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Living Blade (Blood/Fury & deadmanshand)

Ba-bum. Ba-bum.

Her poem was a hand in his chest squeezing his heart with every line forcing it to beat harder than it had since the war. Every word falling from her lips ring in his ears. Threatening to shake him apart as it built inside him. A tension coiling beneath his breast slowly pulling taut. Blood rushing through his veins with a force that he could feel from crown to foot.

When she finished Eilert found himself with sweat breaking on his forehead. His breath hot and steaming in the night air with a brief half scene curl of smoke. He sat up and ran a hand over his face watching it come away wet with a wrinkled brow. Setting his gloves beside him the soldier dipped his hands into the water and splashed it across his skin. If it hissed a little when it hit he never noticed.

"Sounds old," was what he said when he calmed down staring at his reflection in the lake. "Pretty. Like a dream."
 
Vivian watched Eilert rise up, suddenly, and lean over towards the water. Had she said something to offend him? He seemed to be scooping water over himself, and she wondered if it had something to do with her words, or perhaps with his injury?

No one ever spoke as to what it was that had brought the Dragon down. Some said it was merely the age at which most soldiers sought a quieter life, while others spoke of some lucky foe who had managed to strike a blow before they were done in by the Dragon’s charge. Others still insinuated that it was a training accident, or something incurred through mundane means, some whispered tragedy beyond the boundaries of the battlefields. Whatever the case, no one seemed to have specifics. Vivian had assumed that the limp he bore was something to that effect, but could there be another aspect to it as well? Perhaps what he was feeling now had something to do with trying to heal himself, or soothe the pain.

She wanted to reach out, to rest her hand on his shoulder, or back, or arm, some kind of comfort for him, but did not know if he might see this as some weakness. Men were sometimes sensitive. She wanted to offer him something, but didn’t know if she dared. She hesitated a long moment, a moment broken only when he spoke.

She offered a sad smile to his back. “I suspect it is a dream of many.” She kept her tone quieted, unlike the boisterous ways she had been sharing with him all night. Instead, she used a trick her mother had taught her. To make her voice soft, inviting, like an alcove of silken pillows, designed for the utmost of comfort. A secret place. A safe place.

“What is troubling you?” She ventured after another moment of silence. “Something does not bode well with you, does it, Eilert?”
 
"No. I... simply grew hot for a moment," Eilert said slowly knowing even as he said it that it was a poor answer to her concern. A second handful water doused his skin and then a third. The last handful was poured between dry lips and over a grateful tongue. The next sound that escaped him was a relieved sigh.

After a while he sat back resting his hands on the knee that still bent properly. His face was set in somber planes - his eyes distant but focused on nothing. A man doing his best not to live his life while or remember the glories of his past. A man who had dedicated his life to being nothing at all. Hardly a dragon or a soldier and certainly not a noble no matter the titles they heaped upon him.

He shook away the doldrums, gave her an apologetic smile, and said, "Forgive me. I am not prone to conversation and my answer was poor. I have long suffered fevered flashes. Since earliest childhood they have plagued me growing worse as I grew older. Tiny moments of time burning away drenched in sweat. It was the worst during the war. Sometime entire days would be lost to them. The whole week after the Battle of Saint-Mande is lost to me before I woke in the care of the chymists. I could barely move for a month and - as you can see -" he waved towards his bad leg and with a tight, pained smile on his lips - "I never fully recovered."
 
Vivian leaned up, then, sitting at first and then resting her weight forward to peer over his shoulder as best she could from her current angle. “For a man who states so emphatically that old tales do not apply to him, it is strange how alike them he can be.” She mused in a not-quite-teasing manner.

“Before me, for instance is a man to whom some have referred as the Dragon of Ashes.” She clucked her tongue, holding up a hand to forestall whatever words he might employ to deny the name or its hold over him. “Whether he accepts it or not, it has been said. Oddly, for a man who denies it so wholeheartedly, however, it is the same man who suffers fevered flashes.”

Carefully, slowly, she reclined again back onto the cloak he had generously laid out for the two of them. “As for what wears worse, I see nothing amiss. All men have scars, Eilert. Some are simply lucky enough to have them which are easily hidden.” This she did not say as lightly or dismissively as the rest, however. She thought to her father’s infuriatingly impotent attempts to make something greater, once more, out of the inbred mockery the noble class had become.

