WandWpart14

NC-17 Somewhat dark stuff, the dragons I promised are coming. (And you wouldn't believe the mess THAT makes). Implied enjoyment of pain as sex, other dark goodies I can't mention or the surprise would be spoiled. Just walk carefully and don't blame me 'cause IT'S ALL MIDNIGHT'S FAULT!

We relaxed together silently for a timeless time, the three of us; maybe ten minutes, maybe less. Jalin's face was still nestled in my lap, and I was sort of curled forward over him, one hand stroking his hair. From the soft murmuring sounds drifting up from him, I thought maybe he had actually fallen asleep. Half-drowsing my own self even in a semi-upright position, I had to smile a bit. The poor kid's face was doubtless smeared with come from ear to ear; I was pretty sure I'd missed that mouth in the final rush of spasming delight.

Carson was more active than anyone; he had taken care not to collapse on the kid even after an orgasm I knew damn well would have left me weak and gasping. Braced himself on one strong, steely arm even as pleasure tore through him. His other hand was still in mine as he carefully removed himself from Jalin's relaxed body.

Oh, the bastard. He'd come, I knew he had. But was still hard, almost fully erect in fact. Throbbing from taking Jalin, yet barely softened in the least. Scary freaking bastard.

He glanced at me and smiled faintly, as if hearing my thought. Released my hand and sat back, gathering a portion of the rich amber velvets to wipe himself more or less clean with a careless grace that struck me as almost violently sensual.

"I think the baths are called for," he suggested, in a lush and beckoning voice. Mocking blue eyes hooded as he watched me, caressed me with glance alone.

I'd thought I was done in, torn down, burnt up and ready to collapse until daybreak. That look convinced me otherwise. That and a covert, disbelieving glance at him as he lightly stroked one long finger up the underside of his cock, causing the organ to jerk, then fill and shift erotically.

"You're a motherfucking freak of nature," I told him, my voice soft with wonder. Christ, I guessed I was too, because the twitch of interest in my own dick was far stronger than it had any right to be at this point.

His smile was darker than I'd ever seen it, shadowed and fake-innocent all at once. "At the moment.a very messy, sweat-drenched freak. And your cleaning spell is efficient, but truly not relaxing to me." His eyes were dancing with promise, but what they offered wasn't relaxing in the least. "And there is business unfinished, between the two of us. May I hope you will join me?"

Carson frowned, then relented. "May join us later, if he so desires. I think, though, he now needs his rest. Perhaps an hour.or more.at least." And then, as I hesitated, his eyes heated and stabbed into mine like weapons. "The boy gave me much pleasure; I don't deny it. But the night deepens, and I need you, Hawk. You. Alone. " Something of darkness in his eyes now, as he almost whispered, "Us."

He reached out to me, and all I could do was take his hands. Let him pull me to him, Jalin's body falling limply away from both of us. The boy mumbled grouchily and snuggled himself deeper into the velvets, not seeming to miss my touch as yet.

"You are a fire in my soul, wizard," Carson whispered softly against my cheek, his lips too damn close to that sensitive ear. And know what? I absolutely didn't give a damn. "The source of all beauty and madness in the world. Come with me. Please come with me. Now."

"Er. I am pretty filthy, I guess. And.oh, man, there should be a way to get running water to the tents from those hot springs, this trip to the arena every time a guy needs a bath is so damned lame!" I complained, even as I floundered off the bed to search for clothing.

Carson was way ahead of me; he was at the heavy wooden cabinet, throwing it open and pulling out some soft, colorful drawstring pants and low-heeled boots even as I was perching on the edge of the bed and blinking at my messy leathers, not really wanting to crawl back into them. "Here." A pair of pants, sunbursts of purple and yellow, struck me in the chest. A chaotic mixture but seeming to be in my length. Okay, and the patterned boots were fancy but amazingly comfortable, they would do. "Shirt?"

He shrugged. "Why bother? The night is warm." He'd already tugged on some blue and green britches that looked actually conservative next to mine, stepped into the soft boots and was reaching out a hand to me invitingly. Impatiently.

"Yeah, right, innocence is you.not. Those pants look like you're pitching another tent in there. The drunkest bastard in camp could see that erection coming a mile away."

