Lover, Assassin, Witch....

It's not a title she ever expected to hear. It's one she worked hard to convince herself she didn't want to hear, because children were not something you wished on any whore. Everything got harder then. While living with Falonar, the same sort of resistance was there. I don't want a child, she had told him, even as her eyes watched Daemonar flying near the rafters.

A year ago, she changed her mind. Two months ago, the world changed.

Life goes on, and old habits reassert themselves. She started training as soon as she'd recovered from the birth and courtesy of the power it took to wear the Grey, she was almost back in fighting form, though her body was still rounded in ways it hadn't been before, and the fullness of breasts that were aching and heavy with milk tended to throw off her balance in subtle ways. Her body was hers again, and yet there was a sure knowledge at her core that it wasn't really, wouldn't really ever be hers again.

It belonged to the sleeping bundle in the crib in the nursery, with her bright green eyes and softly pointed ears that not even her father's blood added to her grandfather's had erased. Surreal hadn't expected that part of her new station. The fierce protectiveness, yes. She had seen it often enough in Titian's eyes to expect it. But the utter surety that she was no longer her own was unnerving in some ways.

In others, it was perfection.

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.

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?

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.

It's a welcome feeling when my fingers curl around the handle. Familiar. Comforting. I remember the first one she handed me, the first time I wielded it, trying to imitate her movements, jerky, off balance. I was frustrated. She was patient. It didn't help in the end, not really. She was still gone, though I carried it with me, the bone handle cutting deep into my palm where I clutched it too tightly. It was crude, that first weapon, and I couldn't call it to my hands when he bound them and held me down.

I was too stunned at the next. Too frightened of the one after. In too much pain with the fourth. But then came one, and my body was adjusting to what they did to it. It still hurt, but there was the ability to think under the pain, to hate. To rage. To call it in and wrap my hand around it and plunge it deep into his back until he bled as much as I did the first time.

There were others, and people learned. They talked. The plotted, but no one cared enough to stop me. Then he came and there was training and there were teachers. It became a dance in and of itself and separated from the basic needs of survival it became a release. Grace and beauty under the brutality of the movement. Anyone can watch a fencing match and see the beauty, but the grace in the movement of a smaller blade is often lost. Far too often it is used for only one thing, though there are some who can see the beauty in the patterns it can trace on skin as it slices it away. Precision in the cuts. A twist of the wrist. The sure knowledge that the thin blade has done damage no surgeon can repair, slicing a triangle in the heart that can't be stitched closed.

A beautiful instrument ornamented, decorative and deceptively harmless looking, but it delivers death, swift and sure. It's always with me, and there will be none who take what I'm not willing to give ever again.

I'm going to assume you mean romantically, sugar, and not marks that might have escaped my attention in my other profession. Of course, truthfully, no one's ever gotten away in either one. I'm not unprofessional enough to let a mark get away, and my romantic past is somewhat limited.

Falonar, no matter what the bastard might claim, did not "get away." I walked away, and I've no regrets about it. I didn't love him. He didn't love me. The sex was mediocre. I left before it got even more boring. And before he could try and find a way to leave me.

I'm happy with Samael. He makes me happy. He understands me and I understand him, and we fit in a way I've almost never fit with anyone before. There's nowhere I'd rather be, and any talk of people getting away...

Well. You have to have someone before they can get away, yes? And I've never had anyone else besides Falonar, who we've established I've no regret over not being with anymore. Samael, for all the confusion his world can still bring, is far, far preferable in every fashion. And so, if I've never had anyone else, then there wasn't anyone else to get away, was there? No. And so there isn't. One that got away, I mean. Because I never had him anyone else. And besides, anyone else would be far better off where he was and who he might or might not be with and...fuck. Nevermind. Cross that out.

No one. There's no one who got away.

Well, now, sugar, that depends on the people you're asking. Family and friends or acquaintances and strangers? There's a wide chasm between the perceptions there. With family and friends, generally what you see is what you get. With others, let's just say I learned a long time ago to hide behind a smile and to let myself appear to be whatever it was they wanted me to be. It was part of the job to create the fantasy, the illusion, and I was very good at it.

