(“T,” maybe gently “M." G'raha/WoL reminiscence and brief WoL/Aymeric. WoL POV.)
- - - - - - - - - -
- ✧ ☄ ☽ -
She stopped counting time by autumns after the Tower.
To worsen the bite—to make that evanescent season impossible to forget—Samantha was born near that border, her name day cast just before that liminal gasp. She was a late summer blossom that craved for cool air, and it pained her, after G’raha, to remember.
- - - - - - - - - -
The front end of dusk was beginning, the spire on the horizon aglow.
Another day, ordinary but for the circumstances. But that, she supposed, was the fodder for stories—mundane moments, supernormal per perspective. One hand crept to her chest and took her aethermist necklace in hand; toyed with the crystal and wondered—were the Scions at the Stones, sharing tea and fables and banalities their own? In her weeks spent afield mapping pathways, maiming monsters, scaling the echelons of the Tower—had her absence been felt?
Minfilia’s smile was warmer than sunshine and Samantha let herself bask for the briefest of breaths; felt the cool press of gemstone in her hand. “For your protection,” the Antecedent told her, and the Warrior turned the mother-shard gift between her fingers—watched it sparkle and shimmer.
Now it was warmed; imbued with heat from her skin, through her layers of chemise, blouse, and bodice. She thumbed the crystal and thought of Warde, of Waters—Tataru Taru serving tea—Papalymo preaching to Yda, Y’shtola scoffing fondly—Urianger pontificating while the Leveilleur twins attended—
A body a head-and-some smaller slammed into her back, strong arms grappling her into a bear hug.
“You sly old thing!”
The wind was knocked from her lungs, her imaginings scattered, as G’raha Tia all but wrestled her up off the ground. Senseless afresh at the show of his strength, she coughed. “Gods and hells.” It was difficult to remember the last time someone, in no uncertain terms, swept her off her feet. “What in the—Raha—put me down—”
“Why did you not tell me?”
He was audibly pouting.
She used the callused heels of both palms to wrestle the cinching clinch of his forearms, but his vise grip was unbending. She glared at his freckled, sunburnt skin, her voice strained. “Tell you what?”
“That today was your name day,” he sulked, rattling her body minutely. “I would have foraged for gifts.”
She huffed hard. Her cheeks prickled. Leave it to G’raha to winkle out her secrets.
But who told him?
…
She would kill Cid bloody Garlond.
Her body collapsed into deadweight. As usual, in defense against her sentiments—to tamp down the way her heart raced and fluttered, simply to know G’raha cared—
She reached for insipid banter. “Why did you not tell me you were so godsdamned brawny?”
“Aha,” he laughed. “You mean to imply you never noticed?”
There was a wink in his voice. She coughed, indignant—because of course she had, but— “Your ego would never survive how much I’ve noticed,” she wheezed, surprised by her own frankness. She could veritably feel the heat of his massive grin as he eased her back to earth.
His voice was a rumble, thrilled and satisfied. “Fabulous.” One last squeeze like a cincher at her waist, and then she was released. “Remind me to show you my trump cards more often.”
“Numpty,” she grumbled, pushing away.
She spun to scowl down and G’raha’s smile was wide as imagined, dry Mor Dhonan dust stirred up by the delighted lash of his tail. The tip curled and hooked like the side of his mouth. “Right,” he said, all candor and merriment and crisp bits of mischief. “How shall we celebrate?”
She spluttered. “I had no intention to—”
But his hand was shoved in hers and she was being dragged—a fond, familiar hauling she was furtively glad to call common. “Revenant’s Toll,” he said, hitched with excitement. “Our research can wait—”
“But Xande—”
“Is trapped,” said G’raha. “And I, for one, will not allow the horrors of Allag to interfere with your birthday.”
- - - - - - - - - -
Supper hung warm in her belly as they scaled the path to the greenery just past the Splendors.
The omnipresent chatter of settlers and workers faded into static as G’raha’s hand crept again to find hers. “This way,” he murmured, his palm pulsing her fingers with a gentle, affectionate wring.
Heaviness shunted her chest. For a breath, she feared she might burst open—might collapse and dissolve into hot surging butterflies, like those that crowded her stomach.
