Somewhere in the chaos of dreams he wished he didn't have, Lasura remembered one of him sleeping on a woman's lap, cocooned by the warmth of her presence and the gentle hand weaving through his hair. He wondered where that dream came from. A lost memory of his mother long ago? An affection he wished for that never happened? A real event that occurred some time during the night with Djari? Or a place he wanted to be that left another hole to fill when it ended?

The fire had died down long ago, judging from the ashes that left no traces of heat. Djari was gone, along with all her clothes and belongings. She left him the cloak they'd shared, had wrapped it around him with the same care she smoothed a blanket on her horse. He appreciated that, would have taken something from the gesture had he not remembered keeping him alive had been a part of her brother's instructions.

But she had not, he remembered that much, pulled away from the kiss. That meant something too, didn't it?

He decided that it did. He also knew, without needing it proven, where she must have gone to so early in the morning. Or who.

Risked your life to save a woman, and she went right back to the beast.

It sounded like his life all right, and had he not been so bruised, so battered, and so fucking cold from having tried to play the hero, he might have been reasonable enough to blame no one but himself for his idiotic decision. Under the circumstances, cursing the god responsible for bringing her into his life sounded like a better option, whoever that divine piece of shit was.

'Religion is useful,'  Deo had said. 'You can pray to one god for miracles when you're too lazy to work, and blame every suffering on an evil one when your life is full of shit. If you're really pious you can live your whole life without a single responsibility. Isn't that marvelous?" For once, he agreed.

The cave was cold enough to deter a ghost, and the sun seemed to be rising like it wasn't being paid enough to do the job. He got up to look for his clothes and found them already folded and piled together in a corner. Not neatly, mind you. The effort to fold was there, the neatness was nowhere to be found.

It made sense, given how Djari's hair and clothing had never been tidy. She had nails with either sand or soot in them, and everywhere she went smelled like horses and saddles. Her boots were always stained, and he was willing to bet she hadn't noticed the hole in her tunic that seemed to have been there for ages. She wore things inside out, too, sometimes, and staying alive around her required a heroic exercise in self-control to not strangle her to death every time she opened her mouth.

Not too different from his effect on people, to be fair. Except trying to strangle him to death was considered sport and recreation back in the Tower, whether or not he opened his mouth.

Not that his life was any better now in the White Desert. He had, after all, been abandoned in the middle of a barren land he couldn't navigate with no food, no water, no horse, no companion, no idea what to do next, and was standing half-naked in a dark cave freezing his balls off trying to figure out how to not die ugly and anonymous. He figured the first thing to do was to get dressed, and found himself swearing for the fifth time that morning the moment he dropped the cloak to put on a shirt. He needed fire. He needed food. He needed a soft bed with three naked women to warm him under the cover. He might consider three naked men at this point.

Or even risk it with Djari.

The thought sent blood rushing immediately to his groin. He looked down, cringed at the massive erection that greeted him there, and thanked the gods she wasn't here (they really were useful). For the very least he didn't have to deal with––

"I can build a new fire if you're still cold."

He spun toward the mouth of the cave and found her––a silhouette so small, so fragile magnified to epic proportions by the soft, predawn light that came from the narrow opening. And for a moment, despite the horror he'd expected to experience, despite the cold that was still pricking his skin, despite everything that had bothered him about her presence, the sight of Djari flooded him all at once with warmth, with relief, with...

...the realization that she was staring at the bulge between his legs.

Fuck.

"I thought you were gone," he blurted the first thing that came to mind in an attempt to distract, trying desperately to cover it with something without looking like he was trying, which, in the long suffering history of mankind, no one had ever succeeded.

Djari scowled as those unnerving yellow eyes scrutinized his still half-naked form from his split ends to his overgrown toe nails, coming to a pause, once more, on the bundle of shirt he was holding over his fully engorged prick.

"It's all right," she said with the calm and seriousness of a grandmother who'd just caught her grandson masturbating for the first time. "I've been told most men wake up with an erection. You don't have to be embarrassed."

He stared at her, wondering if a response was required, because...how the fuck do you reply to that?

"I mean...I meant..." She brought a hand to her lips, like she just remembered something important. "...Would you like me to leave while you deal with it?"

As opposed to what? Watching? "No." Lasura covered his face with his other hand, the one not still trying in vain to conceal his wretched male parts, and wondered where all the gods went right now. "It'll be fine in a minute." In fact, after all that embarrassing conversation, the thing was already going limp. He concluded that it was another one of Djari's special skills, and picturing her future husband trying to get it up when she started measuring him for size was so satisfying it alleviated half his sufferings all at once.

She listened attentively, nodded, and stepped into the cave, tossing some dead rats he'd never seen on the ground before she took out what looked like his dagger. "I borrowed your rope and knife. I hope you don't mind. We need food to get out of here."

That they did. Escaping the river had zapped all his energy. He was cold, exhausted, and hungry enough to consider eating an old, wrinkly man. Djari, for all her bruises that were already turning purple and the sprained ankle she was still struggling to walk with, looked like someone who'd just been through a war and still had the will to fight another battle if only to make everyone else look bad. "You should have told me," he said without thinking. "I ought to be the one doing these things."

"Why?" It was an honest question, not the kind women often utilized for a valid excuse to put a knife to your throat when you failed to deliver. Djari didn't know how to do that. She was practical, logical, and honest to a fault––to a catastrophic fault, if one were to be precise.

