These Halls [Open]

[Silvar]

It had been almost two weeks since his encounters with the Water Fey, the Light Fey, and the Succubus now, almost two weeks to recoup, to recover from the stress and exhaustion of it to his fullest potential. It had taken every bit of those days to put the pieces back together, for Silvar to be certain he was capable of facing even the least annoying of Fey without taking their heads off (and a few less fortunate who had run across him during that time had suffered just that fate).

And even now, stalking the halls of the castle just after dark, the stillness of the shadows around him was such a fragile thing, the clarity in his thoughts nothing more than temporary (a fact that he knew all too well of himself).

But he was back in his Court, and his dress and mannerisms had to reflect that (to an extent). The things in his head had receded, if only to the edge of his thoughts, but it was enough to appear composed, sharp, dangerous as ever. The collar of the jacket he wore was a high one, appropriately military, and beyond its function of fitting his station it hid the nearly healed wound on his shoulder, the thing (and he sometimes looked at it, but only alone) like a physical manifestation of his not quite fully healed psyche.

He walked these halls as if he belonged here (and he did), like he owned them (to a degree), and he enjoyed the way it was so wonderfully bassackwards. It had always soothed him somehow. Gone for now was the crazed thing he'd been in that battle (and so many others like it), the broken thing (much more uncommon), the confused (only because of him), and here stood the Warrior, nothing more and nothing less.

His steps were strong again, certain, and as a stray attendant scurried away from him in fear he thought of war (a certainly not uncommon thought), though the Fissure was still practically a fresh wound on the world. It would be such a good distraction, and how he wished that irritatingly beautiful thing hadn't shown up and stopped him from killing that courtly sounding girl, because it would have been the perfect excuse for conflict. And oh, how he thrived on Death, how wonderful it felt to be in the center of chaos and he wondered if that was why he liked the castle so, taking a moment to stop and appreciate the view from the middle of one of the staircases.

[Selen Hawthorn]

Whispers of night were always a lullaby to the Dark fey. These interrupted souls, exiled creatures, had a glimmer of hope to get out of their life alive, with prayer, with regard. And while the fair Queen, original of all Dark fey, may have shriveled to a certain sort of fairy-tale, she refused to become made-up, nor a legend. For legends only live to die. There was no way Selen had died. Her death was a mistake, and while she may have been clinging to her last gasp of air, at her own mercy - she was whole. As she laid in the forest, gagging on her own death, she saw hope.

What she commanded was a far bigger plan than anyone could see. Her absence allowed it to blossom, unfurl, and when she returned to her Kingdom, she was greeted with praise, not with questions. Perhaps it was her commanding, controlling power that kept the questionable at bay.

A Dark warrior, in his prideful uniform, appeared to be so lost.

Humming ensued from Selen, a certain melody that she had done almost every night, as she readied herself for bed. Any companion, follower, true stalker of the dark, would know this sound from anywhere. She hummed these noises constantly, finding it careless to use words, to speak them so freely. When the noise stopped, the girl came to, stepping into the meek light of the moon.

Most of her body had been covered in fabric, as though she bundled up for a visit to the Ice Kingdom. What she didn’t want anyone was to see was that she had become merely bones, malnutrition. She was disgusted that her near-death façade had caused her to lose beauty. At least her hair stayed full, long, in their curls -- the only lightness contrasting from her outfit.

“You didn’t look for me,” she said hauntingly, one bony hand raising to point a rather accusing finger at the warrior of Dark. Her expression was shrouded by the darkness of the room, and perhaps it was a good thing that Silvar could not read into the ascending Queen’s emotion.

[Silvar]

The comforting silence was shattered, a comfortably uncomfortable melody resonating in the empty halls to shatter his sanity, and Silvar knew that melody. From a place in the past that had been buried by coverup and the shroud of Death that melody rose, caused an itch in him and commanded attention beyond attention.