“We are as whole as we give ourselves permission to become. The only pieces that may be taken from us are the ones which we willingly give.” She raised her hands up, folding them behind her head and laying back against them. “Based on that, you are as whole as the day you emerged from your mother. More so, in fact. As then, one might assume the only purpose in your life was she. Noble as that is, I suspect that may have, at one point, become no longer true?”
 
"If I resembled the Dragon of the tales I would be 8 feet tall and wielding fire like a blade. Armies would scatter before me and women throw themselves at my feet as I gifted them with the riches of my victories. I would have the blood of monsters raging in my veins as my witch of a mother watched over me with magicks brought from the darkest heart of Vandrfold," Eilert said with a laugh as he gazed at his surprisingly philosophical companion. "The only part of that is true is that my mother is from Vandrfold."

Though her rumors long predated his own. Witch was one of the kinder words she had been called during the traveling of his earliest years and one of the few she would explain the meaning of. Sourceless hate based off the strange and the foreign drove them from one town to another. Till Kolding and she found people willing to turn a blind eye to her origin in return for her skills. Midwife, doctor, and herbalist. Those were good titles to have. Ones that meant something besides a story told over drinks to explain a loss.

"But scars and wholeness? I don't know about those things. Not really," he forestalled any protestation with a raised hand. "I know what the words mean. How the scholars would define them. But can I say I know whether I am broken or simply scarred... I don't know. I am not sure that is even my answer to give. I wouldn't know what it would mean either way. Am I supposed to mope and moan if broken? That is not may way. Should I find myself a wife and start a family if whole and scarred? What a poor husband I would make. Either answer results in me taking the same actions. Living the same life. So is it a distinction that matters in the end?"

For a moment he was silent his words and manner having betrayed an education far more extensive than any common soldier. Philosophy and contemplation - for all his words - seemed an easy thing for him. Something familiar. Thoughts and arguments freely given in the manner of the old philosophers as questions.

"But I have heard my story many times, Vivian, and I find it predictable these days like a play seen too many times. Tonight I would hear of you," the words fell from his lips as he relaxed next to her on the cloak. "You who jumps from balconies and claims the attention of legends -" the way he said legend was as close to the sound of chuckle as any word could be and still be understood. "to flee into the woods. A young woman who would rather spend her time philosophizing with an old soldier about his place in the world than exchanging talk with her peers. That story is a new one and sounds far more interesting."
 
Oh, soldier…. Why is your life so sad? So bleak? She fought back the urge to draw a hand down the side of his face. Such tenderness certainly seemed to fit the moment, but the familiar gesture may have been too much. She kept her hands to herself, and some part of her soul seemed to quail under the strain.

‘So is it a distinction that matters in the end?’

She wanted to answer him, but had no words to tell him how tragic she found it all. Some part of her felt the need to protect him, to wrap him in comfort and promise him all the rewards that his pains had earned him. She wanted to see him healed and happy and whole. Didn’t he deserve at least that much? On his behalf, she felt her heart cracking at the edges.

It took her, therefore, a few moments to realize what he was asking her. She blinked at him in surprise. “Me?” She asked incredulously, as though she hadn’t fully heard what he had said. “What is there to say of me?” She took on a quality of voice that mocked herself as much as the world she grew up in. “Poor little noble girl, lives a life in gilded chains.” She wrinkled her nose before continuing, less spiteful but just as disdaining. She glanced back towards the manor - the castle, though she hated using the word. It seemed so… arrogant – as though she could see its outline against the sparse trees, windows glowing with more warmth than the rooms inside held.

“Well, my father and mother,” she gestured to the party they had just left. “Have three children. I am the oldest. They gave us the best of everything. But as a trade, we were expected to behave in a particular way, at least around people who might judge them. ‘True to yourself, but respect your audience’, my father would always say. He’s got a good heart, but too much the blood of a diplomat. That’s what they’re raising us to become. Once they are gone, it will do the kingdom well to have diplomats to carry on the tradition.” She shrugged, somewhat embarrassed. She picked at another blade of grass and looked down at that, instead of at the man who lay beside her.