"Because..." Yeah, why exactly? He was a man, yes, but she was better than him at hunting, riding, or even building a fire. She knew the terrain, how to find animals, what to bait with. By then he had come to terms with his own uselessness, but having a dick meant admitting it was not an option, especially in front of a woman who'd just deflated both your dick and ego. "... you're hurt." It was a qualified excuse. "And my life isn't as important." Now that's better. Deo would be proud. She might even kiss him again for that, if those romantic stories could be counted upon.

"You're right." Djari agreed wholeheartedly. "I need to be more careful with my life."

Lasura sighed and decided all those stories must have been written by eunuchs.

"I just...wanted to pay you back with something."

It brought back a memory, one that stuffed a bunch of live insects of various sizes in his stomach. "You have." He smiled. "We called it even last night, didn't we?"

Djari stilled, and the moment tipped over, stumbling to a halt like news of death delivered in the middle of a banquet. She pressed her lips together, like someone who'd just committed a crime and was having a difficult time lying to cover it up, and then decided it was beneath her altogether. "It didn't mean anything," she said.

How, Lasura wondered, could four simple words hurt so much? What do I say to that?

"It meant something to me," he told her. Because it did. It meant a lot to him. "It still does. It will be for a long time." He was, he realized belatedly, laying his heart bare in front of a woman, and was terrified of her answer.

Djari caught his eyes and held them with the same respect she gave her horses, with the same hard, indestructible desire to carry a task to perfection. "You are asking for what I cannot give," she said, might have chiseled those words into rocks and stones had a tool been at hand. "Ask me for something else, Prince Lasura, something that would be a fair trade, a worthy transaction for your life."

A fair trade...a worthy transaction....

It burst out of him like a beast, leaping out of its cage after a lifetime of confinement––the reality he'd lived with all his life as a son no one wanted, an excess that didn't qualify for any position, an extra mouth to feed that would never amount to anything, to anyone. For eighteen years he had accepted it as his fate, had intended to live with the arrangement, had even made a joke of it on several occasions. That morning, hearing it from Djari, after all he had done, coupled by how exhausted, how cold, how beaten up he was, it broke something within him, broke it so hard he could still hear the shards hitting the ground when he hurled it back at her. "Like what, Djari?" Don't say it. Don't finish that sentence. Don't go that far. "What can you give me? Will you sleep with me if I ask? Will you bind yourself to me, be my slave for life, swear an oath to serve me like he did? Because as far as I know, that hasn't made anyone very happy now, has it? Has it?"

Too late, he thought as he stood heaving for breaths, to take back what had been said. Too late to mend a wound torn open by hate, by bitterness, by jealousy that never had the right to exist to begin with. And it was all there on her face, in her eyes, as she clamped her mouth shut. It was there in those small hands she'd curled into fists, in the way her whole body trembled from trying to hold it together, to keep herself from falling as she swallowed those words and the cold, hard truths in them.

"We can couple when I have some yarra roots. If that is what you want." It took her a long time to say it, not angrily, no, regretfully, apologetically. "I cannot afford the risk to carry your child. I cannot bind myself to serve a Rashai, not for who I am and what I must do. I owe you a life debt, and it will be repaid. That is our way of life. Ask me for something else, Prince Lasura. Something worth your sacrifice. Something I am allowed to give. I am not––" She paused to breathe, to clench her fists, to hold back a tear. "––being given much room to do what I please. It is not likely to change for the rest of my life."

I am, he thought, a disgusting human being who deserves to live and die alone.

How could he have said those words? All he saw then was his own pain, his own sufferings, and here she was, still trying to do the right thing, to handle it with decency, to uphold her honor––and his––when she could have easily lied and used him like everyone else.

Looking at her then, straining still from the effort to hold her back straight and her chin high, he realized, for the first time, how alone she was, and how much she needed to cry. He had a feeling it would never happen. At least not on my shoulder.

"Djari...listen to me." He reached out to cradle her face between his palms, without pausing to wonder if he should. This time, the urge came from something more tangible than desire––something that was made to last, to stay. "I saved you because it mattered to me, because I didn't want you to die, because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. I would have done it again a hundred times, a thousand times, even when you insist on throwing your life away for him, even when you stand there and tell me there is no place for us where you're going." He would do that, he knew that now, knew it with as much certainty as he knew his the taste of his own blood. "This was my choice to make, Djari, and no matter how wrong, how dangerous, how pointless it may seem, you don't get to take that away from me by making it a trade, a transaction. It's more important to me than that. Do you understand?"

Sunlight bled deeper into the cave, chased away the shadows, the cold that clung to his skin, and the indecisions he'd been harboring all his life. He knew what he wanted now, where he wanted to stand, and by whose side he wanted to stay.

"There exists something more than what's right, what's fair, and what you must do, Djari. There must be room for it, or there is no point to fighting, to saving any of this. I don't want to be another responsibility you have to carry, another task you must accomplish, another cage that traps you in. I want to be that one irresponsible thing you do, the one wrong decision you make, the reason that made you cross the line. If you must give me something in return, then give me that place in your life, because that's what you are to me. That's fair."

There was a lightness in the air, an absence of weight that suddenly disappeared from his chest, and perhaps, also, from her shoulders. For a moment, he felt everything was going to be fine, that this wall between them was all right, that maybe he could find a way to be content with what was given. Maybe.

And then the light was gone, snuffed out like a candle caught between two palms as they clapped, as the sound of applause filled the cave from behind Djari.

"A beautiful speech, Prince Lasura. I must admit I almost cried listening. How exceptionally done," said a voice from the entrance, from the figure that had blocked out the sun. "Now, let's get to business. I don't have much time. Djari," commanded Rhykal izr Zoren, "come."

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