His brows drew together dangerously. "Then the drunkest bastard in camp, whom I assume would be Do'nar at this point, would do well to stay OUT of my way. I don't give a damn what anyone thinks. Come." He reached down and snagged my arm in a grip that made me yelp.

I shook loose from Carson, ignoring his hot and angry look, and bent over the boy on the bed. "Hey, Jalin. Bath time for the big boys. Wanna come with?" I ignored Carson's growl of displeasure as blithely as I'd shined on his menacing expression.

"Uh," Jalin said intelligently. One eye half-opened; I couldn't swear it, but I almost thought he looked past me to Carson before sort-of focusing on my face through his fall of sparkling hair. "Too sleepy now. Drunk too. Go 'head. Maybe come later?"

I have to give Carson credit. Even though he was so impatient to get me alone and have his wicked way with me that I could actually feel heat coming off his body in waves, he stepped to the bed and bent down. Touched Jalin's hair lightly. "Yes, Mor'gwaine? I am here."

Jalin spoke in a very soft voice that he possibly thought I was unable to hear. Hmmm. Just as I'd assumed he was asleep and not overhearing what passed between Carson and I?

"Na'jah. I know you and Firehawk will wish your privacy from me at times. Do not let him feel uneasy. I am honored to be part of your circle. I am honored by the touch of the Warchief." All this sounded like a careful speech; the next part did not. "You are.an amazing lover. Beyond belief. I.I.can only hope that you would wish such again."

I think he meant it, I truly do. And yet, the remark was accompanied by a quick, seductive look up through the boy's lashes. I also felt the whisp of his thought, a speculative, calculating feeling that could only alarm me. Oh, no, Jalin. Don't think you can lead Carson around by his dick. That's only dangerous. That does not work.

And besides, even I don't have a line on what he really feels for you. Beyond the desire he's already admitted. And even with the sex drive of a cat in heat, Carson just isn't ruled by that. If there wasn't something more between us, I'd be out the door as fast as anyone.

To my amazement, though, Carson seemed to accept Jalin's remark at face value. Threw me a look so smug that if I were a less evolved fellow I might have been tempted to kick him in a place that would devalue his worth as a hot lover tremendously.

"Little one, you pleased me greatly." He slipped his hand under Jalin's chin and tipped his head up a slight bit more, kissing him softly. "We shall see what befalls."

I could see the surprise on the kid's face at so gentle a touch from the bad-ass Warchief. Saw the calculating look fade and soften into confusion, maybe the beginning of something beyond desire. More along the lines of trust.

Carson gave the kid another soft kiss, and ruffled the bright soft hair lightly. His actions even seemed to amaze himself. Jalin kind of.purred. And nuzzled Carson's face with his cheek. And then sighed, and seemed to drop off into uncaring sleep once again.

I watched my bad boy carefully, as he gently lowered the kid's head to the velvet-swathed bedding. There was a light frown on his face that boded more of thoughtfulness than trouble.

A marshmallow wrapped in ice. A gentle soul hardened by his life and by circumstances beyond anyone's control. He'd come round. He'd care about Jalin, not just want him as a sex toy. I damnwell knew it.

No one hindered us right away. It was late evening by now, and most of the celebrants seemed to have adjourned to private tents. There was one contingent of die-hards clustered around a fire, among them.ah, Christ. Do'nar. Shoulda guessed he'd still be staggering around looking for trouble. He was singing a plaintive love song in a loud, atonal voice that could've cracked windows. The rapt appreciation of his small audience gave me more than a clue as to their own state of drunkenness.

All except for one person, standing somewhat off to the side and eyeing the group with a look of total disgust. And of course as the pair of us attempted to more or less tiptoe past that cluster of masochists, Smitty turned, snorting with disdain, and spotted us.

"McIntyre!" she greeted me sharply, planting herself right in our path as if she actually thought her scrawny bod could even slow Carson down. "Thank God; I need to talk to you right now!"

Carson stopped when I did, but I could tell he wasn't happy. Politeness was just my middle name, I guess; it wasn't as if I were in a mood to chit-chat either. "Uh, well, Smitty, right now we're on our way to."

