The Keep, Ebon Askavi, Kaeleer, Monday morning [Fandom time]
Saetan looked like a man who had barely survived a battlefield.
Judging from the emotional currents flavoring the air around them, Karla was guessing that wasn't all that far from the truth. She closed the door to Jaenelle's sitting room with a near-inaudible thump and waited to be acknowledged.
"My instructions were explicit, Karla." The voice had no strength. The face looked gray and strained. "Leave now."
Karla pointed casually to the Birthright Red Jewels that Saetan wore. "You're going to have the damndest time tossing me out wearing those."
Saetan didn't call in the Black.
It was as Karla'd assumed, then. Whatever Saetan had done to get Jaenelle to the Keep in her present physical and emotional condition had drained the Black. What had happened to put Jaenelle into that condition still had yet to be explained to Karla, however. All Beale had said was that Saetan had been summoned to Little Terreille when something had happened with the Lady and had sent a message that he was bringing her to the Keep and that absolutely no one was to follow him. Karla had listened politely to Beale, nodded her thanks, and had caught the closest Wind to Ebon Askavi before Beale could offer to take her coat.
Saetan
Saetan limped to a chair, swearing softly. He tried to lift a decanter of yabarah from the side table, his hand shaking violently.
Karla
Crossing the room, Karla took the decanter, filled a glass and warmed the blood wine. "You need fresh blood," she informed him quietly.
Lucivar
Saetan stared at her coldly, until Lucivar's entrance dragged both their eyes towards him. "She's right," Lucivar growled. "She's a Healer, not an idiot."
Saetan
"I see no reason why she can't be both," Saetan snapped. "I want you out of here, Lucivar. Take Karla and go."
Karla
Lucivar helped himself to a generous tumbler of brandy while Karla pressed the wineglass into Saetan's hand. She frowned at him for the 'idiot' comment, but was far more interested in what Lucivar had to say next. From the way he was pacing and had his wings drawn up close behind him, he was expecting a fight. She called a footstool over to Saetan's chair and sat, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Lucivar
"When I walk away from here, I'm taking her with me," Lucivar said grimly, drinking half the brandy at a toss. No one in the room thought he meant Karla.
Saetan
"You can't," Saetan snapped. "She's..." He raked his fingers through his hair. "I don't think she's sane."
Lucivar
"Not surprising since they dosed her with safframate."
Karla
Karla's breath hissed through her teeth. She knew of safframate. Partially because they had studied it in the coven. And partially because Jaenelle had been dosed with it once before.
In Briarwood.
Saetan
Neither Lucivar nor Saetan seemed to have noticed her sudden discomfort, mostly because they were still glaring at one another. "Don't be an ass," Saetan scoffed. "Safframate doesn't do that to a person."
Lucivar
"How would you know? You've never been dosed with it." Lucivar struggled to keep the bitterness out of his voice. This wasn't the time to worry old hurts.
"I've used safframate."
Lucivar narowed his eyes and studied his father. "Explain."
Saetan
Saetan drained his glass. "Safframate is a sexual stimulant. There are times when a Consort is called upon to fulfill his duties when he is not feeling up to his top performance. One tiny seed crushed into a glass of wine--two, perhaps, if his Jewel is very dark--will give him the stamina he needs to fully bring his Queen to pleasure."
Lucivar
"One, maybe two seeds." Lucivar snorted, darkly amused. "Now imagine, High Lord, those tiny seeds ground up and used by the spoonful."
Saetan
"That's madness! If you gave someone that much--" Saetan stared at the closed door that led into Jaenelle's bedroom.
Lucivar
"Exactly," Lucivar said softly. "Right now, the very air against her skin feels like she's being kissed by knives. Contact with everything hurts, but also ramps up the sexual stimulation. Of course, that much safframate also makes it impossible to come, so her body is being cranked to the fever pitch over and over again, with no possible relief. Sensation becomes agony that lasts for an eternity."
"Mother Night," Saetan whispered, slumping in his chair.
"But if, for whatever reason, a person doesn't submit to being used until the drug wears of...well, the encounter can turn violent."
Karla
Submit to being used.
How many times had she heard that euphemism in Glacia? How many young women had whispered that phrase while she struggled to knit together torn flesh, trying to save tattered hearts and minds? Karla blinked back tears and asked the question that Saetan wouldn't, couldn't ask of his youngest son, "You were...used...like that, weren't you?"
