Blackwater Islands dread

she does not approve and for a moment it needles past the iron fortress ingram has risen around himself at his flesh. annoyance flares briefly before it soothes out. you have been isolated for some time, he reminds her; not speaking that he had thought her really and truly gone from him this time. he had never given up hope, of course; never forsaken her for another. she was his wife. his true wife; the wife of his soul and his heart and his bones.

but she holds a point.

loathe as ingram was to show any sort of favoritism: he has known her the longest out of any, title as wife notwithstanding.

he does not answer right away; giving contemplation to her words. i will not have you stay on these desolate islands. there is nothing but ghosts here. nothing but what once was's. there was no future here. for him. for her.

as i chose you, wife. he reminds her with sharp tongue and clicking teeth; despite that there had never been any other. i digress, murmurs the dreadfather. you shall be nightwife, foregoing the steps in between, as you wish. because he was soft for her; always. she could ask him to bend the heavens and he would find a way ( or die trying ). you should know the others might not take it well. be prepared to answer their needling questions.

not that she couldn't handle it, he knows. but those rallied to basilica were thus far an ambitious bunch.