They moved beyond the dull commotion, and music distantly warbled, the melody stronger and stronger. G’raha’s ears flicked, overfocused in her vision, and when he turned to flash a grin, she felt sunshine again. “A troubadour,” he laughed—summer sunset, rich and rustling—and as they rounded the corner, she saw the minstrel in question, perched and playing her lyre on a half-mortared ledge.
The small square was under construction but G’raha Tia hardly cared. He towed her right up to the bard and threw down a handful of gil. The Warrior of Light watched in awe as the Baldesion Scholar listed songs by titles unfamiliar, stopping only when the bemused musician grinned.
“That one,” she said, flexing her hands. “I well know it.”
“Perfect,” G’raha breathed. He whirled to face Samantha. “Dance with me.”
It was not a request.
His hands snatched her wrists, then her fingers, and they were woven callus to callus. He brought his strength to bear again as she gasped his name—Raha—and they were spinning.
An ugly laugh tore from her throat, and she was dizzy—anchored by the bright sight of his smile. Her bearings were lost, her wits scattered. She watched the movement of his soft and beautiful mouth, and it took her too many heartbeats to realize he was singing.
The curl of his timbre plucked something far inside her. Ilsabardian, she realized. He was singing in that language—
Like Cassius—
Tears pricked her eyes.
“Your voice.” Hers was hoarse and husky. “It’s magnificent.”
The pitch on his lips spiraled off into a rich vibrato. “Another card to your liking, then?”
Her pulse filled her ears. She nodded, and at the way he dazzled, incandescent, reality beyond him was gone.
G’raha Tia was a riddle, hard and charming and delightful; so bizarre he left her petrified, more frightening, somehow, than a Garlean legatus. His smile stirred her aether, something quiet and arcane, and a swift, relentless pressure thumped like wingbeats in her chest.
I—
He twirled her into a spin. She bent along after; stumbled under his arms and snagged herself, boot tip to boot tip. A shout left her lips as she fell—the clinch of his arms snared her waist as he dove to catch her—and the two of them crumpled, gasping, to the ground.
One leg sprawled beneath him. One knee cocked against his hip. She giggled helplessly as his body shuddered overhead, laughter rolling from his chest. His ears were perked straight forward, his stare so warm.
“Some pair we make,” he murmured past the mirth, and he used one scuffed hand to push her tangled hair behind her ear; to stroke the pads of his fingers, very slowly, down her face.
They locked eyes. Both went still. With the weight of his body above her, cradled hips to cautious hips, a whisper of hunger burned inside her to realize how well they might actually fit.
He wet his lips. His pupils widened, then thinned back to slits.
Slowly, he disentangled them—stepped up and away and reached one hand down. Palm to palm, she was lifted, and— “Follow me,” he said. Again they were stitched at the fingers, her heart become the butterfly flutter, her blood alive with wild anticipation.
Notes fell from his lips—he was singing, and panting, and breathless—and she gripped his hand more tightly. Past the square, past the last hints of construction, past the edge of the Toll and out into Mor Dhona—
They ran into fields strewn with glowing crystals, and before she could catch her air, she was against him; hugged into the hard clutch of his arms like a cincher. He pressed his face to the edge of her shoulder, conspicuously avoiding her chest. “Samantha.” Her name was hot on his lips, hot on the skin past her vestments. Her arms curled, careful around him, and her sleeves slouched half-down. “I—” his voice cracked. “Have another gift,” he huffed. “That is—before I lose the courage to give it.”
Her hands crept up his neck; covetously traced the small plait at his nape. Her body was humming, her pulse racing fast, the precipice between them disappearing in a glimmer. She forced herself to ask. “What is it?”
His mouth at the fringe of her sleeve and her skin. “A kiss.”
Her heart was a stone plunging into her stomach. She froze—leaned back—found his mismatched eyes tilted up to her in gallantry and terror.
Yes, yes, yes—
Her throat was dry, and silence overlingered. He went tense. She felt him begin to recoil and stopped him, her thumbs by his lips. When she leaned down, her dark hair curtained around them.
“Kiss me, then,” she whispered.
Shadowed eyes roved her face. His hands stroked a path up her backbone. He tipped up his chin, and his mouth was soft and lush, his taste warm and bitter. He tried to leave her with a peck but she followed him for something good and proper, drinking the breath from the tip of his tongue, tasting hope and apprehension.