Lucivar
"Yes." Lucivar didn't so much as bat an eyelash while admitting this to a sixteen year old virgin. "But not often. Most witches didn't think riding my cock was worth having my temper in the bed with it. And most of the ones who tried didn't walk away intact if they walked away at all. I had my own definition of violent passion."
Saetan
"And Daemon?" Saetan asked in a shaking voice.
Karla
Karla whirled around to look at Saetan, recognizing that name from Jaenelle's dream. Who was he?
Lucivar
"He had his own way with dealing with it." Lucivar shuddered. "They didn't call him the Sadist for nothing."
Saetan
Saetan reached for the yarbarah. His hand still shook, though not as badly as before. "What do you suggest we do for Jaenelle?"
Lucivar
"She doesn't deserve to endure this alone, and she'll never agree to sex for whatever small relief it might give her. So that leaves violence." Lucivar drained the rest of his brandy glass. "I'm taking her into Askavi. I'll keep us away from the villages. That way, if anything goes wrong, no one else will get caught in the backlash."
Saetan
Saetan lowered his glass. "What about you?"
Lucivar
"I promised myself I'd take care of her. That's what I'm going to do."
Not giving him--or anyone else--any more time to think, Lucivar set his empty glass on the table and crossed the room. He paused at the door, not sure how to approach a witch strong enough to tear his mind apart with a thought.
Karla
Karla huffed at him impatiently, and opened the door herself, trusting to Jaenelle and instinct. The bedroom felt heavy with the growing psychic storm. She braced herself against a wall, edging towards the room, peeking inside.
Jaenelle
Jaenelle paced frantically, her hands gripping her upper arms tight enough to bruise. She glanced at Lucivar standing in the doorways and bared her teeth. Her eyes held revulsion and no recognition. "Get out."
Still, that she did not attack immediately was a comforting sign. Every second Jaenelle resisted the desire to attack a male increased Lucivar's chances of surviving the next few days.
Lucivar
Lucivar didn't move. "Pack a bag," he said. "Casual clothes. A warm jacket for evenings. Walking boots."
Jaenelle
"I'm not going anywhere," Jaenelle snarled. Her eyes darted towards Karla, but skidded away before they could make contact.
"We're going hunting."
"No. Get out."
Lucivar
Lucivar braced his hands on his hips. "You can pack a bag or not, but we're going hunting. Now."
Jaenelle
"I don't want to go anywhere with you."
Desperation and fear were tangles in her voice. Desperation because she didn't want to leave the safety of her room. Fear because Lucivar was pushing her and, cornered, she might strike back and hurt him.
In that fear, the others found hope.
Lucivar
"You can leave this room on your own two feet or over my shoulder. Your choice, Cat."
Jaenelle
Jaenelle grabbed a pillow and shredded it, swearing viciously in several languages. When his only response was to step towards her, she scrambled away from him, putting the bed between them.
It was a fitting, if heart-breaking, irony.
Saetan
Seatan stepped past Karla and into the bedroom. "Go with him, witch-child."
Lucivar
Trapped between father and brother, she stood there, shaking, like a day old foal. She glanced again at Karla, but the males standing so close to her, so suffocatingly close, drew her attention away again.
"We'll get away from everyone," Lucivar coaxed. "Just the two of us. Lots of fresh air and open ground."
Jaenelle
The thoughts flashed through her eyes, over her face. Open ground. Room to maneuver. Room to run. Open ground where she wouldn't be trapped in a room with all this maleness pulling at her, choking her.
"You won't touch me." Not a question or a demand. A plea.
"I won't touch you," Lucivar promised.
Jaenelle's shoulder's slumped. "All right. I'll pack." The defeat in her voice tore at Karla's heart.
Saetan
They closed the door to her room, giving her a bit of privacy as she packed. Saetan went to his son's side. "Be careful, Lucivar," he said, quietly.
Lucivar
Lucivar nodded, looking exhausted already. "It'll be better in the open, on the land."
Karla
"Experience?" Karla asked bitterly.
Lucivar
"Yeah. We'll stop at Jaenelle's cabin first to pick up the sleeping bags and other gear. Ask Smoke to join us. I think she'll be able to tolerate him. And if anything goes wrong, he can send word."
