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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Captain Tyrrell goes to get some fresh air in a place where he cane make actual Expressions without being observed, and Duchess Avrenne Esprit follows, complicating that plan significantly. Tyrrell calms down with some stargazing. And then things get a little calm. 2800-ish words |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Arc: Ringside Seats
As soon as they are out of earshot of the party, Tyrrell whisper-yells between gritted teeth, "It was her. It was her. They tried to murder her."
The anger quietly explodes out of him. Avrenne has seen some Tyrrell rage before, yes, but there is something in this quality of rage that is just… different. This is not the blow-up-and-calm-down fit of passion she's used to; something in his eyes suggests a profound depth of bloodless hatred, icy-cold Wheels in Motion. These are the eyes of a man who arranged to have his own mother assassinated.
Avrenne seems as unbothered by the rage as ever, stepping towards him rather than away, as she closes the distance to keep her voice low. "Someone made an attempt on your student's life?"
"She was the test. Wishock's poison. I knew they'd poisoned one of their own first, but I couldn't find the name. It was her, it was that poor little girl." Mixed with the rage is something that comes very near to being a cry of pain. "She's utterly harmless. She ought to be dead, if they used the poison I think they used. I could have come back and — the last thing I said to her — " His breath becomes ragged and he loses words entirely, pinching his forehead with a hand.
Avrenne's hand goes out in that same way as before, as though she's not thinking about it at all, it's too quick, without the hesitation of thought to consider the action, to touch on his arm near his elbow. Her brows are knit enough to show the faint touches of lines starting to form there, a look of sympathy overriding her composure. "Such is the nature of the unknowable future," she says, and there's a softer edge to her voice, but there's something dark in those eyes. "Has she been a warlock long?"
"Two years," he says. "Though first she was under the instruction of Calduin Bennett, who was my pupil and assistant for a time. She has had a solid, respectable education in the field, and she's a level-headed, sensible creature, if not excessively talented. She is exactly the sort of warlock the Alliance needs, and there are so few like her and Miss Coit, and one of them was nearly snuffed out — for what? For what?"
He turns to Avrenne as though he expects her to answer, looking down at her and searching her face.
"The usual reasons, I expect. A young woman is often an all too easy target, particularly if she is thought to be unprotected. Was her tutelage under you unknown?" Avrenne seems to have wheels turning in her head. Her hand remains where it is still on his arm, warm and steady, her eyes riveted on his as though the rest of the world has ceased to exist.
"I tend to be rather private in most of my relationships, both professional and personal. It is none of anyone's business whom I tutor. Or so I thought. Perhaps they wouldn't have dared, if I'd been more… performative and possessive about my apprentices, the way the Slaughtered Lamb coven tends to be. They do not like me, but they know by now not to cross me. Damn it."
She can see the exact moment in his eyes when it hits that his habitual reticence nearly got a young woman killed.
Avrenne watches with that same even expression. She doesn't speak against it, doesn't look disapproving, there's just something so knowing in those dark eyes, of what it is to be left to create one's own protection. She inhales a deep breath of the outside fresh air — the flash of green-gold-green on her unimpressive bust — and those golden brows go up. "I expect tonight would be an excellent opportunity to further your campaign's efforts, Captain, and who better to demonstrate your seriousness on the matter than your two pupils, out in the open, unlike those in the Slaughtered Lamb." There's that touch of the duchess in her voice again, going forward, to plan rather than dwell.
His gaze finds hers again, and there's something jagged in it, unstable, before he settles it into its usual glacier. "How lovely it must be to be born with circuitry instead of veins. The rest of us, however, may not be in the mood to be political for at least, oh, five to ten minutes after finding out an innocent girl we ought to have protected was crippled and nearly murdered."
Avrenne's lips tighten with something like anger. "The protection of that young, innocent girl is political, Captain. Do you have any idea what it can be like, to not be able to cast a devastating blizzard at those who would harm you? To not be able tower over them with menace they take seriously? Sometimes all that stands between a woman and someone seeking to do her harm is politics that make there be a consequence for taking such action." Her voice is cold, but there's a dark rage in her eyes. "She deserves that protection, and there are only so many men in that room capable of offering it effectively."