Their noses brushed together. “Happy name day, Samantha.”
- - - - - - - - - -
After that, winters seemed a better measure.
Winter was, after all, where she found summer again.
His laugh was warm and breathy. “I was born then, you know,” Borel hummed, voice like velvet and honey and richer than silk. “On that crisp cusp between greenings and heat.”
“Soft thing of springtime,” she called him.
“Monster of maying,” he whispered.
“Either way,” she kissed his lips. “You brought me sunshine again.”
(Heavenly bodies that held her in their influence. “Let me help you.” Rating changes to “E.” Multiple relationships, several snippets from pre-1.0 Calamity to [ShB spoilers] pre-patch 5.3.)
cw: 18+, consensual OCxOC relationship with [in other depictions, unhealthy] BDSM overtones; rough sex, mention of Zenos (scars and injury), Estinien & Samantha being actual animals. Otherwise fluff and feelings. Many POV shifts, mostly wide third-person POV with eyes belonging to: Raphael, Minfilia, G'raha, Estinien, Aymeric, and Samantha (WoL).
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- ✧ ☄ ☽ -
Rain pit-pattered the window.
She swallowed the breath of fragrant mist rising from her teacup—took a scalding, half-steeped sip. Past the glass, out in the garden, the rosebushes hung their pretty red faces, the downpour making the blossoms gleaming and leaden.
A hum from his desk—that soft, commanding timbre—and she looked up as though summoned or beckoned.
Bewitched, bedazzled, besotted.
He was thumbing through papers, grim-faced, unsmiling.
“Come,” he murmured. He sounded tired. The word fell from thinned lips like a drop of cool water from storm-laden petals. She rose from the armchair; padded, barefoot, past polished wood floors. Her long nightgown whispered behind her, a white, frothy slip of a thing—a gift from him.
He stirred at the sound of her subservience.
When Raphael Lemaitre lifted his eyes, Rosalyn Floravale was lost in them. They were green and golden and haunted with hazel, arcane and enchanting as the aurum of his hair. He wet his lips and tipped his quill in its stand; pushed his chair from the counter to allow her to perch in his lap. “Sit.”
Her heart stuttered with butterfly flutters as she climbed astride. He allowed her one rare moment of abandon, to stroke her hands through his long, flaxen hair. She pulled it loose of its ribbon. “You look tired,” she said, timid fingertips tracing his resplendent cheekbones. She cupped the sharp angle of his jawline; kissed the side of his mouth. “Let me help.”
He wrapped her wrist in his hand and closed his eyes. Raphael turned his face to press the hard slash of his mouth against the lines of her palm, the arch of his regal nose caught between her fingers.
“You always do,” he whispered. It was quiet enough to vanish—to disappear into the grumbling of the rainfall and the wind. Whether she heard him or not, before he could intercept it, she snatched the bridge of his glasses. Through his defenses slipped the first flicker of a grin; she cackled as he slipped very cold, very clinical fingertips up the front of her chemise, stiff against her skin.
Thumbs stained by ink moved directly to her breasts, his feather-light touch nonetheless kindling. She arched to fill his hands; to beg him, silently, to cast aside pretense. But Raphael Lemaitre was stern as a statue and nothing could sway him. As always, he looked up through bronze lashes, knowledge implacable, a stronghold unspeaking, unsmiling, unyielding.
After long hours lecturing students, he preferred quiet.
She writhed, impatient, in his lap. He watched a moment in silence. Hands primed for reading and writing moved, very slowly, down the outline of her body—found her hips and eased into a calculated shift. Their bodies moved together, and an ugly cry tore from her lips.
“Shh,” he hushed, unlatching his belt.
She held her lip between her teeth to stifle all sound as she watched him. Unbuckled, unbuttoned, he pushed the immaculate press of his trousers down just low enough to—
Her hot, greedy fingers snatched his length into her fist. Always so hungry to take him, she hitched herself up, and he hissed to see she was bare beneath the nightdress—completely unhindered.