"Oh, I can SEE what you're on your way to DO," she cut in scornfully, giving us both a raking glance at about crotch level that was beyond rude. "But this is important. It's about Jalin, and about your."

Then Carson, who had been glowering at my side like a very Chaos Lord of Wrath, threw one arm around me and stepped forward, dragging me with him. Smitty was forced to choose between being knocked flat on her butt or getting the hell out of his way. She moved, but barely in time.

"You may speak to him tomorrow," he snarled. "If he chooses to hear you. But this is my time, as we have agreed, and not an instant of it will you steal from me!"

"No, by the gods!" And that was fucking THAT. I got my feet moving, not really wanting to be hauled bodily past the now snickering group of late-night revelers. Do'nar, who had shut down his love lament to grin at our more interesting action, now chose to open his beak and begin to bellow out a raunchy little ditty I suspect him of composing on the spot, since it seemed to concern some unidentified redhead getting fucked into unconsciousness, yo ho ho-de-derry-oh!!

Carson was storming along so fast, me kind of trotting helplessly along with, that it wasn't two minutes later we arrived at the dark forbidding bulk of the arena. Funny, the last time I'd been here was to search for one I couldn't touch. And now, the moment we stepped through the arched doorway, that same forbidden creature had me in his arms. Locked in a kiss so hot, so hungry it all but drew my soul from me.

Oh, did that give the impression I wasn't returning that kiss? So sorry to have misled. I was all over him, on him, whimpering down his throat and begging for more with every writhing move of my body. At last, more than a handlock however desperate, more than a teasing touch however filthy and shattering. Our bodies wrapped together to the point of pain, moving and struggling to get even closer. His hands restless and eager, totally wanton. All over me, seeking response and finding it, and not just from those parts you'd expect. There wasn't a molecule of me that didn't fire at his touch, ache to be closer yet. If I'd known a spell for crawling inside his skin I would've tried to use it. Except I couldn't think. No mind left, only touch, feeling, desire.

Finally need for air split us apart, gasping heavily. We'd been glued together so long my wizard-sight had kicked in, and I could see his expression as he stared down toward me. Lust, yes, that I'd been expecting. The aching tenderness in his eyes, though; that was probably a thing he wouldn't have exposed except in the darkness, forgetting as always that even pitch-blackness didn't necessarily blind me.

"No problem-o." A negligent thought lit a couple of torches on the wall, and I couldn't help smiling as I met his look. Sure as shit, only desire there, the gentleness back in hiding. Silly boy. Thought he could fool me. "Good fucking God, but I've missed touching you," I told him softly. And that was true, and right, and I had no trouble saying it.

"So?" he said gently, nuzzling into my hair. His mouth kinda caught the new braid at my temple; not the tribal one. The other one, all knotted together from three separate parts. His fingers came up lazily, to touch and fondle the sapphire-blue beads that held it together. Christ, I swear my damn hair strained for his touch as much as the rest of me. "And.this.means to you?'

"You. If you ever left me for real, if I lost you again I think I'd kill myself. I can't imagine living without you again. I won't live without you again. Carson, please stay alive for me. Please."

Blue Death that still faintly coursed through my veins. That was it, yeah, the goddamn booze. "I love you" would've been simpler, over quicker, less complex.

I shook free of his grip and almost ran through the door that led to the bathing area, the hot springs converted into a bathing pool and semi-sauna by some forgotten folk much more civilized than the Riders.

I didn't have much time to stand facing the wall, shivering even in the clove-scented heat of that dimly-lit room. Some premonition was on me, dark and heavy, something I couldn't define but feared none the less. I felt his hands drop lightly to my shoulders. Gentle as that grip was, he could turn me around effortlessly. And did. Why fight it? The ass I'd made of myself, finally and forever. But I could look down, close my eyes, refuse to look at him. I could retain that much control.

Oh, sure I could. Who among his contingent of warriors would know, how those sword-callused, killing hands could stroke someone's face lightly as a feather. No, not someone's face, my face. His thumb gently brushing the corner of my mouth. Then my moustache for cryin' out loud, much as he swore he hated it, to the point I sometimes feared waking up to find myself without it and having to kill him for the shave.

He took my glasses off. Gently. But I heard the harsh sound as he tossed them down and crunched them beneath his boot. Gone forever, unless I chose to retrieve another pair from Earth.

