Author's notes:

I'm tired. I'll ramble about writing and why we writers make poor readers tomorrow. I do have the make-up chapter done, so if a certain someone would ask ever-so-nicely, I'll post it as well...

(Those of you just joining here, start with Callan and Sian 1)



Instead of another topic, they each kept their own counsel for a mile or two. Sian clenched shut her eyes. Her head shuddered. Her hands balled into fists. She forced herself to relax, then turned to Callan. "Then talk. About anything. I don't care, just talk to me, Sire. Please."

"Of what, little one? Something to help you avoid what's troubling you, or the actual matter at hand? Is it Wilhelm and..." He beckoned with his fingers, then placed the hand back on the steering wheel.

"Jarls. His name was Jarls. I don't know anything else, but he had a name."

"And he screamed. You know that, yes?"

She nodded. "Yes. Yes, dammit. Both of them did. Why can't I forget it? How can you just sit there? Didn't you hear them?"

"I hear far better than you can imagine. Right now, I can hear your heart as it pounds in your chest. I can feel the brush of your breath from even across the room. I can, from your scent alone, tell you what food you had recently. Yes, I heard them. Death screams are never easy on the soul."

She studied her hands for a bit. "How did they die?"

"Do you know what the French idiom for you 'getting there,' as you say it?"

"Why? What does that have to do with this? With them?"

"They call it 'the little death,' pet. 'La Petite Mort.' Do you see now?"

"Yes. So she-- Wait a second! They're like you, right? You said you couldn't, uh, get there."

"I said that can I have one more before I die."

"Oh." She stared at him, at his sturdy features and the flecks of silver in hair. His eyes, so bright, so alive. She tried to imagine them closed, forever. She looked away. "Oh."

"Yes, my little one. That's what Lavender can do. She stole the last beat of their hearts. By taking them 'there.' In the span of a breath, it stripped away their senses, their mind, then their very consciousness."

"Oh." She blinked, her eyes parched.

===

The beat reverberated in her lungs as they wound their way along the edge of the dance floor. The man behind the console addressed the crowd with something urban, something harsh and edgy. Sian blinked, suddenly aware of the spill of aromas around her. Sweat. Everyone danced without reserve, rotating through the tables and booths as if on schedule. Sweat, and the under-scent of sex. The sweetness of the goddess' nectar, the astringent sharpness of the god's offering. It charged her, set her skin tingling. Her throat tightened. She realized the ringing in her ears from her earlier self-injury vanished. In it's place, she heard the soft moans and urgent pleas that set her heart racing.

She never let go of Callan's hand, but squeezed it so hard he halted, gathered her in his arms and said in his usual calm and firm voice, "We've no time to dance, pet. Neither on the floor or in the clouds."

His words, so soft, should have been drowned in the waves of bass, the scratch of electronica. Instead, she heard him inside her ear, his admonition ahead and between the other sounds so loud and ambient. She lost herself in his eyes, threw her head back and swam in the euphoria all around her. In the hunger of people anticipating their turn to burn bright and brief, in the flares of those in the midst, and the soft glow of the spent ones in their private idyll.

He kissed her. Not once, but a row of them. At the point where her collarbones spread like birds' wings, that was the site of his first buss. From there, he planted one after the other along the stiff curve of her throat. Two more he laid on the taut drum of skin under her chin. One on her chin, then a deep one into her, sucking the breath from her. Around his heated lips, she smiled and played the same game, drawing back her air, and his, heated and vibrant. Alive.

She knew when he as about to break their seal. Somehow, she knew it, wished it could last longer, but understood the necessity of the ache. Her eyes flickered back open as his words appeared in her ears again.

"I wish we could, pet. I dearly wish we could."

She nodded, exhaled and again tasted him on their shared breath as it slipped free. His hand uncoiled from her torso, hers from his neck.

He led them to a hallway behind the bar. He said something to the man, something inaudible in the cacophony to Sian standing beside him. The barkeep, halfway down the length of the bar, nodded and waved them through.

Three turns later, the music dulled to thumps of the bass and insistent whispers. "Now, precious, pay heed. We're about to meet some rather powerful people, a handful from those in the Inner Circles."

She nodded slowly. "What are they like?"

Callan sighed. "I would like to say they're wise, honourable people, trying to do what's right. I can't. They're just like you and me, I'm afraid. Some have been corrupted by Power. Others see the potential and try to stay it's influence. One or two try to use the Power to do what's right."

"That doesn't sound very promising."

"Be thankful for them. They're all you have between what we have and a world of people like Marcarius. Or worse."