No one needed to ask what could go wrong; they all knew what a Black Jeweled Black Widow Queen could do to a man. It wasn't 'what could she do,' but rather, what couldn't she?
Saetan
Saetan ran his hands over Lucivar's shoulders. "May the Darkness embrace you," he said hoarsely, turning away, until Lucivar pulled him into a hard hug. "Be careful, Lucivar. I don't want anything to happen to you now that you're finally here. And I don't want you with me in Hell."
Lucivar
Lucivar leaned back and smiled his lazy, arrogant smile. "I promise to stay out of trouble, Father."
Saetan
Saetan snorted. "You mean it as much now as you did when you were little," he said dryly.
Lucivar
"Maybe even less."
Karla
Karla had turned aside, giving them a chance to say their goodbye in peace. It sounded so...final, what they were saying. They were well-aware of the danger Lucivar faced. She wondered if they were doing the right thing. She already mourned the game they would hunt, the animals that would die so savagely. Then she realized the extent of her own foolishness. Jaenelle would never consent to killing an innocent creature just to make herself feel better. She would fight back the urge, turning it inward on herself until Lucivar did or said something to bring it screaming to the surface. Jaenelle would turn on him. And when she did, Saetan wouldn't find his son waiting for him in the Dark Realm. There wouldn't be anything left to wait.
"I want to go with you." The words were out before she knew what she was saying. But that was all right. As soon as she said them, she knew they were true. True as a Black Widow's tangled dream. The dream that called her here.
Saetan
Both Saetan and Lucivar looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "Absolutely not," Saetan said, still blinking.
Lucivar
"Look, witchling," Lucivar said at the same time, "I understand you want to help, but this is going to be dangerous. I can't afford to take my attention off of Jaenelle just to protect you."
Karla
Karla glared at them both, frustrated. "I know this isn't going to be some lark, like a romp across the Hall's grounds," she said. "But you need me there, Lucivar. She's going to spend so much time trying to keep away from you, she could hurt herself. Let me be there as a buffer."
"That's why I'm calling Smoke. He can be a buffer. He can also keep up the pace I'm setting."
"I'll keep up," Karla said, stubbornly. "And wolf or not, he's still male. I'm not. I'm also a Black Widow and a Healer. You think on this trip, you won't need both? One who isn't suffering the effects of safframate?"
Saetan
"You're also a Queen," Saetan said, voice implacable. "You're too valuable to risk. Glacia needs you whole and safe."
Karla
"You make it sound like Lucivar's expendable!" Karla yelled.
Lucivar
"LUCIVAR IS EXPENDABLE!" Lucivar roared, wings flaring. "I'm a male, Karla! A strong Warlord Prince, but, still, a male. My job is to serve and protect my Queen, and if it means dying by her hand to keep her out of the Twisted Kingdom, then, that's that's what I will do!"
Karla
"You don't think knowing she killed her own brother won't send her there faster than the safframate ever could?"
Saetan
"And that is another reason we need you here, Lady," Saetan said, invoking Protocol. "If the worst happens, we'll need you to help draw her back out."
Karla
Karla looked back and forth between the two of them. "My being there might prevent it from happening at all!"
Lucivar
"Perhaps. Or it might just mean two bodies instead of one. I'm already risking my life. I'm not risking yours." The argument, as far as Lucivar was concerned, was over.
Saetan
"I know you want to help, Karla, but this isn’t how." Saetan added. "I'll have Geoffrey arrange a portal back to your school for tomorrow. When Jaenelle comes back, we’ll call for you."
Karla
"What, like I’m just supposed to go back to school like nothing’s happened--"
Lucivar
"Leash your temper. Jaenelle's almost done and the last thing we need is for her to pick up on our snarling and have her lose it here." Lucivar wasn't even looking at Karla anymore. His eyes were trained on the door.
Jaenelle
As he predicted, a moment later, the door opened and Jaenelle stepped out, a small pack in her hands. It vanished a moment later, as if she wanted Lucivar to see it before she stowed it away. "I'm ready," she said in a tiny voice. "Let's go. Now. Out."
Karla
Jaenelle’s eyes swept over all of them, almost without seeing and Karla shuddered. Those eyes belonged to someone who had experienced the most twisted nightmares of the soul and was deciding whether to fight for survival or roll over dead. Karla's stomach roiled and she dashed from the room.