"Carson, you absolute fuck, why the hell did you bust my." The words popped out as they had meant to when I first heard him step on my specs, but a lot of the fire was quenched by the sight of all that water.

"I prefer you without them." His voice was seductive. Something else. Not quivering. No way. Before I could process the thought, reject it, start bitching again about my eyewear, he was doing something else to shut me up.

Who could imagine him licking my eyelids? What the hell! Never anything so soft, so gently sexy, in my life. And then his arms, gathering me in as if I was some kind of treasure.

I laughed a little shakily, perhaps trying to lighten the mood, purge the romance. Such an idiot, as always. "Now what would your warriors think, Carse. The big, bad Warchief all teary-eyed? The harder the shell, the softer the inside, right?"

"I doubt any of those will ever see me so, beloved. Because make no doubt.that Warchief you mention is a part of me, a part greater than that softer self you sneer at. Say rather, 'the greater the love, the bigger the fool.' But the fool does not control me."

"If you leave *me*, there will also be a death." His voice was soft and a little husky, not as musical as usual. I braced myself for romantic bullshit, for something similar to what I'd said in my drunken lunacy.

"Because I *will* kill you if you even think of leaving me." Suddenly that voice was hard and cold, like a knife at my throat. Although his embrace remained gentle.

He surprised a nervous laugh out of me with that one. And then I swallowed, because he hadn't laughed back. That velvet embrace mutated to steel. Painful. Cruel. And suddenly there *was* a knife at my throat. One of the many ebony ones he just seemed to be able to pull out of nowhere. "Do you doubt I will do this? You should not. Give me a reason." His voice was soft again, almost purring. As if he almost wished I *would* give him a reason. "Tell me how the touch of the too-soft fool bores you. Sneer again, wizard. Give me a reason to hurt you."

I swallowed hard. "Well, then. We better stay together, just to keep me healthy. Since I'm gonna die in either case. And Carson. I, I wasn't sneering. At you. I just can't say these.soap opera things. Not out loud. I guess.maybe.I was sneering at myself. For not being able to." Great, McIntyre. Flounder around the issue even when in danger of getting your gullet slit.

He laughed quietly, and the knife barely nicked my throat. And then was gone. Instead, his mouth was there, tasting the blood with avid silence. And then, on my lips. Again, soft as feathers, as rainfall. But the salt I tasted was not all from blood, I knew.

His mouth fell on mine, cutting me off. His teeth. Again. In my lip, but softly; pain but no blood. And then he was sucking me down, sucking me up, his hands on the waistband of those colorful tribal pants and not even bothering to pull them down. Ripping them wide, wide fucking open. I was exposed to him utterly, and I was up in his arms, cradled like a child.

"We came here to bathe," he calmly replied to my squawks of protest. And then he dumped me into that hot bubbling water, scented with something so like cloves.

It wasn't a problem. He caught me, and pushed me hard against the side of the pool. I let myself go, bobbing up into his arms, his face, our lips on a level now from the water's buoyancy and oh god there he was. Against me. His mouth claiming mine and igniting it, hot wet fire from barely a touch and his tongue in my mouth as if to force even that part of me to his will.

His cock he ground against me, before I curled my legs up and around his waist. Water was our friend. Water lifted me, floated me against him as if the very element had been created for this purpose and oh, shit, forgot no lubricant except for the warm bubbling pool all around us. I didn't even have time to worry if it would be enough, because he was against that part of me, piercing me, oh gods, pain sharp as the knife he'd threatened me with, splitting me into a hundred pieces and oh gods healing magic no don't, don't want this agony of him taking me, owning me to ever ever be healed.

Sight blurred, hearing only a swirl of confused bubbling sounds. Strange and erotic, like being possessed on an alien world. As slow and dark and twisted and silent as some half-remembered wet dream.

