered to the faded Black Hand banners softening the wall, barely keeping her face schooled after Umbra’s intrusion. The torch to her left crackled mockingly in its wall sconce. She wanted—needed—to beg for his forgiveness, but her tongue was a wad of dry cotton shoved between her teeth. For the first time since she’d claimed Umbra, she felt helpless. Guilty. She yearned for the sword’s bloodthirst and certainty and guidance, but after its last aside, its magic went vexingly still.

Her gaze dropped to her simple house shoes—fleece-lined and well-maintained, but heavily scuffed and creased with age. She was his Silencer, dammit. If he was being genuine, didn’t her rank matter to him? Shouldn’t he care that she’d become so distracted? Or was he just another powerful man looking to leverage those beneath him?

Strangely, as his boot heels thudded behind her, she realized she didn’t care. That should shame her more than any attraction, but the noose had already been tightened and her wrists bound. They’d caught each other cold-footed. What harm could using and being used really do at this point? Life would seize whatever pleasure she ignored. For now, she and Lucien were isolated, bleeding together, and free to dabble in arts too dark and forbidden for their kind. No one would have to know. The fort’s skeletal guardians certainly wouldn’t betray them.

And if this was a ploy to humiliate her and shock her priorities into line? If he struck her? She’d played into his hands and deserved whatever punishment he inflicted upon her. Pain would put her right. Then she’d take Umbra and go. Follow the her new superiors’ orders, seek distraction in brothels as she always had, and finally hunt down her treacherous relatives.

Testing the waters, Tatiana reached for him. He didn’t strike her. She smoothed her hand up his chest, fingertips brushing the V of warm skin behind the loose laces under his collar. They’d donned plainclothes after training—her, brown leggings under a green  lounge tunic, the hem and long sleeves lightly embroidered in yellow swirls, and him, a relaxed swordsman’s shirt tucked into high, fitted trousers. Only meager cotton separated them. It was too much.

She inhaled slowly; the subtle scents of candle smoke, ink, and aging parchment filled in the room, all far kinder than the sweat, blade oil, and fresh blood that had choked the Sanctuary when she left. His mage light dimmed but still glinted in his dark eyes and hair. Her hand drifted to his neck, thumb rolling over the stubble at his jaw. His pulse raced beneath her fingers. You can’t fake that…

Lucien hooked his thumb beneath her chin and tilted her head up, “Look at me, Tatiana.”

Her name on his tongue, soft as silk, utterly disarmed her. "I didn’t want to offend you, Speaker. Nor anyone else.”

An amused chuckle rumbled in his chest. "Contrary to what some believe, lust is perfectly natural. I have known it. Much of our Family has known it at some point or another. Take no shame in it, my dear."

Fresh doubt engulfed her. Vicente taught that the relationship between a Speaker and Silencer was inviolable. Sacrosanct. When she'd first dreamt of Lucien and woken with a wet, damnable ache between her legs, she knew she'd tainted their bond. There were no tenets against taking lovers, but such relationships were dangerous on countless levels. Outside fairytale rubbish, love strengthened no one. It clouded judgment and offered leverage to enemies. Love killed as sure as any blade.

No, this wasn’t love. She barely knew him. It was lust. Lust.

“Or would you disagree?” he asked.

“No, but…” She managed to meet his gaze. Was it the torch and mage light, or were there amber flecks in his eyes? "You would have your Silencer? Me, of all people"

“Some itches don’t ease until they’re scratched, just as some wounds cannot heal without stitches.” Another smirk tweaked his mouth, a sliver of teeth so white against his skin. "Each shall seek their own kind, and we are forged of the same steel."

Chills skittered up her back. Perhaps she could accept this as the only appropriate thing it could be: an isle of refuge in a bitter sea, catharsis after unthinkable betrayal. Did he need it as much as she did?

Breathing deep, she glanced at his lips then took the plunge. She seized a fistful of his hair and crushed his mouth to hers, startled when matched her hunger and kissed back without preamble, pawing her body with all the roughness that bruised her dreams. Feverish minutes escaped them, somehow fleeting and ageless at once. The whisper of his breath, the iron in his grip, the smoothness of his lips amidst the scratch of his stubble, her every sense narrowed to him. She didn’t care about the hints of smoke from the torch and candles. No more did she care about the ghosts of her past, Umbra’s insatiable appetite for souls, and the unsated vengeance it kept dangling over her head. It didn’t even cross her mind that she hadn’t brewed any of her contraceptives since the Purification. Only the filthy things they could do to each other mattered.