“The finest of things, of course. Clothes. Education. Food. Protection. Sometimes it stifles, but… Well, the price of position, yes? Duty. Whatever the case, we were sent away to study several years ago. At the University of the Holy See. A point of pride for our parents. Upon graduation this past summer, we returned home. And now, our skills are to be tested when the treaty for peace is taken to the heart of Valois for signing. The hard lifting is done already, of course, but both courts are very excited about formalities, you see.” She gave a grim smile, chancing a glance at Eilert. She very nearly regretted it. Lounging at his ease as he was, she could see nothing of the aged soldier in the moonlight. Instead, there was only a man, strong and vital and beautiful, whose gaze was as intense as any she had ever before seen. It was focused, and she found herself momentarily lost before she swallowed, glad for the darkness that hid her blush and freed her gaze to look away again.

“In any case, the morning will see our journey begin. And before they put me to work, I could not stand to spend my time in that party, regardless of the fact it was supposed to be meant to honour our sendoff.” She shrugged, stripping the grass bare with a nail and swallowing against the sudden hammering in her chest.
 
"Gilded chains are still chains," Eilert said softly watching her spin her story. The clarity of her burden staggered him. The weight of it clear in her sweet voice dragging her words down like stones. It pulled at him. A gentle tugging that he had not felt since the earliest years of his manhood before the blood and fury of war had taken root in him. However they began their journey both of them - old soldier and young diplomat - had wound up bound in those same gilded chains. Her delivered into a waiting cradle of shackled privilege and him bound ankle & wrist in them as a reward. Neither had asked for it and neither thrived in it.

Each word she spoke wove a tale he had heard from others before. Then - on the battlefields of the war. They noble sons expected to take up the reigns of war for their family's traditions and parent's direction. A lifetime later as far from the smoking battlefields of the war as they could be and still the same story is told. The nobility as bound by their birth as any peasant. Driven to walk paths not their own at every turn as smiling men and women decide for them.

He did not miss her smile or the blush or the sudden hope within him that she was feeling the same enchantment with him that she had caught him in. For the second time that night he felt heat building in his chest but it was a pleasant warmth this time instead of the fevered flush of before. A spreading ardor quickening heart and limb with silk soft touches - and bringing his hand to gently cover hers.

"I am no poet. My courtly manners are rough at best. So I wish I could say this with skill and art but what I say I mean," Eilert said letting the heat of his skin rest against her cool hand. "I do not know what tomorrow brings but I am glad that you are here with me tonight, sweet Vivian."
 
Vivian, taken by surprise by the sudden tenderness of her companion, looked at Eilert for a moment as though startled. Her blue eyes were wide in the pale moonlight, the familiar gesture somehow making her freeze. She was not worried, of course – somehow she could never fear Eilert – only shocked by the unexpected contact. After the first few heartbeats, of course, which raced through her like the wings of birds in flight, her gaze softened and her body relaxed. She offered him a warm smile, abandoning the blade of grass and reaching her newly-freed hand towards his, layering the connection upon him.

She was suddenly grateful to him, in the way that he seemed to soothe and bolster her, even with what he professed to be a few coarse words and a simple touch. Once again she fought the urge to rest her hand upon his cheek, to lend him some gentle gesture in turn. She told herself it was for the sake of his own comfort, but she could not be certain it wasn’t for her own. Instead, she let a subtle, sly light temper her smile as she offered up laughter to break the awkward way she felt entirely unawkward in his attention.

“Not so fierce now, are you, legend?” She said the last with the dramatic air of the self-important, the drawl falling from her lips as though wearied. She leaned closer, as though conspiring with the man beside her as she kicked bare feet in the air behind and above her head. “Perhaps I should call you my pet dragon, instead?” Two instincts fought for dominance in her mind, one to keep his gaze and another to hide her face, with the compromise that as she lowered her head over his hand between both of hers, she was partly-hidden as locks of hair slid over her face momentarily. Still, half her smile and one sapphire blue iris stood out still against her pale face, a surge of affection struggling to escape the tight control she held over it.
 
Her teasing brought a smile to the old soldier's face. A small light one without the weight and burden of his usual manner. Free and open. The look in his eyes though was fierce. Sharp enough to cut and focused entirely on her. Here in this moment the world lay forgotten. All the pain and scars and whispering heartless tongues lost. Wrapped up and pushed aside by the strange enchantment the night had cast over him.

