Is it too much to ask for Iphigenia x Azriel? If you don't feel like it, Iphigenia x whoever you're most comfortable with
Search unrealized, shadow drifts from chamber to chamber. The wards of some eclipse in total, while others yield with such ease as to be fruitless within. Yet these wards around these chambers—their snarled warning carries the resonance of treasure kept like secret.
A rustle beneath Azriel's ear confirms it.
As he steps through the in-between of the world, the sense of having slunk past a beast too great to mind all of its body strikes him. His pulse quickens, that anticipatory thrum beating at his veins. He settles it with a breath.
Weapon, he expects to find. Tool. Undeniable proof of double-dealing.
But before the hearth sits only a female, knees tucked tight to her chest, toes delved appreciatively into the fur of a rug. She gazes into the flickersnap fire like it might soon reveal something to her. Its glow sets her alight.
She waits, the shadows sigh. She waits always for him.
Made aware in the saying, the wood of the keep groans out warning to her: Intruder.
The tune of this court must meet her ear wrongly. She glances to the flooring and wrinkles up her nose. Then, as though disgusted by her proximity to it, she rises to her feet and turns to settle instead on a nearby chaise.
Azriel stares, transfixed.
Her resemblance to the lady of this court is a disorienting thing—the soft angles of her jaw, the delicate set of her nose, the loving arrangement of her brow. It is her hair which sets her apart, her eyes, both rich in earthen depth and gleaming like dew; it is the revelation made of her body, draped in gold-wrought chain and plum gossamer so thin as to afford the imagination no opportunity; it is the bounty laid out beneath.
Those things, and the collar around her throat.
Shadow deepens beneath the drape of her hair. So close, the gems bleed red as aestival rubies. No seam at the back, no catch. The metal has been welded that she cannot remove it.
Indignation frosts his chest.
A shiver overtakes her. That is when he notices the steam drifting from her eyelashes—tears turned mist turned nothing. Were it not for this, he never would have realized she had been weeping, so adept is she at concealing her sorrow.
Out now through to his fingers, twitching them towards Truth-Teller.
"High Lord," she rejoices. A sweep of her gaze over Beron in her approach, and her bearing attunes itself at once to him. No longer the eager enthusiasm of a lover returned but the tender haven afforded a beleaguered warrior. "Did not you enjoy the banquet?"
"Precious little to enjoy of dining alongside a half-breed whelp," he sneers.
Her round eyes sparkle up at him. As her fingers alight idly on the band of his trousers, his glint dark and hungry.
A dip of his mouth beside the arch of her ear. "But you, petal," he murmurs, reaching between to part the scant fabric of her garment and paw at her sex, "you, I intend to enjoy in full."
She waits, the shadows hiss. For her savior.
microfic ask game if ! ur nasty