They were practiced. So rehearsed, now, she knew the best fits of their bodies; made the frantic struggle of sex into something graceful and efficient. Her desperation always left him breathless, and in the midst of that rainstorm, his dignified lips fell soundlessly open as she sank to sheathe him inside in one stroke, riding him, unruly and ruthless.
Had her eyes been open in the blinding breath that he filled her—had they been open, not closed for the thrill—she would have seen incomprehensible adoration in his face; the brief, broken instant his chiseled façade collapsed. But the mask of power clicked back just as quickly—the need to restrain her,outlast her, and conquer.
She clapped her own palm over her own mouth to stifle her ragged cries and he kissed the valleys of her knuckles; let his eyes glitter like sunbeams in springtime.
Good girl.
- ✧ ☄ ✧ -
The Antecedent’s laugh caught, half-through her throat, and she stifled it.
“What?” Thancred’s scoff was both merry and biting. He stumbled to a halt, dragging the flabbergasted Hero beside him.
“The two of you look so—” Warde cut herself off. “Forgive me—” Her sky-pale eyes glittered, filled with bald amusement. The Warrior—Samantha—pushed her dark hair back with both hands, a fiery blush on her swarthy, sun-blemished cheeks.
“Are you laughing at us?”
A giggle escaped the Antecedent’s lips. She coughed back the cascade that threatened; pinned Waters with a gentle stare. “My dear Thancred—stand aside, if you please?”
Both of her sentinel’s ash-blond eyebrows rose and he lifted both hands, play-acting a couerl-burglar at knifepoint. “Fair lady,” he drawled, reversing three paces.
Samantha watched in some blend of horror and unabashed fascination as Minfilia swept into the center of the room, reaching for her with unassuming, outstretched hands. “Allow me,” she offered, keeping her voice soft and tranquil, hoping it offered some solace. “Our friend here of course is an unrivaled tutor, but—” and she prayed her eyes, then, were soothing. Floravale was full of fire, but skittish, so much promise, so much wild. “Ascilia remembers the basics far better.”
From her guardian, she felt the heat of his exasperated affection—stern and probing cross-examination—and passed him a heartening glance.
Stay.
Samantha crept forward, still possessed of that caged-animal stare. “Ascilia?”
“My name,” she said, very quiet. A tiny smile curled her lips. “The true one.”
“But,” came the instantaneous mutter from the watcher, “If you so much as breathe an onze beyond this chamber—”
His interruption was disrupted. “I trust her,” said Minfilia, holding the Warrior in her eyes. Samantha had a fierce and determined appearance—a woman, to be certain—but despite over two epochs of namedays, the sorceress yet moved with self-doubt; exuded a muted and hushed lack of confidence that Ascilia, for all her abundant misfortunes, comprehended very well.
“That would be the Blessing,” offered Thancred, benevolently unhelpful.
“No.” Warde beheld Floravale with tender evaluation. They stood close, now; close enough to twine hands. “Somehow,” she wove fingertips together; locked eyes, light to dark, “I would trust her regardless.” Minfilia’s voice came out small and wondering, like a child.
Samantha responded in kind. “You would?”
Thancred cocked a resigned hip against the well-worn desk and sighed; watched as two would-be schoolgirls burdened by the weight of the known world swung into silent metronome rhythm, the Antecedent’s surefooted actions rendered clumsy by the Warrior’s ineptness.
Ascilia had been told, from the first of her years—admittedly mostly by Thancred, Twelve bless him—that the shine of her grin held the warmth to melt winters; that, perhaps, if she met all of Coerthas with her gladness, she could thaw even Dalamud’s harshest aetherical chill.
She aimed her finest smile at Samantha.
“I would trust you in twelve thousand lifetimes.” She used her chin to point to their toes, and Samantha tripped across the floor to follow. “Excepting yon loitering observer,” another admittedly unnecessary glance to reassure him, “Rarely have I met a soul I found—so suddenly familiar.”
Samantha’s complexion was olive, dark-freckled, but not deep enough to obscure the hot red of her blush. “I feel the same,” she babbled. “Familiar, I mean—as though I knew you long before we ever met.”
Warde spun the two of them to trace the empty Solar. “Marvelous,” she said gently, and Thancred’s eyes followed them both, serene and tempered. “We might make a proper friend of you yet.”