Tatiana sighed contentedly as he flicked his tongue up the shell of her ear and nibbled the skin below it. She tilted her head aside as he mouthed her neck, all greedy teeth and tongue. Her hands roved over his backside and the cross-draw knife on the back of his belt, up the valley of his spine and into his hair, his ponytail already disheveled from her fingers. Heat coiled deep in her belly, throbbed between her legs. She leaned back against the wall and murmured his name as he pressed against her. How small she felt in comparison. Small, yet impossibly safe in the arms of such a cruel murderer.

She bit his lower lip, tugged at it before his tongue swept back between her teeth. She fumbled with her sword belt, and Umbra clattered to the floor with it and her dagger. Her breath caught as much from the blade’s separation as from Lucien groping her breast. Glancing scornfully at her collar, he shoved his hand her tunic. Having retired for the day, she wore nothing beneath it, and his palm was blissfully warm against her skin, his callouses scraping just as she’d dreamt they would. She moaned softly into his mouth as he rolled her nipple to stiffness. His thumb and forefinger weren’t enough, she thought hazily. She wanted his mouth there. Teeth and that practiced tongue. Before she could drag the tunic over her head, he pressed his knee between her legs. With a breathy sigh, she bowed her head to his collarbone. He grinned against her temple as she rocked her hips against him.

She fisted her hands in his shirt as he mouthed her neck and the corner of her jaw. Forget coarse kisses and touches. The longer she stayed in these godsforsken leggings, the tighter a famine seemed to grip her.

Kissing him again, she untucked his shirt and slid her hands beneath it to scratch his shoulder blades. Lucien inhaled sharply, his cock beginning to stiffen, then strain against her stomach. He rolled his hips against hers, now as desperate for friction as she was. She couldn’t help a soft, smug chuckle. She’d aroused countless men. A few women, too. But this was Lucien Lachance, of all people, cruel and callous and cold as ice. How many could say the same and lived afterward? She yanked his laces loose and curled her fingers around his length, worked him with damning slowness. As she rolled her calloused thumb across its crown, his cock twitched slightly and he broke the kiss to suck in a breath through his teeth.

Tatiana leaned her head back against the wall and grinned. “Did you say something, Speaker?”

He snatched her wrist. “Turn around,” he hissed.

“Only if you promise not to be gentle.”

With all the speed and fluidity of a master swordsman, he coiled her braid around his free hand and shoved her against the heavy trestle table where she’d been reading. He leaned down to her ear, cock pressing to her backside. “I promise.”

Tatiana swallowed hard at the jagged edge in his whisper, her scalp stinging and the table unforgiving on her cheek and temple, but she didn’t hesitate in hitching her leggings down. Lucien didn’t hesitate either, not in toeing her feet apart and not in slicking his fingers, then his cock with her heat. She glared out the side of her eye as he took the former away, then gasped sharply as he took her without warning. Fucked her.

Like his kisses and the size of him, Lucien’s rhythm was everything she’d yearned and ached for—not particularly fast, but as rough as his hands and paining her as much as pleasing her. Tears pricked her eyes as he tightened his grip on her hair. His fingernails bit deep into the flesh at her hip, and deeper still when he leaned lower. The hiss of his breath as he panted through his nose, the shift of his muscles bunching against her back, bits of his hair grazing her cheek, the pulse of satisfaction with each thrust, all of it nearly drove her mad.

Tatiana reached for his bruising hold on her hip, only to have him pin her wrist to the table. She bit her lip and watched as the flames atop the table’s candelabra shuddered in time with his movements. Some mawkish part of her mourned that she couldn’t hold or kiss him while he had her, that she couldn’t look at and connect with him as she’d wanted  but failed to connect with everyone else she’d bedded over the years. As her hips began to ache from the blunt edge of the table, those saccharine wants withered. She gritted her teeth and dug her short, jagged nails into the table. Of course this wasn’t love. Love would kill their kind. This was pure lust. Misery. Catharsis. A feast of bones and fear amidst a famine. There was no sweetness to be tasted, and she knew they wouldn’t know what to do if there was. The sex was good, and that was all she should be caring about.

Sweat began to gather beneath her arms and behind her knees. Her legs turned to jelly. Goosebumps peppered her arms. Fingers stinging as she clawed the table, she fought desperately to prolong her pleasure, the emptiness in her mind. And she was losing.

