He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her into the adjacent sitting room.
“In millennia, We have felt nothing like we did today. In millennia, we have not seen a thing like you. Now rest.Rest.We will protect you. This rarity. This treasure.”
Kailorien’s awareness returned slowly. His mind shed Vargrún’s influence with the reluctance of dunes shedding grains of sand on a windless day.
First, he saw the Companions littering the divans. Unconscious, their skin sheened with sweat, their clothes ripped or missing entirely. He checked for breath. They were alive. Barely. Breathing hard. Spent. Yet their faces were twisted into smiles of bliss.
He stood, looking down at himself. At his nakedness, at the drying, cracking paint on his skin, at the sticky evidence of lust unrestrained. Sick to his stomach, he walked to the adjoining chamber and sank into the bathing pool.
Not to rest—just long enough to wash away thefilth. The immediate evidence of their touch. As he wiped himself clean, he thought ofher.
His Auryn.
And immediately banished her from his mind.
He had no right to conjure the comfort of her face. No right to allow her memory to walk the stained hallways of his mind and body.
For now, he would bathe. Sleep, if he could. After he returned to his quarters—after he’d had a few days to cleanse the scent of this rite from his body—then, perhaps, he would see her. Would risk touching her. Calling her name.
The more he thought of it, the emptier he felt until all that remained was a throbbing hollow at his center. The back of his neck burned. Vargrún wasn’t done. Wasn’t nearly satisfied. But, for now, Kailorien had enough mana and strength to suppress him.
He went to a nearby dresser and pulled out a spare black and gold robe and pants reserved specifically for the Estâr. Tugging on the clothes and running his fingers through his damp hair, he took a deep breath before stepping out of the chamber and into the adjoining hall.
Immediately, he sensed something was amiss. The air thickened, tainted with the cloying perfume of ritual Sahtra and something fouler—burning mana, the sting of misused pleasure, the rot of ancient power cloaked in silk.
Kailorien stepped forward until he heard a voice. Familiar, yet not. Lilting, soothing, crooning in a way he’d never heard before.
A few more steps.
An Attendant rushed out to meet him, bowing and raising his arms to sign, 'Your Quintessence, Arm of the Void. Is assistance needed?'
The drummer boy, charged with keeping the rhythm of the ritual. He wore thick red robes and a harness to keep the drum in place.
“Be gone,” Kailorien ground out, and as the youth rushed to obey, he kept walking forward.
The voice came again.
Softer now.
And then another—sweet and airy.
A knot of dread settled in his gut.
He passed through the doorway to the antechamber and froze.
There she was.
Auryn.
Shu’Khan held her in his arms, and for a moment the sight was so foreign, so strange, sowrong,that Kailorien stumbled back a step. He gripped the wall. The marble cracked beneath his hand with the force.
Auryn.
Here.
In the Companions’ wing.
What is she doing here?
