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Deals in the Dark

Spire...

So late at night.

The great Palace of Timeless Winters is quiet, and, even so far up, the sound of crickets and ravens is still heard from its many gardens. The lights dimmed on most of its corridors, allowing Moonlight to pour in. On many gardens and balconies, starlight could be felt as well, with a sky mostly open, for a change, devoid of the storm clouds that littered it most of the time in this season... but still cloudy enough to prevent a clear view of the sky.

And in this night, through corridors of marble, the Prince of Whiteshield walked, awash in insomnia... sitting on a balcony, feeling the night winds, and eating some chocolate from the package he had gotten for the Pale Angel. A least such small virtues could still be found in those terrible times where real food seemed to draw shorter by the day...

Breaking their shell on his mouth, feeling the wind, the air...

It was hard to move out of the Pale Angel's grasp without her waking up...

...and he hoped she would never know he left...

So I wake up together with you, my love...
... and so you do not get... ideas, about me.

Selina de Windia: She appears behind him, again, coming up out of nowhere. As she always does when she does not wish to been seen or heard...until it is the time she deems fruitful for it.

"Up late, are you?" Comes a neutral toned greeting from the shadow in the hallway behind him.

Alexander: He jumps as she speaks, looking around frantically until he sees her... and sighs in relief.

"You... you startled me..." His mien softens, and he sheds light on her shadow.

"I could not sleep." He says, picking the package and handling it to her... "Chocolates?"

Selina de Windia: "Aren't those for our dear lady of white?" Selina says, eyeing them. But she takes one anyway, with hazelnut inside it. Selina knows chocolates very well, afterall. "But I don't mind if I do."

What really makes other ladies jealous is she knows them very well without being big like some of them.

After eating it, she looks curiously at the Solar. "Or did things go badly?"

Alexander: "They.... went well." He says, blushing... "Thank the sun. I do not think I have been this scared anytime in all my life, you know... when the dead attacked... there was the adrenaline, there was the instinct. I could trust hate and fear. This time... I could trust nothing, there was only guilt. I have never been so scared, never."

He sighs, after a deep breath...

"... but I did it. Things went well, even though she wanted to run, at first..."

He places the package over the glass table on the balcony, as if motioning her to take a seat as well... "And I do not think she would mind you taking one. Not you."

Selina de Windia: "Me?" Selina asks curiously. Repeating his emphasis. But she does take the seat. Her look at him is...odd. Indecyperable. "She tried to kill me when she first found out. I threw what I did with you in the Lover's face to show her that she would have that much harder a time corrupting you...if that's what she wanted. She kept us from killing each other."

The Windian's eyes seem sharp at the moment. Like turquoise knives, almost. Analogues to what she ends lives with. They focus upon Alexander almost uncomfortably. "Like Moranine and Sati, hmm? For even less laudable reasons."

"I will not say I was not afraid. But I was also enraged."

Alexander: "Like Moranine and Sati, indeed. At least you have not actually killed each other."

He thinks back to a previous life, a white chocolate in his hand...

"No Fintan there. No white flame to burn Moranine. Maybe you were lucky for it... or maybe not..." He brings it to his lips, cracking part of it with such a loud sound, breaking the interior which holds such a delicious caramel... "... not, really. I would... not try to make it worse. Not when I can see it in your eyes."

"Which is why you are you to her."

Selina de Windia: "Perhaps. Do remember I am skilled at dealing death in a way Moranine never was." She reminds him, then shrugs. "There are greater pains than death and defeat, in any case. I almost lost her, more than once, at Amber Post. Maybe I am losing Moon too, and don't know it."

The eyes soften. "I am...what? Something you are not? Something you can never be?"

Alexander: "You did leave Moon behind..." The boy speaks with worry, not judgement.

"And you..." He breaks more of the white chocolate. A little bit of caramel drips on his lip, but he licks it off. "... you love her. You love her so much, I can see... and you... well, she wished to go with you. To spend so long with you... like she did, even before. You two seem to be well together... and she can forgive you. She hardly seemed to mind, you and Moon... and, well, others..."

"While me... I am not sure if I can keep her happy, from now on, and on the same bed as my ladies..."