“Oh, gods, gods…” she whimpered. Just another minute, she thought, pleading with herself as she clenched around him. Just another-,

He grunted in annoyance at her words, as if she shouldn’t invoke such powers in his home. When she strained against him, he bent low and set his teeth to the crook of her neck, his strokes quickening. As if its strings had been cut, the tension coiling tighter, tighter, and tighter still under her belly sprang free. A splinter of wood jabbed into her finger when she clawed the old table, her eyes rolling back. Amidst the hitches in her breath, she gasped his name like it was her final plea.

The world slowed to a crawl as her climax rolled over and through her. Despite the bruises, Tatiana melted into heavy bliss, eyes falling shut as she hunted her breath. Lucien needed only a minute more. A deep, shuddering groan and faint spurts of warmth within her betrayed his end. He slowed, stilled, and panted softly against her temple. Then, with near-heartbreaking gentleness, he kissed the side of her neck and sucked on the angry red crescent he’d bitten onto it. He caressed her thighs and stomach and fondled her breasts as no one else had done without pay. Together, they drifted in a silent, hazy limbo, wholly unsure where one began and the other ended. For the moment, all was well. Their Family lived. There was no traitor. Nothing festered in the ruins of their hearts. They were just two sides of a happily forgotten coin, two nameless lovers seeking shelter from the world and the wounds it had beaten into them.

But like all clouds, theirs, too, had to dissipate eventually. Exhaling heavily, Lucien’s hands glided down her sides and he stepped away. Tatiana levered herself up and grimaced at how empty and exposed she felt without him near. The lingering sting in her fingertips, the soreness in her wrists and hips and between her legs, anchored her in the returning tides. She tucked her fringe behind her ear and winced as she tweaked the splinter. Holding her hand near the candles, she plucked it free. Blood welled up on the pad of her finger.

She watched it slide down her finger to plip onto the table. Guilt and shame seeped through her. No matter how outwardly tolerant Marie had been, she’d have hated her now. Maybe she did, if Vicente had been right when he said the Family’s dead could watch their brethren from the Void. Ocheeva and Teinaava wouldn’t look at her. M’raaj-Dar would’ve accused her of whoring her way to power. Gogran would’ve paled, and Telaendril, pursed her lips in thinly veiled disdain. And Vicente, his reproving frown and the narrowing of his pink eyes were going to haunt her sleep for weeks. The sheer roughness of their coupling would’ve made her father faint, but the thought brought no amusement.

Whatever respect and companionship she and Lucien had had, whatever emotions they’d vented and however consensual this had been, they would never be the same. Speaker and Silencer, but she’d never see him as just an assassin, artist, or her superior. She’d see scraps of affection she’d never deserve even if he offered them, a man who’d used her as much as she’d used him. And it all could’ve been avoided if she’d kept to herself.

She wiped her eyes and muttered a curse when her hand came away smeared with kohl and tears. Whether at that or the uneasy twist on her mouth, Lucien watched her closely. The kohl drew his attention to her hand, and the blood on her finger wasn’t far off. “Are you alright?”

Managing a smirk, Tatiana wiped the insides of her thighs with the hem of her tunic. That was always the worst part, she thought, stifling a shudder as she hastily pulled up her leggings and soggy smallclothes. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

She hadn’t fooled him earlier, and by his flat look, she sure as shit hadn’t now. “You asked me not to be gentle,” he said.

“It’s not that. I’m fine, Lucien. Really. But thank you for the concern. Concern isn’t really something I get often unless I pay for it.”

Lucien frowned deeply at that. His stare lingered on the bite he’d left at her neck, her collar rumpled and crooked where he’d yanked it aside. Averting her eyes, she thumbed the loose bits he’d rustled from her braid. Through her lashes, she almost thought he looked like he wanted to draw her close again, or at least make sure he hadn’t truly hurt her. But then his attention became a heavy, white-hot brand, and she avoided it like plague. When she still refused to look at him, he turned coldly away. Clammy air seemed to roll through the library, thick like fog after a storm, and with it a more poignant loneliness than she’d ever known.

Wonderful. You can make yourself feel like shit and piss him off at the same time. You’ve gotten pretty good at this, haven’t you? she thought bitterly.

"If that’s all, I have research to finish. I received word from the Listener this afternoon, while you were working,” he said. “There have been no additional killings since the Purification. He deems it safe to resume our contracts. I’m preparing several for you, the first of which you will depart on in the morning.”