The playfulness of Vivian's words pulled at him. Sincerity a freshness fighting through the years of empty platitudes that had been levied at him with the grace of a dancer. Her attitude betrayed a sense of almost childlike innocence and wonder. Somehow untouched by the lies and machinations that infested every level of the nobility of Midtelande. It was as jarring to his world as the sun rising at midnight. Exquisite and magnificent and an utter mystery.

"I would make a terrible pet, Vivian. I'm moody and scarred and graying with a terrible record for listening to my superiors," Eilert said meeting her challenge with a humor meant to mask the flirting so alien to his day to day bearing. "But I am housebroken. Mostly."
 
"Well," said Vivian with all the assurance of one who spoke the absolute truth. "A terrible record, or indeed one at all, is impressive for a man who has yet to meet a superior." She was full up of her mischievous grins before she lowered her gaze again, still smiling to herself. She was struck by a sudden embarrassment that she had just voiced the thought aloud. She bit down on her bottom lip and desperately scrambled for something to say.

"Perhaps I shall have to keep you sequestered away from company, then." Oh, dear... The images conjured by that statement did nothing to make the conversation any lighter. She found herself suddenly struggling for something neutral to say, but everything that occurred to her rested firmly in the range between a place her mother would warn her of and outright scandal. The longer she thought on it, the more self-conscious she became until finally she removed the hand on top of their pile of limbs and began to slide the other from underneath.

The feeling of his hands, strong and warm and beautifully calloused, was inviting and comforting and she felt as though it were dangerous to linger with any part of her within easy reach of them. Even now she wanted to be closer to him, a man nearly twice her age and half her station. She could, of course, hold no more value over this than over the grass she'd victimized between fingernails, but she wondered... What must he think if he could see into her mind now? And if she were discovered? What would befall him, if her family and peers could only see? Better by far to bring the conversation back around to something that could be easily overheard without more than rolled eyes and sadly shaking heads.
 
"I have done some of my best work out of the public eye," Eilert said returning the teasing with an unintended entendre. Unintended but not necessarily unwanted. She had undone years of shaping his tongue into a blunt instrument meant to distract and distance the teeming, whispering nobility. Made him want her in a way no one had in years.

The feel of her hands pulling free of his was both satisfying and agonizing. Smooth flesh against his weathered skin sending thrills through his ravaged frame while the rest of him of him cried out at the loss of contact. It was sharp. Startling. Beautiful and cutting. Vivid little flowers working through the ash coating his world.

He should feel like a dirty old man. Twice her age and worlds apart but he couldn't bring himself to. She made him forget himself. Treated him like he was whole. Like a man. No pretensions. No appeal to names given him or false reverence for accomplishments better suited to history books than real life. No cold sympathy for wounds or pains that they pretended to understand. Just actual human contact.

Finally he started to laugh. At himself, the situation, and - maybe - the whole of his life. Armies and warriors and kings had been faced with the kind of stoicism that would inspire philosophers. Stone faced and steady handed. But Vivian - a slip of a girl with an adventurous streak and an infectious smile - undid years of discipline and belief that he was beyond such things anymore. Exposed now as delusions. A joke he'd played on himself for years. A joke not appreciated till it had an audience.
 
Despite the loss of the binding of her dress, his words made it hard for her to breathe. Only the single, auditory hiss as she gasped air through her smile came easy. Everything after that seemed laboured as her struggle became so very uncomfortable. Out of the public eye? They were out of the public eye now. What was he saying?

She was so lost in her wonderment that when he began to laugh, she was taken off guard. She blinked at him, momentarily, and the longer it kept on, the more she felt the pressure of her own laughter bubbling up in her lungs and demanding release into the air. His mirth was infectious, leaving her to soon follow with her own melodic sounds of joy. Seeing him so animated made her feel privileged, as though she were witnessing something few people before her had been glad enough to have seen.

As she was laughing and unknown to her, pyrotechnic specialists from beyond the Holy See had begun their work in setting in place a display of the kingdom's wealth and wonder. As the paroxysms of laughter overtook her, as she rocked forward over her hands again, placing her forehead on the cloak and filling her senses with the scent, the colour of him, the feel of the fabric against her skin and left her shoulders to dictate the jagged rise and fall of their own private entertainment, the first fuses were lit and set to begin the display near the castle's turrets, from which they had so recently escaped.