My lungs were bursting, my limbs finally thrashing in panic as he brutally fucked into me, couldn't hear but I knew that he was grunting out something mindless as his body shook with animal lust, as he drove that hot thick shaft into me repeatedly, the already unbearable size of him bucking and swelling, more than filling my quaking body as he approached completion, as he was drowning me and knew it and didn't care. //take it, slut, whore, mine, you fucking take it.take it take it take it!//

He dragged me out. I was choking, gasping, spitting, dying. My lungs on fire, my body racked. And I was coming--so hard, so powerful that savage red smears pulsed across the dark night of my failed vision. I came hearing deep dark music, seeing flowers of fire. Almost tasting my own damn orgasm. I hung in his arms, a shuddering wreck, still jerking, still coming, scared to death but oh god the pleasure, the sheer force of it spurting hard into the hot liquid that had nearly ended my life, how sick was this anyway, terror and ecstasy and.

Still inside me, he was still inside me and I was clenching around him, pulling him deeper. I felt one last spasm go through me and then he was staggering and gasping, falling back into the water as his lower body jerked against me, holding me beyond tightly, pouring forth as strong and desperate and helpless as if I had fucked him instead of the other way around.

Another few seconds of gasping disbelief, hanging in his supporting arms and then rage like lava boiled through me. "You.miserable.FUCK!" He didn't try to dodge my wild swing; it caught him square in the face and he gasped sharply but didn't release me into the water although that luscious mouth was now split and bloody. I struggled crazily, mad to be away from him, and wound up for another blow. This time, though, he caught my fist in one hand before it reached his face. His cock had slipped out of me, thank God for that because I never wanted it or him near me ever fucking again.

"You tried to kill me!" I screamed in his face. Wild with shock and betrayal, I'd known he'd hurt me but I'd never thought he'd put me so close to danger, never thought it, never would've believed till now.

And like the warrior he was, he dropped and rolled, and instead of Jalin's knife piercing his back, the boy was flying over his shoulder into the bathing pool and goddammit, I was the one the stupid knife hit.

There was darkness. There was pain. There was me healing myself, as per usual, so automatic now it barely registered. What DID register was something else. Jalin screaming at Carson. Carson not wasting time on howling back, though the fury in him was so white-hot it should have scorched the very water I was in. And oh, surprise surprise.Smitty yelling at both of them. Where the hell had she come from?

In the water, breathing, finally realizing. Water Breathing spell, Carson had expected me to use it. I was a wizard, after all. This was one of the most

When the hell was the first time I'd asked him for this? How had the thought of his first startled look, the hesitancy in him before he realized I meant it and let himself surrender to it.how had that escaped me?

I opened my eyes, a little blearily. I was sorta half-laying in the shallow part of the hot spring pool, kinda like a beached dolphin. The water around me was crimson. I guess the hot water had increased the blood flow or something. But I knew Jalin had only tagged my shoulder and upper arm with the knife; a painful and messy wound, but not serious. Already healed. I was getting better at this healing crap. Probably a good thing.

The way these two were going at it, though, you'd think I was dead and they each blamed it on the other. Jalin was either trying to get to Carson or away from him; not easy to tell, with Carse holding him at arm's length somewhat contemptuously while the boy flailed around and screeched and swore and just generally went batshit. Carson was saying something, but Jalin was making too much noise for me to know what it was. Smitty was standing a couple feet away, shouting at both of them to stop it but not dumb enough to get much closer to all the action.

I had a confused memory of Carson dragging me out of the water in a panic at all the blood, checking me for life signs. Holding me, whispering to me frantically to forgive him in a broken voice I never would've expected from him even if we were alone; certainly not in front of Jalin. Who came out of the water like a small blond torpedo to hit him in the back, screaming for him to get away from me, how could he do this to me, etc and so on. Enough damn drama to make a soap opera writer blush.

I glanced down at myself and, well, *I* blushed. Being totally nude would've been preferable; naked can be dignified, if you've got the panache to pull it off. There is no dignity, though, in pants that are still, er, intact around the bottom portion of your legs but totally torn open from your butt and crotch. Doesn't leave much to the imagination there. Obviously raped, poor boy. And I couldn't believe the bastard had thrown me into the pool with my fancy boots still on. Those bastards were ruined for sure, now. And I won't begin to mention how their presence increased the lack-of-dignity factor. I wasn't even sure I could stand up without falling over. And as for trying to get tight, wet boots off your fucking feet.

