Lover, Assassin, Witch....

It was a delicate dance that we danced, swirling around each other in perfectly complimenting colors. A Warlord Prince of any Jewel rank is dangerous. More than dangerous, deadly. A witch who wears the Gray is equally deadly. There is imbalance in it, by nature. Who leads? Who follows? His caste is higher. My Jewel is darker than his Opal. I am female. He is male. He is an aristo. I was a whore.

We moved cautiously around each other, fingers brushing first, then stepping closer. A brush of lips, a breath caught, and then I retreated. He followed.

In the end the patterns we trod circled around each other too tightly to be distinguished. He Served with stubborn determination, bending me gently until I accepted what he offered with a disgruntled snort. He’d get so angry if I wouldn’t let him that it really wasn’t worth the bother, as I told my family. Opal Jeweled or not, I grumbled, he was still a Warlord Prince and after several bruises from losing bouts with fighting sticks, I was getting tired of fighting even if my masseuse appreciated the business.

Then he offered to take over that position, warm, strong hands sliding over supple skin, and we started a new dance altogether.

It used to be clients. When I worked, I usually worked all but 3 nights of the month and slept during the day. Nothing kept me from that sleep. Not fury at my clients, not guilt over my marks. I slept like a child.

But now it is the child that keeps me awake. I fear for her. I fear for her future, for what she will be. With my blood and his mingled, with all the things we bring. The coldness, sometimes. The anger. The bitterness. It laces through both of us and I fear what we could do to her.

I don't talk about it, because someone has to believe in us. Someone has to know that we can do this. That we have the ability to change, to be better for her. But he's so...He posts things. He talks about his inability to change and I think, No. This is not the man I know. The man I know wants to change. He wanted me. He wanted this child. And when he looks at me, and when he feels her move...it doesn't make sense, the words he says at other times. The things I know he does with others. The needs I can't fulfill for him. The places he goes.

I wonder if I am the same. If the face he sees, the face they all see, if it's something else. Another me and underneath is her. The girl from the streets who had no qualms about killing. The girl consumed by hatred and bitterness, planning her father's murder, her mother's revenge. That's not what I want to pass on to my daughter. That isn't the legacy I want to bring. I want her to grow up loved and happy and safe and at peace.

And I lie awake wondering how she can have that with parents like us.

Surreal slipped outside with a smile, lifting her face to the sun, just closing her eyes and breathing it in. It wasn't that she hadn't been outside in the preceding month, but the nausea and exhaustion had been bad enough that it hadn't been often or for extended periods of time. That had all passed in the past couple of weeks, and all she could think about was being out of those rooms, energy filling her in ways she'd never experienced.

The trees were starting to change, just around the edges, and there was a crisp smell of autumn in the air. The first harvest festivals had passed already, and Samhain loomed within the next month. Fergus had taught her the names and some of the ritual meanings and she found herself delighting in the learning of the things so important to these distant bloodkin of her mother's people.

She wrapped a shawl around her closely before anyone wandering by could fuss at her for being out in the chilly air. A quiet stroll through the gardens, maybe out to the woods, would be good for both her and baby. She'd had to have her dresses let out, smiling as she felt her shape start to change to accommodate the child. She'd always been tiny, so the difference was more readily apparent, but as she touched her stomach she felt an almost irrational urge to bounce at the physical surety of the baby's growth.

Then something did bounce, or at least flutter. Her hands settled flat over her stomach and she gasped, then grinned as she felt it again. A definite movement she could feel both inside and against her hand. She didn't know if anyone else would be able to feel it, but Sam would and this was something she wanted to share with him.

Of course, not knowing where he was proved to be a bit of a problem.

"Samael!" She was bouncing now, beaming with delight as she ran down to the stables to see if that's where he'd wandered off to.

