There was nothing in the world for Nyx, in this moment, except for Cay. As they cut an urgent path from the abandoned building, through Drasnia’s streets, and to the more affluent neighborhood where the Blue Dove Inn could be found, Nyx could recall seeing, hearing, or feeling nothing but her. He couldn’t recall the details of procuring the room beyond the face of the Innkeeper and the exchange of coin… and, even now, as they stood in that room, Nyx was oblivious to its finery other than being aware that it was a much more suitable place…as opulent as the décor and appointments of the suite may have been, all of it was eclipsed by the tortured beauty of the woman in the ill-fitting sack-dress, tattered-stockings, and too-large boots who stood less than a breath away.

She filled his vision, reducing all that surrounded her to an inconsequential haze, standing out against the background of the room as the stars stood out against the ink-black of the night sky. She dominated his hearing, the sound of her breath and her heartbeat drowning out the din of the awakening city beyond the window. She was in the very air he breathed; he found her rainwater scent over that of the perfumed water and wood oil and flowers that belonged to the room and it filled him; the breaths that she exhaled into the space between them caressed the currents that swirled in the place and he felt her all around him… her fingers in his hair and on his neck and his back and at his lips… her body, free of the rough burlap and heavy leather of her clothing, wrapping around and melting into his…

A smile danced on his lips and in his eyes as he watched her face move in the shadows cast by the brim of her hat… There was adoration and longing in Nyx’s smile as he devoured her with his senses… love and lust and all that came with them both. That wasn’t all of it, though, the mith’ganni realized as he watched Cay’s lower lip disappear into her own mouth and the expression on her face shift in a way that it seemed to echo the thoughts in his own mind…

 For all of your urgency to get here, Nyx, his mind’s voice chuckled in amusement, for as long as you have waited for this moment, now that it is yours you are just going to stand here and look at her?

How can I not, he answered in a slow blink of his shining eyes, Look at her. If nothing more ever comes of this, I have this moment and… I want to remember it… every second of it… He felt his tongue glide over his lips as he watched her chew on hers… felt his fingertips tingle in anticipation of touching her and his stomach tighten in anticipation of feeling her against him again… and I fear that if I touch her this will all disappear and I will find that I have awoken too soon from my dream.

…along with the affection and ache that painted his features were intermingled disbelief and doubt – not of his feeling for her but, rather, the reality of the moment – that added a somewhat sheepish tint to that smile…

This is no dream, a softer voice in his mind assured him when Cay, at last, drifted slowly toward him, arms reaching… her fingers trembled as they closed on the clasp of his cloak… that trembling rippled through his own body as his own fingers closed over hers and shuddered on the breath that he drew in when she didn’t vanish at his touch… his other hand found the rough burlap at her hip, pressed firmly into the flesh that hid beneath, fingers clutching hungrily as they sought to pull her closer and, then, as his cloak fell away into a shadowy pool at their feet, going feather-light as they followed the graceful curves of her body upward… sliding over her waist, fluttering along her ribcage, brushing delicately over the swell of her breast, and tracing the arc of her neck… before it released her only long enough to take the beaten leather hat from her head and toss it away, careless of where it landed...

“Nyx… my Nyx…” Her voice washed over him, caressing his very soul with her words, as both of his hands moved to cup her face between them and he opened his eyes to look into hers. “…I’ve never done this before…” A pale thumb gingerly traced her lips as he let the fires in those amber eyes burn away any of the doubt and disbelief that may have survived her initial touch, and fingers brushed an errant lock of mahogany hair from her cheek…

“Nor have I, melamin,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers now, his fingers trickling back down along her neck to deftly unfasten her cloak and nudge it away, “not… like this.”

“… I want to though,” she breathed as his lips whispered over her cheek and rained promising kisses along path his fingertips had just traced, “…I want to savor that love you’ve promised… let me savor it… let me savor you…”

Nyx’s nimble fingers had worked their way back down the dress that yet hid Cay’s true form from him, deftly unfastening the buttons and belt that kept the garment in place before slithering over her hips and lower, along her thighs, to catch up the fabric at the tattered hem of her skirt. The shower of kisses pattered along her collarbone, across the hollow of her throat, and traced a path ascending this side of her neck that mirrored those which had descended the other… his lips found the lobe of her ear, took it between them for a moment, then traced that curve, too, tenderly but hungrily kissing the scar from where a delicate point had once issued. As his kisses climbed, so too did his hands, once again, with the hem of her dress still caught up in them… “You will,” he whispered, his lips flitting across her cheek in search of her mouth again, “We will… Now and always…” He kissed her, then, with a soft passion, still guiding her dress upwards, and broke away for only an instant when he felt her hands leave him, her arms reaching skyward, and, in that instant the dress was gone…

His hands and mouth fell back to her again before the discarded frock could even touch the floor and, how it was managed even Nyx would never be sure but, as his arms curled around her to cradle and lift her to him, Cay was swept up and out of her boots… “Amin mela lle, Cayrimsa Etellenya,” he purred between kisses as he carried her toward the bed, “and I am going to love you like you have never imagined possible…”

“Amin sana lle corm ar’kama cormamin,” Cay whispered, her hand clasped tightly around his, “Ar’amin ondea lle corm ar’kama corm’lle.”