In mid-laugh, she was startled and cried out in alarm as the first blossom of light and colour instated itself in the sky above, expanding in an explosion that left her wide-eyed and gazing back towards her childhood home. For an instant, she froze, the picture of the rabbit covered by the shadow of the hawk, until she burst out laughing again. "Great gods!" She cursed mildly, still wildly out of character for a woman of her station.
 
Eilert laughter continued at her surprised outburst. Indeed grew stronger if anything at her wide eyed gaze. Part of him thought briefly that he should be watching the fireworks - even if only for a moment - but the rest of him was too busy watching the light play across her features. Flashes illuminating her in a mix of colors and shades revealing new perfections with each burst. A dozen different Vivians exploding into life one moment and gone the next.

"You should see the Wintermas celebration we hold at Kolding. We bring in fireworks experts from far Kushan and drink Ustican wine around bonfires as the show goes on. There is music and stories and very few nobles congratulating each other on being born rich," he said leaning forward. "It is bright and beautiful and full of life. You would love it and I would love to show it to you. It would give me a reason to finally do more than watch it from my balcony."
 
Soon, Vivian's laughter died down as she lost herself in the wonder of the display. Often, when such events made their way to the capitol, they were the only parts of these gatherings she truly admired. Something in the exuberant bursts of sound and colour and light made her feel as though somewhere, something was at least free. Even if it could not be her.

When Eilert began to speak, her attention was thoroughly diverted, intent instead on his words. They sounded ever so much like an invitation in their wistfulness, leaving her again to wonder if she'd spent too much time in the presence of other nobles or if the words beneath those spoken were indeed present and meant to be heard.

"I'm afraid my experience with any sort of wine has been somewhat limited. Our own, local vineyards are a fair outline for the depth of my knowledge. One day, though, I intend to have a wealth of experiences to draw on." She was nervous to seem so eager to pursue the potential invitation. If she was wrong? What, then, could he think of her? "Could you be contented, dismissing your career in that way? A whole life of tales traded to become some little noble girl's guide to Kolding?" The tease seemed easiest. Give him something to respond to, an opening, something he might say...

She had to stop reading into it so much, she knew. It would be better, easier to simply say what she thought and let him make his own conclusions. But of all the people she'd met tonight, this week, since she returned home even... He, of all, was someone she hoped would think well of her.
 
"Dismissing my career? No. It wouldn't be that," Eilert said with a soft laugh as he watched her. "Playing your guide would be the most meaningful thing I've done in years. A break from all the numbers and entreaties and criminals masquerading as politicians to escort a pretty woman around my city? If anything I am coming out ahead on that one."

He felt clumsy flirting like a recruit swinging a sword for the first time or an old vet who hadn't picked up a blade in years. Not that he was sure which applied to him. Before - when he was still the Dragon of Ashes - the women he had been with had just kind of come after him. There was little talking involved to be honest. After he was the Lord Mayor of Kolding he had only been around the noblewomen who wantedthe Eilert of legend and not the one of flesh and blood and aching bone. Either way the sword had not been swung in quite some time.

The joke brought a wry twist to his lips as he shook away his meandering thoughts. Most nights he was content to sit in thought - to let his mind wander where it will - but tonight he wanted to be focused. To be present in the moment. To show her that he was more than a broken down warhorse. More than anything he wanted her to like him and that may have been the strangest thing to cross his mind all night.

"We could try different Ustican wines as we wander from performance to performance. Listening to musicians from all corners of the land and - yes - more than a few retelling of my own ventures," the Dragon conceded with a nod shifting to make himself more comfortable. "Even if the stories are gloriously overblown and make me out to be some conquering god. Good for a laugh but not a history lesson."

"To be honest I can think of no better way to spend a night than with you. Wintermas or just a random night escaping from a party... it makes no difference. I have not laughed or smiled so much in one night in many years," he said leaning towards her eyes frank and focused on her. "I know that this is bold but I hope that this will be only the first such time we spend together."
 
Vivian smiled a sly, knowing smile at him and leaned backward, rolling onto her back on the dark expanse of the cloak. One hand rested across her stomach, drawing patterns on the fabric of her dress - or what was left of it - as she other stroked at the cloak beneath her, staring up at the sky that still blossomed in arrays of light and colour. It was safer than looking at him. Her smile never wavered.