Another contract? That should’ve made her heart leap. Instead, without Umbra on her hip, it simply reminded her how tired she was. “As you command, Speaker,” she whispered, forcing herself to look at him. Stony authority choked off his lust and affection. “By your leave?”

Nodding curtly, Lucien strode back to his table and the towers of books he’d left behind. He sank into his chair. “Meet me here in the morning for briefing,” he said, raspy from something nameless and wounded.

“As you command,” she repeated. She donned her sword belt, apologetically curling her fingers around Umbra’s hilt. No scratches or nicks, of course, but she shouldn’t have been so careless. She needed it, and it needed her like no one else could or would. Like Lucien or no other mortal would. Faint tendrils of black mist caressed her hand in agreement and vanished. She squeezed the hilt tighter, blood from her finger soaking into the leather wrapping. The potential repercussions of her and Lucien’s impulsivity brushed her mind, but she disregarded them; it should be too early in the month to matter.

The promise of magically warmed water and lavender soap tempted her, but she was too physically and emotionally drained to heave on the squealing water pump for a second time that night. Settling for a quick wipe-down and a change of clothes, she snuffed the candles on her table and returned to her room. The place had come to feel almost like home in the last fortnight, but as she looked around the spartan chamber, she felt like a grimy beggar sheltering under a nobleman’s eaves. One of the skeletal patrols turned empty, condemning eye sockets to her as she turned to shut the door. After washing her tunic’s hem in her wash basin and cleaning up, she used her meager healing spell to mend her finger and burrowed into her cot. The coarse wool blanket seemed heavy as a heap of bodies. Even now, she swore it smelled like him, all leather and parchment and iron.

No matter how she’d expected her dismissal, it cut like a serrated knife, shredding all it touched and taking bits with it. Yet what she had and hadn’t seen in Luc—her Speaker’s—eyes, sawed into bone and reminded her that she wasn’t meant to have the love found in fairytales. The jailer had dirtied her. Ruined her. He’d been right, too. No matter how she tried to scrub herself clean, whether she bedded a whore or someone she’d almost consider a friend, no one would want her for anything more than coin or to sate their own pleasure. Silencer and Champion of Cyrodiil she might still be, but no power or prestige would ever change that.

It didn’t help that Lucien, to whatever extent, had wanted her, then snuffed it out like a candle. She knew should do the same, but could she? Could she step back into her killing boots, strangle her attraction to him, and see him as just her superior? Biting back tears, she clutched the blanket and drew her knees up to her chest, ignoring the complaints of her bruises and burrowed her face into her pillow.

~ gods, Tat, since when do you get fucked and fall to pieces? you don’t need him you don’t need the sanctuary you just need me and your revenge we’ll get it soon. sithis will have whatever blood he wants. lucien…will get what he wants ~

Shadows of black and murky purple swirled around the edges of her vision, and a familiar sense of I’m All You Need drew her attention to her nightstand. It was a black smudge against the wall. Atop it lay Umbra, still sheathed. Still hungry and hers. She clutched it to her chest. The scabbard was hard and cold between her knees. The leather wrap creaked as she tightened her grip on its hilt. Lucien hadn’t let her hold his hand, but she still had this.

Sithis only knew how long she glared at the wall, thoughts draining away as the guardians tromped down the hall. By the time her eyes began to droop, she knew one thing. Umbra’s whisper carried it through her until consciousness abandoned her to deep, dreamless darkness.

~ and since it’s only a weapon he wants, it’s only a weapon he’ll get ~

~ ~ ~

Late-winter rains had soaked the county for most of the afternoon and evening, sorely needed after a bone-dry tenday. By the time Lucien snapped his books shut and ghosted up the steps to Fort Farragut’s ramparts, the storm had marched northeast and left chilly, fitful winds in its wake. The naked branches shivered in their passing, and the curtains of mountain laurel and evergreen vines clinging to the dilapidated structure shuddered as they swept through the battlements. Each gust was a slap in the face. He pulled his hood lower. Rain dribbled off the eaves and arches to smack his head and shoulders like pebbles, rolling down his cloak’s shell of thick, waxed canvas.

None of it distracted him like he’d hoped. He’d never felt like such a stranger in his own home.