Minfilia pretended not to notice how her partner’s breath stoppered—looked away as Samantha cast a nervous glance to Waters. Warde was aware of the role he assumed on her arrival in Ul’dah; camouflaged the elation she felt at his aura of pride and protection. So you adopted her as well, my secret-keeper.
“Scion and associate,” he grunted, feigning indifference—though the look in his eyes was anything but.
The Warrior huffed. “I would love nothing more than your friendship,” she muttered, and the words were rough but honest. She was catching on to one bar of the dance—Tataru would be delighted. “But—” She laughed then, nervous. “How can I presume to join in?”
Her dark, delving stare flicked to Minfilia’s—smoldering and shy.
“Why,” and the Antecedent lifted both arms to guide her in a pirouette. “You join in the same as this.” The Warrior twirled and her uneven skirts whirled in tiers to hug her calves, catching on the buckles of her blonde spinner’s boots, tickling the trims of leather-embellished leggings.
Rosalyn and Ascilia met each other eye-to-eye, the hybrid mage no small margin taller—
And then the woman the Antecedent hoped might fill the old soles of an Archon tripped all over herself and they were entangled, slip to surcote. With an exaggerated sigh, Thancred bustled over to unravel them. “So much for hoodwinking the Syndicate.”
Above their sudden, wild laughter, Samantha barked. “I trained in natural magick, not parlor tricks.”
Minfilia was breathless. “I’ve been cured of misgivings.”
- ☽ ✧ ☾ -
His tail swayed back and forth as he looked at the Tower.
There in the distant yawn of that crystalline throne room, the Void yet stretched—and there beyond, through that rift in time and space and aether,Nero—
G’raha Tia balled his hands into fists and squared his center of gravity; felt the heft of eons past and future ghost to settle on his shoulders. There was something, something—something he was missing.
Something he yet needed to finish.
Like Nero, he hungered for Allag. For all G’raha knew that his colleagues might deride him—the lash of Scaevan sarcasm was, after all, something far harsher than biting—he almost, quite often, relatedto the defector; met cold eyes the color of midwinter mornings and saw something brittle tucked behind them.
Brittle, and bitter—substratum primed to crack.
“Raha?”
The barest sound of her voice pooled to tug at his navel. He turned before she could see the way the dense hairs along his tailbone stood up; loosed a casual grin like a mockery of an arrow. “You found me.”
“Of course I—” In the darkness, she almost looked frightened. The plucking sensation dropped inconveniently lower as she trudged up to glare down at his face, a worry line creased between her brows. “You—” She pursed her lips and spluttered. “After all that happened—” She flicked one frustrated hand toward the looming, glittering spire. “Tell me before you run off like that.”
Oh, she was furious—furious and terrified.
For him.
Pleasure stirred in his heart and down between his legs before he could ignore it. He raised his eyebrows. “Worrying after me?”
She scowled harder. “You—” Her hands were balled into fists so tight he could see every ridge of her knuckles and half-gloves. “Of course I worry after you, Raha.”
A tremor itched down his back and he ignored the sudden, feral urge he felt to pounce. “As you see,” he said instead, gesturing to himself. “Whole and hale.”
“Uncharacteristic,” she muttered. She thrust out one hand, flexing stiff fingers.
He had the choice, then, to continue to rile her—but he wove them palm to palm instead, following back to the outpost. A thrill marched up his spine as she all but dragged him to camp, his deepest, most animal instincts ecstatic to be chased and claimed.
He supposed he should have known, somehow, that things would shift—change being the crux of existence, the eternal pendulum swing. But had he known, even after; even granted the gift of both foresight and hindsight, would he have picked another way?
When he thought of it centuries after, he remembered a mirage. For what else could it be but delirium imagined, delusions he dreamt in the lifetimes he slept in the Umbilicus, the haze of his waking besides?
But wherever it came from, in no past, present, or future would G’raha rob himself of one memory: Her legs, a cage to bind him as he moved, slowly and carefully, inside.
- ☾ ❅ ☽ -
His growl was furious. “Let me help you.”
She squirmed away from him like an eel but Estinien chased her; pinned her down with the obstinate weight of his body. He was scalding hot, the gift he stole from Nidhogg affecting his temperature.