Then Carse sort of dropped Jalin and was at my side instantly. I felt the in-coming of Jalin's thoughts, silly protective thoughts, as if he could keep Carse from killing me if that really had been his intention. I slammed my mind into his brain before he'd taken three paces toward the knife lying on the rough stone floor. //No. Stop. Not his fault//

"I asked for it," I said aloud. "It wasn't Carson's fault, Jalin! We were playing a game. I forgot the rules. The rule. That when I ask for this, I gotta protect myself."

I spoke to Jalin, but it was Carson's eyes I met. Hoping my own offered apology would be enough. "I fucked up. Not Carson. Me. Although," I just couldn't help from adding a bit crankily, "anyone with a grain of sense would've not ripped my pants to hell and gone, or ruined my fancy new boots either."

"Fool. Ass! You demand rough play but your wardrobe should be straightened first? You forget your damn protection spells, cause me to nearly.to.and then complain that your boots are damp?" He shook me slightly, which rattled my teeth in my head like dice; the boy just never would learn his own strength. I kept my mouth shut, though, because he was starting to get angry. "Never again. I was a fool to consent the first time!"

"Games?" Jalin's voice was a little wild; disbelieving, rejecting. He was staring from me to Carson. I could feel him remembering how careful Carson had been with him; how I had thought only of pleasuring him. Trying to reconcile it with the idea of Carson hurting me, by my request. And coming up only with confusion. "It's stupid! Why would you want such a thing? This is madness!"

With as much dignity as I could muster, and allowing Carson to help me because he seemed to want to, I stood up. Dragging what was LEFT of my pants up around my waist, and sort of tying the remains in a knot. It didn't cover everything, but it was way better than nothing. I gave Carse a wrathful look. Even stark naked he still seemed to be wearing armor. Probably because he really, truly didn't give a damn.

"Okay, Smitty. Since you're here interrupting our privacy anyway, talk. What the hell do the ears have to do with it? I got 'em about four years ago, back in Berkeley if you must know."

"And I'll bet that's when you started, uh, getting into this rough stuff. McIntyre, you didn't just get ears. You're half-elven. Half-elven of *this* world, not some Tolkien fantasy where the damn point-ears are all sad and noble and the fucking good guys."

I froze in Carson's grip. The premonition suddenly back on me, dark and cold. "What are you talking about, Smitty? There aren't any elves here anymore. I've heard it from a shitload of people, here and in the South. The elves left long ago."

"They left. When the Aesir came. They didn't like the competition. Especially of a crew that was kind of rough, but for all their monsters basically decent." Smitty's voice was annoyed. I wondered, kind of distractedly, about when it was that she'd lost her insufferable good humor and became tense and bitchy. About the time all the weird Wizard and Warrior stuff started happening around us?

I opened my mouth for another question, but before it emerged Jalin spoke. A low and frightening voice, almost clinically uninvolved. "The elves were the first gods here, Hawk. The Dark and Beautiful Ones. The Eaters of the Sun. They left, but they linger. In some places western, you can hear their voices, like cold fire and honey."

"What the hell's the word?" Smitty waved a hand irritably in the air. "Not anything like the, shit, High Elves? I never bothered to read this crap on Earth, dammit! I liked murder mysteries. Oh, yeah. Dark Elves. Four letter word. Damn!"

Smitty grinned faintly, as if pleased at my scholarship. "That's it! Drow elves. You're half Drow. And they were, uh, kinda." She floundered. "Well, extremely powerful sorcerers. And necromancers. And, uh, well, sexually weird, sadomasochists in lots of cases, lessee what else were they known for?"

I shook free of Carson to storm closer to her, wild with disbelief and the beginning of a horrible fear. "Smitty. Drow are the bad guys. Dark Elves are evil, chaotic, murdering fucks. You are telling me I'm a half-breed DROW?!?"

Explode! I was well on my way to raving in her face. I felt Carson's touch on my back and ignored it. Jalin's softly voiced, "Firehawk!" I ignored just as thoroughly.

"How the fuck are you telling me this when you admitted you bought into this whole ultimate Wizard and Warrior thing? That we're here to save the damn place? Carson with a wolf in his head that makes him crazy, and now me a damn Dark Elf? What kind of heroes is that?"

eye. "You're thinking Tolkien. And I admit, the best documented legends are those of the good guys fighting evil. Kicking chaos ass. But, Keith. Sometimes the balance shifts too far towards law, toward light. And too much light can burn people, can hurt as much as too much dark. Lots of, well, religious upheavals here. Oppression in the name of order. That kind of thing."

