The Coquette and the Thane

PART I | Chapter VII

1:7 | Son of a Witch

Kedean pursed his lips, eyeing his charge.  The moonlight glowed on her cheeks, lending a soft, ethereal luminance to her skin while accentuating the darkness of her hair by contrast, but her eyes remained steadfast, returning his gaze unfalteringly.  At last, he sighed, relenting. 

“If I answer yours, will you answer mine?”

“Mm…” She glanced back out, thoughtful.  “That hardly seems fair.  Mine is quite simple, while yours…”  When she looked back, something unreadable lingered in her expression.  “Well, to call a war a street fight, it is…complicated.”

Kedean waited.

His charge sighed.  “Very well…if you answer mine,” she consented, “I will…attempt to answer yours, the best that I can.”

“I suppose that’s all I can ask for…” Kedean conceded, and studied her as she watched him, tracing the paths of light on her hair as the breezes pushed at it and mapping the sharp, elegant curves of her face with his eyes. 

Hers was a dangerous, wicked beauty—like a delicate desert flower that ate its victims alive or a siren song that lured sailors to their rocky graves—but beauty, nonetheless, and he wondered what man he was taking her to, what fingers would trace those cheeks and chin and lips without guilt and whether they would worship or tame or break her.

If he succeeded in delivering her. 

Abruptly, he shut his eyes, as those were thoughts he had no right to dwell on, and aloud he said, “Yes, I think you’re beautiful…but you knew that.”

“Ah, well…in this case, yes, I suppose I had my suspicions,” his charge admitted, a faint hint of budding coquetry in her tone, “…but I wanted to hear you say it.”

When Kedean opened his eyes, she was smiling, a look that on her only reinforced the sense of something perilous behind her allure, and not for the first time now, he wondered what he was doing, standing alone at night under the stars with a woman worlds out of his reach. 

He rarely took interest in women in general, and when he did they were practical, grounded ones—daughters of merchants, innkeepers, and mercenaries—those who had seen all walks of life and understood that some men simply didn’t stay in one place for very long.  He never meddled with the upper classes and wouldn’t have it any other way.  Baisyl Merseille was the furthest thing from his ‘type’ imaginable.  

“So, are you going to tell me why you want nothing more with this world?” he asked, and she dropped her gaze, her former smile fading to something grimmer and more severe.

“Ah, yes…I did promise that, didn’t I…” 

She took a breath. 

“As far as I can tell,” she started at last, “…I have the length of this journey before I am wed to a child.  A child I know nothing of and certainly care nothing for.  If I were to consent to completing this journey, arriving on time and going through with everything as my father has planned, I would live out three or four years of relative peace and nearly unbearable boredom before he developed an interest in my anatomy, at which point I would become his sex doll until he grew bored of me.  From there, I would live out the rest of my life with no thought given to me until he desired to bear a child, and I'd watch him fleet from mistress to mistress, silently waiting out the much-desired end to my pointless existence.”

Kedean blinked, startled by the sudden, jarringly coarse words.

“I suppose,” she finished wearily, “the heart of it is that I have no interest in the life I know awaits me.  I enjoyed relative control over my life until very recently, and it’s not something I willingly give up.  The concept of playing the role of pampered whore to a spoilt boy child half my age is…not appealing, and I have no intentions of greeting that fate, whatever the cost may be.”

Kedean frowned.  “Well…if you are indeed set on it, you could at least wait until you arrive and save me the trouble of explaining the situation to your family, possibly getting myself hung…”  She looked up sharply, eyebrows raised, and he shrugged, “…or do away with your betrothed, if he turns out as detestable as you predict…”

She snorted, but her smirk was vicious.  “As pleasant as that sounds…I doubt it would end well for me in the long run.”

Kedean considered a moment, thoughtful.  Eventually, on a more serious note he said, “If all you really want is control over your life…why not make him fall in love with you?”  At her look, he pressed, “Surely it wouldn’t be that hard…”

“Have you ever made an attempt?” she quipped, arching one eyebrow, and he blinked.

“Pardon?”

“To make a man fall in love with you,” she clarified.  “Have you ever tried it?”

Kedean frowned, resisting the urge to turn away and forcefully ignoring the sudden, unanticipated lurch in his gut.  “Forgive me for speaking the obvious, milady," he said at length, "but I think you’re rather better equipped than I for that task…”

“Mm…” she hummed, unconvinced.  “For some men, I suppose…”

“It was only a suggestion…though, I must admit, at least thus far you do seem to be the sort very well suited to that variety of…”

“Manipulation?” she guessed.

“…persuasive exploitation.”