What they actually perceive? Probably they look and see a whore. They all know what I used to do. My name is too well known in both Realms for that to be secret. And that gives them general ideas of what they think I should be. Weak and passive, to let men use me instead of taking my own pleasure. Easy, that I'll spread my legs for anyone and anything. Avaricious, to sell my body and take money for sex. Manipulative social climber, to have talked my way into one of the most prominent aristo families in Kaeleer. I've heard whispers some think I slept my way in, that the males want someone on hand, should their wives turn them away.

I used the first two to my advantage for 350 years. I can't snub my nose at them now. I was stronger than most of my clients, but it wouldn't have done to let them know that. They had aggressive, dominating females at home they served. They took from me what they couldn't get from them. It was how it was. It was how I made my living. I don't regret it now. Everything has a price, and that my reputation follows me is the price I paid for staying alive and taking what control I could back of my life.

My family and friends don't see that, I don't think. Don't perceive me that way. They all know of the second occupation that the first was a cover for. They know about the knives and the poisons and the blood and the death. Maybe not the details, but at least in general. Daemon knows most of the details, though even he may not know about my fondness for the witchblood as a weapon.

My family would tell you I'm stubborn. Snarly. Opinionated. Difficult. Hopefully, they'd tell you I'm loyal as well. Prickly sometimes gets substituted for snarly. Someone told me once he thought I wanted to be male. He almost lost his balls for saying it, which he would have said proved his point. My family knows nothing could be farther from the truth.

[locked from the family]Sometimes, I wonder though, who sees beneath that. I'd like to think the family does. Oh, I'm not saying I'm not prickly and stubborn and difficult. I am, and there's no getting around that. But even that's not all I am. But I don't let them see that. Not the tears. Not the aching loneliness. Not the desire to for once have something and someone I can call mine. To have a place that is mine. To build something rather than just destroy. Life instead of death. Sometimes, they catch glimpses, but I wonder just how much they know. If they don't, then that's all on me...and I don't know if I want them to see.

It was a small fortune that lay there in the middle of the bed. A lucrative week at Deje's Red Moon House, and an even more lucrative contract performed to the client's satisfaction. My fingers sifted through the gold, watching coins trickle through my fingers. They sparkled against even the warmth of my skin as I sat next to them, running them through my hands again and again. The price of skin. The price of blood. The price of sex. The price of death.

Everything has a price.

I was worth a fortune, in the bedroom and out. I could command any price I wished for my services. A fortune.

I sold my talents and as I studied the gold I wondered if that was what I was worth. Golden skin, golden coins. Cold against skin, like a blade, and just as deadly in their own way.

Everything has a price. Even me. I hated those coins, but I scooped them up and vanished them to join the rest of my small fortune. I could quit. I could retire to a small house in a small town somewhere. Get a cat. Maybe a dog. No more nights on my back. No more days with a blade in my hand.

But the blade was the joy and the men between my thighs were the price I paid for it. The gold piled up. I bought what I needed, though truly most of my wardrobe had been provided by grateful clients, and what I took away from a house was mine to keep. I saved for that day when I could walk away. When the debt had been extracted. When I could rejoice in that fortune. Revenge was better than gold.

There was a debt to be paid that the largest fortune in the world would not satisfy. A debt that the blood that stained my hands would not erase.

Once it was paid to my satisfaction, in screams and pleas for mercy not given, then I could retire. Then I could rest.

But until then, I'd continue to pay the price and earn the fortune and make each slice of the blade a promise for what was to come.

I'm not sure about the "intentionally making a fool of myself" bit, but I did what I did intentionally and knew I looked a fool doing it, so I'm going to say it's my journal and that's how I'm interpreting the question.

It was shortly after Winsol. I was still contemplating the move to Amdarh, still not sure what to do about Samael, about Daemon, about...anything really. I'd wrapped the gifts in paper that I bought in New York, a city in the other Realm, other world. Something to share of what I'd seen with my family.

It had snowmen on it, and I was intrigued. It's not that children in Kaeleer and Terreille don't make snowpeople. They do. Beautiful ones. But I never got the chance. Not much snow in the slums of Draega and a child whoring herself on the streets doesn't have time for such things.

