A silver seal etches through her veins and into my own. A temporary contract.

Thousands of insects crawling through each and every fiber of my being like a dance of electricity and smoke, the push and pull of reciprocated energy. Thoughts, feelings, they all come crashing into me. A personal education on someone supposedly estranged.

Yet, through those thoughts and feelings, I see an outstretch of cobblestone and gravel leading to a veiled palace. I hear the grinding of wheels on half paved stretches of road and horses breathing in silent cold air.

A raven-haired mistress sits inside a coach with hands folded gently in her lap and eyes transfixed permanently outside. Her gaze lingers on what appeared to be a ginger-haired maiden and her blond companion gardening outside, a peaceful rule and a quiet world. Their court was small, their visitors far and few between. Without war, no one knew where the wealth and endless fortune came from.

Only that is was a time of love.

She steps out of the carriage and into the spring air with fog hanging low, blowing it out of her face with every step closer until the young woman turned to see her. Those auburn eyes alight.

A pair of gentle hands wrap around her and pull her body into them. "You didn't tell me we were having guests, dear."

I blink away the vision at the sound of his voice in my ears, launching into action and thrusting myself that the crowd with all the strength welling up inside me. Her strength,

Endless and wild, yet light-weight and oddly containable.

There wasn't time for considerations, only enough for me to burn up and outwardly towards her fellow men. Tearing through the line of defenses with fire and sleek determination, most find themselves gutted and charred within moments. A small crowd traps me again when I stand still for a breath, my back hitting another's.

The woman's hood slips off her head completely and down her back, revealing pointed ears under thick locks and letting her pointed teeth shine in their direction. Something more wicked and free consumes her demeanor this time, it coils tightly in her eyes and snakes along her lips, washing over every inch of her frame.

I sense her through this strange contract, feel her tugging a little to reel me in before the release. It then snaps like a rubber band and sends us slicing into and carving out the guts and hearts of the remaining assailants.

Dead at my feet. All of them.

Stretching in the power and light of the moon, I feel a little dizzy again and find my legs trembling beneath me. The ringing ceases, the only sound a dull moaning. Perhaps the faint cries are drowned out by this, with Remi collapsed in the sand behind me and the boys looking back and forth in confusion.

I turn to see the Fae woman standing over another body, the heel of her boot twisting into his groin with a sadistic grin sneaking over her lips once again. The calm persona is seeping back into her, but that doesn't remove the raw, unadulterated joy in her eyes. "You've no idea how long I've been waiting to tear your balls off," she murmurs into the wind. "Six years, just waiting for the uprising..."

She stomps so hard that - if I didn't know better - I'd hear the sound of his testicles popping. The satisfaction on her face swells and then fades completely.

Back to the monotonous state it once dwelled in before.

Slowly, she turns to me. A confident swagger with the edge of danger. Someone with years of training, yet need for none. The look in her gaze told me secrets the mortal world couldn't dream to know and yet even in her memory, I couldn't jog my own.

Closing the gap between us, I feel her aura long before her touch. It is a gentle and cold reality, I'm not sure why I don't stop her. Two fingers press into each temple, concise and well practiced. "Hello, old friend."

My knees cave beneath me, vision doubling before the colors drain away into nothingness. Arms wrap around my shoulders, my head promptly resting on her chest. "You've fared well for so long now, Kali. Rest, I will watch over the humans."

With nothing to struggle against, my consciousness breaks.

"Are you hurting her?" A familiar timid voice squeaks.

There is silence otherwise when I feel someone tampering with my energy field. Warm, calloused hands are inches away from either side of my ears, hovering there.

No answer.

A pair of footsteps off to my right grind into what sounds like pavement. My senses are shut down. I cannot feel or see, there are no scents. My only availability is hearing that which is still fuzzy and disconnected.

Someone's pacing a simple track back and forth. "Why should we trust you with her?" Comes the gruff question.

Interesting that he's protective...

"I could slit your throat without moving from this spot," comes the gentle, strangely nurturing tone. Still cold and dripping with insurance. "Though I haven't. What does that say about my intentions?"

I hear no response.

"What are you doing to her?" Remi asks, clearly not for the first time. "She's moving around so much and that doesn't look comfortable..."

Do I feel nothing because...?

I try to stir but it's impossible, my eyes won't even tick. But the void of touch suggests the lack thereof.

"What happened to the third of you?" Her voice ticks slightly with concern. "There were three, now there's two, what happened?"

Her tongue alone would suggest a more archaic way of speaking and as such, I can hear the generations of jaded frustration woven in. It shouldn't be so hard to remember someone who'd dare address me as a friend.

No one answers her for a moment but the pacing stops. Daniel isn't with them. My body arches slightly in panic and the Fae tsks under her breath. "Best answer me soon here or your friend will wake up shortly in quite a significant amount of pain."

The words are a slow warning for me as well as them. Her fingers close in on my temples again, the tingling sensation rushing back. Even under the warmth of her hold, I'm conflicted.

A hefty sigh comes from above and I relax. "He's out scanning the camp for survivors and supplies."

"Does he have the heart to kill?"

There's a soft mumbling but everything returns to static, her Mana drifting over me and Tangling through my soul in suppression.

Moist.

This experience is entirely unique.

The darkness melts around me into the absolute blackness of a cavern all too familiar. My spirit no longer dwells within my body, I realize, looking down and then through where my body should be.