"I have a feeling you would never tell the truth of those tales yourself." She teased him as he denied any validity in the legend of the Dragon, distancing himself from the telling. She fell quiet again at the compliment, her eyes drifting slowly over to where he leaned. For a moment, in the shifting light, he looked splendid and magical, as though she could see the light reflecting from him and could bask in all that he was for just a moment. Not the heartbroken trinket set out like a trophy to draw the eye. But a man hewn from marble, animated by sparks and flames, one after another. That deceptive warmth buried beneath the hard surface and solid frame. But he, too, was flesh like hers, and just beneath the marble, she could see him struggle to clear his gaze of scars. He was a wondrous creature.

His admission - for she was sure that was what it had been - made her feel the compulsion to reassure him. A silly thought, that, where a man of his age and strengths might need the comfort of a child like she. Nonetheless, she shifted her touch from cloak to hover a moment away from his cheek. Hesitation took her, here, and for a moment she let her hand over in midair before she finally closed the distance between their skin, that same light contact she'd had with the cloak graving his cheek just below the bone. She rested her palm along his jaw and stroked with fingers until she nearly reached his eye, avoiding discomfort to him before the pads at each fingertip drew down towards his jaw once more.

"Not random, Eilert." She began, but she didn't know how to express what she wanted to say. I needed to escape, and you are my hero? Or perhaps, We were meant to be here, don't you know that? She left the thought hanging in the air a moment and decided it was better left unspoiled. Instead, she smiled at him in turn. "That smile looks stiff as your leg, old man." She teased him, her face gentle to keep the sting from her words. "But it suits your eyes nicely." Can I keep it? She bit the words back just in time.
 
There was so much being unsaid. So much that neither of them could put to words. A song built in the silences between their voices. Eilert searched within himself for a way to add to it. To express the feelings roiling inside him but it was in vain. In the end he was a soldier. A storied soldier but a soldier all the same. Poetry in word was not his strong suit.

When in doubt be bold.

"I have had little reason to smile till tonight," the man the world called the Dragon of Ashes said before rubbing his cheek against her fingertips. He was like a cat rubbing against the hand that pets luxuriating in the touch and attention. His skin was hot. Fevered. If the night was any colder he'd have steamed. His breath was hotter. The breath of a billows against her flesh. Finally he pressed his lips against her palm. Simple. Almost chaste but an invitation for certain.

His gaze was still focused on her. Never leaving the clean, youthful lines of her face. Watching for a response or simply unable to look away he couldn't say. Not that it was a concern anymore. All he cared about at the moment was the sweet woman who for a night at least had made him feel alive again.
 
The kiss made Vivian catch her breath, a sharp hiss as it was pulled etween her teeth and stopped. To keep it in, she pulled her bottom lip between those tight-held teeth, biting down gently but enough to cause the skin to pull slightly. She was nervous, unsure of herself. Whatever she chose to do next might leave a trail of consequences behind her. And there were a plethora of options to choose from.

In her mind, flashes of possibilities made themselves known. She might draw him near, revel in the warmth he provided, use it as an excuse to feel his body pulled over her own. She ached with the imagining of the comfort that might bring, but pushed the thought away in favour of the next that flooded into her mind. She, her hand reaching behind her as the soldier pressed his advantage, lips to her neck and arms around her waist, whispered words pouring over her in guttural promises. But behind that was an equally passionate beckoning, both her slender wrists in one of his hands and rough lips capturing her own while a single knee pressed in between hers...

Each consecutive thought made her heart flail in it's rhythm, her lungs clench painfully to draw or expel breath. And the dozen or so that followed, all lit by the cold silvery light of the moon and the flashes of the pyrotechnics above made her release her lip and use her tongue to soothe the skin before tongue, fingers and gaze alike retracted, hasty and slightly flushed.

"We... We should not linger long here." She stammered, pushing herself up to her elbows. "Once the display is done, my mother will be searching for me. I doubt this place will be forgotten for long." The excuse was feeble, in her mind, knowing that her brothers would stave off questions as to where she might be as long as they could. But the presumptions in her mind, layered in the interpretations of hidden meanings in the words of Eilert were beginning to make her doubt herself. To doubt the silly dreams of a naive young girl, though brand new and furiously fast they occurred to her.

