There was some ceremony after the fights that she couldn't attend, and she waiting for Rush to come back with Lyon. The lycanthrope was abnormally somber at the unity gathering, and she actually missed his easy going teasing nature. Too much tension was making her stomach turn, and it was empty. Rush had told her he would take her out to see the stands and eat before the council meeting, and she was so ready for that. The fights had been too stressful to her, the power plays and shows of force.

Dark magic filled the room, but it wasn't Rush's, and she lifted her eyes as a vampire approached Lyon. The lycanthrope stiffened and faced the foreign man while putting her at his back protectively. That was all the time it took for the other one to sneak in and grab her. They fell through a transportation spell and with how fast it all happened, she never fully saw anyone's face and then she was alone. No one would dare kill her at the unity gathering, according to Rush, but as she looked around her new surroundings, she was a little lost with what to do.

She was still in the grounds; transportation spells couldn't leave or enter it from outside the obelisks, but she was in a bind. It was dangerous to be a mage alone, regardless of the protections she had at Rush's side. Clearly, whoever had touched her didn't want the blame for her death and had vanished upon depositing her here, but they had no qualms about leaving her to her fate in a crowded lunch area. Pulling her arms in, she tried to find a side to hide until Rush came for her, but all the edges were stalls with vampires selling everything from food for the blood slaves to lavish jewelry and metalsmithed goods.

Several men were bent over blood slaves with their fangs in their necks, and they did more than just that. One had his hand on the woman's breast, and Mer's face heated, but she only turned away to another man with his hand up another poor girl's skirt. The slaves the vampires brought to this gathering were loyal, so there was no doubt in her mind that the girls were enjoying it, but she didn't need to watch.

"Are you lost?" A smooth voice asked, and she snapped her eyes up to a man that was a head taller than Rush and her owner already had a few inches on her.

Holy hell in a handbasket, Talamayas Sol–the man who'd decimated Darius and crushed Neil.

"I–" Mer tried to speak, but instead it came out as a croak as she lowered her eyes from his molten gaze to his sleek, tanned chest that was left in the open sun like a lightly toasted dinner roll. His skin was so sleek that it reflected the light more than she thought it had a right to. "Do you oil your skin?" Mer asked with morbid fascination when she probably should have been running for her life. Not like the latter would do her any good.

Talamayas chuckled, and she lifted her eyes back up to find him wearing a pleasant smile.

"Not personally," the man answered with amusement. "Vice does it to me sometimes because he thinks I'll be embarrassed and wash it off. I prefer the sheen of sand, dry but rough and beautiful." Talamayas purred on the word rough, after which, he offered his arm as if he were a chauffeur.

"I... don't know what you want." Mer stared at his extended appendage, wondering if she was supposed to touch it or not. It was as slick as the rest of him and she wasn't enthusiastic for coating herself in him.

"Someone separated you from your master," Talamayas said, and she wrung her hands and swallowed her tightening throat. "Walk with me and no harm will come to you while your master searches you out. By law, they can harm an unattended mage, so allow me to attend to you."

As he offered her his arm again, she scrutinized his face for an ulterior motive, but she couldn't tell if he had one or not. Reluctantly, she slid her hands around his arm and tightened her jaw as the moisture of the oil soaked into her hands. Turning her head away, she breathed in any air that wasn't all over him and tried to calm herself.

"Other way," Talamayas whispered down into her ear.

She flipped her gaze back so quickly that she almost smacked into his face. With a laugh, he stood up fully and used his other hand to pull her face nearer his arm. She trembled under his strong touch and couldn't help but inhale deeply of his scent. Instead of a manly musk, she breathed in something quite different and choked on the air in surprise. When he let her go, she didn't move, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on.

"I told you you were inhaling the wrong way." Talamayas chuckled again, and when he met her eyes, they were soft.

It was so strange that she tilted her head to the side and tried to figure out what this guy was on. "Why do you smell so good?" Mer asked, trying to pretend like she wasn't sniffing it on purpose now. It was certainly more pleasant than the dirt in the air from the rock walls and the iron from so many open veins nearby. "It's like some godly mix between honey and vanilla. I'm not even sure what's going on with my nose right now." Mer blushed, widening the man's smile. What she wasn't saying was that she wanted to lick him. He smelled like a fresh baked pastry from the oven, seasoned with cinnamon and drenched in honey.

"Like I said, one of my men, Vice, thinks it's funny. Vampires are super sensitive to smell, and the spices he uses appeal to them. I would wash it off, but I also get a sort of guilty pleasure from their struggle. They want to come closer and indulge in it but are also are terrified of me. None of them will even mention it, afraid that they might offend me. It's really just hilarious all around."

"So, you're both a bunch of trolls?" Mer said with a growing smile, and Talamayas raised an eyebrow. "It's a human term for people who intentionally goad and trick others for their own amusement."

"That definitely sounds like me," Talamayas said with a magnanimous grin, and they shared a laugh. "You are just as interesting as I was told you were, Meredith Aurion." Talamayas tilted his head down, and she crossed her arm. Rush's lack of keeping her name concealed had ended up with it spreading super quickly, and she was used to people knowing her identity.

"Well, you're less threatening that I thought you'd be," Mer dared say, but she knew she'd chosen the wrong words as soon as his smile widened.

"You are not on the other side of the battlefield as me. I'm known for upholding the law quite strictly, so my protection of you should be assumed as nothing more than that. I don't like meddlers and instigators who think to ruin a unity gathering."

"Well, obligation or not, thank you," Mer said genuinely, and Talamayas gave her a rather curt nod.