He let his gaze shift from the view he'd partook in, toward the origin of the sound as crimson eyes swept over the bundled form of a shadow, a ghost but there was no chill in the air (and there should have been, should have been). It was questionable whether it were a dream or reality, but his dreams had never included her, only Death (and on the rarest occasion Light). Still, something was off, something was different, and she had been dead, of that he was sure (wasn't he? He found himself questioning).

An accusation, and her hand seemed to mimic Death in how thin it was, his own expression shadowed but showing little of the confusion (shock, disbelief) he felt at seeing her alive. Still, she had given him everything he had, every right and every privilege, and as he met her eyes he could not hold that gaze without bowing his head first (ghost or no). It had been years, yet still she instilled such a respect in him.

"They performed the ritual before I returned from the border," he remembered it clearly, perhaps too clearly and it was contradictory to what he saw standing before him. Unless she were an apparition (why was he speaking to one?), her body in his memory had been burned as it should have been in death, and yet... "That is what I was told..." and why he felt the need to excuse himself he did not know.

The only rational explanation screamed that he had been fooled, and he felt a touch of irritation that showed in the slightest narrowing of his eyes. "If you are truly here, however..." and there was despite all odds no part of him that doubted it after all, "I assume it must have been a rather elaborate lie."

If only he knew...

[Selen Hawthorn]

One step, two step, forward she went. While she had not been an apparition, nor a ghost, nothing to echo that her spirit was haunting, her movements had an awkward limp to it. She had always been a graceful person, to move with the ground, as though it was the last hope she could depend upon. But now she moved rather hastily, and while her limbs appeared to be fracture with each movement of the eye, she was suddenly before the warrior of dark. The light contrast of what were her eyes, were merely dark as ink. Selen’s shoulders raised, as though talons, and jerked down.

She appeared to be reckoning with the control of her own body. Control. That is all she ever knew, that is all she could do, but now she wasn’t sure if she could control much of anything. Her mouth turned up in a smile, her lips cracked, red forming over the whiteness of her mouth, bleeding. There was a shake from her, and her head boggled in place. She could not pretend that it was easy any longer.

“Ah,” she exhaled, the hand that had once out stretched to the warrior, reached to grasp onto the cloth of his attire. Selen grasped it for support and her head dropped forward, as though her skull was far too heavy for her neck to support. The vibrations coming off of her was from her rattling bones. She was so cold. Now it all made sense. Silvar did not search for something that was already dead, and who better to believe than her elder sister, Etoile?

“Wretched bitch,” was all she could come up with, her craning back as though a mangled jack-in-the-box toy. “Where is she?” Selen came up with, the pitch of her voice getting high, and when she raised her head even more, Silvar would be able to see that her teeth had been unnatural, as though her canines were sharpened for weapons. “I will kill her with my own hands!”

There was a frenzy about her, and her colorless eyes drank in Silvar’s regretful face, was it? He looked lost, dreamy, as though she wasn’t really here at all. And when Selen went to shove at Silvar, to awake him to see her even more - alive for what she was - all she felt was her body’s weight tugging on fabric. Her strength was futile. Then she stopped, as though she would return to being dead. Yet, her searching, longing expression had not left as she peered upon Silvar.

[Silvar]

It was wrong, something was so terribly wrong about this woman, though, and he knew it to be so, memory providing grace, providing a different tone. As she came to be before him he wondered, what could have made her this way but Death, and he had seen such pitiful things...

She seemed almost fragile, almost frail, and it conflicted with several mindsets of his but in the end what would rule over the rest was what ruled... Etoile was forgotten for now as the thin and damaged looking thing before him took precedence, and he could feel the bones of her fingers as she gripped at his clothes. Something was so, so wrong.

Her words, however, brought the memory of Etoile back to him, because there was none other that she could have been speaking of, he somehow knew it to be so, and though he often relished in this sort of broken mentality he could not rise above this being her. The sharpness of her teeth was an unfamiliar sort of familiar (his were the same, but hers...), and the color was off but it was...

The corners of his lips turned downward slightly, and he felt a terrible excuse for a guard in that moment as he realized he could not give her the answer she was looking for.

"She left the castle three nights ago before nightfall and has not returned..."