Selina de Windia: "She does mind." Selina says with a snort. "It is just that, as far as I can tell, being a slut or however you wish to put it, is too deeply ingrained in me. You, on the other hand," She indicates the prince with a slightly raised index finger. "Are not made of such stuff. So the thoughts go, I suspect."

The finger lowers, hand goes back to the table. "Of course, those stereotypes are woefully inadaquate on both counts. She loves you and you love her so much as well. Despite what we all are."

"Moon may understand better than her...but I shouldn't neglect him all the same."

Alexander: "I... have not been much like the knight I wanted to be. Not with Kanti... but I... have to change, I think. I have to be a different type of knight. Valencia... I feel such love for her. But a love that does not diminish my love for my lady. That would not make any sense for me before..." He says, as he slowly gets up, gliding, with the utmost grace, closer to the Dark Angel...

"... but now it does. This is who I am. And I can still be a knight."

He picks Selina's hand, then, drawing her up, to him... "I can still be her dream."

... and holding her tightly. "And I should be nicer to my love's love. To the one who has tried to protect me since our first day, who tried to advise me, even if she did with a barbed tongue. Who gave me sin to burn my rod and soul in cold nights, and advice to keep me away from the darkness."

Selina de Windia: She doesn't really know what to say to that. So she hugs him back, holding him close. More protectively than sexually. Maybe they would do that again, someday, maybe not. Best not to right now.

In any case...

"I do try, now, to not be so possessive. At least not with you. She fell in love with both of us, gradually -- it was not just on our side that this occurred." She shakes her head, thinking of the other times they'd fought. "Seeing us fight must distress her."

Alexander: "No.... we should not. We should make her happy. We love her, right?" He says, inhaling her... so tightly with her. He is happy for what his sister has done, right now. For him, her scent is such... lust. He knows that is how he remembers it... and how he might act if he was not unable to, right now. Or not, pehaps. But it would still have been a struggle... "She should be at peace with us, and us at peace with each other... we will see how she wants us. She seems to have definite plans on how to handle it..."

"I wonder how I will, however..."

"I am not like you..."

Selina de Windia: "Not like me?" Selina asks curiously, looking at him now. "Are you saying I am more adaptable?"

Alexander: "No. You are more... secure." He says, looking up...

And appearing so innocent, with his head on her bosom. So pure, not thinking about lust even with the Dark Angel there with him. "I feel... so lonely. I want them close to me. You keep them as separate things, it seems... but I want them all close to me. I wanted the Circle... a family, did I not? A family..."

"I will ask Kanti to move to my room, my lady willing. I want to keep my angels as close to me as I can, Aine... because I need them. I dread to be alone, I realised... my sister... a week ago, she got me to think about my life. So very hard... and this is what I realised. If I have to explain my life, to excuse my life... it is that. I need them. I need their company. Their warmth."

"I wonder if they will understand, being all together..."

Selina de Windia: "A family to replace the one you lost." Selina says, almost an echo of what he has just said. How odd, she had said the same...

So many years ago.

She had not gotten it then, of course. Not with the Wyld Hunt still in force. You did not stick your neck out too far in those days.

"That security is because my life made it necessary...but..." Her voice wavers just a bit, before steadying. "I wanted it too. That festered and sat unfulfilled in a world where people took what they wanted, until I wanted it only for me. Until anyone who threatened it died. That was how I lived for a long time."

Alexander: So you are... just like me...

We are the same.

He clung closer to her. More tightly. His white wings wrapped around her, protectively, until he touched her dark ones. They begun to relax, as if asking for Selina to do the same, to close them both in a cocoon of white and black... "Maybe you should get it, too? Hold them close to you, like a family? Moon... Iselsis... Lilith... Fiona, even? She likes you..." He does not know about Ellena, or Bronze Butterfly, but he would mention them, if he knew... "...and me?"

"I... want to be part of it, with you..."

"I will be here, for you... like you were for me. When I needed, and did not even realise..."

That in your way, even as you made me hate and fear you, you protected me...

Selina de Windia: "I am getting it...in a way." She says with a faint smile. "Even though we have our fights, it seems we all get along, in a fashion. Maybe as time goes on we'll get along better."

Maybe it will be less based on sex and mutual need, too.

But Selina knows that sex is a strong binder. And based on desperation. As is mutual need.

