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Winter winds did not bother Ataya. They rippled about him like a ghost of a caress, threading between his hair and through his clothes while his thoughts moved with them to elsewhere. Ethereal. Ever-present, and yet nowhere for more than a moment.

Nesrinn was a different story.

When Ataya had been asked to — or informed that he would — take on the duty of bringing his sister’s estranged bed partner to their house in the mountains so that their father might ‘meet’ with him, Ataya had only the lowest of hopes. That it would be quick and clean when it happened. That it would not be dragged out or brutal. That his sister would not have to watch. That Nesrinn’s body did not s**t itself terribly and leave an unpleasant mess to deal with.

But he kept them to himself. He felt, as such, like something of reaper, gathering to him and guiding on the body of someone soon to pass. Nesrinn — fool that he was, perhaps — followed without more than a scattering of questions. He wanted to see Akara, and that, apparently, was enough to inspire him to make the walk with death and entertain the demands of a murderer. Ataya wondered, as they traveled together in silence, what went through a man’s mind at that point, what it took to step forward, knowing that you danced the blade of a knife.

“When my father kills you,” Ataya said at length, his voice toneless as the gusts skirting between the legs of their hastars as they moved up the mountainside, “…what do you want done with your body? It would seem a waste to leave it, and I suspect it would upset my sister to see…”

He also had yet to have the opportunity to work with a proper Magescian corpse for his own purposes, but he supposed Nesrinn did not need to know that.

“She will be.”

Ataya let the conversation hang at that for an extended period, his mind flitting to the events to come, what it might take to actually spare Nesrinn’s life, and what good it would do in the long run. If their father was fully determined to kill him, he saw no happy endings for him, but Detraeus had waited this long, and allowed someone else to go for him. It prompted Ataya to at least toy with the idea, for a moment, that perhaps…

He put the thought from his mind. It wasn’t really his business after all, in any case. He didn’t want the man to die, but not because he especially cared one way or the other. He simply knew that Kara did, and did not want to see his sister wounded.

“You have nothing to be frightened of,” Ataya said at length. “You have a soul, after all…death is only a process, and not the last one. Besides…you might even live.”

With that, he clipped his hastar’s reins, driving her a pace or two forward and ahead of his company. They made it to the winding path leading towards the Doryu home when the snow was two fingers high on the ground, and the sun hovering halfway down the evening sky.

“You will wait.” Detraeus moved as he said it, before his daughter in an instant and filling the doorframe with a flick of his tail as his gaze narrowed on the distant, approaching riders. “I will see to him first.”

Detraeus’ attention flicked down, and a frown pinched his features. Anger, a snappish retort, stubbornness and disobedience at this point he could have anticipated and dealt with. The softer, hopefulness with its touch of wounded disappointment, however, made his chest tighten. The thought of the boy — that thing — near to her still made his skin itch and his wings flick. Defensive. Territorial.

Why had he even ‘invited’ it onto his land?

He should have done as he originally intended and killed him before bringing it here. And yet…

He rolled his shoulders, tail shifting to swing at a slower pace like a pendulum. After opening the door, he hung in the space there, eyeless gaze honed on the thing which had started all of this. ‘The father of your grandchild,’ his mate had said, and it left a strange, conflicted sickness in his gut.

“Walk behind me. You will not touch him, nor he you, unless I bid it. Do you understand? Or I will kill him before he finishes that breath.”

Det narrowed his gaze, flicking it towards his daughter, before grunting. It was a single, non-committal noise, and he gave no more answer than that immediately, starting out instead and moving towards their company.

“No,” he said at length. “Not until I say, if I say.”

‘Until every inch of him is stripped of a potential weapon and he knows exactly what will happen to him if he breathes improperly while near you. He should be dead by now. That is how ‘fortunate’ he is and he needs to know it is a fortune that can be retracted at any moment.’

