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Detraeus grunted. “Sword, then.”

Without another word, he notched his head, bidding the other follow and making sure that he was doing so before moving towards the house. “We will fight,” he said. “No imprinted weapon. No magic. If you die, you were not fit to touch my daughter. If you live…” He trailed off for a moment, and then rolled his shoulders, “…you live.”

He moved to the stables, where he stored his blades, and selected one for himself before gesturing that Rinn choose one.

Detraeus ignored his daughter’s line of questioning. She knew why, and ought to know well enough by now that he had no intention of dropping the encounter by now. It was kindness enough on his part not to have killed the boy — as he should have — already, nevermind allowing him to be brought all the way up into the mountains, to their home…

Detraeus released a stiff breath and rolled his shoulders. On seeing the boy eye daggers first, he made mental note, and turned his focus to the way the other carried himself, where his comforts gravitated, and his eventual choice in blade. As he started out again, after selecting his sword of choice, Detraeus moved in his wake, but gathered quickly a set of the small, hand daggers that Nesrinn’s gaze had lingered on initially.

After stepping from the threshold of the stable, he picked up his pace, tail thrashing once as he passed the boy and moved on to an open, well-trodden space outside the front of their home where he had often trained with his children before. There, he stopped. When Nesrinn came near enough, he tossed the dagger set forward so that it hit the snow with a soft thwwp at the boy’s feet.

“Arm yourself with those, also, if you see fit. And the sword. Then…” Detraeus gave a last, sweeping study of the boy before snorting, and spitting into the snow. “Try to kill me.”

Detraeus waited.

He had no intention of moving first. Not unless the boy begged it by being so absolutely hesitant as to merit it. But he preferred to see how — if — the boy would try. When he did, Detraeus immediately shifted, flicking his weight sidelong enough so as to not even necessitate a parry. He nicked outwards, though. Just clipping the tip of his blade into the cloth at Nesrinn’s thigh. A test. A critique. And a goading gesture in and of itself.

He refrained from comment, though. That could wait until well after.

Detraeus and Nesrinn danced, trading attacks back and forth. At first, Detraeus kept his moves largely conservative, testing the boy, baiting him and catching in nicks where he could, but Nesrinn learned fast. Far faster than he anticipated, and was more skilled than he gave him credit for — and fierce. Though he didn’t share Detraeus’ specific hate, the taunting quickly baited Nesrinn into a state of adamant combat — not that Detraeus wanted or expected anything less — but the boy’s overall skill at it privately impressed above what he expected.

He did not ease his pace because of it.

Quite the opposite, as the fight progressed, and Nesrinn managed to get in a few surprise licks of his own, with both of them eventually using both full blades and knives, Detraeus’ ferocity spiked. Gradually. The more Nesrinn managed to assert himself, however, the more Detraeus’ anger — that he had dared show up, come here, touch his daughter, pretend to be worthy of anything — speared upwards.

At an unfortunate twisting point for Nesrinn, Detraeus snaked in, and buried a blade in the boy’s gut, pinning him hard to the ground in the process.

Detraeus — part of him, on some level — had chosen the positioning of his thrust carefully. It was angry, certainly, wanting the boy to know what a fool he’d been, to have dared touch his daughter—

But he could not have said where exactly he might have gone from there, if Akara’s appearance had not knocked him from the moment. Shaken from his mindset that saw nothing but the angle of a blade and avenues towards sinking it another person, Detraeus blinked, watching his daughter almost blindly for a moment. Something curdled in his gut, then. Slow, and cool. Heavy at the pit of his stomach.

He withdrew his blade. Felt his pulse beat against the ribs of his chest. Felt his muscles itch with a strange numbness as he stood and as he watched his daughter, still distant, as though perceiving the train of events that followed from a dreamstate.

Part of him felt unfinished.

The job wasn’t finished.

But another, newer emotion argued what he knew, for better or for worse, to be the truth: he was not going to kill Nesrinn. Not today. Not in front of his daughter. If the boy hurt her, yes. But not with her as she was, and he being so young and stupidly hopeful.

He did not even look much bird to the eye. Perhaps, if they were very, very lucky, he would prove to be more dragon than Seren-born.

Detraeus should have known better than to think things might be simple. Or, he might have thought as much if the sight of his daughter collapsing left any room or time for thought in his mind. Instead, something snapped.

Like the release of a long-held arrow, he shot around, whipping back towards the pair, and in that instant, everything left him but his anger and his worst fears. The thing had hurt her. She was dead. As punishment for him showing mercy, the bird had killed her, and by all the gods, Detraeus was going to—



Ataya should have known better than to think things might be simple. That his father might let Nesrinn be. That things might actually end peacefully.

When he felt his sister’s magic waver, he knew in that moment that she had pushed herself too far, a familiar rippling and petering of energy. He was spared barely a moment to mentally grouse at her stupidity—

‘Foolish, foolish, foolish, foolish, why—?’

—before she toppled like a doll cut from her strings.

Ataya moved on instinct. He knew without checking that his father would be reacting as quickly, if not more so, and thus it was within a split of an instant that he jolted his magic forward, a sloshing river of shadow that he sank into and became as he coiled over the pair of lovers — his sister — and Nesrinn as he swallowed them both and dragged them along the snow through the magic.

Slipping through the shadows alone was like walking. Dragging another in along with him was, magical exertion wise, similar to the amount of extra physical effort it took to carry a second body with you as you walked. Taking two was that much more strenuous, but the distance, fortunately, was brief enough to get them a half dozen paces across the snow before Ataya staggered back into physical form, them behind him, and threw up a waist-high ‘wall’ of ice spires between him and—

“Stupid boy,” Detraeus snarled. “Get out of my way—”

“Akara is fine,” Ataya snapped. “She—”

“—collapsed—”

“ —because she overworked herself! She always—”

A beat of powerful wings told Ataya that his father was up into the air, and for a moment, his pulse tripped, gut lurching with frustration and anger at his father’s stubbornness—but then, heavy, booted feet dropped to the snow in front of him, his father’s heat close, and his grip knotting in the front of Ataya’s tunic. Some of Ataya’s nervous tension eased. But his anger remained.

“Akara is unconscious,” he said. “By no fault of Nesrinn’s…”

A pause stretched between them, and in it, Ataya felt his father’s tension, radiant as dark energy. When he finally spoke, it was quiet, but taut, and low. “What do you care for him.”

“I do not,” Ataya said. “But you will accomplish nothing with his death but cause needless upset to my sister.”

“My daughter.”

“My sister…”

His father waited another breath, the air tense between them. Then, Detraeus released his grip with a barely-there shove of emphasis before moving around Ataya and down to gather Akara in his arms. Without a word he took her, up, away from Nesrinn, and towards the house.

When his father’s footfalls sounded against the steps leading into their house, Ataya breathed a curt exhale, and rounded on Nesrinn.

“Still breathing?”