"Come, soldier." She said, offering him a warm, reassuring smile. Simply because she was off balance and nervous was no reason to make him feel as though he were at fault. "Be my hero again, will you?"
 
Eilert squashed his disappointment when she pulled away. He knew that much of what he was hoping and dreaming were far fetched. Belonging to a man he hadn't been in years. Maybe to one he'd only been in stories. But they were hopes - and he wasn't willing to give up on them so easily.

Especially not in the face of so feeble an explanation. Real disinterest would have been a denial. A no. A turn down. Not a stammered excuse and flushing. Denial would have been crushing but this? This was cute.

So when she smiled and spoke he smiled and said, "For you? Always. Where would you have me whisk you away to? Where can we go to not be disturbed?"
 
His first words had her standing, in motion before she could catch his final question and once she was as upright as she could manage, she finally understood what last words were leaving him.

"Undisturbed?" She blinked towards him. Quiet, she admonished her heart as it leaped and rattled around in her chest. "Surely you must have spent enough time here. Surely, by now, you must have seen to your duty. Why would you want to remain in a place like this any longer than need be?"

Another voice, behind and beyond the way she chastised herself was left with few words aside from a mantra she silently directed at him. Say it, she silently begged. Say it and free us both. She watched him as he moved, an overwhelming compulsion, an agonizing ache to reach out to him. To embrace the idea that he might be thinking as she thought just as she might then embrace him.

Immediately her mind sped through options. There were trees enough here, of course, to keep them from prying eyes. A little further along the shoreline, too, there were sparse spaces between the water and the rocks which formed a sort of natural fence to the land. There was, too, outlying buildings where servants housed, where animals were kept, but these would run a higher risk of discovery as people came and went throughout the night. The truth of it was, here and now was the most comfortable and secluded they could hope to be on such a beautiful night, as far from the crowds and with the least likelihood of being seen, but for some twist of tragic coincidence. But dare she speak such a thing to him? Did she dare betray what fantasies her thought of him included now?
 
"Duty?" Eilert asked laughing softly. Only nobility and youth would assume duty had brought him here. No matter what titles he had been given he was no knight. His duty was to be a symbol - to remind these puffed up poppinjays what had come before - and he had abandoned that the moment she asked him to come with her.

He came with her because she asked. Now he wanted to stay with her because she made him feel alive. Whole. Heart beating in his chest like the billows of a forge. Hot and strong. Skin flush. If the night air held any chill he could no longer feel it. For the first time in years - even if he wouldn't admit it - Eilert felt like the Dragon of Ashes again.

"Vivian," Eilert said stepping forward eyes fever bright and limp all but forgotten. "There is no duty greater for me tonight than accompanying you. Nothing that could make me want to do anything other spend my time here making you smile. Let those fools in the castle keep each other company. We would be wasted on them."

Gone now was the caution his tongue had learned over long court years. Gone was the decorum and thought in action that the nobility had drilled into him with boorish dedication. All burned away by heat and need and fantasies of what could be. Ten years of careful taming undone in a moment like paper set to flame.

"I ask you this now and if you say no I will escort you back to the castle and press you no more," he leaned in close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin and smell the unique mixture of scented oils and flesh that was him. "Do you want to press your lips to mine as badly as I do yours?"
 
She felt as though he'd struck a blow to her that had driven the air from her lungs. Once, earlier in her youth, she'd fallen from a rather spirited horse and landed on her back. The impact had made her feel as though she were broken, as though she would never be able to draw a full breath again. It was a feeling that had left her panicked and made it in turn yet more difficult for her to breathe. The cycle had only been broken when her brothers had stood above her, coaching her to calm and relaxing her enough to let her fill her lungs again.

And all it had taken Eilert was a single question.

She wanted to answer him, wanted to come up with something that showed she was not afraid. But she was terrified and feared the expression on her face must have made that perfectly clear. They were so close she was able to reach out, to rest her hands on his chest, to let her fingers curl in the dark fabric he had readjusted so frequently since the moment they'd met. her grip, at one time shaking, steadied only as she clenched her hands around his clothing.