“Letgo of me,” she growled, trying to kick him, but he curled in a way that placed his long frame at the advantage. His right hand was encrusted with scales of obsidian, vaguely monstrous, and where he touched her a tickling miasma of aether descended. Warped crimson and violet levin tangled down her body in gossamer cobwebs, and each felt the other flicker within—that strange place they were blended from sharing the Eyes—however swiftly her tenure had ended.
“Let me look at you,” he snarled, and just as the smoke of his eldritch magick found a crack in the light of her blessings, seeping in, he snatched her wrist in his hand and used the secret she taught him against her.
A cry tore from her throat—arse—and she crumpled, limp, to the blankets.
Then, with the skilled and ruthless fingers of a hunter, he stripped her bare of skirts and bodice and shucked her free of her chemise, much like he might clean an antelope carcass.
It was rare that Estinien was shocked, but his eyes went wide on reflex at the sight of the wounds on her body—fresh tracks and puckered scars, no few left by Ame-no-Habakiri. His scale-flecked thumb stroked a path by the lines left by the katana and he shuddered with a convulsion, consumed at once by rage. Again, both could feel it curl within,an actual, aetherical connection.
Death, came the inward rumble, not from her, but from Estinien.
I will kill him.
She coughed out a laugh. “Who can kill the unkillable,” she croaked, increasingly convinced that the prince was akin to a demon. “That man defies all rational definition.”
“Slag him,” Estinien spat, physically shaking. His eyes were frozen on the places stained by Doma, by Galvus—her flawed and magnificent skin— “How could you allow him—”
“I let nothing,” she hissed, the command of her magick returning. She huffed a breath to transpose the fire building in her chest and it came out an icy mist. “How could you allow Nidhogg?”
Hard, dark eyes caught her glare. They were locked for a handful of hot breaths and heartbeats. Estinien lunged, pulling the blow just before their browbones cracked together; nestling gently instead.
His voice rarely hitched, rarely fractured. “He told me to protect you,” he whispered, and in the depths of it she heard something shatter; a glacier’s melting edge.
Aymeric.
“You are,” she rasped, both hands on his face. “You do. You did.”
Thought evaporated. Tussle turned to whispers turned to snapping and biting. His clothes were gone, saltwater on his face. The source of the tears hardly mattered.
Samantha hooked her knee around his haunches, tossed her head back, and howled.
- ☾ ✧ ☽ -
The canopy of the Twelveswood swayed above.
He laughed, and a cackle of crowcall escaped her. “And here I thought,” she rasped, hoarse, “The Lord Commander was not the type to be prevailed upon.”
A crooked grin twisted his lips. He hooked his elbow to buttress her back; dipped her low so that the gleaming, star-white fringes of her blanched-bright hair swept almost to the ground. “But you, my Hero,” he exhaled, “Are prevailing.” He whorled her upright and was gratified to find her grinning, broad and breathless. “And I of course admit a certain bias in the case of our affairs.”
She unfurled against his arm and tossed her head; barked another wine-drunk chortle at the stars that glittered far above the boughs. The lamplight cast the stern angles of her face into shadows impossibly softer, framed by the intermittent pinprick-incandescence of fireflies.
Like them, her splendor shone foremost from within.
“Impolitic,” she teased him, “For a statesman to play favorites.” And then, without warning, she was deadweight in his hands. The Warrior of Light dragged the Speaker of Ishgard down to dewy cushions of moss and leaf-litter; jerked her chin toward the bottle long abandoned. “And to ply a weary Scion with drink, nonetheless.” She quirked a brow. “Are you trying to intoxicate me, Ser Aymeric?”
He was smiling down at her, beguiled—hers, helplessly, always. “Not on drink,” he murmured, brushing the tips of their noses together. “Though I concede I misjudged the—vigor of this vintage.”
She snorted and dissolved into guffaws, and he held her, amused and admiring.
His design was elaborate—ambitious and, to his horror, slightly extravagant—from aperitifs with her parents, to the banquet in the ballroom, to this tour of girlhood haunts and havens, he had plans.
But let her this moment, his skipping heart warbled. This breath of freedom from Norvrandt.
Your grandiose suggestions can wait.