What is bound can later hold together more sturdily.

She pats his head. Almost affectionately. "You are. We are all part of this. Even Cael, and I don't really trust him."

Alexander: "Family, then..." He smiles up at her, so happy...

His smile is contagious in a flawless face, touching her with the purity of the sun.

"We will fight less, now. And even if we do... will be like me and my sister. Not like enemies. I will not hate you, anymore. I will not antagonize you, anymore..." He says, then seems to think something... '... but please do not share milady with anyone else. Or I will be angry! "

Selina de Windia: "Share her?" Selina shakes her head again. "As if she's a pliant girl I can lead to my lustful partners? Pteh." The woman breathes out sharply to show what she thinks of that.

"Besides, where did you get that idea?"

Alexander: He blushes, just a little... "Well... I did say I wanted to keep all my ladies together with me..."

"... did I not?" He says, almost shyly....

"You are my exception... because you truly love her. But I would be hurt, like she was..." He shakes his own head, suddenly his feelings, his words, losing coehrence as they are spoken. "I... cannot say why I am different. Just..."

Selina de Windia: She raises her eyebrows at Alex. "Is that a double standard I'm hearing? Not that I think she would join me with...Moon. They do not seem to get along very well."

Alexander: "I... think so." He says, even more embarassed and looking a bit away...

"... sorry. I cannot help it..."

Selina de Windia: "Like I said, I doubt she would consent." Selina shrugs. "In fact, I cannot foresee it."

Then she sighs, and shakes her head, again. "Of course, I did lay with her as a man." Her gaze is sly. "I...had to find out what it was like. So many years, I wondered. And I wanted to know what it is like for you..." She finishes a trifle darkly.

Alexander: A pall comes over his face.

His heart skips a beat.

It is so silly. She has laid with the Dark Angel. He knew it. He had always known it. Even before they had really been a couple, he had seen them as one. Then why... then why does that make him blanch like this? Just why... does it make him so...

... hurt?

"I... see..." Was it due to something he had felt only he could have with her? Was it because the Dark Angel was... different, from him, and thus did not count properly as competition? Why was it... he did not know...

Selina de Windia: "I thought it was best to tell you that now. Instead of you finding out from her, or in front of her." Selina says simply, not gloating or really giving much away. "This is not gloating."

Gloating is worse than pointless, right now.

"But I will not have this out, the way it did with her, when she learned I had been with you."

Alexander: "That is that... double standard again, right?"

The prince chuckles a little sadly, letting go of her, watching the stars...

And trying to close all of his feelings, which he knew to be silly, selfish...

"And what was it like? Like me, and not like you...?"

Selina de Windia: She does feel sorry for him. But...she had done it, and Vorpal might or might not sugar-coat it. In any case, it was Selina's idea, so she should be the one to say so. "Don't blame her, please. It was my idea."

"Perhaps unfortunately, I can say I know how you feel. Not exactly, but close enough." Then she thinks, sighing. "It was...odd. She was so soft...and I was not... I guess it will be harder to make fun of men after that."

"And I do know I do not want our Eclipse doing that to her."

Alexander: "I know I do not want anyone else doing that to her." He says, faster than he should, and then chuckles at what she says. "That is... interesting. Well, I did put a dress once... thanks to my sister. She is... mean." He shakes his head, turning to her...

"But fair is fair. Just you and me, then? Keeping her our lady" He reaches to hold the Dark Angel's hand..

And even through confusion and remains of shock, can still smile.

Selina de Windia: She had planned to try that with Moon, as she had arranged Iria. Weeks of seeing Vorpal has, however, taught Selina that she would not enjoy being treated that way, even if it is at a lesser level. She would be highly unlikely to ever expose herself to such a tryst. But agreeing not to, here, will kill it for good... The little voice from before, comes back into her head. The one that saw her through years of life in places where she might have died otherwise.

Always keep your options open.

Sometimes the price is too high.

She sighs, almost visibly deflating, black wings drooping a bit behind her. "One of the more delightful nights -- however remote its chances -- I could picture dies with my agreement...but very well."

Perhaps that double she had seen that night of victory at the Boil? But no. Vorpal is more than her body, however alluring. Far more.

I suppose I had better not ever mention it to Moon again.

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