Further down the path, Ataya slowed his hastar’s pace a touch. “Your weapons. How many do you carry on you that are concealed? For all that you may need them later, I do not suspect they will help you initially, and whatever other foolish things you might do, do not lie to my father. If he commands something of you, such as removing them or moving to stand at a certain place, I recommend immediate compliance. Also assume the truth: he is starting with the fixed conviction that you deserve to die, and you are here only to prove him wrong, mm?”

A pulse of skittering ice across the ground and a pluck at the chilled air told Ataya that his father had — as he might have expected — noted their arrival and was approaching. It also gave him surprising news, and he tilted his head, puzzled and double-checking, but no. That was most definitely his sister’s shape, her energy. He opened his mouth again.

“And whatever you do…do not breathe in my sister’s direction unless you are absolutely certain he has given you permission to do so.”

Detraeus felt like a bowstring drawn to the nocking point, each of his muscles taut and ready snap. It took everything in him not to draw his bow immediately on seeing the boy, but by some miracle, they managed to make it up before the hastars, where both stopped. Ataya dismounted. Detraeus gestured stiffly at their ‘guest.’

“Off of the beast. Slowly. Keep your hands out when you land. Ataya will remove your weapons. If you twitch…”

Ataya opened his mouth, but then decided against it and ran his hand gently down Rannah’s neck in a quick, comforting stroke before leaving her where she stood and moving to wait beside where Nesrinn would dismount so that he might follow his father’s order. For all the futility of it, Ataya didn’t suppose it mattered much, and he knew Nesrinn would cooperate. Why he had agreed to this to begin with, he would never know, and in some ways he wondered if he ought to resent the man for it. If he’d run of his own regard, than at least he might have saved his sister the heartache of watching him die…

But then, who knew what chance really had in store?

Ataya moved carefully, drawing his fingers over Nesrinn’s clothes: across and down his chest, about his waist, along his arms. He removed the obvious weapons at his hips, slid his fingers up the man’s back and then down. He considered asking where the ‘concealed’ weapons were at around that point, but supposed it was too late. If he did, he suspected his father would only assume there were more somewhere else, and better that he get to them on his own. His curiosity was soon assayed, in any case, as his fingers moved along Nesrinn’s thighs, and found them. Ataya knelt, working carefully over the fastenings to pull the set free before continuing his finger-search lower, to the other’s boots.

Putting his hands quite nearly literally all over the man who had impregnated his sister and getting on his knees before him was not — Ataya had to admit — on his list of predictions for how he expected the events to proceed. So far as his predictions had gone, however, he supposed it was so far among the better of options. As he finished, he ran his hands up in a final check, skirting dangerously close along the insides of Nesrinn’s thighs before removing himself entirely. He tilted his head and carded his fingers through his hair, shaking the snow from it where it had pooled on the ground when he knelt.

“There. He is weaponless.”

As Ataya stepped aside, Detraeus grunted behind him. Having watched the display, he still felt an itch in him, and moved forward after his son made space. He did not want to touch. But he wanted him touching his daughter less, and part of him was comforted that the other did at least look primarily dovaa. He plucked at the boy’s tunic sleeves, his chest, repeating a stiff and quicker, if no less thorough, version of what Ataya had performed. At length, upon finishing, he loomed before the boy, his wings stretching and flicking as he regarded him.

Detraeus opened his mouth, shut it, snorted, and then took a half step to the side, head notching a twitch towards his daughter. “Akara. You may. Briefly.” His gaze flit towards Ataya. “And Ataya…bring the boy’s weapons forward. He will fight me.”

Ataya pursed his lips. “I am not a beast of burden—”

“Or the boy will fight unarmed.”

“Enough.”

Detraeus bit the word out in a bitter quip. While Ataya moved, gathering the weapons and then leading his hastar off with them, towards the house, Detraeus’ gaze raked over their guest. Young, but a fighter. Fit enough. Indistinguishable from a dovaa at first glance. Detraeus assumed his Serenian heritage manifested itself in the worst way, and after a time flicked his tail, the winter wind skittering its way between them and filling the gap of silence until he spoke again.

“You are a barbarian.” A pause. “Can you use a sword?”