“My heart has always been yours,” Nyx managed to breathe in reply just before she lifted herself on her toes to kiss him again. The rest of his words were lost as her lips met his but the sentiment continued to be expressed in his touch as he pulled her to him once more, reveling in the heat and lightning that flashed at her answer and the feel of her against him.

That taste of her lips, Nyx thought, was too fleeting for the feelings that had just surged through him and his tongue danced hungrily over his lips to capture every last mote of that sweetness when she pulled away. A soft yet hungry smile formed in the wake of the longing sigh that shuddered past Nyx’s lips and his eyes opened to find hers looking up into them. The words she spoke next, he was sure by the way Cay had tried to cool her gaze when she spoke them, were intended to be something of an ominous threat…

“But I swear, Nyx Shyndyn… if you go back on anything you have just said, if you <i>ever</i> hurt me…”

Never, moon-yellow orbs promised as they danced between her lips and her eyes…

“…you know full well what I am capable of. I will make sure that every moment of your long elven life will be nothing but torture…”

The torture would be that life without you, his eyes and smile and fingertips chorused as they feathered lightly but longingly over her…

“…I will think up new ways to make sure you regret it constantly,” Cay promised, though the trembling of her breath and body alike belied the fact that she knew her warnings were unnecessary, “May the Gods help me.”

“The Gods be damned,” Nyx purred, lifting her against him as her mouth sought out his again, “ will help you…”

For a long moment the he was lost in the all consuming flames of passion… his hands kneading her writhing body as they clutched her wantonly against him, devouring her with a hunger that was matched if not exceeded in the meeting of their lips and the yearning growls that rumbled in his chest as she both stole and gave him breath… and, in the instant before she again broke their kiss, Nyx could very well have been pressed to tear away the burlap sack-dress that now hatefully kept his fingers from her flesh and devour her completely… Not here, he managed to remind himself as she pulled away from him to let their shared breath explode into the heated air with a gasp, she deserves better than this…hovel…

The assassin trembled a bit, himself, as Cay’s head came to rest on his chest again and he forced himself to draw in a breath to replace the one that had just been lost between them. His chest heaved and his arms wrapped around her all the more to keep her close, his head bowing and nuzzling his face, once more, into her hair as he let that breath go and took in another…

“As for the Hellkites,” the witch murmured into his chest as she clung to him, “I want them to know. I want Dmitrova to know that it is you who kills him, the elf whom he severely underestimated. I want him to know <i>why</i>… to know that it is our...”

…His embrace grew tighter still in the short pause in her request and he nodded faintly… reassuringly… before he kissed her head and she finally said the word…

“…love that has ended him.”

“He will know, elen en cormamin,” he promised, “he will see it written in the blood of his followers and friends as they are taken from him… he will feel it as the strands of the web he has woven over this place are snapped and his pocket empire crumbles around him… and he will know his end when he is on his knees at my feet and sees you take his chair…”

Nyx felt Cayrimsa’s smile even before she turned her face toward his … felt it in the shift of her cheek against his chest and in the tingling, electric tremor that surged through her body at the thought of his promises come true… her amber eyes sparkled like stars when they met his; her delight, not just at the thoughts of taking that pleasure at Dmitrova’s expense but, also, at the thoughts of sharing that pleasure with him shimmering even brighter that the raging fires that were ever present in those cinnamon pools. One hand found her face again… fingertips feathering over her lips, across her cheek, and into her hair behind the scar-topped curve of her ear to cradle her head in his hand as his eyes absorbed her face… and he returned the smile before his lips fell towards hers again.

He felt her wrap around him – her hands roaming and clutching at his back and shoulders, her leg curling around his hip and thigh – as he lifted her in his arms, and felt the breath stolen from his lungs as her lips moved against his and she whispered; “I love you.”

“Amin vithel mela lle,” he whispered back on that same breath, their lips so close that those soft words were a kiss in themselves, “and for that love, I will give you the Hellkites, Dmitrova’s head, and more…”

The purr that had been rumbling in his chest swelled to an anxious, needful, and almost impatient growl as he held her hungrily to him and punctuated his words with a kiss that echoed the urgency of the growl…

“But...” he broke the kiss for a breathless instant as he lifted her higher, and took a step forward, his lips still on hers as he held her aloft between himself and the wall, “ …right now, Cay...” He kissed her again, unable to resist the temptation, forced himself to stop so that he might finish his thought, “…I cannot think of Dmitrova...” another punctuating kiss “…or Aelion or any of the rest of it... All I can think about is you... making love to you...”