Tyrrell visibly grinds his teeth. "I shall do my best," he says. "But I do not have a switch I can simply– " He exhales. "I will need a moment. And then I will need a plan." He turns away and begins to wander toward the gardens, taking deep breaths of the cool night air.
Avrenne stands there a moment, her grip on his arm slipping, as she clasps her hands together in front of her, before she strides forward to keep pace with him as best she can in her low, sensible heels — but still heels — the audible swish of her skirts making it clear that she intends to catch up to him.
He slows his pace instinctively, seeming less as though he is trying to escape her and more as though he is moving toward something pretty to look at, trying to erase the image of that little girl and her silver cane.
Avrenne slows her own when it's clear she isn't going to need to churn those little legs to keep up with his, turning her attention to the flowers in question. There's a bit of a silence before she offers, almost a peace offering in it, "Viburnum." She gestures to the plant in question. "In the Language of Flowers, 'pride.' And, well, interestingly enough, a long time ago, in Arathor times, the branches were often used for arrow shafts."
Tyrrell stops to examine the flowers. "You should put one in your hair," he says dryly. "I can think of no more appropriate adornment."
"Oh, really?" Avrenne turns her head to the roses. "And here I thought you wanted me to turn my attention to nonsense like those," she moves her hand in a graceful line, her palm open. "The Rosa Rugosa, or 'pink beach rose,' a symbol of love and adoration. Rather interesting choice to have next to the clematis and lavender. A very lovely floral sentence," she says, and there's a touch of something warmer in her voice, of something adjacent to real passion for what she's speaking on. "And well displayed with the apple blossom and rosemary inside."
"I am deaf to that particular poetry, I am afraid," he says. "But unlike some, I am happy to learn, rather than stubbornly set in my ways and interests." He studies her for a moment coolly. "And speaking of my interests - how shallow you must think them, dressing as you have in such a transparent attempt to entice me. What a dreadfully easily manipulated creature you must think me."
Avrenne turns her gaze to Tyrrell, and raises both brows at him. "Yes, what other purpose might I possibly have, dressed in a suggestion of the fel, when I intend to speak to several others on my beliefs of the political situation with warlocks, than to attempt to catch the eye of a man I have made my interest in expressly clear," she says, her voice so dry it's amazing she doesn't need a drink after. Her head tilts though, chin going up. "The other meaning is more to suggest what it must signify when I went to stand next to you, to make my own statement, for those who can read that sort of poetry. A small declaration, for those looking. The lighthouse and the sailor was an accident; tonight was not. Let them see where my interest has turned."
"I wasn't referring to the color," he says, gazing at her steadily. "I was referring to the fact that you seem to have misplaced half of it, in the back."
Avrenne takes a step closer. "And what interest in my back would I possibly expect you to have, Captain? I do not have a tattoo of Mt. Hyjal there for you to a-ha over, after all."
"I also have a passing interest in astronomy," he says. "And you've a constellation there that stands out so sharply against your fair skin that when I close my eyes, there is an afterimage of the stars themselves. I wonder what piece of yourself you plan to show me at the next public occasion, when in private you make it clear that your body is not for me to enjoy? Shall your next dress be slit up the side to the waist, so that I no longer have to guess, through the clinging fabric of this one, the precise length and shape of your thigh?"
Avrenne's expression flickers at the mention of her leg, and there's a small, mostly aborted movement of her left hand near her leg, as though about to cover something — something that can't possibly be seen through the dress she wears. "I believe I was fairly clear on my offer, Captain, in my initial proposal of what it would entail, should you choose to align your House with mine, and what opportunities you may have the privilege to enjoy. It was you who declined, and set terms otherwise." She's looking at Zath with much too close attention, and her breathing is much less steady than it was before.
"I declined because of your clear disinterest. Men do not have the luxury of simply thinking of Lordaeron. To produce a child a man must enjoy himself, and the only thing more repellent than my cold hands may be to you is your very aversion, to me. The most irresistible thing to me on earth is to be desired, which makes you, my frigid duchess, very easy to resist, for all your superficial enticements."
Avrenne takes another step forward, her eyes dark pools in the deep twilight of evening, the chips of gems catching faint lights from the house. "I do not need your desire or to entice you so. Men are not so difficult to entice as that, if such was my tactic. I want your logical choice in me as a marital union, no matter how you may feel about me, not based on my desire for you." She has to tip her head back further to be able to keep her gaze on his. "Do not mistake composure for lack of interest, Captain. Who on Azeroth said that I would have been thinking of Lordaeron when I would have had another far more enticing, far closer option to admire." That composure is slipping, as it is, something breathy in her voice, although she seems to be fighting against it.