He wanted to ask what had happened to her, wanted to know but said nothing. If she willed him to know it he would know it, and it felt like waking from a dream, a haze as he looked upon her. Yet she was still different. To be proclaimed dead, however... there had to be some truth to that lie, with the way she looked...

[Selen Hawthorn]

As Selen looked after Silvar, she drowned her mind with worries. How could she possibly trust Silvar? What if Etoile had been so elaborate in her plans, that she had caused Silvar to lie to her directly? (But why would her sister go that far, even in death?) While she had been on the throne before, she never questioned her motives, her thoughts and her desires. But now all she had left to live on was questions. Also, where was Etoile now? Why had she left so suddenly? There couldn’t have been any way she knew Selen was alive.

After all, the fey that resurrected her told her all that was, and how her life had ended too quickly - too unplanned. Selen was alive again for a reason. The desperate look faded into an expression of triumph. Her lips pressed together, pulling inward so she could suck the chapped blood off her flesh. A dark swirl engulfed her eyes, pupil and iris becoming one as the fingers in Silvar’s shirt tightened, strengthen. Selen gave a sturdy tug on Silvar’s uniform, straightened herself and raised her shoulders defiantly.

The blond strands of her hair tumbled forth, lively, as she gave her warrior a simple nod. “Then she will be labeled as a traitor, through out these lands, please notify the other courts immediately,” the Queen turned on her foot a little, but her face remained fixed on the warrior, smirking.

Even in the glow of her face, there was something unnatural about her now. It was as though she was a walking corpse. Even her cheek bones seemed to protrude slightly.

A sudden force came from her, pushing heavily upon Silvar, and all the Warrior would be able to hear, even in the darkest depths of his mind was:

‘State your loyalty.’

[Silvar]

The change in expression on some level managed to ease at least somewhat the tension that had settled over him, and the seemingly renewed bit of strength was reassuring. Despite the frail look about her his Queen had strength in her still, even after death or near death, whichever it had been for he was positive it must have been one of the two. He made a valiant attempt to push it aside, however, for as it were the how and the why were insignificant in the face of what simply was.

Etoile a traitor? Silvar comprehended it and accepted it without question, for she had not stepped down from her throne willingly, and Etoile was gone and she was alive, and he had rarely ever questioned her words. She was alive and here, ghostly as her apparition was in the depth of the shadows on her face and the thinness of her fingers because there was still strength and power in the way she held herself before him now, appropriate. The politics of the matter he would have wished to avoid, but if she bade him to do it, he would seal the letters and send them with his quickest courier.

While he had many questions, now seemed an inappropriate time to ask them, and he attempted to quell their uprising and silence his now scattered thoughts.

The attempt at silence, however, was cut short by the sudden and overwhelming phrase, command beyond commanding such that he dropped fluidly to one knee before her without even the ability to begin to question, head bowed. It was a measure of respect that he had not even showed to Etoile, and the words he spoke were familiar between the two of them.

"If you will it so, my Queen, my blade and my power are yours to command as you see fit."

[Selen Hawthorn]

Her stability was weak, but her pride was strong and it burned through her veins. When Silvar dropped down to one knee, she felt shaken, and alive. Her hands went out a little, her palms faced up as though she was catching rain drops. There was nothing there, but she continued to allow her head to drop back, allowing her eyes to stare searchingly up at the vast, dark ceiling. At least her warrior had not been a traitor. Selen would have not been able to keep her sanity in check if she found out that the warrior, whom she picked for skill, had went against her.

“Lovely,” she said, dropping her arms again. While she had desired the time to aimlessly wander the halls of the kingdom, to try and get in touch with all the emotions she felt; she knew she could not. For her absence in the Kingdom must have been questionable. Was there any rumors at all? What had her followers heard of her death, about who had done it? Now that she was here again, obviously alive, would her Kingdom question her loyalty to them? Hopefully they had not, for she came back with an appearance that wasn’t exactly herself.