"N-..." She tried to shake her head. She knew it was the answer she was supposed to give. But her eyes on his wouldn't let her lie that way. He wanted... He wanted, just as she did, and the reality of that gift was almost more than she could bear. What could she lose with this? What could she not live through, stolen kisses so far from the eyes of those who would direct her steps, always? Here, where they were sure never to be found unless and until her brothers had reason to fear for her life. Here, so far from her mother's disapproving glance and her father's stern face, from the gossiping tongues and flighty laughter, what could she lose?

And what might she gain? She swallowed hard, licked her lips and decided to tell the truth. It was a breathy voice that whispered her answer, her single word infused with all the hope and desire that she held for the subject at hand. A kiss. A single kiss... What harm?

"Yes...."
 
At her breathy yes he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Vivian's. With gentle kisses he tasted her luxuriating in the sweet, fresh flavor. She was cool against his lips. Fighting the fever in his flesh with nothing more than her presence. Calling and taming the Dragon in equal measure.

Unable to resist any longer Eilert wrapped his arms around her and brought them together. So many times tonight he had resisted the urge to take her in his arms that it was an almost physical relief when he finally pulled her close. She was soft. Silken against his chest. Her scent eclipsed all other perfumes. Clean and pure and enticing.

This. This is what he had hoped for. Desired since she had caught him up in her wake and dragged him along on her escape. A need to feel like the man she saw when she looked at him - the need to feel her desire for him. And now that he could it felt like years were being stripped away with every passing moment. Pain forgotten and humiliations cast aside. Apathy giving way to the passion that had once made him the most feared man in Midtelande.

But in this moment he was no warrior - feared or otherwise. Now he was a man. No myths or legends or failures to haunt or distract him from what mattered. To distract him from her.
 
The meeting of their lips had the opposite effect on Vivian than his question had done, leaving her drawing deep a breath that somehow made her dizzy. It was filled with the scent of him, the warmth and the solidity as though she'd lived a hundred seasons without ever truly feeling the stability of the earth around her. She felt the way her breath propped her upward, pressing her body into his own.

But it was his arms, she realized, his arms that brought her close, that held her near and brought her such reward for her risk. She uncurled her hands from his tunic and instead reached up her arms until she could feel them wrap gently but firmly across the back of his shoulders, the back of his neck. Her lips never stopped their fluid dance around his own, the soft press gaining in strength as they became emboldened, driven onward by the way he accepted her so close to him.

With the chill of the night waiting just beyond the comfort and protection of his embrace, Vivian felt herself shiver. She never wanted him to let her go, never wanted him to loose his hold for even so much as a moment. The idea that the kiss might end, that it must eventually cease, left her trembling and made her whimper against him. She reached up with one hand towards the back of his head, pleading silently for him to remain close while the other hand sifted, while it slid from his neck to his shoulder, from his shoulder to his arm, pulling from behind his elbow to demand he hold her tighter. She pressed herself nearer to him, as though to demonstrate her desires.

As the fingers at the back of his head dug in through his hair, as she reached towards his scalp, she felt only the momentary thrill of trepidation as she realized that she had never before been this close to any man, never before shown such signs of want before the idea was cleared from her mind entirely and she simply reveled in all that was Eilert.
 
When Vivian gripped him tight he melted against her all heat and need. Burying himself in the sense of her.Tasting her with his lips. Feeling her fingers in his hair. Smelling their excitement in the air. Skin tingling. Senses alive in a way they had not been since his days on the battlefield.

Without realizing it he lifted her off the ground by his grip on her waist. Her weight meaning no more to him than the clothes on his back. Eilert had no caring for weight or effort. All he cared about was her and being as close to her as possible. Feeling her against his chest and in his arms.

Vaguely some part of him knew what they were doing would have consequences down the road. Some reaction to their passion in word or deed. The nobility would have no choice but react. It was their nature to do so. To wag tongues and gossip and wax eloquently about a common born man touching a noble woman. If Eilert were not so enraptured he would have laughed at the absurdity.

Without warning he fell backwards onto the cloak he'd laid down earlier. His body cushioned her landing and his handling was careful as any chirugeon. Unwilling to brook even the possibility of harm of to her. Here... the weight of her upon him... the comfort of the soft ground below... the stars overhead... this was right. Perfect. This was exactly where he needed to be and who he needed to be with.
 
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