"I thought you said this place was abandoned," Kazul said in a whisper.

"By the lions who used to live here, yes. But you can't expect other things not to have moved in." The grin pulling at the corners of Ru's mouth made Kazul want to swat him hard, even as it made her want to join him in his amusement.

She hated herself for asking, but still the words came from her mouth: "What kind of things?"

Now Ru's grin had become an obviously irrepressible flash of white in the moonlight as he looked at her over his shoulder and said, "Let's find out. Unless you're afraid?"

The two of them had sneaked out of the stronghold as the sun was setting and the guard was changing, taking a roundabout way to the abandoned settlement that took them up the narrow strip of beach where many lions, including Ru, fought their áskorun toward the mainland. They might have gone through the forest instead, for Kazul was familiar with the wood because of her half-brother, but that same half-brother also lived there and would probably notice their passage.

So they made their secret departure and made their way to an a place which had been long-ago abandoned as a result of the Stormborn Reavers. It was possible the past inhabitants had been captured or simply annihilated as well. Neither Kazul nor Ru knew how the place had come to be abandoned, but Ru had discovered as he wandered during the nights and had mentioned it to Kazul in passing one day.

She had expressed an interest in seeing it, and so Ru had told her to meet him in a certain place at a certain time. When they met, he had led her off the way they had come to this empty, maybe haunted place to explore. There was nothing left to raid, not after all this time, but there could still be things to discover.

Kazul shot him a dirty look for the implication and lifted her chin defiantly, telling him, "When you get your guts ripped out by whatever's living here, I'm not going to lift a paw to help you."

"But you'll weep at my funeral," he said with a sly smile. "I know you will."

"Hah. I won't even say that you died out here. I'll tell everyone that you ran away like a coward." One corner of her mouth twisted upward in a smug expression that could only be described as a smirk. Ru would never have admitted it, but he liked seeing her smirk like that.

Ru stepped very close to Kazul, invading her personal space in a way he knew she disliked and which would challenge her to react. "And what would I be running away from?"

"Me. I'll say you tried to force yourself on me and I ran you off. They'd probably believe it of you, too. You're always around me, and people talk you know." She was still teasing him despite the distasteful subject she'd brought up so casually. Kazul had never had any difficulty making light of unpleasant, inappropriate topics of conversation. Rape among them.

"Oh?" Ru responded in a similar tone. "What do they say?"

Kazul had not moved from her spot, even though Ru could see that it bothered her to have him standing so close to her in a dozen little tells. It amused him to read these signs in her and see how determinedly she strove to overcome her innate aversion to closeness and physical contact. It also amused him to test it from time to time.

"They say you're a lion of obsession and strange passions, and that you fixated on me the first time you laid eyes on me." She raised her golden brown eyes to his green eyes, daring him to disagree with her.

"That sounds more like the fantasy of a teenage girl than the subject and product of gossip. But then, it would also be in keeping with what I heard."

Kazul made a small sound inviting him to elaborate. "Tell me what you've heard."

Ru leaned closer and began speaking very, very softly so that Kazul, too, had to lean in. Wearing an infuriating smirk Ru whispered, "I've heard that you became fascinated with me long before I was more than peripherally aware of your existence. I've heard you asked your half-brother to befriend me so that you could get closer. I've heard that you're in love with me."

She looked at him, startled and wide-eyed, and for a moment when their eyes met and her mouth opened it seemed that the whole nature of their relationship would change. Then she uttered a soft, disbelieving "huh" and shoved him backward with both forepaws pushing hard against his chest.

"In your dreams," she said, laughing unkindly.

"You're cruel," Ru said. "But you aren't convincing. I don't believe you."

Kazul shrugged. "Believe what you want, but please don't expect me to indulge you by playing along with your fantasies and delusions."

Ru's green eyes seemed to simultaneously darken and gleam for a moment when she spoke of his fantasies and illusions. Kazul saw it and sensed that perhaps the greatest danger to her tonight would not come from the abandoned settlement after all. When his pupils seemed to swallow his irid and his smirk vanished he seemed a darker, more dangerous lion. Her heartbeat sped up and her breath caught in her chest.

"You're curious, aren't you?" he asked, moving behind her and speaking with his mouth beside her left ear. He shifted to speak into her other ear, letting the bump of his nose almost touch the back of her neck as he did so. Then he continued to speak so that his breath danced lightly over the thin flesh there to make a shiver run down her spine. "You wonder about my strange passions."

Kazul held still, able to prevent herself from making any sort of conscious action but helpless to prevent her fur from standing on end or to slow her rapid pulse. At least her breathing remained under her control. Mostly. Controlling her breathing did not seem to have convinced her body that nothing was amiss however.

"And if I was curious?" She turned to look at him over her shoulder without moving away from him.

Her stillness told Ru much and more, and he wondered if she meant him to know it. Sometimes Kazul thought she was being obvious when she was being subtle and sometimes it was the other way around. She was playing his game, or maybe he was playing hers. Trying to figure out which it was now was futile, he decided.

"If you were," he said slowly, "you would have to be certain and you would have to ask."

"Ask what?"

Ru shook his head and stepped away from her. "You aren't ready. If you were, you'd already know."