- ☾ ☄ ✧ -
He held his frame at an angle away from her.
Distant.
“Close the door,” she begged again. The Exarch met her stare through copper lashes, the side of shrewd, slitted eyes, and the Tower itself seemed to inhale. There was a long, gravid pause.
Then, very sudden, very quiet, the access to the Ocular clicked shut.
And they were alone.
The Exarch—G’raha—gripped his right arm like it pained him. She reached for it on impulse. “Let me help you.”
It should have been easier, to look and see a friend. But it was hard to reconcile—to dissect him from her trials in Norvrandt—to blend the ardent young scholar with the venerable, cryptic old man. Even as he turned and opened his posture to her—even as she took him by the shoulder, the shape so familiar—he was something slightly else. “Samantha—” The richness of his very timbre was darkened, subtly altered, the Exarch ancient in ways that G’raha Tia only wished to understand.
“No.” Her low voice echoed hoarsely in the room. “Don’t dispute it. Don’t speak to me of debts or death or some other damnation imagined.” His right shoulder was hard as granite. She dug in her fingertips. “You don’t deserve to suffer, Raha,” she muttered. “You never did.”
His face was serene and impassive. But as she watched—as she poured healing aether through his fractures, letting it slip between the tectonics of him and the Tower—something cracked.
Strong arms hooked the small of her back, his stature humble but packed, dense and deceptive, with power. He crumpled with a breath and turned to crush his face against her shoulder.
“Say it again.”
Shocked from focus, her spell fizzled—but her grip on him tightened. She hugged him, hard. “You never deserved it,” she rasped, one hand cradling his neck. “Not one bit.”
The hard tips of his crystallized fingers caught between the layers of her bodice. The breath he took rattled his body.
How long they stood and swayed there was unknown.
- ☄ -
The spell to shield her aether was proving easier to weave, but whether it was effective was a question only Estinien could answer.
It was late by the time she reached the Manor. Snow fell in flurries, all but stopped, and she took her time shedding her layers, sneaking into the foyer so as not to wake the—
A breathy laugh, far down the hallway.
She froze and craned her neck. A dim glow from the direction of the parlor. Sweeping back her hair, now damp with melted snowflakes, she tiptoed down the vaulted corridor, ears peeled for—
“Fury bless it.”
Aymeric’s laugh, again. “You keep too much tension in your shoulders.”
A grin curled her lips in a reflex like breathing and she picked up her pace, keeping quiet. The heirlooms and artifacts stored on the walls seemed to watch and adjudicate as she crept to the archway, peeking in.
There in the parlor, limned by firelight, the two most eminent figures of her Ishgard were dancing.
Estinien swayed away from his partner, long torso bared to the hips, garbed in ash-colored slacks that hugged his thighs too tightly—a pair nicked from Aymeric, no doubt. And the lender himself was dressed all in black, the high neck of his collar offering only the barest glimpse of alabaster throat.
Quiet and clandestine, she leaned against the frame, watching as the two of them simpered.
“Poor form,” crooned the lord of the house.
“My arse,” came the clapback.
With lupine grace, Estinien slunk back, snatching Aymeric’s wrist. A wicked smirk curved Borel’s beautiful mouth as he followed. “That, I assure you, is formed quite correctly.”
And then Estinien laughed. It was a raw, candid sound—wide and rambling as the grin on his lips. At the gleam of his teeth, a wild, uninhibited rapture surged through her, and she realized with a start—
It did not belong only to her.
Before she could think to escape, a hard, towering body barreled for impact. “You little rat,” Estinien growled—and she caught a glittering wink in his right earlobe as she was lifted from the floor, hefted easily over his shoulder.
She slumped and twisted to find Aymeric watching, smiling bright. “Ignore me,” she insisted. “Keep bonding. I have a mind to go to the—”
But Estinien was already carrying her up the stairs. “You smell like—” She could hearhis nose wrinkle. “Too much of those damned Lakeland lilacs and not enough like me.”
She huffed. “Last I checked, the world was not, in fact, compelled to smell Wyrmbloodian.”
Trailing behind by several paces, Aymeric followed, laughter lighting the ice of his stare. He pushed the rook-black curl from his eyes and fixed her with earnest attention. “Welcome home again, beloved.”