"Would you like to do something fun, Meredith Aurion?" Talamayas asked, and she narrowed her eyes on that word. That was highly subjective, especially when voiced by a vampire. "I doubt that emotionless brick you call a master has bothered to show you around. The Shades have always been... boring."

Mer chuckled. She really shouldn't have, but it wasn't like he was wrong. As soon as they'd gotten here, Rush had kept her from everyone and stuffed her in the seating arrangements for the fights. Considering, she looked around at all the stands in a new light. It might be fun to let him show her around. It was that or stand here with him in awkward drooling silence. Being so near him was worse than standing in line at Cinnabon.

"It's settled then. Fun it is," Talamayas said, slipping his arms around her waist and taking off.

The man flew through the air and dropped her on the ground in a different area. There were more humans here, she noticed. Dark energy saturated the air around vampires, and it was much thinner here. Stalls still lined the walkways, but there were many blood slaves who walked unattended by their masters. That was allowed if they weren't mages though. The men and women smiled, but she wondered how much of it was genuine.

"Try this," Talamayas said, stealing something from one of the stands and dropping a few coins to the vampire.

"What is it?" Mer asked, accepting a warm, tinfoil wrapped something. Whatever it was, it was squished in a thin flatbread like outside and had an unidentifiable mix of brown, green, and white in the center.

"Eat," Talamayas nearly threatened, and she took a bite into whatever it was

The bread was dryer than she was used to, and whatever sauce it had was tangy with a bit of spice, but it was really good. It tasted like beef, but who knew what meat the vampires fed their slaves. A growl of her stomach accompanied her first bite, and she ate it faster than she could blink, crinkling up the tinfoil ball and tossing it in a waste bin next to them.

"Does he not feed you?" Talamayas asked, seemingly appalled.

"Uh, yeah, just hadn't yet with all the drama. We were going to eat after the fights in the lull between that and the council meeting you guys have. That was really tasty though. I haven't had something with quite that... uniqueness before."

"Few things thrive in the desert, and we don't import all our food. That is one of the traditional dishes for the humans in my territory. The humans we use for blood and the mage who lives in my dungeons quite like it a lot, so I wanted to share it with you."

"I beg your pardon?" Mer said as her stomach rolled. "Well at least you feed your prisoner." What sort of sick man bragged about what his slaves and prisoners ate? That was normal for vampires though, wasn't it? The man had been trying to be nice though, so she couldn't fault him for what little he knew about humans.

"Toss this," Talamayas handed her a small hoop and she stared at it before looking up to the game ahead of her.

"This is an interesting use of my time," Mer said as she spun the hoop around her finger. "You should know that before I was sold to the Shades as a debt that I excelled at all manner of drunk games at arcades and parties. Not even a challenge."

Mer tossed the hoop up into the air and smiled as it fluttered onto the furthest spike. Grabbing the remaining few she tossed them up and landed them on the other three in a row. "Not even a contest." Mer flexed her tiny muscles and Talamayas laughed.

"Something more delicate then. I'm sure you'll flounder at that." Talamayas challenged, and she cracked her knuckles in a manner that has the vampire raising an eyebrow.

Whoops. She had forgotten that she was with a potentially hostile house head.

"Rush must love your spunk. How peculiar for a Shade," Talamayas said with a smile as he herded her to a small pool on the ground. There, he dropped to his knees and relaxed as she crouched with him. He handed her a hook dangling on a string, and she looked at the pool with a bunch of decorative balloons floating with small loops.

"You think I have no hand-eye coordination?" Mer challenged, and the damn man just relaxed into a cross-legged position and leaned on his hands. Was she missing something?

She dipped the hook into the water and fished for one of the loops with patience, making sure to hover it slowly. It seemed simple enough but when she lifted the hook, the string snapped. What the hell? Mer looked at it and realized that it was made of paper. What cruel torture was this? She was supposed to fish a bunch of moving penny sized hooks out with wet paper? Talamayas leaned toward the human running the stall and dropped a huge pile of coins there and took a bunch of hooks and set them next to her.

Way to boost her confidence.

It took almost fifteen tries with no luck. Either she was bad, or this was hard, or both. When her last hook's paper broke, she fell back on her butt with a defeated groan. Talamayas put a single coin on the counter, grabbed a hook and leaned in close to her. The bakery caressed her nose in full swing as he leaned in.

"You aren't patient," Talamayas said, though kindly. "First, watch the trajectory of the balloons. They don't move too fast, but they drift. Predict where it will be when you drop your hook instead of dropping it into the water where it is. You lose your target that way. Second, watch the loops to see how deep they are in the water and if they are easy to catch. There is no point in aiming for a target you'll lose your line trying to fish out even if you are in the right spot. Lastly, smooth execution. Come from the right side and don't hesitate. Drop the hook with the flow of water so you don't create ripples and then pull it back against the current to flip the ring up into the metal."

Talamayas pulled out a white balloon decorated with black and red streaks and handed it to her with the most consideration she'd seen a man have in a while. Looping the string on her finger, he relinquished it to her, and she met his crimson eyes with a different emotion than she expected. It almost seemed like concern.

"It is much like the battlefield, Meredith Aurion. Predict where your opponent is going, not where they are, aim for things easy to hit rather than miss and waste energy, and always come from where you are least expected. Don't rush head on into a trap, instead find a blind spot, exploit a weakness. Vampires don't fight fair, so don't give them the courtesy." Talamayas pat her head like she was a child.

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Word Count: 2430