Any power she emitted had disappeared and she slowly appeared to be making her way from the warrior, but it was only a matter of movements before she started to sink to the ground, from where she stood. As she lowered herself to her knees, she bowed her head and placed one small hand against her forehead. Everything in her body hurt. Muscles, bones, even her insides. When was the last time she had a meal, or even drank? How the hell did she even make it this far?

While she was well aware of her hair lightening, she was not aware that her eyes had lost any signs of color, and was now a mark - much like a scar - to represent the death she had been through. The boy she had meet was beautiful, she remembered, and her mind went further to him. She had known him before, hadn’t she? Selen turned her face now, finally taking note of where she was. The girl looked over Silvar, and while she had needed a lot of help, she did not voice a plea.

How awkward. To come here and not have a question about her whereabouts. Was it out of fear? Respect? She wondered. If her people could accept her back as easily as Silvar did, then there would be no problems. But there was a foreboding feeling when she thought of Svv, and much like her hatred for Etoile, she had started to feel it for her Untouchable fey. Yet, she could not figure out why.

“You seem well, Silvar,” she commented idly, as though making an inside joke.

[Silvar]

Loyalty when it came to the throne was not something Silvar lacked, and while the position was transient there would always remain a loyalty to her, however convoluted. His Queen, the one who had given him his position, who had given him war and everything else. He had failed to protect her once.

She had moved, and he had lifted his head in time to see her sink to her knees, a tinge of the closest thing he could feel to worry flitting through him at the way her frail looking hand pressed to her forehead. Her countenance was weak but her pride was strong and he was beginning to place the changes, hazy holes in his memory filling slowly with her proper colors. She was lighter, her hair the most obvious difference next to her current fragility.

He rose, and though above her in stature he gave no air of being above her in position, her eyes upon him another difference (and it had struck him as odd when first he saw them). While loyalty and respect were not things that the Warrior gave easily, she had both of them from him, and as she addressed him he offered his hand to help her up. She may not have asked for his help, but it was plain that she needed it now.

"I admit you have seen better days," he offered in response, one corner of his lips quirking upward slightly though the hint of humor was still tinged with a good number of other things, and primarily he was concerned at that moment with her wellbeing. "But for a woman supposed dead and burned you look rather stunning."

He would certainly need to see to the writing of a pair of letters as she had requested, but first and foremost... How would the rest of the kingdom take her return? None of them were in the position to question her, but some would, without a doubt. A sense of duty would have him keep watch.

[Selen Hawthorn]

Inked eyes followed Silvar as he moved so fluidly. She had wished she could find the strength to move as he did, but although the muscles in her face didn’t twitch, she was in extreme pain. It was as if she was born again, learning how to breathe, walk, stand, and even think -- and to trust. Yet, in all the dark periods of her life, of all the wandering searching, she had been grounded. It was as if her wings been cut off, but she knew they were still there, somehow.

A hand was held out to her and she blinked a few times, trying to show how capable she was of holding all of her pain and suffering in. For some reason she caught wind of a memory, one of people leading her along. She had followed, there were two people, but the images were so foggy. As she was dying, she wasn’t so sure a hand was ever going to save her, or if watching eyes truly cared that she was leaving the world. Her departure was significant to her, for it wasn’t something she could not forget; yet, remembering was the worse part.

Finally, she reached forward for the hand. What was even worse was that she didn’t really realize how cold she was, until her flesh had brushed against Silvar’s. The male was radiating of heat, and she had been so hurt and betrayed, that she could only find solace in that fact that she could feel these things. Her small fingers wrapped feebly around the male’s hand, submerging herself into the warmth as she used Silvar as a crutch. Slowly, she rose to her feet, leaning still into her warrior’s weight.

“Thank you, Silvar,” she murmured with, a little smile remaining upon her features. In her life she had been a vain creature, and had found it fitting that she at least had a sense of beauty to someone.

As if politics were a burden now, she decided to Silvar to have control of the situation, far too exhausted to exert anymore energy. “Etoile didn’t throw out my wardrobe, did she?”