She laughed, and Kedean wasn’t sure what he expected, but the warmth and openness in the sound caught him off guard.  Then, for a brief, fleeting second, he caught sight of her grin—bold and mischievous—before she replaced it with a smile that didn’t quite dampen the light in her eyes. 

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I am occasionally guilty of some forms of…persuasion…to better my own interests.  I will have you know, though…there is a reason I would never fare particularly well at court…”

When Kedean raised an eyebrow inquisitively, her smile warmed, and she met his gaze.

“I am very, very poor at ‘pretending’ to like people.  Those who I have a distaste for tend to learn of it very quickly…” She paused a moment, “…unless they are exceptionally dimwitted, in which case I am forced to go to extra efforts to assure that the sentiment eventually drills its way into their head.”

Kedean smiled, chuckling lowly.  “So…you like me, then?”

She blinked, thrown for a moment, and he watched seeds of heat blossom in her cheeks in the scarce seconds before she dipped her head.  She cleared her throat, quietly, against her palm.  “That is…one possible interpretation of my behavior, yes.”

“Milady…”

She looked up.

“You should get some rest,” he said gently, “it’s late…”

“I suppose the chances of me convincing you to go back in before me, with my most sincere assurances that I’ll follow immediately after, are slim?”

“Very.”

She sighed and propped her elbows on the rail, tilting her head back to eye the stars.  “So be it, then, I suppose I won’t bother to persuade you…but I’m not yet tired.  You’ll have to wait up some time here with me yet if you wish to keep your constant vigil.”

Kedean smiled very slightly, his eyes tracing their way up the line of her neck before he caught himself and diverted his gaze.  “I can do that,” he said, “…but if we’re to be spending so much time together, I hope you won’t mind my asking one more question?”

She spared him a glance. 

“Why did you wager for a kiss, if you had no intention of collecting on it?”

She raised her eyebrows, amusement tugging at the corners of her lips.  “When did I ever say I had no intentions of collecting?”

Kedean blinked.  “You said in your cabin-”

“-that I had no intention of sleeping with you,” his charge clarified.  “The last I checked, those two were far from necessarily going hand in hand.”

Kedean held her stare.  “Alright,” he said at length, “then why a kiss?  Why at all?  What do you…” ‘…want from me?’ “…hope to get out of it?”  He considered a moment.  “Or do you simply enjoy making people uncomfortable?”

She huffed.  “It’s not that,” she said, but then, she smiled, amending, “…well, perhaps that is a small factor, but…” She shook her head, “…that certainly wasn’t my driving motive.  I…” Her brow furrowed, pensive, “…suppose I never took an interest in anyone quite so quickly as I did you,” she answered honestly.  “I reasoned that, since I am likely to either die in relatively short order or spend the rest of my life enduring dull, gruelingly abysmal intercourse…I had very little to lose.”

There was a short silence, filled only by the quiet slap of the ocean against the hull and rolling breeze.

Then she said, quieter, “I also can’t recall ever kissing someone solely for the purpose of doing just that…or whose company I enjoyed, for that matter.”  

Kedean eyed her, unable to help the onset of a slow frown.  “Milady…” he started, concern seeping into his tone despite his best intentions; she didn’t seem the type to appreciate pity of any sort, “if-”

“It’s not as pathetic as it sounds,” she cut in, clearing her throat and straightening her stance with a small, pursed frown of her own.  “I merely…don’t often get along with people particularly well, is all.  I have too little tolerance for ignorance…and too little patience for insolence.”

When her eyes met his, they dared him to press the issue. 

He looked away first.  “So, in order to ensure your success…you cheated?”

His charge scoffed.  “In a game with only two rules?”  She shook her head.  “No.  I heard nothing about the prohibition of magic…I was dishonest, perhaps,” she conceded, “but did nothing against the established rules.”

“It was you, then…”

“Of course,” she said.  “Who else would it have been?”

“So…you’re not human—?”

“I am human!” she snapped with startling ferocity, almost before he finished the question, and then blinked the next instant, as if surprised herself by the harshness of her own outburst.  After a moment, it looked like she might add more, or apologize, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out, and she shut it again seconds later, turning her glower in another direction.

Kedean watched and waited, hugely puzzled and curious, but also very aware that he’d touched on a subject that probably ought not be pursued—at least, certainly not for the time being. 

