Dawn lit the sky and Rion pulled Kara to her shaky feet. They were both stiff from exposure, and dry from the wind. Kara stumbled, but not because of fatigue or fear. She was too busy gazing around her at the village.

"Is it so different from Aquaria?" He changed his grip on her wrist to a natural hand hold and slowed his pace so he could walk beside her.

Kara cracked a tiny smile and gave him a look he had come to recognize as her letting him know what he'd said or asked was ridiculous to her. "It's dirty." 

He decided to call her on it. "Then you must find 'dirty' to be intriguing."

Kara's steel wall flew up and he squeezed her hand with a short guttural chuckle. He noted that she hadn't objected to having her hand held, even after she'd told him-- in no uncertain terms that she couldn't fall in love--nor had she made any move to release herself. 

In his mind, Kara inserted an image. First a clear dome-like apparatus, artificially light blue, that never changed. Giant lights shone on it to indicate daylight. Streets were made of hard, smooth material he'd never seen before. Buildings were tall and many people lived in them, no windows at all. There was very little green, certainly no grass, no animals and no children running outside. Nothing in his experience had ever prepared him for that vision.

"You see." 

"Come with me." He pulled her along, through the hedge between two houses, their thatched roofs smelling organic and alive.

Behind another house, a short hill rose like a guardian indicating the outskirts of town. A trellis of some kind of colored plants caught the starlight and as Rion would have jumped it like a hedge, Kara stopped abruptly. "Flowers!" 

In Rion's mind there flashed an image of flowers, not alive and blooming beautifully, but as she saw them, artificial, lifeless, pale reflections.

She didn't touch the flowers but leaned her face close to smell them, her sublime expression took him by surprise, a feeling of delight permeated his senses. He reached out and pulled the bloom, as large as his fist and as brightly colored pink as a coral shell, off its stem and presented it to her. Kara was shocked, even as she held out her hand and he laid it carefully on her palm.

"You killed it." She breathed, not looking at it, wiping discreetly at the way her eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

"No, it'll grow another one. Don't worry." He didn't like that he had dismayed her, but had only wanted to please her. In his world, plucking a bloom and giving it to a maiden was considered good form. Obviously, in hers, it was not. He grabbed her free hand and pulled her up the path on the side of the hill. 

This time he kept his hands on her shoulders, manipulated her neck carefully to the west and was satisfied with her gasp. Once before he stood on this grassy knoll with her on his mind. Once before her strange defiance had called his soul into reflection.

"Kara." He whispered softly. They stared at the sea together, and then slowly surveyed the shore, and the villages, the castle and the huge crags of Sentinel. In seconds, he had moved her so she could see beyond, to the swamps, the buttes, and plateaus of their shared planet, the skyline, purple and silver with beckoning shapes waiting to be explored. "There are villages along the coast, quite a few of them, Salimantor and human alike, some are mixed, some are more one than the other, they manage to live fairly peaceably."

"What is that?" She pointed toward the strange mushy lowlands of the swamps. Rion felt the gentle weight of her left shoulder as it rested against him trustingly. His hand rose to cup the silken skin. She didn't pull away.

"That is where generations of battles have been fought. Originals fought the Salimantors there, pioneers of your people, our people," he corrected. "Fought each other and Quildor fought Taan and Belakane there. The land has covered their bones and become dead to all life."

"And you want to go there?" She turned astonished eyes on him.

"No." He tilted her face with two fingers of inquiry, waiting for her withdrawal. Despite her words to the contrary, a sense of warmth and satisfaction entered his heart, he closed his eyes to enjoy the way it made his chest tighten, and his thighs constrict as if a bolt of shared energy was shooting into him. His fingers directed her gaze in the opposite direction. Ahead lay hills and trees, winding buttes and flat-topped plateaus, barely discernible in the darkness. In her mind, she felt his elation as he envisioned them walking far away from their squabbles to pioneer for themselves.

Kara swallowed painfully against his fingers holding her steady. Rion hunched his shoulders into her protectively and pointed things out.

"Wh- where is Valdemar?"

Rion's eyes darted confidently as he pointed beyond the swamps, and toward a higher distant mountain range far away. Kara felt like she could actually penetrate the encompassing land mass and see Korlon's home city for herself, although she'd never been there.