"You're saying we're the bad guys," I interrupted her, not believing it. Wouldn't believe it, not for a minute a second, no I fucking wouldn't. "You're saying we're supposed."

".to tip the Balance back toward Darkness here. Towards Chaos. Yeah." She met my look without flinching, even though I know I must have looked ready to.

Cold and powerful and contemptible. The dark negative of what all literature has painted as perhaps arrogant, maybe distant, but still and always channeled to good.

This was not happening to me, maybe I was a bit of a selfish bastard and my life hadn't been spent as well as it could have been, but this I would never believe it if she repeated it for a thousand years.

"I've been watching what happens around all of you. Carson, I suspected from the first; Jalin, when the Wolfgod gave him that name. But you, Keith, you fooled me. All funny and fiery and such a damn Californian. I thought, until I saw those ears. I thought I might be wrong."

Both Carson and Jalin were.well. Staring at me. With the same expression. I wasn't sure if it was mainly disbelief or worry; I was sure that it pissed me off.

Jalin shrugged, eyeing me with confusion. "It, well. It explains why you, you would ask Na'jah to hurt you. The Drow embraced all that was sensual, and their powers of magic were great. They could practice what they wished without injury or death. And it was said that none could resist their allure, that they were masters of seduction. This is not a bad thing, Hawk." Oh right, HE would think so.

"And it is irrelevant," Carson put in quietly. Those calm blue eyes were touching me with too damned much understanding, too much sympathy. "You are still yourself, lanisha. Is it so important for you, to be a hero in the eyes of the world?"

There was something cool and dark in my brain. Too polite to force itself.himself.forward now. But I knew what it was. Drow elf. Demon. That silver otherness I'd fondly believed was only the voice of my own magic.

I caught the bit of Jalin's remark that seemed to matter. Masters of seduction. And I was talking before I thought. Which I usually do anyway, right? But this time it was deadly.

I had been a thirty-eight year old history teacher. Nothing spectacular in the looks department, merely okay. Lonely and bored and ready to bag it all. How the fuck could he have wanted ME?

He went dead white in an instant. Backed away from me. Said in a quiet voice as dead as his expression, "You may not remember. But I loved you at an age when you would not admit I could feel what I felt. I wanted you then, as well. And you ran from me." His eyes blazed suddenly in that white face. "I thought you had changed, and truly it seemed you feared nothing anymore. But I was the one who made the first move, always. I was wrong about you, wizard. You are a coward. I am ashamed for you, and for myself."

"What you are afraid of IS yourself. Not of failure. You are afraid of *not* failing. You are afraid of how wonderful you could be. You are afraid of what I see in you."

The armies of light surround us. We have repelled them as best we could, using magic and seduction, the weapons we know. And for this, they call us evil. Because we do not retaliate with the iron weapons of their choice, we are skulkers in the night, betrayers, demons.

They call us evil, as they attack us in our own land, unprovoked save by their distaste for our ways. They are as relentless as rabid wolves, these children of the sun. They breed like spiders, and like spiders come into the world filled with poison. They do not understand that there are many places to stand within the world; many ways to be and live. They wish to create a narrow place according to their beliefs, and all the world must fit in that airless prison or perish.

We will die holding true to what we know. No light without darkness. No substance without shadow. The soft green of spring is beautiful, but so also are the stark skeleton branches against the ice of winter. Blood and honey are both sweet, and if not for the blackness of the night sky, who could see the stars?

We wish to fight. If these madmen have their way, many things strange and beautiful will disappear from the land. All will be dust, blistered by the relentless heat of the sun. But we are too few, our knowledge of how to defeat these ones too limited by our ignorance of the workings of their minds.

We will retreat, and wait for the Balance to be restored as it always is. We must have faith, that those who always come at need will come again to restore the Balance. This timefor us.

"Carson!" I was yelling his name even as I fell unconscious. A mantra to protect me against a thousand memories, dark and sweet and totally inhuman, the whole history of a darker world filling my mind and taking it in an instant.