If he’d accused her of witchcraft or tainted ancestry, he might have understood her defensiveness, but in his experience nobles often flaunted magical heritage.  If a prestigious family could trace its roots back to elves, fae folk, or even dragonkin, they treasured it like a pedigree and held it over the heads of anyone they could.  The fact that she shrank back from even the suggestion…

“I apologize,” she said.  “Your question didn’t merit quite so…impassioned…of a response.  I…suppose you could say I simply haven’t had particularly positive experiences with magic,” she explained, “…or those who wield it, for that matter, and my own is…extremely limited, to say the least.  I can conjure minor illusions—like that of the feeling of heat, as I did on you—but it does no lasting damage and I wouldn’t be able to keep it up.  I might be able to mend a paper cut or a bloody knee, but for any large-scale purposes my magic is useless…which is just as well, I suppose, since I have no fondness for it.”

“Yet you use it?” Kedean asked.

She blinked, looking at him as if he’d asked if water were wet.  “If I allowed personal preferences to take precedence over rational decision making and wasted available resources simply because I felt-”

In the distance, something loud and low cracked, a sharp sound that reverberated over the sea, and they both started at once, Kedean frowning and his charge tensing at his side.

“Was that…thunder?” she asked, and Kedean scanned the sky on instinct, though already shaking his head.  Scattered storm clouds blotted out the stars in the far distance, but none very near, and he had yet to see lightning.

“I don’t think so,” he said.  “There’s been a storm brewing since evening, but that sounded more like-”

Closer this time, the same sound cracked, followed moments later by a resounding splash that erupted to the right of the ship, and together, they finished in unison, “Cannon fire.”

Serpent’s Channel, aboard the Havana

“No!  No, no, no, what do they think they’re doing!?” Fern hissed, furious, as she rushed up to the bow of her ship.  “I gave specific orders not to—uuughhh!”  Her wings buzzed to life, magic tingling through her as she lifted to a foot or so hover above the deck.  “DERG!”

“Captain?”

“See to it that Mervil and Terranah quit wasting their magic on cloaking us, the Dawn Strider has clearly given away our position.  Bring the ship up on our target’s starboard bow, and have the Durandal cover her aft.  I have some words for the captain of the Strider…”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” he responded immediately, and she was off, zipping up, into the air—cool, but crisp and fresh.  Moments later, she was down again, landing feet from the startled, second-in-command fleet master aboard the ship that had fired the cannons.

“Captain Desper-”

She whirled to face the deck, commanding, “CEASE FIRE!” in a voice that boomed surprisingly well over the most recent crack of another cannon shot.  “This is your commanding officer ordering that you hold all attacks until otherwise instructed—Lieutenant Aryin!”  She rounded back around at the last part, facing the man at the wheel again.  “Would you care to explain to me why your men are attacking our target on a hostage mission with cannons before we’ve secured our objective?”

“Captain-”

“Hold your excuses!” she snapped.  “We don’t have time for them now.  Bring your ship around to target’s port bow, board with your best men as soon as you’ve secured your position, and do NOT kill any of the passengers aboard that ship.  Do I make myself absolutely clear?”

“Yes, captain!”

Without waiting for a word more, she took off again. 

Beside the target ship, the Havana was already coming into position, but their quarry had obviously been well warned, many of them already flocking to the deck, readying themselves to fend off their attackers.  Useless as they were, given the extent to which they were outnumbered, the defensive maneuvers still meant the possibility of more lives lost on her end, considering that their targets were not bound by such constricting rules as ‘Don’t kill the enemy,’ and she swore silently to herself, vowing mentally to wring the neck personally of the man involved in firing those cannons.

No time for that now, though.  Instead, as Derg brought the main ship to a hold, some of her men immediately boarding, Fern flit down, and landed. 

As the most recent incident—along with any number of past issues—proved, the only way to truly ensure that things proceeded properly was to get her hands dirty and handle them herself.  This was no exception.  Thus, as soon as she touched deck, her eyes went to work—darting over the ship, scanning the crowds, and tallying up their numbers—her magic stretching out further still, seeking the corresponding blip of power that would pinpoint their target.

In moments, Fern had her location.  She dodged the crowds easily enough—smaller than most humans and practiced at maneuvering—and closed in on the cabin quite handily until-

“Whatever you want…”

She half tripped in her haste to halt, still nearly skidding face first into the largest human she had ever seen, and her eyes travelled up.  Up, over a body taller than full grown troll and as dark as a Tercian drow, and finally to two, earth brown eyes that held hers steady as a rock.

“…it is not in that room.”

Fern tightened her stance, weapons already at the ready in her palms, and eyes narrowed.  “Back off, human,” she growled.  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.  Step out of my way now, and I might not have to hurt you.”

Barely perceptibly, his posture shifted—lower, more grounded and defensive—but his eyes never left hers.  “I can promise you, everything of material value is below deck.  You’ll gain nothing from attacking our passengers and crew.  Take what you want and leave.”