"Who is Korlon?" Rion grasped her unguarded thoughts easily. He looked into her eyes, daring her to deny or to lie. He knew Korlon was the son of Archer Valdemar. What he needed to know was who Korlon was to her.

Kara shrugged and glanced down at their feet only inches apart. "My teacher, and my guardian." 

Rion plucked the information easily from her mind and heard her little indignant gasp as he did. He saw once again the image of the man he'd seen in her dreams. 

"He's more than your teacher and guardian." He dropped her chin and compelled her to look him in the eye by lowering his own stance to be on her level. "Isn't he?"

Kara refused to answer, throwing up her shields, guarding her feelings for Korlon with everything she had inside her.

My feelings were too new! Too tender, she cried inside, not for you to view! Or Judge!

Rion's inner sense reeled back, although he didn't drop her gaze or let her go.

He felt a deep sense of surprise.

Was it possible? Had she somehow kept this from him?

Jealousy whipped viciously, and self-preservation kicked in at the same time. He needed a moment to digest this development. He had allowed himself to become captivated by her bright wit, her courage, and stubborn loyalty. He had inadvertently allowed himself to be beguiled, although he didn't know if it were his own damnable feelings for her or his wishes to be gone from Quildor that fueled the enchantment.

A wash of annoyance followed the jealousy, and Rion had to tamp it down, not wishing to give her power over him. He let his eyes travel over her familiar face; the hard set of glittering lavender eyes, the clumps of lashes lying against sun-burnt cheeks, trying to adjust to the idea that she had feelings for someone other than him.

To assuage his hurt he grinned knowingly. "Ah ha!" He chortled, slapping her back in an attempt at jovial understanding. "You have feelings for him! Has he kissed you? Has he declared for you?"

He had to hold himself aloof from her in that moment, knowing that if she sensed his sudden jealousy she'd hide herself even further inside. But jealous, he was, as it whipped through him again in unprecedented fury. The thought of another man touching her was absolutely anathema.

Her tell-tale cheeks burned the story into his mind. He found himself grabbing her roughly. "Really?!" He shook her, causing her arms to tighten against him, and her neck to snap up, her eyes blazing in defiance. "Really?"

Only Kara knew that there had been no kiss, what there had been was a treasure to her. Only she knew how badly she wanted Korlon to declare for her. To spread her feelings wide for this man... this enemy... she jerked away from him, but Rion was having none of it. He dug his fingers into her collarbone firmly.

"Let me see." He demanded.

Kara flung her head from side to side, as if that could prevent Rion's powerful mind from entering hers. Her knee came up and connected with his upper thigh, and as he grunted, she elbowed him in the ribs.

"Leave me alone! You said to respect... you agreed...." She panted, struggling against him now not as the Princess that had to escape from him, or the warrior that needed to learn about him, but as the woman who felt exposed by him.

Only she knew that the feelings she'd been harboring for Korlon were no longer even comparable to the feelings she was harboring for Rion himself! If he could see those feelings for Korlon-- he would feel her confusion about him!

Struggling made her defenses weaker. She hit him hard on the chest, but he peeled back the steel wall image in her mind and felt, rather than saw the girlishly romantic thoughts that were hidden in her tender maiden dreams. There had been no violation. There had been no declaration. There had been no...kiss.

He instantly viewed the image of the two of them in the crystal field when he had kissed her forehead-- and later when they had almost--

He gathered her to his chest with arms suddenly gone possessive, searching her eyes now sparkling in the dawn, glaring at him as he splayed his fingers along the back of the head, filling his hands with her hair. Her lips had fallen open in tormented confusion.

He knew---

She wanted him--

He felt it.

He let her name fall from his lips seconds before claiming that first kiss for his own. Both hands slid up and over her cheeks, experiencing his possession of her in a way no one before him ever had. His shoulders hunched closer to her, invading, insinuating, demanding.

Shock waves tore through Kara, as his lips pressed to hers roughly, pliant like the melding walls of Sentinel. Like those walls, Kara felt the breaking down of barriers. Things that could not be held back. Terror sparkled in her mind as the wall and all its safeguards shattered in the face of this surprising onslaught.