He turned down a narrow corridor and took the spiraling stair at the end. Shortly after he’d been promoted to Speaker and claimed the fort, Banus Alor had magically reinforced it, preventing further natural degradation and damage by external forces. Lucien hadn’t had any of the exterior ruination repaired, however, wanting to preserve the place’s haunted, overtly threatening aura, as well as its general inaccessibility. As such, the little storeroom he headed toward was the last room on the upper levels with an intact roof—making it also the last dry room there. Town was too far to walk and its taverns too loud even at this hour. The forests were muddy, and muddy forests were dangerous with all his wits about him. But he couldn’t have stayed below. His books and missives had turned dull. He wouldn’t waste time trying to sleep. Downstairs in the vaults that had for two decades been his personal sanctuary, pieces of himself seemed scattered beyond reach. When she refused to look at him, the air turned suffocatingly close. He needed to gather himself. To breathe.

She did, too.

He ducked the crooked arms of the rhododendron overhanging the doorway and slumped down against the back wall. A few of last season’s leaves scuttled away as he did. He summoned a dim cloud of mage light and drew his ebony dagger. Its sleepy light glimmered across the tracery swirling down the blade and hilt, brilliant gold on cobalt blue. Drawing a whetstone from his cloak pocket, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the grating drag of stone on steel. As with the wind, damp, and forlorn scenery, it brought none of its usual comfort.

Still he tasted her. Smelled hints of lavender and rosewater from her hair, the ghosts of blood they could never fully cover. Her kisses were still pinpricks on his throat. The tiny crescents and scratches she’d raked down his shoulder blades still stung and, damn everything, left him hungering for more. Sex was an occasional indulgence for him, an enjoyable but ultimately unnecessary diversion. Like a good glass of wine or any other pleasure, it was something to be enjoyed after more pressing obligations were fulfilled. The Dark Brotherhood had no restrictions on sex, only that its members keep their duties to Sithis at the fore, and the Black Hand was by no means known for celibacy. Whether he stroked himself or visited the Family-aligned brothel in Cheydinhal, he took his pleasure, reclaimed his senses, and went on his way as casually as if he’d picked up a loaf of bread from the market. But that wasn’t even the crux of his frustration now.

No, it was simply that he wasn’t supposed to want more. His chest wasn’t supposed to ache with a dozen things he’d repressed and resented for half his life—among them, fledgling care, sorrow at the abuse she alluded to, his own surprise and hurt when she wouldn’t bloody look at him. Lucien set his teeth.

Outside, the incessant rustling of branches scratched at his ears, its warning as vehement as the hissing from a basket of vipers. She may have saved Cyrodiil and the Family, but she will ruin you.

After Tatiana turned in, he’d done as he had after every other conquest he’d made in the name of business or pleasure: he’d thrown himself back into his work. Chiefly, he resumed the planning of her upcoming contracts. Then he’d returned to dissecting months’ worth of reports from Count Indarys and his steward, desperate even after the Purification to find holes in the Hand’s argument against the Sanctuary. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes between their initial kiss and their departure, yet every document, every murderous plot thread and possibility scribbled in his notes, had greyed and withered under his scrutiny, and he couldn’t focus on any of them. Habit, duty, and disgustingly human need demanded he return to Farragut’s depths. That he find something, anything, to substantiate his resistance to his fellows’ vote. Something to vindicate his confidence that the traitor had not slunk out from beneath his nose.

But how could he stomach the count’s loopy script and hideous verbosity after doing what he’d done? How could he convince the others of their errors or himself of their validity? How could he lift molded curtains or turn jagged stones, string two, three, four coherent thoughts together when Tatiana filled every corner and crevice of his mind?

What was more, what kind of Speaker fucked their Silencer mere weeks after his friends, first mentor, and adoptive children, were exterminated—by that Silencer? What kind of Speaker focused not on avenging them, but on the warmth that had rushed through him when he met his Silencer’s gaze? What kind of Speaker fixated not on the possibility of an escaped traitor, but the press of her slick heat or her high, breathy moans as he pounded her against the table? She’d wanted to hold his hand. He’d thought that pinning it down would keep him in check. Keep it a purely physical affair. A distraction, a buoy in the black sea threatening to swallow them.

How stupid and sorely mistaken he’d been.

Lucien enjoyed Tatiana’s company. Their minds, aspirations, and beliefs twined with wicked grace, like two snakes. They were picked from the same row, as his mother would’ve said. Initially, he’d thought her intriguing, pretty in an imperfect way with her soft face offset by scars, a crooked nose, and a cruel mouth and eyes. From what he could only describe as inspiration from Sithis, he knew she’d be the fresh blood the Family so sorely needed. But he hadn’t wanted her sexually. He'd taken his share of men and women over the years, rough kisses and touches bought when he couldn’t scratch the proverbial itch himself. The women had been taller and leaner. Some had had fuller breasts and lips. All had had prosaically straight noses, unscarred, perfectly made-up faces, and hair that smelled of cloying perfume instead of blood, leather, and roses. Only after months of training with her, bonding with her and claiming her as his Silencer, had he begun to indulge thoughts of bedding her.