Looking back, there was only one time I can even say I played in the snow. I was 20 and had decided to take some time off--just a week or so--and get away from the Red Moon houses. The court Daemon was serving at was busy with their preparations and he was able to slip away as well. We met in Shalador at one of our hideaways. Well, his hideaway that would become one of mine. There was snow and it was hard for him to get me off of the sofa in front of the fire with my nice book, but he managed it by promising to cook dinner for the next three nights. We went for a walk, and I'd gotten a bit ahead of him when something hit me from behind. He'd thrown a snowball at me and I just...stared at him. The Sadist was throwing snowballs? Of course, at that time I'd only heard the name. I was a child, really, still. Hadn't even made my Offering yet. I scooped snow up and threw it back. The bastard put up a shield, smirking. It was war pretty quickly though, and he finally dropped the shield to give me a fighting chance. We went back inside only when our fingers were too numb to do anything else. Two whores laughing in the kitchen on holiday from their lives. He made me wrap up in a blanket to not catch a chill and brought me hot toddies all night.

But since that week, 'til this Winsol...it wasn't really something I'd done again. I looked back on it as a bit of childhood that was stolen from me. A Winsol gift from my friend.

So when Daemon suggested we make the snowman on the Hall's grounds, I sort of stared at him. He'd been humoring a child then. We were both adults now. I mean, if he wanted to take Daemonar out to build a snow man, that was different. But no. He tugged me outside again, with the same eagerness he'd shown that week so long ago.

Do you know how ridiculous people look rolling snow balls around on a lawn to make them bigger? Graysfang got involved as well, thrilled to be able to play whatever game we were playing and knocked it over more than once. We broke to play snowball fetch with him, and I, ex-whore and assassin, was chasing a wolf around a yard trying to retrieve the snowman's nose and eyes. I tripped, falling flat on my face in the snow and Daemon almost fell over from laughing at me so hard. That degenerated into a snowball fight of our own because such an insult as laughing at me had to be repaid with snow down his back. Graysfang pounced us both and there was wrestling and possibly tickling. We were both soaked through by the end of it, warming spells or not, and we looked a sight. My hair was bedraggled and falling all down and my trousers were muddy and covered in bits of grass that hadn't quite been covered yet. Flushed and sweating and panting for air and Daemon...immaculate, never a hair out of place Daemon was not in much better shape. We both looked like fools. Grown-ups playing like children and making a mess of the lovely carpets when they tramped back inside. I knew it. I had only to look at Daemon to know what I must look like.

And I just...didn't care. It didn't matter. I'm not sure I'd ever had that much fun.

We got back down to business when Graysfang finally collapsed in exhaustion and by the end we had a snowman. In a nice dinner jacket. With a snifter of brandy in his hand and a look about him that sent us both scampering inside before anyone could see who'd made the snowman on the lawn that looked like the High Lord of Hell.

I know what most people think of me. At least most of "society" as it's made up both in Terreille and even still here. They look at me and see my former profession. Whore. Not enough of them know of the other to see that side. The males away from the Coven get this look in their eyes, sometimes. Speculation and lust combined with something darker. What would I let them do to me? What could they get away with? And ought they do such to someone under the protection of Saetan SaDiablo? They generally decide that the latter risk outweighs the potential for what they could get away with, and thus they tend to leave me alone.

But I move through them here, looking for those that might be spies for Dorothea. Looking for anyone who threatens Jaenelle. And all I see is their eyes following me with the same thought and I know that the poison that's corrupted the Blood of Terreille has come here to Kaeleer. What I'm not sure of yet is how deep it runs, or how we can stop it from ruining the Shadow Realm as it has the Realm of Light.

The one person I'm unsure of, as always, is Daemon. Perhaps it's silly to be unsure. Likely it's my own guilt still niggling there. We seem to be back to where we were all those centuries, as if our efforts for Jaenelle and my care of him, when he'd let me, while he was in the Twisted Kingdom healed the old wounds. But you don't live in fear of someone for 50 years without lingering repercussions. You don't do something so incredibly stupid that it costs you your dearest friend--your only friend--without lingering doubt.

Not even I can be that cold inside.

I know what I did was wrong. We've never discussed it. Always things more pressing. People to help. Our jobs to do, such as they were and are. And he's happy now, with his chance with Jaenelle. They're still so unsure sometimes...I don't want to be in the way of their healing each other. So, perhaps it's best I'm in Amdarh away from the Hall, or at Sam's Tower, away from Kaeleer.

I don't know what he thinks. What he remembers. I don't want the coldness, the darkness that we let--that I let come between us wound the chance he has now at happiness. I don't want to tear the family I've found apart, or have any of them looking at me the way others do.

I don't want them, or him, to look at me and think what I see in the men of Amdarh and Little Terreille's eyes.

Whore.