A lifetime could have passed in the moments that the two of them were lost in that kiss and, perhaps, in some fashion, a lifetime… several lifetimes… did pass. The fury of the kiss’s beginning was a testament, it seemed, to the rage and loathing that burned in their very souls… his anger at the human blood in her veins; blood that had taken everything from him and made him less than he had ever been manifested in the hungry insistence of his lips on hers… her hatred for his elven blood (and her own) evident in the icy and rigid resistance against those demands. The wrath and scorn were rapidly consumed in the both of them, though, as that initial fury burned itself into a passion born of more powerful things… want… need… desire… acceptance… and the hard ferocity of the kiss melted, softened by the flames of truth and yearning that burned in the two. The aggression and rough insistence of Nyx’s attentions eased in the span of the shuddering and longing breath that accompanied the thawing of Cay’s stony opposition. The contention, animosity, and apathy that had for so long clad the façade of the relationship between the witch and the assassin were flicked away on the dancing flame-tips of the ravenous fires that, at last, were freed from the long-damped furnaces kept by a pair of hardened hearts and shattered souls.

Yes, a lifetime and more came and went in those moments of eternal bliss in which those lost souls found one another, melded together in a union of sincerity that, perhaps, neither of them had expected and, for Nyx, it seemed, a new lifetime stole it’s first breath from the gasp that escaped Cay’s lips and blew sweetly over his own when she finally pulled away. There was nothing behind him, now, he thought… taking her breath as his own in the instant before his arms loosened slightly around her and let her feet find the floor again… and everything ahead. It wasn’t as difficult as he had imagined it would be to draw in a breath past the pounding of his heart… Cay’s head and hand resting against it, now, somehow kept the thrumming and fluttering organ from crushing his lungs, he imagined, and prevented it, too, from exploding from his chest altogether. His scarcely opened when he realized that it wasn’t just his own arms that held her to him, now… he still held her, yes, but now wrapped in a languorously tender embrace, not one inclined to restraining dominance… his tongue danced over his tingling lips, still tasting hers upon them, as she leaned into him, and his hands feathered lightly over her as he bowed his head to nuzzle into the rainwater scented locks of her hair.

“Amin delotha lle,” she whispered, her words trembling against the air just as her body trembled against his.

“Amin sinta,” he answered just as softly, closing his eyes again as he gingerly kissed the top of her head, his fingers gently stroking along the spill of her hair and across her cheek.

A trembling breath of his own followed as her fingers slid into his coat, under the tunic beneath, and traced their way along a path of scars to come to rest over his heart. One arm lay across her slender back as its hand moved to cradle the back of her head, and the other snaked a bit more tightly around her waist, its hand coming to rest on her hip, as she buried her face in his chest.

“Nan’ amin caelaya’lle,” she murmured, her breath following her hand, caressing his skin with its warmth.

“Amin hiraetha,” he replied, planting another kiss amidst her locks. For a long moment he said nothing else… let himself be content in the peace and simplicity of just holding, caressing, and feeling her… but there was more to be said; more that had to be said. As much as all of this had confused him, Nyx knew, Cayrimsa was likely even more confused by it… even if she had been granted the insights he had been provided by the stars and Taellyn’s dreamweaving she would have denied them as stubbornly as she tried to disavow everything else and, he felt, if he didn’t explain those insights to her now, in this moment… if she escaped without truly knowing… she would all too easily find her way back to that denial and be lost to him again.

Tell her then, Steppe Son, a voice that sounded curiously like Taellyn’s murmured in his mind, Tell her the truth… if neither of you take anything else from this, let it be the truth…

“Amin ero nowe amin vithel delothe lle, Cayrimsa,” Nyx whispered then, both hands moving to cradle her face between them and lift her gaze to his. He sighed, studying her face through heavy-lidded eyes, and then, although her eyes hadn’t opened to see it, smiled softly. “Nan’ sii’ amin sinta tanya iire amin delotha lle,” he continued, pausing a moment to taste her lips again, “ten’naa amin mela lle til’en mele tanya ta kelasakkata amin fea…”

The fires that burned behind Cay’s eyes did so with a peculiar light in the moment that Nyx paused in his confession to the witch. That light, more so than his own inability to find the proper words to continue, stretched his hesitation out into a longer-than-intended silence that ended only when she drew in a long, deep breath after closing the distance between them all the more. There were no words for the moment, it seemed – none that could be vocalized, at any rate – but, in that lingering silence, Nyx knew that those nebulous things were being spoken in the place where their gazes met … and found himself hoping that, this once, his eyes wouldn’t find it all too easy to lie…

 “But you did nothing to stop them,” Cay murmured after a moment, “Did you?...”

Should have known that was coming, yes? But just had to stop and attempt to arrange your thoughts… Nyx’s jaw clenched but his gaze held hers. What ever his eyes told her, now, he hoped their words were penned by his heart as opposed to his ever-quick-to-defend mind….

“…For all your talk of…For all your feelings that I am like you, that half of my blood is enough… you never came out and stopped them.”

