Origfic: Lover's Favour

[sabcatt]

There's a strange feeling in her stomach, something that hisses like doused embers, slowly dying. Ayuirei tries to remember the last time she felt this lost, this young; not when Jaethal said you can't be a day over seventy, and Ayuirei blushed because she'd been caught in her lie; not on the fifth day of Amiri's absence, wondering when (if) she would return; not the day she left her fathers' home, even, and Iba had looked anxious and Tata had mostly looked resigned.

She rubs her hands over her eyes, which burn more than usual, and looks back at Dovan. At Dovan's body. It was too late, she wants to say, and I'm sorry, and why the fuck did you tell me any of that. She is the last receptacle of a dead man's story, because she brought him here to kill him, and then she stood back and watched him die.

Was it cowardice? Was she afraid of what would happen, if he lived? Her heart still races, though she was never in danger. A faint imprint of his warmth remains on the knuckles of her right hand, where they'd pressed against his neck as he—carelessly, stupidly, but why would he think he was in danger? He was a bandit-lord's lieutenant and she was supposed to be one of his people—let her point the wand into the underside of his jaw and cast Harm on him. A bit of fun, he'd offered her, and the thrill she'd felt as they walked out of the fort side-by-side had nothing to do with their objectives, the Stag Lord or the kingdom she knows will one day rise here. It had to do with Dovan's bare stomach, his swaggering step, the way he trained his eyes on her and nobody else, like she alone was worth his regard.

Thirty minutes together; three quarters of an hour, maybe, between their meeting and his death. She'd walked him straight to it. They hadn't kissed, but she'd pressed her body against his, had toyed with the idea that maybe through her veil he wouldn't be able to tell she had no experience. It was fear that held her back; her friends were watching, waiting in ambush, and this new, tiny flame of desire, a first she couldn't admit was a first without revealing a much greater secret, was too fragile to withstand even their lighthearted teasing. She won't admit to such a weakness. She hid it, refused to offer mercy in case it sounded too much like caring, and now the only man she's ever imagined kissing is lying at her feet, in the mud. Dead.

She kneels down without a plan, merely a desire to be close again. It's a foolish impulse; there was a fire, and now there are ashes. What is left will not warm her. Something glints at the side of his neck, and she tilts her head to get a better view. The shine resolves itself into a drop earring, a large turquoise cabochon set in silver with a triangle of the same metal dangling below it. A stone of that size is probably valuable, and would contribute to their funding; if there's a pair, so much the better. Her fingers buzz as she gently tugs the earring free. There's an intimacy to this, too, the solemn inverse of the heat that had sparked in her when Dovan bared his throat and bit down his scream under her hands.

Ayuirei rolls his head to check the other side; there is a second earring, covered in mud. She wipes it off on Dovan's collar (the part that isn't messy with blood), and holds the pair in her hands for a moment.

Amiri whistles. "Guy had some, uh, bling, huh?"

Despite herself, Ayuirei smiles as she stands up. "Bling is correct. Here, take this."

She hands one of the earrings to Amiri (as the strongest of their little group, she's also the designated pack mule, even for the small and light objects they run across), and tugs the silver triangle free from the cabochon. It comes off easily, and she gives the metal to Amiri as well. "That should also be worth something."

The cabochon, she hooks into her veil, below her ear on the left side, where the beadwork is sparse at the moment. She'll move it later, as many times as it takes. Perhaps it will someday become the center of a flame in the pattern; perhaps not.

"That's hardcore," Upsmirk says. Ayuirei hums in response. No matter how happy her friends might be, or what they might think, this is not a token of victory. It's a lover's token, albeit stolen rather than justly won. The first she's ever had.

And, she thinks, as the sizzling in her body refuses to abate, the last she'll permit herself to want for a long, long time.