“Oh, I plan to,” she said, leering.  “Unfortunately, at the moment, you are the only thing standing between me and everything I came here for, so I’ll tell you one more time…”

“Surely,” he said, “you’re not going to attack m-”

Her blades met with steel in a sharp, sheer clang, and her opponent swore in a tongue even she barely recognized.  Something about his own poor luck and violent, angry women, by the sound of things, and Fern raised her eyebrows, darting deftly in despite her mild amusement.

“Women troubles?” she asked, behind him with a flick of her wings, and he spun—impressively quickly, for such a large man—but not quite quickly enough. 

“How—?  Nnnhh…”

Fern’s weapons, having served their purpose, were back in their sheaths, her hands catching at his wrists the instant he turned, and the man literally over twice her height and most probably triple her weight or more stilled in his tracks, slowing like a rabbit hitting quicksand. 

Behind her, a woman’s voice called, “No, don’t let her touch—!” but that, too, came too late, and the giant human’s eyelids sagged: once, twice.

“And…magic again, too…”  He fell to his knees, and collapsed.

“Don’t worry,” Fern consoled the unconscious man, “you’ll sleep very, very well…” She turned to the woman, “…but yo-”

Her sentence never made it, her stomach roiling and her head swaying dizzily, and for a moment all she could see was fire: fire, and claws, and immense, blood-red wings that cast a deathly shadow on the screaming victims beneath it.  Then, jarringly, she jerked back to the present, her heart throbbing wildly in her chest as she faced her nightmare’s look-alike. 

This woman was not Melsinna.

The same, dark-as-matted-blood hair that spilled over her body like braided ink and the same pale-as-porcelain skin that caught moonlight like a restless spirit, perhaps—but not the same.  She was younger, for one, and lacked those wicked, poison-green eyes that reflected fear like a looking-glass.  Her magical signal was also far smaller—almost insignificant.

By the time Fern pulled herself back together, the woman was at the fallen man’s side, her fingers to his throat, likely feeling for a pulse.  When she found one, she looked sharply up, meeting Fern’s eyes head on. 

“He knows nothing, sprite!” she snapped, vicious.  “No one on this ship does!  If you hurt him…”

“Hush your mouth, broodling,” Fern snarled, working as much menace as she could manage into her tone, despite her still shaken state.  “You’re in no position to bargain, let alone threaten me.  I make the demands here.  What is he, your consort?”

“No!  He is human, and unbound,” she insisted.  “We have no relation.  If you have business with me, take me, but leave this ship and this crew!  They-”

“We’ll see about that,” Fern said, softer, her magic already reaching out when she caught the startled women at the throat. 

The instant they made contact, Fern nearly dropped her hold, a strange, foreign magic swelling and undulating under her fingertips like a riptide: powerful illusion magic, almost overwhelmingly so, in an aura that soaked her target like water through a sponge.  It was winding, thick, complex, and thorough, clearly meant to stick and stay stuck, and Fern had to fight to sink her own magic through it, like swimming upstream.  Luckily, though, the curse was obviously an outsider’s work, the woman herself having only miniscule magic defenses, and she weakened quickly, her muscles softening and brief struggles petering off in moments.

Then, her strength waning to the breaking point, her lips curled back, and—eyes narrowed and words breathy but venomous—she snarled, “Fairy…witch,” in the last moments before her lashes finally dipped, sagged under the weight of Fern’s magic, and shut.  Like a cut puppet, she crumpled by the other human, and Fern swayed on her feet.

Dizzy and weak from the magical exertion, she panted the retort, “Spawn…” like the dirtiest insult to be had, and promised, “…I’ll…deal with you later.”  Two powerful sleep spells in the lesser part of a few minutes really drained a person.  And she hadn’t even found the whelpling she’d been sent after. 

What had Tyrius said he went by again?  Basil?

She’d have to interrogate the redhead later, since they were obviously related; siblings, most likely.  Assuming she survived long enough to wake up, that is.

---

A/N: Many thanks, again, to Midnightsscream and Vandra for your feedback.  Comments really keep me going.  :)

EDIT: In my last hours before my plane flight, I'm just now realizing I'm not actually positive I'll even be able to access AFF from China (since some sites, like YouTube and a lot of porn sites, are completely blocked over there and I don't remember whether I could access it last time I was there or not).  Hopefully, that won't be a problem; if it is, this story will continue to be updated on my fiction press account under the same author name, and I will try to guide my boyfriend through the steps to update it on here for me, but I'm not sure how well that will work.

Just...fyi.  :)