I am generally a truthful sort. Oh, there are things I suppose I lie about, or used to, at least. My age. That I liked it when they -- fill in the blank with whatever you think a client might have done. That I didn't love the kill. That I didn't take pleasure in killing, though Sadi called me on that. I enjoyed the kill, yes, but I didn't kill for my own pleasure.

That I didn't find release in it. Have I said that out loud before? That sometimes the only peace I could find came in bloodshed. I can look back and tell the truth about that now, when I can find peace in so many other things.

But generally, I tell the truth. I've been called abrasive for it, for not sugar coating it. Unless you are a client or a mark, what you see is what you get, and as I don't have clients or marks anymore...well. This is me. Who I am at the core and I don't think there are lies so pervasive to warrant discussion on their own.

[Locked from Samael and my family]

Well, perhaps there is one.

Does it really count as a confession of a lie if I'm too cowardly to put it where anyone I lie for would see? But it's a lie for a good reason, and I wouldn't hurt them for the world, so it is best if it stays here, between us and away from them.

"I love him like a sister, or a cousin."

There is nothing...familial about my affections for him. There hasn't been since I was a child. I have always loved him since the first day he swept in and saved us, loved him as a woman, not a sister. I would have done nearly anything for him, if he'd just asked.

But it's not a truth I will ever tell him. Not a truth I will tell Jaenelle or Lucivar or Saetan. Because no matter how much I love him, he does not feel the same for me. And he is happy. He loves and is loved by someone so very much more worthy of him than I could ever be. And I love her so, as well. Why would I ever disrupt their happiness with my truth? To love is not a betrayal, and I loved him before she was born. I can't stop it now, but I'll keep lying about it because I don't want there to ever be a question of my loyalty to her. She is my Queen. She is Witch. She is my Sister. And my loyalty and love for her, for our family, goes deeper than any passion for Sadi.

Besides, I have Samael, now. And I love him so very much. A woman's passion, conceived as a woman, and chosen deliberately, through trouble and trials, instead of a child's adoration deepened over time into something more heated and desperate.

It's different that what I feel for Sadi, but no less deep. I finally have a chance to have that love with someone. To have a family and a home of my own. To be the center of someone's world. This is how it should be. How it is. And I am happy.

Why would I let a truth out that could disrupt all of that?

No.

I suppose I should clarify and expand that, but it really comes down to just that. I'm not saying I don't have friends. I'm not saying I don't want or appreciate them, but it doesn't come easy. A lot of people are put off by my occupations, or former occupations. Not that I care about their opinions, but it does make that first hurdle of friendly acquaintances harder to get over. I'm naturally suspicious. I learned early that giving trust easily is an unwise move, and when even your best friend betrays that trust, it makes it harder to trust again.

I always feel like I'm living on the edge, and I've learned that the only person I can completely depend on is me. I may learn to trust others, to a certain extent, but that knowledge is always there and it makes the friendship making process more difficult.

I'm prickly, or so I've been told. I'm opinionated. I'm quick to solve a dispute in violence, and have few qualms about killing. None of this lends itself well to making friends. It makes people wary, and rightfully so. Of course, I'm wary of them as well. So we circle each other warily and keep from reaching out for a long time.

I have friends. There are people willing to see past that, willing to be patient until I trust them. But not many, and it is never easy. It works for me.

That rather depends on your definition of strong, doesn't it? There's an argument to be made that what happened to me as a child made me strong. I survived it, at least and there's only one other I know who has managed to come through a rape on her Virgin Night still able to use her Craft. Most of them are at least broken, if not driven completely mad. So, one could say that was a strength. At 12, I managed to hold on to myself through the first rape, and the second, and the third. I survived and that has to mean something, yes?

Whether I survived intact...my inner web, yes. My use of Craft, yes. I held onto those, and yet part of me thinks that they managed to kill something else, and I was too young then to realize what I'd lost. Even now, I can't put a name to it.