Now that he had, he realized his own need for comfort and distraction blinded him to what was now a glaring sun: for the first time in two decades, he wanted someone not simply as a friend or casual bedmate, but a lover. For that reason alone, fucking her had been a mistake.

And all mistakes, according to Vicente, were fine teachers if those who’d committed them cared to learn. Lucien cared deeply. He might’ve painted on his mask far better than she had, but the Cheydinhal Sanctuary had been family to him, too. He would not lose himself so carelessly and insult their memory again. With a particularly violent stroke of the whetstone, he dragged his thoughts from her to where they belonged. Their Family’s deaths had been necessary, by Sithis, necessary, to protect and restore the Brotherhood. They were at His side, reveling in bloody pleasures if innocent and rightfully punished if guilty. Losing a leg was better than losing a life, after all.

No matter how he still wanted her, he couldn’t let her become more important than his obligations to Sithis, and as her Speaker, he couldn’t in good conscience allow her to put him before her duties either. Without proof of the traitor’s survival, he had to accept the consensus that it was safe to resume Family activities. So it was as personally as professionally necessary to put her back to work. He’d bury their hurt and starve their lust. Force distance between them so they could gather themselves and remember their places. Weeks would pass before they next reunited. Months, maybe. When they did, they’d be Speaker and Silencer again, finger and nail. Not these two misguided, pathetic souls. It was for their good and the good of the Family.  

She was his weapon, after all. A pretty one, but a weapon nonetheless. He couldn't forget that.

Scowling at the knife, he sheathed it and pocketed the whetstone. Groaning softly at the dull ache in his back, he dismissed his mage light, rose, and returned to the ramparts. He stared out into the midnight gloom. A lake of tiny, twinkling lights betrayed Cheydinhal, dozing in the valley below the fort’s mantle of wooded hills, the barest suggestions of golden lamps and patrolmen’s torches, windows of homes and taverns open too late for their own good. He leaned on the wall, dampness seeping through the elbows of his sleeves, and tried to lose himself in the constellations and wisps of cloud.

An icy knot pushed up into his throat. No matter what had happened, stars always returned after storms and bright days. Tatiana might not. He might not.

Holding his breath, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he slammed his fist once, twice, three times against the break in the wall, the rugged stone shredding the side of his hand and little finger. Paltry comforts.

He returned to the central courtyard, the hem of his cloak snapping at his ankles as he descended the steps. Gusts swirled up the road through the cracked arch, the with grass, brush, and saplings that choked the place muttering at his arrival. Inhaling slowly, he reached out through his blood-bond, beckoning to what suddenly seemed his last earthly constant. From the inky shadows in the far half of the courtyard emerged Shadowmere. She pricked her ears toward him and approached, hooves impossibly silent on the uneven cobbles. Starlight danced in her ruby eyes and dappled her ebon coat. Whickering softly, she nosed his shoulder, then his bleeding hand in the hopes of finding a few strips of meat. He shushed her gently. She snorted, then lapped at the stinging wounds in his hand. The pain ebbed under the wash of her warm, corpse-stink saliva, and his flesh knit seamlessly together. He flexed his fingers and held them up to the moonglow. Lucien took her gesture as a sign from the Night Mother, a promise that his wounds would be healed in time. A promise that She would guide him and Tatiana. Protect them. Enlighten the others if they had erred as he so secretly feared.

A frail smile threatened Lucien’s lips, fading as swiftly as it had come. He kissed Shadowmere’s brow. Something about the creature could soothe him when nothing else could. Always had, always would. But with that calm and clarity, a pronounced weariness settled over him like a heavy pack, as much a burden as a relief. He locked gazes with the creature, stroked her cresty neck. The Dead Drops should be secured, but it was always better to be paranoid and safe than dead and sorry.

Tatiana was his weapon, yet she’d been Family first. No matter how great their abilities, he cared deeply for his Family, and her, he cared for and trusted above all others. Whether an inspiration from the Night Mother or an unconscious apology for dismissing her, he came to a decision. 

“Take care of her,” he whispered to Shadowmere, “as you have so faithfully taken care of me.”