As might sight adjusts, my breath stutters away from me.

In front of me, Lindon's blond hair is matted down over his glowing irises, skin coated in a thick grime and dirt only present on those confined in slavery, with sweat they cannot wash. His pants are tattered and fraying into oblivion and both eyes are so bloodshot you cannot see white.

The room matches mine, webs and all. Though his chamber doesn't appear to have any markings or sarcophagus. Even then, each growing mossy crack in the wall faintly glows with Mana as if trying to reach out and cradle Lindon's dying form.

Complete exhaustion consumes him along with something else. Mania. The same coiling pressure of insanity warping through my mind. Only... Infinitely worse.

I graze my energy along the skin exposed on his forearms, feeling a gentle sizzle and the hum of our presence syncing momentarily, yet his head only tilts to the side for a half second before falling back down again. Whether talking himself out of the hallucination or all around giving up, I'll never know.

Broken hearted, the cracks of agonizing concern dent my lungs and suffocate me. Falling a few steps away, I turn from the scene and extend myself towards the heavy, thick rock wall and tightly compacted doors. I'm stuck with a needle in my aura when I draw too close, feeling the barrier long before seeing dim markings in shaded corners, almost impossible to read.

I come back and kneel before his slowly opening eyes, trying to find any way to push through his energy. My hands graze his cheeks, then trace down his chest, but there is no reaction.

"Oh, Love..." I whisper, deathly still and aching to do anything more than rot from the inside out at the thought of leaving him behind.

For a moment I feel Lin flinch against my touch and excitement stirs. It's only shattered by what I hear next when he lifts his dark golden gaze to the corner of the room and laughs wickedly. "My dear? Whatever could you possibly want? Perhaps you'll rip out my lungs this time, yes?"

My world imploded within three singular moments, the strength I'd used to move an inch sucked out of the air. Gravity no longer existed, a heavy shiver enveloping every fiber of my being. "No, no..."

The cracks in my voice echo off the chamber walls and back for only me to hear. For me and me alone...

His frame does not shift in the dark, the clouded tunnel vision into that one corner pressing harder into my chest before I no longer want to stand before him. I can no longer stand to be here, a hair's breadth away with little more than a change in the draft. Every sense tampered with.

Lindon is in front of me yet the soft texture of his skin is long gone. Those words were spoken as if yards away from me in a hushed murmur.

If this were the reality, I wanted no part of it.

No part of his world as the bane he wishes did not exist, yet so welcoming as to show that no matter what it is me betraying him. I am the one, the only righteous heart with any form of power. The acceptance is grinding, a willingness to endure that which cannot be described.

Every thought a lie.

"Lin, please..." I plead, trying again and surging forward with what little strength I have in me.

My aura is resisted, fought off and staved by the tension in his body. I don't understand, trying to claw my way through the barriers around his own soul as a freezing electricity shocks me away. Repelled by the man I love.

Without Mana, without time, I am helpless here.

Barely able to memorize his confines in this dark temple, I slump to the ground and stare vacantly. "I love you," I cry, pain welling in my vision. "I love you, Sweetheart, I'll figure this out..."

It's then I'm returned to the void.

An abyss of exhaustion drapes over my weak frame when I'm awoken.

I feel tears stained, dry and tense on my cheeks and crusty eyelashes. An impossible dream or a painstaking reality. Either way, finding Lindon is no longer a mere practicality for the humans but a necessity.

My shoulders are nudged repeatedly by a sad girl with soft eyes. The promise of a tiny smile dances across her lips and gives me a simple target to focus in on.

"Iridian, are you okay?" Remi asks.

Her fingers knead into my arm slightly as the thought of danger passes through her eyes. I watch the consideration recede again, but not before making note of the mistrust. Once again, she'd believed me mortal and confused rest for cataclysmic injury.

I nod gently and look around.

The Fae woman sits cross-legged, under her hood in the beating sun.

"She's fine," she says without so much as opening her eyes. "Stop asking."

A strange sense of sanity soothes my frustration and I sit up, glancing around for something to drink and finding a bottle of water two inches from my hand. I take it and pop the cap, turning to find the boys.

With an unconscious sniff, I recoil and hiss. "Ugh, it still smells like pestilence."

The Fae cracks a grin, gaze fixating on me and giving a slow once-over. "Indeed, though I must say most of the continent smells no better."

"Delightful," I grumble, taking a fast swallow from the plastic bottle and setting it down.

Something misplaced in my brain clicks when I look again. The woman's hood falls off and in the growing day, her hair has returned to an entirely black color. The same midnight shade as the vision before.

The pointed ears are hidden, her canines retracted into normal and almost human form.

A hybrid more powerful than any other and a Lady of the land we used to rule so very long ago. Rejected from both worlds and superior to most. Every memory begins to page through my head and sew itself together into the lengthy book of time we'd been together.

"Meika."

So! I know I haven't been really great at this lately but after the trick update (sorry SongofLightandShadow) I feel its only right to give you all a extra long chapter!

Long story short, I've been kinda stressed out about money and life stuff as of late and it's effected my fluidity. I'm still so inspired for this story, I just don't always have the time for it. So thank you, all of you, for sticking with me anyway and reading almost instantly.

How's everyone enjoying their winter? The story? Happy holidays BTW!

Love you all and have a fantastic day!!!