[NFI, NFB, OOC=love. Text adapted from Chapter Thirteen of Heir to the Shadows. Warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence. Part 2 of plot.]
Judging from the emotional currents flavoring the air around them, Karla was guessing that wasn't all that far from the truth. She closed the door to Jaenelle's sitting room with a near-inaudible thump and waited to be acknowledged.
"My instructions were explicit, Karla." The voice had no strength. The face looked gray and strained. "Leave now."
Karla pointed casually to the Birthright Red Jewels that Saetan wore. "You're going to have the damndest time tossing me out wearing those."
Saetan didn't call in the Black.
It was as Karla'd assumed, then. Whatever Saetan had done to get Jaenelle to the Keep in her present physical and emotional condition had drained the Black. What had happened to put Jaenelle into that condition still had yet to be explained to Karla, however. All Beale had said was that Saetan had been summoned to Little Terreille when something had happened with the Lady and had sent a message that he was bringing her to the Keep and that absolutely no one was to follow him. Karla had listened politely to Beale, nodded her thanks, and had caught the closest Wind to Ebon Askavi before Beale could offer to take her coat.
Saetan
Saetan limped to a chair, swearing softly. He tried to lift a decanter of yabarah from the side table, his hand shaking violently.
Karla
Crossing the room, Karla took the decanter, filled a glass and warmed the blood wine. "You need fresh blood," she informed him quietly.
Lucivar
Saetan stared at her coldly, until Lucivar's entrance dragged both their eyes towards him. "She's right," Lucivar growled. "She's a Healer, not an idiot."
Saetan
"I see no reason why she can't be both," Saetan snapped. "I want you out of here, Lucivar. Take Karla and go."
Karla
Lucivar helped himself to a generous tumbler of brandy while Karla pressed the wineglass into Saetan's hand. She frowned at him for the 'idiot' comment, but was far more interested in what Lucivar had to say next. From the way he was pacing and had his wings drawn up close behind him, he was expecting a fight. She called a footstool over to Saetan's chair and sat, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Lucivar
"When I walk away from here, I'm taking her with me," Lucivar said grimly, drinking half the brandy at a toss. No one in the room thought he meant Karla.
Saetan
"You can't," Saetan snapped. "She's..." He raked his fingers through his hair. "I don't think she's sane."
Lucivar
"Not surprising since they dosed her with safframate."
Karla
Karla's breath hissed through her teeth. She knew of safframate. Partially because they had studied it in the coven. And partially because Jaenelle had been dosed with it once before.
In Briarwood.
Saetan
Neither Lucivar nor Saetan seemed to have noticed her sudden discomfort, mostly because they were still glaring at one another. "Don't be an ass," Saetan scoffed. "Safframate doesn't do that to a person."
Lucivar
"How would you know? You've never been dosed with it." Lucivar struggled to keep the bitterness out of his voice. This wasn't the time to worry old hurts.
"I've used safframate."
Lucivar narowed his eyes and studied his father. "Explain."
Saetan
Saetan drained his glass. "Safframate is a sexual stimulant. There are times when a Consort is called upon to fulfill his duties when he is not feeling up to his top performance. One tiny seed crushed into a glass of wine--two, perhaps, if his Jewel is very dark--will give him the stamina he needs to fully bring his Queen to pleasure."
Lucivar
"One, maybe two seeds." Lucivar snorted, darkly amused. "Now imagine, High Lord, those tiny seeds ground up and used by the spoonful."
Saetan
"That's madness! If you gave someone that much--" Saetan stared at the closed door that led into Jaenelle's bedroom.
Lucivar
"Exactly," Lucivar said softly. "Right now, the very air against her skin feels like she's being kissed by knives. Contact with everything hurts, but also ramps up the sexual stimulation. Of course, that much safframate also makes it impossible to come, so her body is being cranked to the fever pitch over and over again, with no possible relief. Sensation becomes agony that lasts for an eternity."
"Mother Night," Saetan whispered, slumping in his chair.
"But if, for whatever reason, a person doesn't submit to being used until the drug wears of...well, the encounter can turn violent."
Karla
Submit to being used.
How many times had she heard that euphemism in Glacia? How many young women had whispered that phrase while she struggled to knit together torn flesh, trying to save tattered hearts and minds? Karla blinked back tears and asked the question that Saetan wouldn't, couldn't ask of his youngest son, "You were...used...like that, weren't you?"
