Gyrfalcon's Keep xi. could you tell me like it is? pretty little fears.

@Daegon vaguely forward-dated (perhaps around 7/3/19 - 7/5/19 if that works)

She'd departed from the forest they called a temporary home with a parting expression of exploring the nearby territories - patrolling for hidden threats (other, more volatile, groups, predators and the like). 

The scree and shale of the ruinous cliff provided little by the way of threat or interest, proving her mission unnecessary and futile. A desire burned from some hidden corner, to range further afield and continue her unfounded search but the aspiring leader was reluctant to stray too far from the mountains and subsequently her recruits. 

The nightwisp allowed her paws to adopt an aimless stroll, head tilting and peering as she allowed her lilac gaze to wander over the shattered rock and abandoned nests - mind following suit as it wandered along garden paths of boredom.

He was in this strange new lands for a few days now and in that time met only a few other wolves. Daegon did his best to avoid pack lands and pack wolves in general, hunting when needed as well as sleeping. Well at least whatever his body had allowed.

As he approached a familiar scent slammed against his nose and he tried to shake it off. Yet as he trekked forwards a pelt matched the scent. “No way...”

Again, that inner alarm chimed, a warning that eyes roved her skin; yet, there was something more to it, some magnifying attraction - something altogether primitive and intimate. 

Her heart denied but she knew him. In the deep of her bones, she knew who stood just feet behind her before she'd even turned. 

So shocked was she, the dark girl forgot the ruin of her face - the gaping scar where once a lavender orb had nestled, the twin to the eye that now gazed upon him wide with disbelief. 

Her star-kissed crown tipped ever back - he had always towered over her, why would that ever change even as she was a woman grown now - and back to find the hardened features she had traced; how many times had her head fallen back in such a manner, a motion most familiar now, to receive his lips, to capture whispers, to let his kiss fall upon her neck with the gentleness of summer's first rain? 

It should not have been but it was, he should not be but he was here.

"I've lost my wits," her voice broke free of the knot in her throat at last, a rasp of shock. 

"You're not real," she whispered, shaking her dark crown anxiously as her eye squeezed shut. It was yet another dream, come to plague her in the midst of day. "You died," came the next soft statement, voice breaking on the last word - daring not even to open her eyes for fear that the apparition was lingering, haunting her.

She stood there in disbelief as did he. Last he had heard of her uproar was in the empire and she had fled or vanished. But not now; now she stood in front of him and he wanted no more than to run to her but there he stood.

”I heard you were exiled...I... i searched everywhere. I thought I would never find you...” at this moment he was at a loss for words

Realization strikes her, drawing her eye to open and find the citrine of his - forced to grapple with the fact that he is real as his baritones strike her ringing ears. Dread curls in the depths of her, drying her tongue and swirling her stomach with nausea. 

"I waited for you," she promises earnestly, "but the Kingdom would have sent rangers, I had to go home." 

"What did they tell you, the Lireans?" she ventures cautiously, suddenly struck by the fact that they might have revealed the nature of her crimes to Daegon.

Suddenly terrified they hadn't.

She had finally came to terms with the fact that he was standing before her and was not a figment of her imagination. Her voice was like a melody to his ears one he had not heard in a long time.

She stated that she had waited for him; for the longest time he had though that she hadn’t. “I wasn’t let known of what the reason for your exile. At that moment I was afraid to ask. Why were they after you?” He then asked referring to his home. “Why were you exiled?”

She swallowed heavily, heart beginning to pound as pressure tightened around her chest. 

He didn't know. 

A lump rose in her throat - humiliation for the things his brother had done to her, which she would have to reveal, and fear for the secret she had to give up. There was no way she could conceal it, he knew her. He would see through a lie and she could not bring herself to look him in the eyes and spit falsehood. 

"I killed your brother."

He was left utterly speechless. “W...why?” He managed to choke out. He couldn’t think of her as a murderer; of his kin no less. He had noticed that their union was with no love but surely she didn’t commit this act due to that. There was more she want telling him.

Her breath stuttered in her lungs, quivering vaguely with the effort of holding herself together. With a shaky inhale, she was forced to admit, "He hurt me."

"When your father passed and Lucavon sent for me - sent his guardsmen to collect me and bring me back to your Kingdom to fulfill our union - some instinct told me something was off." They'd been brigands - rough, crude sellswords as opposed to the refined Knights of the realm - but Kingdoms'd been known to hire them on occasion so Rhælla hadn't voiced her concerns. 

"When we reached the Icadearian borders, Lucavon ordered my escort - my father's loyal men sent to see me safely to my destination - to be butchered and forced me to watch." Genuine pain laced her tones. Those men had been her doting babysitters and playmates when she was a bairn, her mentors in combat and history and astrology; they'd practically been her uncles. Worse yet, their deaths were absolutely pointless.

