Summary: Cesia. Rath. The progression of their involvement.
Author: Ahnkitomi/Shiegra
Series: Dragon Knights
Disclaimer: Dragons Knights belongs to Mineko Ohkami
DOB: October 18th, 2005

12. Lies.

Their relationship began with lies.

She wove a trap around the three; at the time she thought them ridiculously easy to fool, and expected an easy meal, while some long suppressed part of her screamed protests at the veils she had woven over her own eyes.

When the witch was dead she was shattered, stunned and lost. What now, when her bonds and cage were gone?

But she had pulled herself together, gathered herself, and traveled instead. Zoma had been there with an engaging smile and bright eyes, so eager to please, and she had found her purpose again.

Illusions once more in the safe shield of first crystal ball and then the guise of a young girl managing a hotel. She lied without thought or regret, because she was used to it once more.

The next stage of their relationship was fear.

Fear of his sword at her throat, his eyes cold and dark. Her composure breaks when they are gone and she presses a hand to her thundering heart, closes her eyes, and prays for courage.

A banquet-lights, Ruwalk pressing a drink in her hands with a wide, mischievous smile. She takes only a single sip before she sets it down, repulsed by the notion of losing control.

The weight of long flowers in her arms, she accidentally hears him speaking cryptic almost-secrets, the set of his mouth grim. She gives herself away and panics-knowing too late that her wind magic gives her away as she flees.

He protects her even if it is only in his thirst for blood, for compensation and revenge of some kind even he possibly does not understand, and the first fading of fear begins, fostering a new, strange emotion.

He nurses her in a small town, feeding her horrible cooking with a bright, inquisitive smile and she insults him casually, and is rewarded by the gradual softening of his eyes.

She gets him drunk, herself a small white animal and hating it, and listens to his hatred, then curls up next to him on soft sheets and listens to the thud of his heartbeat and the soft whisper of steady breathing, and tries to dismiss the pervasive warmth as the comfort and insulation of a coat of thick, snowy fur.

She sees him associate, effortlessly with the young girl from the village, and knows true jealousy for the first time in her life. She hates it but it will not go away.

Much later, he dies by his own hand and her sanity slips and cracks just a little. She hangs on by her finger nails and pulls herself back bit by bit by bringing him back to life. She regrets Kai-stern’s death, but she would have given him up a thousand times over to bring Rath back.

She gives herself up for the others and endures terror in a strange place by remembering the way his skin felt under her fingers.

And then he’s dying again, the only way Nadil will, and she knows the only way to kill her greatest enemy is to kill the demon she loves.

His kiss, pressed to Cesia’s partly open mouth, tastes like blood and sounds like her breaking heart.