Lucivar
"Yes." Lucivar didn't so much as bat an eyelash while admitting this to a sixteen year old virgin. "But not often. Most witches didn't think riding my cock was worth having my temper in the bed with it. And most of the ones who tried didn't walk away intact if they walked away at all. I had my own definition of violent passion."
Saetan
"And Daemon?" Saetan asked in a shaking voice.
Karla
Karla whirled around to look at Saetan, recognizing that name from Jaenelle's dream. Who was he?
Lucivar
"He had his own way with dealing with it." Lucivar shuddered. "They didn't call him the Sadist for nothing."
Saetan
Saetan reached for the yarbarah. His hand still shook, though not as badly as before. "What do you suggest we do for Jaenelle?"
Lucivar
"She doesn't deserve to endure this alone, and she'll never agree to sex for whatever small relief it might give her. So that leaves violence." Lucivar drained the rest of his brandy glass. "I'm taking her into Askavi. I'll keep us away from the villages. That way, if anything goes wrong, no one else will get caught in the backlash."
Saetan
Saetan lowered his glass. "What about you?"
Lucivar
"I promised myself I'd take care of her. That's what I'm going to do."
Not giving him--or anyone else--any more time to think, Lucivar set his empty glass on the table and crossed the room. He paused at the door, not sure how to approach a witch strong enough to tear his mind apart with a thought.
Karla
Karla huffed at him impatiently, and opened the door herself, trusting to Jaenelle and instinct. The bedroom felt heavy with the growing psychic storm. She braced herself against a wall, edging towards the room, peeking inside.
Jaenelle
Jaenelle paced frantically, her hands gripping her upper arms tight enough to bruise. She glanced at Lucivar standing in the doorways and bared her teeth. Her eyes held revulsion and no recognition. "Get out."
Still, that she did not attack immediately was a comforting sign. Every second Jaenelle resisted the desire to attack a male increased Lucivar's chances of surviving the next few days.
Lucivar
Lucivar didn't move. "Pack a bag," he said. "Casual clothes. A warm jacket for evenings. Walking boots."
Jaenelle
"I'm not going anywhere," Jaenelle snarled. Her eyes darted towards Karla, but skidded away before they could make contact.
"We're going hunting."
"No. Get out."
Lucivar
Lucivar braced his hands on his hips. "You can pack a bag or not, but we're going hunting. Now."
Jaenelle
"I don't want to go anywhere with you."
Desperation and fear were tangles in her voice. Desperation because she didn't want to leave the safety of her room. Fear because Lucivar was pushing her and, cornered, she might strike back and hurt him.
In that fear, the others found hope.
Lucivar
"You can leave this room on your own two feet or over my shoulder. Your choice, Cat."
Jaenelle
Jaenelle grabbed a pillow and shredded it, swearing viciously in several languages. When his only response was to step towards her, she scrambled away from him, putting the bed between them.
It was a fitting, if heart-breaking, irony.
Saetan
Seatan stepped past Karla and into the bedroom. "Go with him, witch-child."
Lucivar
Trapped between father and brother, she stood there, shaking, like a day old foal. She glanced again at Karla, but the males standing so close to her, so suffocatingly close, drew her attention away again.
"We'll get away from everyone," Lucivar coaxed. "Just the two of us. Lots of fresh air and open ground."
Jaenelle
The thoughts flashed through her eyes, over her face. Open ground. Room to maneuver. Room to run. Open ground where she wouldn't be trapped in a room with all this maleness pulling at her, choking her.
"You won't touch me." Not a question or a demand. A plea.
"I won't touch you," Lucivar promised.
Jaenelle's shoulder's slumped. "All right. I'll pack." The defeat in her voice tore at Karla's heart.
Saetan
They closed the door to her room, giving her a bit of privacy as she packed. Saetan went to his son's side. "Be careful, Lucivar," he said, quietly.
Lucivar
Lucivar nodded, looking exhausted already. "It'll be better in the open, on the land."
Karla
"Experience?" Karla asked bitterly.
Lucivar
"Yeah. We'll stop at Jaenelle's cabin first to pick up the sleeping bags and other gear. Ask Smoke to join us. I think she'll be able to tolerate him. And if anything goes wrong, he can send word."
No one needed to ask what could go wrong; they all knew what a Black Jeweled Black Widow Queen could do to a man. It wasn't 'what could she do,' but rather, what couldn't she?