I don't know. My instinct is to say, "Yes. If you come through the trials and you're still alive, then you will grow from what you learn and you will be stronger in the end." It makes such logical sense and it allows me to derive some pride in surviving what my life was. It allows me to say, "Look. I survived that. I can survive anything this damn world has to throw at me, because each trial just makes me stronger." There is peace in saying that. Pride. Defiance to throw back into the face of the world. I scream at the wind to do its worst, because it can't break me.

But the defiance, the fear, the darkness it bred...is it strength? Or is it another form of death. A death of self. Of gentleness. Of goodness. If I had come through it as Jaenelle did, wise and patient and kind and loving, perhaps I could claim it. But I didn't.

Oh, I'm strong. And you won't break me. And you won't bend me to your will. However, perhaps that's because the only strength I have left is my defiance, my determination to not be dragged down. Perhaps the rest of what I could have been is already dead.

If Kartane SaDiablo had his way, I never would have been born. It was his habit, you see, to break a young witch, no more than 12 or 13 at the most, and keep her until he seeded her. Then he either terrified her into spontaneously aborting or had one of the Healers under his mother's thumb take care of it. Once the child was gone, he tossed the girl into the street to return to her family in shame or to find work at a Red Moon House.

For centuries that was his game and none of them escaped. None until Titian.

She didn't go home, and I've never known why. Perhaps the Priestesses at the Gates back to Kaeleer could not be trusted? Perhaps she thought her family would not accept me, though they have done so with open arms since my coming here. Perhaps she was ashamed, though she never showed such shame to me. She didn't go to a Red Moon house where they would have been reluctant to take in a pregnant whore, and he could have found her.

No, she ran and she hid in the streets. She whored herself for a pittance to keep us both fed. She taught me what she could to keep me safe. And she screamed her last breath to keep me safe, pulsing energy in the walls to warn me from our home when Kartane sent an assassin to finish that which he hadn't been able to. There was no reason to kill her except that she ran, except that she bore me, and she knew that was the risk when she defied him.

I never understood any of it. Not why she didn't go home where she would be safe. Not why he wanted me dead so badly. And most of all why she didn't just abort me and make her way to safety and away from him, able to slide into the shadows and rebuild a life with as few reminders as possible.

None of the men who took me ever seeded me. I was lucky, I suppose, though I always wondered if it was damage from the first time. But I swore if they did, that I would get rid of their seed. That I would not carry the child of my rapist to term.

Only now do I begin to understand. I feel the tiny flutter of life inside me, the consciousness awakening though there is nothing physical yet that should give such a feeling, or so they tell me. This child was conceived in love. Wanted by both father and mother. Her life will be safe in a way I never knew. But what I have come to realize is that none of that matters where she and I are concerned. Not who her father is. Not how she will be raised. Not where she will live. Only that she is there inside of me. She is part of me and I cannot dream of harming her. Mine to protect. Mine to love. That I will share those moments and duties with a man I love means that I am blessed, and that she will know the wholeness I would wish for her, but it does not effect my love for her one way or the other.

To feel such a thing is to know, finally, why Titian did as she did. I would do anything for this child. The streets again. Separation from my family. Hiding forever. Whatever it took to raise her whole and healthy and safe in this world. I finally understand my mother, and I hope that wherever she is, she knows that.

I think that by now everyone who knows me knows the answer to this one, sugar. The breaking of a witch. The abuse of a child--physical, emotional or sexual. Rape in any form. The abuse of a witch, forcing her to kneel and stripping away her power.

It was done to my mother. They tried to do it to me, more than once. The feel of fists and the terror of being violated, the helplessness of that feeling stays with me, even now after all this time. It sticks in my throat, and when I see or hear about it happening to someone else, I can't stop the spike of fury.

No one has the right to take such a thing from anyone else. No one has the right to do such a thing. And those that do will not hear a thing when I find them. All they will feel is the thrust of my blade the moment before their hearts stop.

May the Darkness be merciful, my lover has a tail. And whiskers.

Somebody fix it.