He growled then, his hands moving over her with a furious want as he kissed her with a passion that had all but boiled over… “Not here, though,” he said on quickened breath as he again forced his lips from hers and, against the shuddering protests of his muscles, returned her to her feet and pulled her away from the wall, “You deserve much more than this…”

A bit shakily, the mith’ganni backed away, his yellow eyes blazing as they tore away from hers for just long enough to find her hat where it had fallen. He snatched the thing up, handed it to her, and took her hand in what seemed to be one hurried, yet fluid movement…

“…but until we find that silken bedroom in the manor that you deserve,” he purred, leading her toward the door, “I know of an inn not far from here…”

What did he want?

Nyx wasn’t sure that he truly knew what he wanted. There, in the shadows of the abandoned tenement, with the rest of the world vanquished beyond that penumbral veil, all he could truly claim to want was for this moment to last… but he knew that they couldn’t linger, here, in their own private world forever, just as he knew that the answer she wanted wasn’t a thing that could be contained in that perfect, timeless place… There had to be more than that and Nyx knew that there was – he had seen the answers in the stars and in his dreams, had them affirmed in the words of the Dream-weaving Taellyn and, in a lesser, mocking fashion, in Prien’s rebukes and taunts, and thus had come to understand how Fate herself had wrought all of this – but finding the words to explain that to Cay, finding the words to clearly define what he wanted, not only from her but from himself, as well… Are there such words? Is there time to speak them all, should I manage to find them?

Nyx drew in a breath as his gaze dropped to where Cay’s face was once again nestled into his chest and her hand spread over his heart – felt her breath as it whispered through the folds of cloth she had slipped aside to get her skin against his and, where skin met skin, he felt her pulse keeping rhythm with his own – and released that breath in a soft, almost uncertain sigh. “I want this, ” he said at last, one hand at her back, cradling her body against his, and the fingers of the other brushing across her cheek and over the scarred place on her ear, “I want moments that no one else has and where nothing else matters. I want what I came to this place to find… and…I cannot say if it changes anything or if it makes any sort difference… but I have come to realize that I came here to find you, Cayrimsa, vanima nwalmaeramin …”

He felt her tense slightly, then, the pressure of her fingertips increasing as one part of her fought to refute what he told her as impossibility and the other part of her fought to hear the truth in what he said. In response, Nyx’s arms, at first, wrapped more tightly around her, pulling her closer to him if such a thing was possible; then, after a moment, his embrace loosened, his hands gliding delicately over her still trembling frame. “Everything you have said is true,” he whispered, “There is</i> no place for us in the human world or the elven one. Neither would accept me… humans because I am a point-ear, as you say, and elves because I am kinslayer… but I do not care for their acceptance… I belong to neither and I hate them both the same for it… just like you…”

A heavier sigh blew past Nyx’s lips following that admission and, in its wake, the mith’ganni bowed his head to plant one more kiss atop hers before he reluctantly pulled a single step back from her. “When I left Shanurdir, I followed the stars, believing they would lead me to find the humans that destroyed my people… and I did find them… but I also found that I had destroyed myself … that I had become the nothing that I am now, yes?” His eyes sought ought hers as he continued, one hand still lingering on her hip and the other moving to touch her cheek again, “I was already less than nothing in human eyes, Cay, and, after what I had done in the name of vengeance for my people, discovered that I had been forsaken by my people because of it… All that was left for me, then, were the stars that lit my path and the god that had taken everything else from me in order to give me nothing but the hopes of the hopeless… So I became Death… the edge of the Executioner’s Axe… and belonged nowhere other than where the stars led and belonged to no one other than myself and my god…

Neither Prien nor the stars kept me in one place overlong until twenty years ago when the stars led me to Drasnia. They led me here and Prien called for his souls and I took them while I waited for the stars to guide me to the next place… but the stars have not guided me to another place to find what it is I seek because it is already here and has been here all along… they brought me here when you arrived here… they pointed me to you when your pain was no longer a private thing… and they painted you in the sky when it came time for me to steal that pain from you… That is what I want, Cay. I want to belong, again, to something… to someone… to you…”

Sinking in the liquid depths of the glimmering amber eyes that stared silently up into his, Nyx paused for a moment, the fingers of one hand caressing her cheek and then tracing the rose-petal curves of her lips as the other at her hip lifted and moved to close over her hand where it splayed over his heart. “I am not asking for you to change who you are,” he murmured after a while, “to run away with me and live a life on the steppes or in the forests. I am not asking you to suddenly despise the human blood in your veins as you do the elven. I do not care if you even acknowledge to anyone else that you love me... just tell me that you do… tell me that I belong to you in the same way that you belong to me… Tell me that you and I can have the one thing which has been denied to both of us and I will show you a world where our blood does not matter, Cayrimsa Etellenya. Tell me… make me more than death and dying with that one small thing… and it will not matter if Vadim ever discovers what we have done because, if you can… if you do… I will show you love like you have never known… I will show you love that cannot be taken away… and… I will give you the Hellkites, as well.”