cont.

[bloodandflowers]

"He shouldn't get away with it," she snarls, but the fire dies and her hands begin to shake. More dizziness, she tries to push it down. It will pass. "He shouldn't--"

But her words die away as the world dims and goes black.

It's what he's dreading, but it's also what Kell expects, and he catches her shoulders when she sways, stoops and swings her into his arms when her knees give way. The short display has attracted quite a following, but Kell ignores them all, striding to the wall to paint a symbol with the still fresh blood eking from one of his wrists.

He presses his palm to the mark and steps forward and through, not into his cramped, secret room near the park, but into the bedroom of his own apartment. Kell lies Lila on the bed and loosens her collar, listening for a moment to her breath and then her heart. It isn't good, but neither is it very bad, yet, and he heaves a sigh.

He fetches a bowl of cold water and a cloth and returns. Kell places the dampened cloth on her brow and sits in the chair next to the bed, watching her as the minutes tick by. The blood, he leaves. Lila's earned that reminder.

*

Slowly, the world comes back into focus. Lila blinks a few times and takes stock of her surroundings. A ceiling, walls, a bed. Kell sitting next to her looking stern. Perhaps even more than usual. It makes her smile despite the pounding of her head and the dryness of her mouth. She licks her lips, tasting blood, and lifts a hand to remove the wet cloth she feels on her forehead.

"Well, at least you haven't tied me up," she tells him, thinking back to when they first met.

If Kell is relieved to see her conscious again, he gives no outward sign, and neither does he let the smile he feels tugging at the edges of his mouth take root. Let her recall their first meeting all she likes - she's nearly killed herself in the meantime, and the reminder is all Kell needs to regain his frown.

"Lie still," he says. "The dizziness will come again."

Comments

[bloodandflowers]

Kell shakes his head, his eyes drawn without his conscious wish towards the hardness he can see pebbling under Lila's shirt. It is likely the magic, but a small, loud - if buried - part of him would like to think it's from his touch.

"I know of no one who can heal as efficiently as I can, but there are magicians who can balance the five elements. They are healers and teachers - nearly always priests."

Her fingers are on his hand. Kell leaves it where it is, brushing his thumb against her skin.

[best_thief]

Kell's thumb raises goosebumps along Lila's skin, makes the tiny hairs along her arms stand on end. She forgets to breathe. He speaks and she barely registers the words, letting the sound of his voice melt over her. What is it about him that does this to her?

"Like Tieren," she says, and it comes out like a whisper. "He knew about you in the Essen Tasch." Her lips, previously parted, poised and wanting his, quirk into a smile. "He knew about me, too. He had the look of a long-suffering parent."

[bloodandflowers]

Kell smiles, and though it can't compare to the longing he feels each time he thinks of Rhy, he can't help but ache for his old teacher. Apart from his brother, Tieren seemed to be the only person left in Red London who saw him as a person and not a thing.

"I'm glad he is well," Kell replies, reacting to the breathless quality of her voice with a full body shiver. "There have been few comforts since you left, but he remained my friend."

[best_thief]

"And what's gone on since I left?" Lila asks, the ghost of a smile on her face. "Because I can't imagine I was one of those comforts."

If Lila had to describe herself, it would be the opposite of comfort.

She lightly strokes her fingers past Kell's knuckles, up his arm, along his wrist. Tickling, teasing touches meant to distract. She knows his attention is on her bare stomach, her hand, her breasts, even, and knowing this she reaches deftly into his jacket pocket with her other hand. She plucks out a coin with her first two fingers.

She holds it up for him to see she's done it, her face lit up in delight. Not a comfort.

"You see?"

[bloodandflowers]

Her slim fingers drift over him, and Kell's eyelids lower, his mind racing as he considers what she must have touched while she was gone. Swords hilts, the masts of a ship - Emery. He blinks in surprise when she holds something suddenly between them.

It's his own coin, the strange one with the bear that no one uses in the city. He's fascinated with it, but he makes no move to take it back. "I - " he starts, but he remembers all too well how she'd thrown his explanation about being a trinket in his face. The palace is a prison now, but at least it had a warm bed.

"You were," he replies. "My memories of you were a comfort. Particularly those of your more objectionable behavior." Kell looks pointedly at the coin.

[best_thief]

"You lie," Lila accuses, staring in disbelief. It disappears a moment later into a wry smile. "Or perhaps you just enjoy lecturing, and I give you the perfect excuses for it."

She sets his coin on the bedside table, having had no intentions of keeping it. It isn't from here, she knows all of Darrow's currency and none of it is adorned with a bear.

[bloodandflowers]

Kell frowns faintly. "I don't enjoy lecturing." It's not his fault that everyone he knows insists on being as nonsensical as possible.

He gathers his arms back to himself, folding them in his lap with his hands tucked into the edges of his sleeves. "I liked the thought that you were out there, free to sail where you pleased." The thought might not have been half as comforting had he known it was with Alucard Emery. "I've come to understand why you wanted that life for yourself."

[best_thief]

Lila misses Kell's touch as soon as he withdraws his hand. She looks down at her stomach, smooth and unblemished now save for the smear of blood. She doesn't wipe it off, but merely tugs her shirt back down.

