#amrieth

He was nothing now.

Ixon laid in his swaying bunk, rocking and creaking in rhythm with the zeppelin's groaning lurch, the clank and churn of the engines all around him. He looked blankly up at the wood overhead, tracing its whorls and patterns and lines. He'd given everything up. His rank among the Blood Knights. His title. Even his honor, in that he had always sworn to protect, to obey the hierarchy, to go where commanded and come when called.

All for her. All for a pale little slip of a thing, barely a stranger, who looked at him as if she expected better from him, when all he could give her was the promise that he would let her down.

She was safer with someone else. Anyone else. She would be reassigned to another partner, one who could protect her. It was better that way.

And it was better for Ixon to fight alone.

...

Ixon watched Amrieth across the firelight, orange and gold against a little sprite of flame. She wasn’t looking at him, for once. Perhaps she’d given up on trying to get him to talk. He’d done everything he could to stonewall her, to shut her out, to keep her as far away from him as possible. It was for the best. It was for her own good.

Or maybe he only told himself that because as much as he wanted to protect her…he was trying even harder to protect himself.

He looked down at his hand, resting palm open, fingers slightly curled, and flexed it slightly, then clenched it into a fist. He could feel the heat and texture of her, burned into his palm. The way she’d looked up at him when he’d pinned her to the ground; how tiny she’d been under his palm. The beat of her heart, rapid against his palm. By the Light, she was so very small.

Ixon waited until he was absolutely certain that maddening slip of a girl was well away, off about her own business, before he slipped away from camp and out to the beach. Even knowing she was well out of sight or earshot, he was still wary as he slipped out of his armor and carefully laid it atop a protective blanket on the sand, before laying out another blanket and stretching out atop it. A low groan escaped his lips as the heat baked up through the thin fabric and into his bare skin, soaking into him, while the sun beat down on him from above with a burn that bordered on sweetest pain, searing into his naked back. Sometimes…sometimes he felt as if he would forever be cold, frostbitten, trapped in dreams of ice and death.

So he took the sun where he could, and absorbed it into every fiber of his being so that no matter where he went, he would always be warm at his deepest core.

...

The girl is going to be problematic.

Ixon paused in nudging another log onto the campfire, one sharp brow arching as he glanced over his shoulder at the…small thing he had somehow been burdened with. Why did she have to be so tiny?