Terror that was replaced by beautiful waves of tenderness. Kara's fingers gripped Rion's wrists as he held her to him, tasting her, governing her. His kiss deepened, pressing her intimately, wrapping around her in gentle yet unmistakable desire. He started to move, to give her a breath, and was unprepared for the sudden softening of her lips the way she kissed him back with all her energy, not once, not twice, but finally yielding to him and-- claiming him.

"Na'shilean." He whispered, meaning it. He kissed her again, her response drawn from her like living water from a well, her eyes closed and she melted into his embrace. Rion ran his hands over her face, through her hair, and down her neck and shoulders. He whispered her name again, skimming kisses over her face.

Her fingers clutched at his wrists once again and pulled them to her side just seconds before she dug her nails into his flesh and drew blood. Her wail was piercing, like a scream of rage and pain together.

"You are mine!" He ground out, turning her wrists to his and digging his nails in, also drawing blood.

"Rion--- I'm not--!"

He lifted her fingers as the blood ran down her wrist to mingle with his. "Yes, you are, Kara." He said, and this time his voice was soft and tender as he recognized the finality in his own statement. "And only mine!"

"I can't---!"

"You are! I know it and you know it!"

Her astonishment couldn't have been more real. Her cheeks reddened, her eyes blinked into his, and her fingers came up to touch his lips, red now from their passion.

"Rion! No--! I never wanted this to happen! I always thought..."

"What you felt for him was the infant infatuation of first love, Kara, nothing more." He referred to her budding feelings for Korlon, and brushed them aside as if they were nothing "What we feel is shared, real..."

Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding, racing back and forth across his face as realization dawned. "Rion... you're my enemy!"

Rion knew that he held her willingly even in that moment. Her fingers continued to caress his lips in wonder, her eyes to search his in realization.

His expression twisted from indignant to determined. "Not from the first moment I sensed you, Kara. You are not my enemy. And we are bound together..." He was shaking her gently, forcing her to see his sincerity and passion. "You sensed me, you understood my need for freedom, my desire to be clear of Quildor...."

Without warning a chill of sea spray cloaked them both and Kara's hand rose to move her bangs out of her misty and confused eyes, as Rion's lips dropped once more to hers.

"Perhaps you would prefer to explain that statement and all others to our liege?" Came the sinister tip of a sword beneath Rion's chin, effectively separating him from Kara's slim figure.

He felt her body stiffen in awareness, her fingers clenched painfully in the thin fabric of his unguarded shirt. He wanted to reassure her, but it was too late and too fast. A convulsive tremor accompanied the voice of a Brother as it hissed in her ear. Rion knew this brother well. One he didn't relish the idea of confronting at this moment in time. Fool him, for allowing his guard down and his jealousy to make him vulnerable. He had not sensed nor heard the approach of Quarso.

"Jayce." Rion pronounced his name forcefully, carrying the weight of his authority over this Quarso. "Leave off."

The sword tip drew blood.

Kara felt Rion's stance solidify dangerously, from aggressively possessive to that of a warrior. In the slight lapse, she whipped around, pulling the dagger from Rion's belt and knocking the sword tip away from his neck, her arms rose to cover his body from the threat, her reflexes ready to fight.

Silver gleamed in the moonlight as the sword changed hands and a dagger clashed against hers in quick reply. Kara stabbed, felt the slice of material and skin, and leaped forward, pressing home. Her instincts told her to get her assailant down and she did, kicking his feet out from under him, landing on top of him with both legs and knees pressing sensitive spots that rendered her attacker unable to move, but not unable to transform. This he did, throwing her off him and rushing forward to finish her off. Rion transformed also, knocking Kara away from Jayce's grip. 

Kara leaped to her feet as the two Salimantor Foemen began to fight earnestly, and would have sprung in to slice the neck of the evil one from behind, when she was grabbed around the neck, by another Salimantor. Her scream was torn from her throat before her own dagger was used to slice her from one ear to the other, and Kara felt the warmth of her own blood spurting against her skin in frothy dark skeins. There was no time as the sensation of body and soul weakened in oozing bursts, and she lost control of her limbs. The last thing she saw was the now transformed human face of the man who had killed her, pinning her down as her life's blood drained from her.

*******