You would not have wished me to, his mind defended, You have taken your pleasure from your pain for far longer than I have been watching you…

I should have, his heart admitted, and had I known sooner why I was watching you… why I could not stop watching you… perhaps I would have…

Nyx said nothing as Cay proceeded, though. His gaze transfixed by hers and his senses thrumming at her proximity, the mith’ganni simply stood staring into the half-elf’s soul, absorbing her accusations and admonitions as they were hurled at him… He scowled, eyes narrowing but not leaving hers, when the witch turned words he had or had not spoken into something akin to calling her a whore… No more a whore than I am, nwalmaer…… he thought to voice his dispute at that moment, too, but…

“…But let us get something straight Nyx…”

…the challenge was washed away on the hissing intake of breath as she reached up with slender fingers to push back a lock of his hair and come to rest upon the pointed tip of his ear. Even as those fingertips drifted away from his ear and whispered downward along his neck, Nyx didn’t move... the cool of his skin warmed beneath her touch… muscles fluttered their reaction to her fingertips as they traced over him… the beating of his heart quickened… but the assassin remained still and silent as Cay continued. There was nothing he could say to dispute anything she said, anyway…

“Your blood is pure elven… you sport the ears, the almond moon eyes of your people… You use the silvered tongue of the elves, but not always…”

It was strange how the feelings that surged through him, now, were so close to those that enveloped him in the moment just before the kill, Nyx thought, as her touch rippled away from his neck, became firmer so as not to be diminished by the bulk of his coat as those fingertips trailed over his chest. His yellow eyes narrowed a bit more as his ears registered the tone in her voice but still didn’t break from hers One onyx brow arched upward and the tip of his tongue flicked across his lips before they started to curl into an expression somewhere between snarl and smile but otherwise, the mith’ganni remained still…

“…You dress in shadow, instead of the light that elves adore… cloaking yourself in the tombs of humans deep in the belly of a city not the gentle embrace of nature, and have for years…You do not hold life sacred as elves by nature do, instead you kill…”

… A certain tension – a sensation at once familiar and forgotten - crept into his lithe frame as her fingers wandered lower, languidly tracing downward from the point of his breastbone, across his stomach, and over the skull-shaped buckle of his belt. Nyx’s stomach tightened – contracting instinctually as hands that weren’t his own came that close to his weapons – his fingers flexed and he drew in a slow breath to keep the reaction from spreading farther..

“You kill for him… your seductive God of death…”

Or, Nyx wondered, considering the events of these last few days and the revelations – some that he had come to on his own, some others offered by the likes of Taellyn and even the forsaken death-god that Cay now provoked him with – that seemed to have unraveled in their course, do I kill for you?

“…and you kill because you enjoy it. You gave yourself to him, you left the plains, you killed your people.”

“You, Nyx Shyndyn may have been birthed of elven parents, raised in their embrace,” Cay’s fingers closed suddenly around the silver-skull buckle, then, and with a tug, she pulled him even closer as she finished, “but you are no more elven than I, perhaps less.”

Finally, as the ambiguous expression that had been ghosting his features solidified into a sharply primal grin, Nyx’s moon-hued eyes broke free of Cay’s smoldering amber gaze, dipped slowly to where her fingers were entwined in his belt, lingered there for a moment before, just as slowly, slithering back up to lock to hers, again… and the smile evolved into wicked laughter… “Much less,” he nodded as one alabaster hand shot out from beneath his cloak to clamp around her wrist, keeping her from moving her hand from where he now had it trapped. He stepped forward as his other hand appeared from the penumbral folds to tangle fingers, savagely and sensuously at the same time, into the chestnut tresses that spilled from beneath her hat as he backed her into the wall and pressed tightly against her. A subtle turning of his wrist was enough to crane her neck back, tipping her face up to his more than was required to simply meet his eyes… He leaned in even closer; pressing against her and pulling her to him all at once, his face close enough to hers, now, that when he spoke again, his lips scarcely brushed over hers

“For all your attempts to deny it, Cayrimsa Etellenya,” Nyx whispered, the grip on her wrist loosening as the hand that held it feathered up along her forearm, past her elbow, and danced delicately around her waist from there, “your own words have done nothing but confirm what I have been telling you these past days… I am not an elf any more than you are… I am not the human that you tell yourself that you want, either, am I?”

His hand found the small of her back, pressed firmly against the celestial shape that hid beneath the formless burlap sackcloth of her dress, and lifted upward enough to lift her feet from the floorboards beneath them. “No,” he murmured, tasting her lips and her breath on each word that he spoke as he held her separate from the rest of the world that surrounded them, “were I that, melamin, I would have taken from you what those others have, already… I would have stopped them all from granting you the pain that has been your pleasure all this time and you would have hated me for more than the points on my ears, yes?

