#rienskier

Small shadows drifted softly across the floor, speckling a beam of moonlight from the window. The air was colder that night and clouds drifted through the sky, now and then covering this small comfort. Jaskier had been watching the moonlight for hours, even as the snow began, hoping the clouds would move on once more and return the little patch of cold white.

The room was dark at long last, free of its oppressive candles. The scorched logs lay limp in the grate, the fire finally dead in the night. He'd flinched at every pop and stray spark which floated upward on the warm draft. He would rather shiver in the dark. Were he able, he would throw himself out over the windowsill into the frigid night.

But he could not. Arms engulfed him, caging him in place. Rience lay at his side, asleep. His embrace was stifling, skin burning where it touched. It was only his memory, Jaskier knew, but it was a torture of its own kind. And it was true, no matter what his mind exaggerated, them mad mage ran hot.

He supposed that was the fire in him, sleeping beneath his skin like embers beneath the bark of a log. Jaskier could feel it. A hand on a porcelain cup of fresh tea; no matter how sweet it was, with one shift it would spill over and burn all it touched.

This sick approximation of affection kept him captive. A doting obsession. Rience knew it was a ridiculous farce, but it was his own. It was revenge and indulgence, and perhaps jealousy, Jaskier thought. The lingering glaces at the mirror, the way Rience stroked Jaskier's face—even the way in which he spoke of the beauty he admired in Jaskier was laced with a kind of envy.

As one might keep a precious bauble was to make its beauty one's own.

So he was kept. He was posed and ordered, dressed up and down, taken out and admired at Rience's whim. He delighted in his power, and his cruelty blazed like the sun. But when the sun fell to give way to the moon, he quieted and left Jaskier to his own devices. Except for the darkest of nights.

Tonight was dark enough, and Rience came quietly to Jaskier. He did not speak to order him, nor did he take from him anything more than his space upon the bed. He merely lifted the coverlet and inserted himself behind him, wrapping his arms around his chest. There he clung, to be vanished by morning and forgotten.

If there had been no fire in him, Jaskier might have embraced him. In a pub, without agenda, such a face would have made him stop. He was weak enough to admit it. But there was no choice in this. There was nothing gentle in it. Rience was a wildfire, destroying everything in his path, mindless in his consumption.