She shifts onto her side, watching him. He looks so sad that she nearly reaches out to him, but to what end? Lila's never been good at comforting or consoling. "You wanted to leave?" she asks. "Why?"

[bloodandflowers]

"I could never," Kell is quick to say. He knows what his presence means for Arnes, even if its citizens no longer hold any love for him. "But it is not as it was before the Black Night. Apart from Rhy, the royal family no longer trusts me. The king appointed two of his own guards to watch me, everywhere I go."

Kell draws a stilted breath. "I could not breathe. Life shut inside a palace is not a life at all."

[best_thief]

"But you saved them," Lila protests, incensed. She sits up abruptly with only a small wince from the bruises she still carries from the day's fights. Her eyes narrow, thinking of all he went through for Rhy, for his kingdom, for his whole damn world.

"They should be stumbling over themselves with gratitude. What is their justification? Do they even have any?" she snaps.

[bloodandflowers]

"They have the death of their loved ones," says Kell, and the reminder serves to chase away the resentment for his confinement completely for a moment. "Black magic took many lives that night, Lila, and I brought it there. I am meant to protect them, but I brought the plague that nearly killed them and their prince, all in one evening. Besides."

Kell rubs at his chest again. "It's true that my suffering is Rhy's own. If anything happens to me, it happens to Rhy as well. The King needs his son to live."

Kell understands, but it doesn't mean that he likes it, or managed well at all beneath the weight of it. "I miss my brother, but my life may well be better here."

[best_thief]

"I won't hear your excuses, not for them," Lila says, utterly indignant on his behalf, and even hers. They went through hell to save Red London, she won't hear that Kell should be blamed. "You don't think that wouldn't have happened regardless? Holland would have made sure of it. The Danes set you up."

She goes quiet when he speaks of his brother, and of being better off in this city. She loathes it here, she can't imagine this being a better alternative to much of anything. He must have truly been suffering.

"Do you like it here?"

[bloodandflowers]

As much as he knows that he is to blame, for his naivety if nothing else, part of Kell warms to hear her defend him. He looks away at the question, but he supposes he owes Lila an honest response.

"No," he answers. "It is strange and new, but the novelty does not last, and there is nowhere to go. I wanted to see the worlds, not a tiny piece of just one, yet again." Kell looks back at Lila. "And I think you will hate the confinement. But there are pleasant things here," he admits. "I have a friend, a good one."

[best_thief]

Lila isn't entirely surprised to hear it, with the way Rhy's parents keep Kell under their heel. Before, it had made her livid to hear him talk about his easy, privileged life like it was a burden, but the fact that they won't let him out of their sight would be maddening. If she could travel worlds no one would ever be able to tie her down.

"Yes, I met your friend," she says dryly, resisting an eyeroll.

"Kell," Lila says, leaning forward, keeping her eyes locked on his. "If we get back, leave with me. We'll steal a ship. With your power, and my everything, we'd be the best damn pirates the Arnesian sea has ever seen. Even Alucard won't be able to catch us, not without his Sarows."

[bloodandflowers]

Kell has no idea what a Sarows is, and he's made a promise he intends to keep if he ever returns, that Rhy will rule with Kell at his side, but Kings, he wants. Lila's eyes are bright on his, and Kell closes them, drawing an unsteady breath.

Their own ship. Away from the King and Arnes and Alucuard, away from every invisible chain Kell felt wrapping tighter the longer he remained. "Where would we go?" he asks, allowing himself to imagine it as he opens his eyes. "What will we plunder, Lila Bard?"

[best_thief]

With his eyes closed, Lila wonders if Kell is imagining it the way she dreamt of pirating, the wind on your face, the wheel of a ship under your hands, the sea all around you, and the promise of adventure.

"Everything," Lila says, her voice hushed and her gaze hungry. She rests her hand on his knee like a claim, fingers splayed.

"Have you heard of Sasenroche?" she asks next, and doesn't wait for an answer before continuing. "It's a legend. A secret island, a black market. We'll start there. You won't believe all the treasure that's to be found."

[bloodandflowers]

He hasn't, and Kell smiles a little, to think of Lila so new to his world, yet already knowing more of it than he does. "Warded, no doubt," he says, shifting closer with an undeniably fond expression on his face.

"But not against an Antari. You know we would have to disguise me in some way if you wish to make real use of my magic. Better if no one sees it coming."

[best_thief]

Antari can get past the wards? Of course they can, Kell just wouldn't because he's such a good boy. But the way he talks now, plotting with her, planning ways to pirate and thieve, it's all she can do not to climb into his lap.

"Those glasses," she says, "with the tinted lenses. Haven't you seen people wearing them here? They call them sunglasses. If we can't bring them back with us, we can re-create them."

[bloodandflowers]

He can tell he's pleased her, and Kell warms to the topic. "I've seen them," he agrees. Perhaps he could even enchant the lenses to allow normal light to pass through, so he could wear them in and out of doors. "I ought to wear them here. These people care for my dark eye even less than Grey Londoners."

[best_thief]

"Is it worse, then, when they don't know what it means?" Lila asks, looking to his black eye. All things considered, even with everything they'd been through together, she hadn't actually known him for very long before she left. Still, she thinks she'd gotten used to it. It's just...who he is. She can't imagine him looking any different.