Zath's gaze sharpens as he studies her face, listens to the changes in her voice and breathing.
"But my hands are indeed cold," he says quietly. "Have always been. My lover doesn't mind, but you seem rather more… delicate. Do you think you could bear it?"
Even as he speaks, a single cool fingertip comes to light on the bare skin of her back; somehow a hand has sneaked around behind her when she wasn't looking. He is looking at her eyes, but his fingertip has come to rest on the uppermost of the aforementioned constellation points, and now begins to trace an almost imperceptible, feather-light but unerring path toward the next.
Avrenne's back arches like a bow, a wobble of it, like something strung too tight, but not away from his hand. That mask over her face doesn't last — there's a parting of her lips, almost as though on an unvocalized gasp, and several blinks — and she tries to fit it back on over again; it fits badly over what looks like startled desire. She's frozen in place, a frost nova more effective than a real one likely would have been, and she seems to be having trouble forming a word as his finger trails downward.
A second fingertip joins it, also strangely cool, and his gaze doesn't waver from hers as he accurately finds the next point of the constellation and begins to drift toward the next.
"Where else are you marked…?" he asks her, very softly. "Shall I find those places too? Will you read the story of a thousand battles on my skin with your own fingertips? Or simply hold your breath and pray for it all to be over, for my weight to be gone from you, the scent of me faded from your sheets?"
The reminder about holding her breath seems to help — as she resumes breathing with a shaky inhale — and it takes too long. The moment passes where it would be a haughty rejoinder, where he could believe her unaffected and cool, and the way the words come out do not have the sharp enough edge of pride to hold them steady; they sound like an invitation, warm and edging closer and closer to pleading. "I suppose you will have to find that out on the wedding night, when you offer for it. I will not surrender my virtue for any bid under that." It would be so much more believable if she wasn't leaning towards him like a magnet has started to pull her forward.
"Ah," he says, leaning in a bit more. He smells faintly of black currant and wormwood, dark and ripe with a bitter edge. "We are pretending you have virtue, are we?" There is a strange warmth in his tone that takes the sting out of the tease. "Very well, I shall observe the proper Noble Rituals and save the 'deflowering' until all of the i's and t's are dotted and crossed to your satisfaction."
Speaking of dots, his questing fingertips have now found their way to the last of her "stars" without the aid of sight, and his cool palm now unfurls to rest audaciously against her bare back.
"But perhaps you might permit yourself a small preliminary survey?" he suggests in a silken murmur, gazing almost drowsily down into her eyes from very near. "One should never attempt to breach a wall without first confirming the efficacy of the siege equipment, hm?"
The hand on her back exerts a gentle pressure, coaxing her closer.
Avrenne's breathing has gone ragged, her eyes locked onto his, wide and enraptured, open desire unfeigned and obvious. Her right hand comes up between them, placed on his chest, perhaps in some effort to enforce the space between them; too quickly, however, her fingers curl into the fabric, as though she can't help herself from trying to hold onto him instead.
There is the start of a forward lean, reaching upwards as her head tilts, exposing the line of her throat, before there is a very distant sound of loud laughter from inside the house, and it seems that reality exerts itself into her consciousness long enough to halt her. "I believe," she says, her voice gone sultry and her accent stronger. "I have all the preliminary information I need before a contract is signed, Captain." Despite her words, her hand tightens on his uniform, the sense of heat palpable through the fabric. She abruptly crushes her eyes closed and —
She's gone, out of his arms, fifteen yards out, stumbling slightly on the garden path, blinked away.
Zath stands for a moment as though poleaxed, and then curses under his breath and stalks off deeper into the gardens.
Avrenne spends several moments catching her breath, hands pressed to her chest as though trying to prevent her heart from beating out of it. Piece by piece, she pulls her composure on like armor, straightening to her full, unimpressive height, hands falling back down to her sides. She takes a final calming breath, looks over her shoulder to where Zath went, before rapidly turning back to the house, and then walks back to the gala, head held high, poise nearly shimmering in the air around her like a frost shield.