Sequoia Coast born into cruelty and crooked form

The man cloaked in black stared at her blankly. Raleska assumed at first he was simply carefully dissecting what she had said piece by piece, stitching it together into a fabric that was clean and readily understood: yet the longer the silence spanned, the more Raleska was caught by that intelligent glint to his apple-green eyes. Eyes which reminded her so very much of her mother.

Shrewd.

If she was being played a fool, she might have never known.

He divulged his name at last; a name with great gravitas. Toothsome as the rocks in which the sea threw itself against. It was a shame Raleska had never learned from Caiaphas her natal tongue -- for in that moment they were far more alike than she was aware.

She considered lying, but withstood the impulse. There was something about the hunter that suggested he did not suffer fools well or gently. "Raleska Eyjólfur." Once, that name had been something else -- generations ago her great-great-great grand-dam had gone by the name of Eyjólfur Tyge. From her exploits sprouted a long line of hardened men and women -- and Eyjólfur, having taken no man for a husband, had given each of them her own proud name as surname. A name to bear like a shield or tooth. Raleska would have liked Eyjólfur, had she ever met her. "Of Rusalka."

Now, she had nothing of her lineage but the black mask to her face: all others of her blood had withered away like the softening of a drawing tide.