reignfall | for insufficientjewel.

for insufficientjewel.

A man's footfalls, light for his size, and coming closer. Were she not dazed with hunger, this would be her sign to flee, to become once more one with the night, gone half a mile before he has so much as a chance at rounding this corner. This hunger is a frightening one, though, it cuts deep and for the first time since she herself was turned, Celeste fears what might come after. If she does not feed, what madness might befall her? If she is so close to losing her senses in the presence of her victim now, what will happen if she flees, if she means to last through another day, to hunt another night? Few are out past curfew these days, and fewer are inclined to invite strangers into their homes past sundown. The woman before her is her safest wager.

And not only because she has already fallen under her spell, having forgotten those pleas for aid and mercy she'd uttered at the first sight of her attacker's fangs. The woman is still now, stiff as a board, and though there is sentience yet flickering behind her eyes, she cannot fight a vampire's might. She almost pities her: it is not, she recalls, a pleasant feeling.

The steps come closer, though, and there is no time to search for humanity in her unbeating heart. Even in life, she would not have chosen it. This may no longer be a question of life and death, but she is seeing double, hearing echoes, and she cannot wait another night, cannot last another scalding day, if she does not do as her nature commands.

She leans forward, then, presses her victim bodily against the wall, buries her fangs in her neck and smells a man's scent so close as though –

She is grabbed, drawn back, and though her strength by far outdoes that of her opponent, her dazed state is enough to stop her. "This does not concern you," she murmurs, eyes half shut as she means to keep her victim under her control. The woman slides to the ground, rattled by the pain of the bite, and it is more difficult to keep her hypnotised when facing away from her. "Leave this place, good sir, or find yourself in trouble beyond your reckoning."

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Ordinarily, he would never lay hands on a woman. It is deeply engrained in him, that sense of chivalry, that certainty that it would be unforgivable to use his strength against a lady.

But this is no ordinary situation. The hair prickles at the nape of his neck, and he has heard the woman's pleading, seen and smelled the blood - and there are limits to chivalry, surely; there is an end to manners, when there is violence at hand. Violence: it is not a thing with which Francis is well-acquainted, at least not in adulthood, and it is not a thing he has ever sought out; but even so, he knows it when he sees it. If he had any doubt, it is gone when he sees the victim's pallor, the blood that smears her skin and her collar, the blank shock in her wide eyes.

And perhaps, then, it is true what the attacker says. Perhaps this is trouble beyond his reckoning. Certainly, he does not have any real recourse, beyond calling for help: he is tall and well-built, but he is not a fighter, and he knows his folklore well enough that as soon as he sees the blood on her lips and the fangs beneath, his first staggered thought is Not human. She is not human.

Wąpierz. The word floats fully-formed into his mind; followed swiftly by another, Romanian: strigoi. He has read treatises on the creatures, written on his master's behalf a great deal about their lore. Vampires.

They are not real. They cannot be. And yet, here she stands: and what other explanation is there, but that folk-tales roam in the open air? He swallows hard, but does not flinch from her threat; he is careful not to meet her eyes, but looks instead at the crumpled form of the other woman. He must focus on her, he decides. Hers is the life at stake.

"It concerns me." His tone is steady, even if he does not feel it. His hands still grip her arms, and beneath them, he feels none of the warmth of living flesh. "As soon as I saw it, it concerned me. Get back from her!"

Was she once, in life, this warm? When she held on to another, when she fought the man who turned her, did he, too, feel that strange surge of heat, that promise not merely of a feast, but of a life? He is accursedly, unabashedly living, and throwing all of it her merry way, when he should make for a quick and decisive exit. The hasty gulps she had taken were enough to soothe her most immediate hunger, yet she is far from restored, and that is all that slows her down. Were she at the height of her strength, at her fullest, thirstless, she would snap his arm in two, and tear his throat out by the might of her teeth for the mere pleasure of it.

Like this, however, she must choose, and so the hold on the woman is lifted as swift as it had descended on her. This mortal is not crafted of that same cloth the man before her is; there is no attempt made to help him now. She presses a hand to her throat and means to scramble, but the bloodloss is slowing her. Fragile in her terror, she uses the wall to steady herself as she makes to crawl away, and Celeste's nostrils flare as she scents the blood, a trail left like a promise for her to follow.

Later.

She licks her lips, then wipes her mouth, and those precious few drops that have escaped her blood-red tongue are lapped now from the side of her palm, wasting none. It is not enough, and her hungry eyes fix on him now. Like a cat's, they reflect the streetlights, eerie, she might reckon, had she ever seen herself like this. "Mortal man, what is this stranger to you?"

Her cold hand falls to his living, warm one, and he can feel the surging strength as she means to rid herself of his grip. Blood has stained the front of her fine dress, and blood has dyed a strand of her hair, which has come loose from an otherwise respectably neat up-do. "See how she leaves you here." Her free hand roams forward, meaning to touch his face and force him to look her in the eye, so that she may assert herself over his mind with a lull of false promises. "I would be more earnest with you than her."

If she is truly what she appears, he cannot hope to hold her back. Of that, he is certain: and yet, he is equally certain that if he does not try, he will never rest easy again, knowing that the woman's death would be on his conscience. The hand that presses to his has all the warmth of the grave, and all its promise too; and it is strong, stronger by far than he is. Still, he keeps his eyes from hers for a long moment; until they catch hers in passing, and with a lurch of sudden horror, he feels himself caught in the cat-green gleam of them.

She is, he realises, beautiful - not a beauty that attracts, but one that repels him in its incongruity, gold and white marred with the smears of crimson. His skin crawls at her touch, his pulse rising in instinctive, atavistic horror. He snatches his free hand back from her arm, crossing himself. A weak protection against such a demon, perhaps, but all the protection he has.

