Ravensblood Forest light of my life, fire of my loins [m]

Oh, that she could call to her the spirit of the wolverine that had come to haunt her of late, that it might rip him to pieces, and bring Lethe down with it. What she wouldn't do to impart her hatred for the deserter queen on her shaman, and claim back her wolves from days long gone. Kaskae would have known what to do—would have taken down the golden woman with tooth and claw, without any of the cunning magic Jinx would have preferred—but the younger of the two was in no state to do such a thing. Her body was battered, bruised, and her emotions... Another kind of injury altogether.

When next Lecter spoke, it sent tendrils of dread winding around her heart, dark and cold and unforgiving. "No!" she abruptly blurted out, her rage suddenly subsiding in the wake of a much worse emotion: fear. She had always counted on him, even when she was a young thing, friends with his daughter and utterly terrified of him, but transfixed by his lessons. Bewitched by his magic. She had counted on him when she rose to her throne, had counted on him in Bon Dye... And now, more than ever, counted on him to find it in him to remain.

These emotions had a name, but it was foreign to her, and so presently unknown. She felt the stiffening of his body in the sharpness of his eyes, like daggers in her soul, and thought it was directed at her. She stiffened too, but let go her breath in a tremble. "I don't want another," she growled, practically a complaint, as though "another" referred to a consolation toy she found unsavoury, when the grand prize was a golden trophy. Her possession, her longing... It did not wander.

"I want you," she proclaimed, largely unsure exactly what she was saying, but certain it was true. "I need you, Lecter." And there, at the end, a quavering note of desperation found its way into her voice, and rooted there in the tharump of her burning heart.