"I was forced to go through with the marriage, right there on the borders and to consummate it later that night," the dark Seelie could scarcely look at him, tones wavering with shame as she blinked - forcing back any tears that dared threaten her composure. 

"I was a Queen in title alone, a prisoner in all other aspects - I was beaten, raped, tortured. My chance for freedom came in the form of a thrall girl named Tälea, who had managed to find a plant of nightshade."

"She made me promise that if she gifted it to me that it would never be traced to her, that I would use it to bring the whole Kingdom to its knees," she revealed in a hushed murmur, vaguely nervous he would be enraged over her destruction of his home, "so, I did."

"Nyke wyse syt ao; nyke swer, Daeg, yn pōnta io emagon ossēntan issa lo pōnta issa se naejot sagon drēje - nyke istan yentê drüin iemnȳ," she finishes earnestly in her mother tongue, for it was an old euphemism that Lireans could not lie in the olde tongue. 

"When I arrived home and the truth of Lucavon's death reached my father's ears, he took my eye and cast me out for treason," the girl shakes her head, lip curling bitterly. 

"But I'd have done it a thousand times over if it meant being free of that monster."

His heart ached for her as she described all the hateful and wicked things his brother had put her through. Why hadn’t he seen it, why hadn’t he been there to stop it. He cursed himself for being so ignorant. He was left utterly speechless as he stood before her. He almost felt tears swell in his eyes.

”You should of told me...I could of helped you.” His voice broke quaking with anger and sadness not directly at her but at his brother at the situation. “Damnit I could of protected you. I would of killed anyone who harmed you blood or not.” He felt as though his heart was about to leap from his chest. “I would of taken you away from all of it.... you didn’t deserve that...”

Something withered and vulnerable within fractured at his words - her heart perhaps - but the woman would not broke this. Her spine straightened and fire flickered in the eye she retained, the strength of her indignation drawing her forward a step to stand toe-to-toe with the Vallaeris.

"And then what?" she demanded of him. "You'd have killed your own brother, your King?" the nightwisp shook her head, jaw setting as she denied the fearful tears such a thought conjured - even now. "I refused to make you a Kingslayer, a Kinslayer, to see us both put to death for treachery and treason."

The Seelie wheeled from him, shaking her head adamantly. It was impossible and he knew it. It was the very reason she concealed it from him - Daegon was a hero, a knight, but he was rash. Such knowledge would driven him to violence, an outburst that would have ended in his own demise.

"There are few options afforded to Queens in such trouble. I'm sorry I killed your blood but I did what I had to and I will not apologize for that", the girl whispered, voice cracking.

Lucavon had morphed her, twisted her into a murderess and monstress but she would never regret his death.

He let out a long held in sigh, she was right. If he was gaven the choice could he of really killed his own brother. “Look...” his voice was calm and tired what was done was done. “The past is the past and I can’t change that no matter how hard I wanted to.”

He then took note of what she said about what happened. “And I’m not asking you to apologize nor do I blame you for what you did. I may not have been able to save you from what happened but I can be there for you now. “ He just got her back he didn’t want to lose her again. “If you’ll have me.”

It wasn't the response she'd expected, to say the least.

She awaits rage, hate - were she in his paws, confronting the admitted murderer of her beloved twin, even with Rhaelyx's betrayal tearing her heart asunder, the femme would have become unhinged in her charge to rip that person to pieces.

The nightwisp hovers, swaying on her dark paws as the intensity of the moment flees - leaving her drained and hollow. Her gaze shuttered wearily and a sigh wisped through her lips. 

Her eye reopened at his words, unable to conceal the shock that shone through. "Daeg...of course, you would be welcome with us," she whispers, still too surprised to offer him even a hint of a reassuring smile. 

"But..." Rhælla trails, gaze flitting away as she summons the correct string of words. "This...us.."

"It doesn't mean we're just a thing again," the former Queen finally spits out, for once lacking in poise and allowing her youth to shine through as her eye finds him, pooled with apology and begging for understanding. 

Things had changed. Rhæ was not the vulnerable damsel he'd once fell in love with in the shadows of a corrupt Kingdom; the wisp had grown, hardened - she'd shed the dreams of girlhood and the naive, rose-tinted goggles of youth to shoulder ambition and justice. 

"I can't.." she tried to explain with a shake of her head, "I'm not ready for that."

He gave a sigh of relief yet his heart longed to stand by her side he would bode his time here. “Thank you.” He said in response to her letting him stay.

”I understand.” It was hurt he felt but he did understand. It was a long time ago and he didn’t blame her. If anything he was just happy to see her and be near her once more.

It wasn't what he wanted, this she knew. She shifted on her paws, gaze cast to the ground as guilt slithered in her veins - despite the fact that she reminded herself that he was not owed her. 

Unable to find any words now that everything had been laid bare, Rhælla at last met his gaze to murmur, "We're to the east of here, I'll show you the way."

The girl turned, falling silent as she weaved over stone and ruin - wondering silently what this might mean for the future, for them.