You are right… I am no more elf than you are… and you are no more human than I am, are you? And that, elen en cormamin, is what makes us so alike! Your blood and mine be damned… elven… human… all of it! I am nothing, Cay… but I am yours…”

He lifted her higher then, enough to bring her lips fully to his, and kissed her. He kissed her hard, at first, much as he had just a few short nights ago in that alley, but there was more passion than anger in this kiss than that first one… nor did this one end as abruptly…

Nyx’s senses hummed as he waited out Cay’s dealings with the dwarven vendor; his yellow eyes narrowed to slits as they swept from one sneering face to the next, his jaw clenched tight as he forced his mind to ignore the epithets and slurs that were lobbed in his direction, and his fingers resting at the ready on the hilt of his blade. Even as exposed and anxious as he found himself feeling, then – standing alone like some stony island at the mouth of the bay, defiant against the crashing waves of hatred thrown at him from the storm-tossed sea of humanity that coursed around him – the Mith’ganni couldn’t help but take some small satisfaction in the moment, as well… Yes, he thought as he evenly returned the spiteful glares of the trio of young, brash humans who had seen fit to press their luck and shove roughly past him as they lofted their insults, you are all so very brave when the numbers are in your favor. This is how your empire managed its birth, yes? Where will your bravery be when you are without your friends … alone in the dark … and I give you the opportunity to make good your threats?

The mith’ganni’s eyes and ears were keen on the crush of loathing that seemed, now, to exude from the market, itself, and he opened himself to it, let it flow into and through him to fuel his own hatred. His mind was occupied with thoughts of how many of them he mind send screaming to their ends before he was brought down himself and, had some other numbers-emboldened round-ear chosen to take inspiration from that last group and intentionally jostled him in their passing, Nyx was almost certain that he would not be long in finding out. He found himself hoping for it, in fact… Just one small excuse to open one of them up… and his fingers curled around the well worn hilt of the kukri at his hip as one of the thugs made the decision to turn and shout at the “horse-f***er” one more time… the motion that would draw the blade from its scabbard, along with the intended step toward the monkey-faced breeder, was halted when he felt Cay’s fingers on his wrist. He stayed the instinctual flinch of his muscles that the unexpected contact brought and, as her hand guided his gently away from the kukri, tried to force some of the remaining tension from them as she led him away from the throng in the market and towards less crowded venues along its periphery.

A short time later, some distance from the crowded thoroughfares hemming the bazaar, she led him off of the streets all together and into the dusty stillness of an abandoned tenement. The thrumming tension of his paranoia had steadily ebbed from him as they had made their way here – the cautioning touch of Cayrimsa’s fingers at his wrist having done as much for that as had the diminishment of scornful glances and bigoted comments – and almost drained completely away as she led him into the clinging comfort of the shadowed room. He cast a glance over his shoulder as the door to the place closed behind them and, now freed from the need to perpetually scan his surroundings, Nyx’s yellow eyes found Cay’s face. His gaze drifted downward and watched his fingers trail after hers as her hand slid away from his wrist, and then returned to meet her eyes again as she offered one of the paper-wrapped pies to him…

“I love these things,” she smiled nervously, taking a bite of the pastry she’d kept for herself.

… Nyx blinked, then, and his hand broke off its pursuit of hers to take the greasy parcel she had offered. His gaze let go of her face for the moment and peered at the curious contents of the pie that were revealed when broke a piece of the crust away. Still unsure of what he might be about to eat, he tentatively sniffed at the filling. He wasn’t sure what to make of the thing but, when his eyes lifted to her face once more and he watched her chase down a trickle of grease that had escaped her lips and blot it away with her sleeve, Nyx smiled faintly and finally took a bite. “Not bad,” he agreed with a nod after having swallowed that first mouthful.

“So what now,” she asked as he took another bite, “If they haven’t already they will kill Aelion, a few days and the city will calm down, but until then… until then you should lay low...

Lay low? Nyx scowled, his gaze sweeping back toward the door for a moment… imagining the city full of people beyond it who, today, had much less tolerance for moon-eyed point-ears than they had yesterday. You mean ‘hide’… from them…

“…I know you wanted to speak to Aelion, I don’t think we can get to him now, though.”

The scowl curled into a something of a wry grin and his gaze swung back in time to catch hers turning downwards. “We can if we must,” Nyx assured her, “Humans, I have noticed, tend to design their prisons with more thought given to keeping people in and give little consideration to keeping people out, yes?”

“He obviously wasn’t working alone, though… I don’t know where to start poking around though. The contacts I have in this city are all… they are human. Whatever Aelion was up to he wasn’t telling any round ears about. But maybe Dmitrova knows something…”

“I am certain that he does,” the mith’ganni nodded again, his expression going thoughtful as he bit off and chewed another mouthful of the pie, “otherwise, why would he have taken such an interest in Bolstoii’s affairs to begin with, yes? It is more than just a simple percentage of Styopa’s caravans, I am sure; there would have been easier methods for Vadim to have gotten that…” He licked the grease from his fingers and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes met Cay’s, then, winking at him from the deep shadows cast by the brim of her hat and he smiled…

“As for what we do now, melamin,” he purred, taking a step closer to her, “I have an idea or two… if risking your position with the Hellkites is no longer a concern…”