Saetan
Saetan ran his hands over Lucivar's shoulders. "May the Darkness embrace you," he said hoarsely, turning away, until Lucivar pulled him into a hard hug. "Be careful, Lucivar. I don't want anything to happen to you now that you're finally here. And I don't want you with me in Hell."
Lucivar
Lucivar leaned back and smiled his lazy, arrogant smile. "I promise to stay out of trouble, Father."
Saetan
Saetan snorted. "You mean it as much now as you did when you were little," he said dryly.
Lucivar
"Maybe even less."
Karla
Karla had turned aside, giving them a chance to say their goodbye in peace. It sounded so...final, what they were saying. They were well-aware of the danger Lucivar faced. She wondered if they were doing the right thing. She already mourned the game they would hunt, the animals that would die so savagely. Then she realized the extent of her own foolishness. Jaenelle would never consent to killing an innocent creature just to make herself feel better. She would fight back the urge, turning it inward on herself until Lucivar did or said something to bring it screaming to the surface. Jaenelle would turn on him. And when she did, Saetan wouldn't find his son waiting for him in the Dark Realm. There wouldn't be anything left to wait.
"I want to go with you." The words were out before she knew what she was saying. But that was all right. As soon as she said them, she knew they were true. True as a Black Widow's tangled dream. The dream that called her here.
Saetan
Both Saetan and Lucivar looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "Absolutely not," Saetan said, still blinking.
Lucivar
"Look, witchling," Lucivar said at the same time, "I understand you want to help, but this is going to be dangerous. I can't afford to take my attention off of Jaenelle just to protect you."
Karla
Karla glared at them both, frustrated. "I know this isn't going to be some lark, like a romp across the Hall's grounds," she said. "But you need me there, Lucivar. She's going to spend so much time trying to keep away from you, she could hurt herself. Let me be there as a buffer."
"That's why I'm calling Smoke. He can be a buffer. He can also keep up the pace I'm setting."
"I'll keep up," Karla said, stubbornly. "And wolf or not, he's still male. I'm not. I'm also a Black Widow and a Healer. You think on this trip, you won't need both? One who isn't suffering the effects of safframate?"
Saetan
"You're also a Queen," Saetan said, voice implacable. "You're too valuable to risk. Glacia needs you whole and safe."
Karla
"You make it sound like Lucivar's expendable!" Karla yelled.
Lucivar
"LUCIVAR IS EXPENDABLE!" Lucivar roared, wings flaring. "I'm a male, Karla! A strong Warlord Prince, but, still, a male. My job is to serve and protect my Queen, and if it means dying by her hand to keep her out of the Twisted Kingdom, then, that's that's what I will do!"
Karla
"You don't think knowing she killed her own brother won't send her there faster than the safframate ever could?"
Saetan
"And that is another reason we need you here, Lady," Saetan said, invoking Protocol. "If the worst happens, we'll need you to help draw her back out."
Karla
Karla looked back and forth between the two of them. "My being there might prevent it from happening at all!"
Lucivar
"Perhaps. Or it might just mean two bodies instead of one. I'm already risking my life. I'm not risking yours." The argument, as far as Lucivar was concerned, was over.
Saetan
"I know you want to help, Karla, but this isn’t how." Saetan added. "I'll have Geoffrey arrange a portal back to your school for tomorrow. When Jaenelle comes back, we’ll call for you."
Karla
"What, like I’m just supposed to go back to school like nothing’s happened--"
Lucivar
"Leash your temper. Jaenelle's almost done and the last thing we need is for her to pick up on our snarling and have her lose it here." Lucivar wasn't even looking at Karla anymore. His eyes were trained on the door.
Jaenelle
As he predicted, a moment later, the door opened and Jaenelle stepped out, a small pack in her hands. It vanished a moment later, as if she wanted Lucivar to see it before she stowed it away. "I'm ready," she said in a tiny voice. "Let's go. Now. Out."
Karla
Jaenelle’s eyes swept over all of them, almost without seeing and Karla shuddered. Those eyes belonged to someone who had experienced the most twisted nightmares of the soul and was deciding whether to fight for survival or roll over dead. Karla's stomach roiled and she dashed from the room.
[NFI, NFB, OOC=love. Text adapted from Chapter Thirteen of Heir to the Shadows. Warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence. Part 2 of plot.]