the_lioness | (no subject)

(no subject)

*Alanna slowly climbs the stairs, trailing her fingertips along the cool wall as if trying to cling to every last sensation before she's too tired to notice such things.

Once at the appointed room, she lifts her chin and opens the door. This is all her fault, after all, and now there are consequences.*

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Roger is waiting. He is seated, placid, at a card table; the box is nowhere to be seen. His shirt is satin and his grooming immaculate. A small silver bowl is on the table beside his hand.

"Hello, Lioness," he says, quietly.

Hello, Duke Roger. Sleep well, I trust? No horrid dreams keeping you awake in the dark hours of the night?

*Smile full of false brightness, she sweeps into the room. She starts to bow and stops herself, eyes flashing.*

"No," he says, levelly. "Though I am sure the same cannot be said of you. But come, Lioness, enough toying. Here."

He gestures to the bowl, rolling his left sleeve up. "Kindly bare your right arm."

Bare my arm?

*She quirks an eyebrow, hands balling into fists behind her back. Not sitting just yet, she battles between the knowledge that she has no choice, and the ingrained aversion to letting this man have even the tiniest flicker of her magic.*

How do you intend to do this? All Thom and I ever had to do was touch hands...

*Sighing, Alanna wishes she could take back that name. Thom. It hovers between them in the air like morning mist. She remembers the sight of Roger's Gift turning Thom's a dull burnt orange and wonders if that will happen to hers.*

"I am not your twin," he says, simply. And waits, holding his palms open on the table.

Thank the Goddess for that. *Slowly, hesitantly, she sinks into the chair, leaving enough room between herself and the table so that she can stand quickly. She looks a bit like a cat deciding between fighting or fleeing.* Why the bowl?

Wordlessly, he lifts a knife out from the shadow of the bowl and inclines her head toward her arm. He cocks a brow.

*Alanna pales, jerking backwards.*

Mithros, you can't be serious...

No.

There are other ways, Roger. I'm sure of it. You are not getting a drop of my blood.

"I'm afraid there isn't," he says, shrugging. "The transference of magic is a tricky thing. But if it consoles you... I don't need much."

As if you care what does and does not make me feel better about any of this.

*Snarling, she pushes on her sleeve and thrusts her arm forward.*

Fine. Is this what you did to Thom? Muddying his Gift up with yours?

Roger's face remains impassive. "That was a little different," he says.

He hands her the knife. "Would you like to do it? Let a little spill into the bowl."

Better I do it than you.

*Fingers closing around the knife handle, she licks her lips and stares at her arm.

What am I doing?

What I need to do. Or they die. It might be fake, it might not. I can't take that risk.

She grits her teeth and makes a small cut on the side of her arm, careful not to touch anything vital. As blood drips slowly off her arm into the bowl, she lifts her gaze to his.*

Happy?

Roger cocks a brow, ignoring the question, and takes the bowl once a thin layer of blood covers the bottom; taking a silver vial from his sleeve, he pours the contents into it until the liquid in the bowl is a ruddy silver, reflective and thixotropic.

He looks up at Alanna. "I would ask you to stare into the bowl, concentrating on its movement. I need to send a probe into you, to draw out your Gift, and your mind has to be...fluid."

*Fluid. Alanna manages not to snort. Unconsciously turning the silver ring on her finger, she glares at him.*

A probe? Stay out of my head.

*Breathing shakily, she drops her gaze to the bowl and blinks.*

Roger waits until her eyes grow dreamy and then he drops through her ribs, into the blackness there, searching for the purple threads in her veins:

He begins drawing them into his orange, amorphous self, swimming down and down, gathering them into a wreath around his reaching limbs.

*A voice in the back of her head, that same voice that insisted on being heard when Lucifer compelled her to kiss him, screams in anger. Her eyes are glazed over, but her breathing grows increasingly erratic as he works.

She can feel him taking it, and would rather be stabbed ten times over than suffer this sensation.*

I... you are...

*Her voice sounds reedy, and words fail her.*

After a time he releases, the wreath cradled in him, a purple glow firing his head:

"There," he says, his voice thin with effort.

*Just before he pulls back, Alanna becomes dimly aware of the flickering light coming from the emberstone around her neck. The room spins, and she grips the sides of the table with as much force as she can manage. Everything hurts, her head pounds with self-recrimination and guilt; yet curiously, her emotions feel numb. Deadened.

Her eyes slide shut, and she slumps forward, taking a deep breath.*

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