Rian had let Magda have what he never did. To have revenge. Not that he thought he wouldn’t ever have it… but he’d have to wait for far too long. But the pain he felt… the sorrow. He did mourn his brother. The only before he had been captured and taken by the red devil. He mourned the brother who arrived and was the first to gather him in his arms after he was rescued by the man know as Logan and Wren from the darkest depths of that mansion.

Izen. His heart tore everytime he pictured him. While he didn’t fault Magda for the choice she made, as it was such a Coheed choice that he was surprised. But the demons from his past swallowed him in his moment of weakness. Magda didn’t come to bed, but he didn’t seek her out either… he didn’t invite her in with an open door. Instead, a few days passed and he sat on the floor in front of the fire that had never been put out. One that was bright enough to light the room and keep the shadows at bay.

He heard the door handle turn, and he only shifted to look back over his shoulder and freeze. Magda… didn’t look like herself. Yet she did. There was something sharper there, something beautiful in the way that a snakes scales were beautiful. Making you forget about the fangs that laid within. “Magda,” his voice cracked from days of not being used except for his shouts when he woke from nightmares.

Magda stilled as he looked over his shoulder as if she were an intruder here to steal all he owned. She waited until the tension unwound in his shoulders until his voice called her name. Her heart fluttered and her chest swelled with…well, love. Magda had been reluctant to name it, but there was no other word. She’d always thought love to be a thing of gentle selflessness. Of wholeness, not hunger. Magda’s love was none of those things, but she’d call it love just the same.

Wordlessly, Magda shed her outer dress so that only her thin chemise remained. All the while she watched Rian, as if he might evaporate into thin air if she looked away too soon. After her dress fell to the floor, Magda made her way to the end of the bed and crawled foward to lay next to her husband. Dropped on her side, with her curls laying like a puddle around her head, she came so close that her nose nearly touched his. If Rian would allow, she’d stroke his cheek, marveling at him.

“Come back to me.”

Rian wasn’t sure why, but he lifted from in front of the fire place and met her at the bed. Almost in a trance, a thing of habit as he crawled in and she met him. The two laying down as she brought them closer, so close that her breath tickled his face as she spoke. His eyes softened only a touch, to allow her to see the heaviness that weighed on his mind.

He didn’t flinch from her touch, but his jaw ticked. “I didn’t go anywhere.” Which was the truth. He hadn’t left their house since he got sick after Izen.

Magda continued to stroke his cheek, as if this were one of his Eldouir nightmares she was trying to coax him out of. Only it was one of her own creation.

“But you have in your mind,” Magda said gently, “And I need you now. Here…” She kissed him, a tear dropping down her cheek before she parted to look at him again. “I need you…”

His eyes closed for a long moment as she kissed him, only to open quickly as something touched his cheek… something wet. He blinked rapidly at her and realized… she was crying. He had retreated from her when something traumatic had happened to her too. He had no idea that Izen had been set up, and so he reached for her, one arm around her waist and his other cupped her cheek, fingers sinking into her dark hair.

“I know,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers. He wanted to tell her he just was in shock, that this spurred the nightmares to reappear, made the dark seem so much more menacing. But he was sure she understood from how brightly that fire burned. “How have you been?” What could he do…

Magda leaned happily into his touch. She drew close to Rian as if he were the fire that burned in the hearth and her bones were aching with cold. This was what brought her peace when there was so little to be had: both of them lying here, their foreheads touching, his breath matching hers as they held one another. It was the glimpse of light in the blackness of her soul. Her only salvation yet the cause of her sin.

Magda was quiet for a moment. She was quiet for a long time, stroking Rian’s cheek.

“They’ll come for me,” Magda whispered, “Maybe not for this, but one day, Nevermere will come to take me.” Her voice was peaceful, certain. “And we need to be ready.”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t press. He was the Chieftain and yet he had lost footing when he lost Izen. But he believe Magda and everything she had told him, what brutal marks he had found on her. He believed that justice had been served. But why had it been his little brother…

Her mention of being taken had his lip peel back, “they will take you nowhere.” He growled in response. His voice rough and dark, “you are mine, and you will remain here with me.”

He angled her head back and narrowed his eyes. “What have I missed? What have you been doing?” Because while he had been sick and here… Magda had not been.

Magda kissed him then as if she could pour herself into him and they could truly become one. If ‘I love you’ could be said without words, this was it, for Magda hoped at this point it didn’t need to be said. She did not love him with gentle hands but with fangs and venom. With bitterness and loathing for the rest of the world, she loved him.

“I’ve been gathering support. Speaking to the tribesmen and the senior officers of Nevermere. Bolstering alliances where they matter, bending wills where they are weak.” Magda pulled herself closer. “I believe I’ve bought us some time, but Coheed cannot fight Nevermere alone. We need allies. We need Cambria, to start.”

Magda and Rian never had a soft relationship. Or perhaps, only tiny glimpses of one, but he could only think of two times that they had been soft. She kissed him always like it was her last, and how it made his own aggression and hunger fly high.

“Then let us meet with their new Cheiftess. I heard she is of Nevermeran blood?” That could cause some problems potentially…

Princess. His eyes flashed in surprise. “Ophelia?” He said the Princess, the only one he had known of from his time in Nevermere. “There is no way she is running a place like Cambria.” He said confidently.

Yet the mention of Wren sent a small spark through him, and he almost missed the way Magda said her name. He reached up, his hand sliding along her jaw until it found its home as his thumb pressed to her lower lip and chin. “You are awfully possessive.” Though the glint in his eye suggested he was far more amused than anything else.

Magda shook her head, still smirking. “No, Odina is an Ellis princess—Princess Tara, daughter of the overthrown king. If only her father saw how easily she’d folded to Rainecourt rule. But perhaps…” Magda shrugged, “There’s hope for her yet.”

On the subject of Wren, Magda’s black eyes lit with a challenge. “Why shouldn’t I be?” She purred, hand slipping to the back of his neck as her fingers wound into his curls. She considered him for a moment, before adding, “I suppose I don’t mind if you have your playthings…” she kissed then whispered against his lips, “So long as you remember that you’re mine.”

Ellis. Something about the name sparked his memory. Dark stone halls and floors… a dark haired woman… humming a soft tune that he couldn’t quite put together.

It was there and gone just as quickly. Especially as he listened to her admit she was possessive. And jealousy lingered on her tone. “Does it help you,” his fingers brushed that metal at her neck, “to know I’ve never lain with her? She’s been more likely to try and break off your favorite part of me than use it,” he chuckled. But her admission surprised him. Coheed wasn’t a one woman household, but Nevermere was… and he had always assumed when he signed his life away, Magda wouldn’t stand for anything else but just her.

“It sounds like a trap,” he murmured against her mouth, before he dragged her back to him. His kiss as possessive as what he claimed her to be. “We will go to Cambria… we need to replan, and rebuild.”