[Silvar]

His gaze remained on her as she blinked, and he kept his hand extended to her (if he'd thought about it, there would be a glimpse of a particular Fey at the memory of the gesture, but there were no such thoughts in his mind at that moment) until finally she took hold of it. Silvar hadn't realized how cold she was any more than she had until that moment, either, but the touch of her fingers to his flesh was almost icy, and his brow furrowed minutely.

He was so terribly unused to seeing her this way, and on a level of adolescence he'd left behind centuries ago he felt worry. The Warrior let his arm move to support her, and as light as she was it would have been nearly effortless to pick her up and carry her, but it just wasn't the type of thing that he would do, and he gave a nod in response to her thanks.

"She used the adjoining chambers, yours remain untouched," he replied, that same hint of amusement audible in his voice up alongside responsibility, and for the first time since he'd laid eyes on her again he looked past her, up the stairs toward the quarters he'd just come from. It would be a slow trek in her current condition to be sure, but a necessary one.

"Can you walk?" he questioned her then, because if she couldn't, he was going to have to carry her. And if she requested it of him, then he would, despite it being unusual for him. First, he did need to get her out of this hallway. Second would be to ascertain whether she was up to eating anything or not.

She didn't seem up to the task of holding a meeting just then, either, though it would be important to do as soon as possible.

[Selen Hawthorn]

Selen could no longer hold back. It had been painfully long since she been in her home, and here she was, alive again. She was gazing upon her warrior with two eyes, feeling him there. The Queen went out of character for herself, to cherish what little loyalty someone had for her. Leaning her weight fully into Silvar now - though she was not heavy - she had placed her head against the warrior’s shoulder. The other arm that was free from Silvar, moved around the male’s torso to pull him into a very light hug. Her luck was with her today, to see so many familiar faces in her kingdom and to be greeted by someone who had not thought less of her.

Before her departure from the world, she had been a weak person. And with her return she had vowed never to be weak again; yet, for this time being she could let herself simply enjoy the second chance. There was no need to camouflage her weakness now, for it was apparent even in her step. In reality, it would take a week for her physical recovery, but only a night to work on her mental capabilities.

Her chest heaved awkwardly, gasping for strained amounts of air. The resurrection put a lot of strain on her body, and it was clean, for she was even on the verge of tears. Yet, nothing came from her dark eyes. She was far too happy and miserable all at once, to have it all visibly set into action. Holding onto Silvar, inhaled lightly, taking in an almost almond scent from Silvar. After a wave of familiarity, her eyes shifted to look at the curve of Silvar’s chin, reminiscing about old times.

The warrior’s question derailed her for a second. It was unwise to frolic over her return, to see all of her kingdom now. A hesitant nod was felt from her. “I’ve used all my strength to get here, I can go no further,” while it was not a direct request to be carried, she had asked it indirectly; her pride getting the best of her.

[Silvar]

This closeness, this contact, was something Silvar was unused to, considering he was the type of fey to make contact physically only when exchanging blows in battle. Even a typical handshake was something he tended to shy away from, but he took the responsibility of her weight against him, shouldered it well. He had harbored no lovers in the past, save for one, and the memory of that one had been driven so far beneath layer upon layer of dirt and blood and denial, so that hers was the first head to be rested upon his shoulder in something other than death.

His discomfort, however, was overruled by a still nagging concern, one of the most irritating things he'd felt in a long time, and he could do nothing but allow her the comfort, the reprieve. The need to shelter her was something he didn't quite understand, chalked up to loyalty for truly anyone else in her state would have received scorn, even disgust from him. Theirs was an odd history, it seemed.

He looked down at the top of her head as she strained for breath, his brow creasing as the corners of his lips turned slightly downward. Her words only confirmed his suspicions, and though indirect their meaning was clear. She needed rest, and it was by no mere obligation that he would see to it she got what she needed.

Without hesitation, he shifted his position in order to lift her frail form, the clothes she wore seeming almost to be the heaviest part of her as he situated one arm around her back, the other under her knees. Not to waste any time, he started up the stairs with her as soon as she was situated, running through his head a plan of action. This situation was not typical, after all.