"You are not even earnest in promising earnestness." He cannot look away, but he will not let her in, either: he feels the warm caress and the soft comfort washing against his mind, but it has no place here. He will not allow it. Without entirely knowing he is doing it, he hardens his mind against her. Ne nos inducas in tentationem, libera nos a malo... He had thought, once, to become a priest. Vaguely, he wonders whether he might have been more prepared for this pass if he had done so; would sanctity protect him against this evil? Would he know what to say, to banish her back to whatever pit of Hell she came from? "I do not know the lady. But I know there is no place for wąpierzy among the living."

Around the corner, she can hear the woman rise to stand, to flee the scene yet faster still. The trail of blood left behind is one she could easily follow, but already it is cold on the cobblestone. Any moment now, her would-be victim could take shelter inside, and she will not be foolish enough to open the door for her. The hunt might be futile, and to hunt after blood spilled is not nearly so appealing to her as the taste of the fresh thing.

The man before her is brimming with life. There is more of a flush to Celeste's cheeks now – the blood she'd drank is evidently taking – but the shadows beneath her eyes remain, betraying her temporary weakness. There is no breathing, per se, not the way he drinks it in and expels it in a silent prayer, but she does draw a mechanical breath, to taste him in the air around him. The heat of him is unbearable, and she can hear the thumping of his heart. He is not without fear, but his resolve is stronger.

Too strong, she finds, with widening eyes, as he does not sink into the lull she had wished to place on him. No matter: she steps forward all the same, and the hunger in her eyes is blatant. Give in, she thinks her own starved prayer. "And no place among the dead. By what right do you deny me what I need to carry on?"

"By what right should you take it from her?" There is a cold sweat rising beneath the cheap linen of his shirt, and he must fight the urge to recoil, to flee as she draws nearer. But she is a predator, and if he flinches, if he shows weakness, then there is no doubt that she will fall upon him. Nor is running an option: not only is she undoubtedly swifter than his frail human body, but he has no guarantee, if he ceases to preoccupy her, that she will not find the woman again. Or some other prey, equally innocent.

No, he must stand firm, even as all animal instinct cries out to run and hide. If he falters, all is lost. He must stand firm, and he must forget the doom that no doubt awaits; fear will not serve him.

Pity will not serve him, either; and yet, he does feel it. He could not call her weak - he is certain, having felt the strength of her grip, that the creature before him could tear him limb from limb if she wished - but he can hear a desperation in her voice, see the hunger in her face, and that face is human enough still to bring a pang of sympathy. Once, he is sure, she was a living, feeling woman; that woman is still part of the creature, even if she is no longer living. There is a tragedy in it, that he will not deny. He wonders whether creatures such as her still fear death. He would fear it more, he thinks, knowing that her soul must be damned.

"You kill to eat, do you not?" Perhaps not him, per se, but like the rest of them, he will buy from the butcher's, or trade for scraps at the market. There is something in his fervour that is utterly distracting to her, like a cat who has caught a mouse only to release it, all for the pleasure of catching it anew. At once, he is more appealing prey than the woman she'd so readily won over, and at once, she does not have the opportunity now to change her mind. This is a dark hour of the night, yes, but hardly the darkest, and she does not have much time before she must seek shelter to be on the safe side.

"I need not even kill. A drink is enough for me to feed," her tone is soft, apologetic were she not so given toward the sultry, and she leans forward just a little more, caught in his scent, pushed further by the racing beat of his heart.

It strikes her that this has quick become the longest conversation she has had with a mortal in some time. Part of her wants to see it last. "I used to prefer veal, too, not that long ago."

There is, he will admit, some truth to what she says. He has rarely killed his own meat, and indeed eats little of it - but that is more due to its cost than to any principle, and he can understand her point. Life has a right to sustain itself, even at the cost of others; that is the nature of living.

But, he must remind himself sharply, she is not alive. She has no right to be walking this world at all. Her death is a tragedy, as all deaths may be; but it is a tragedy of the past, for there is no heat in her and no pulse beating beneath the skin.

"You need not kill?" She is scant inches from him, and if she breathed, he would feel it against his face. She does not breathe. The hair on the back of Francis' neck prickles with instinctive dread. "And yet you would have killed her. Do you deny that?"

It is abundantly clear that he would not understand. To feed on blood, and feel another's life seep through her veins, that is, by itself, pleasurable. But to do it with the intent to kill is another thing entirely, and if the struggle is subdued so as to not risk a fang, there is no greater exhilaration than to feast on the moment of death. It is glorious, it is indescribable – it is as though she is alive again. It is as though she has become a god in her own right.

"Mayhaps." Yes, a resounding yes in her heart of hearts, but she is basking in the radiant light of his living, on the secondhand heat of him, and the inherent humanity he carries. He smells of life, and the details of him are intoxicating, too: where she is cold most all the time that she has not freshly fed, he is dressed to defend himself from the weather, and his skin shows traces of it, and she wants him more than she has wanted that woman. "If it has been too long, there is no stopping."

That is the truth, in the end. She does not like to think what it would be like to lose her senses to the hunger.

He thinks, again, of all that he has read. It fits: it fits all too well. And yet...

There is no agreement on whether vampires can feed without killing, so far as he knows. There is a suggestion, certainly, that they can choose whether to kill or to turn their victim; but in none of the stories, none of the essays on the wampir, has there been any question that those are the only possible ends. And so it might well be. To kill, to turn, or to enthrall: are these not aims enough for a demon?

Except that, for all the danger inherent in her, and for all that she is unrepentant, she does not quite strike him as demonic. He has no doubt that she would kill him, and that she would feel no guilt in the matter. Perhaps she can feel no guilt. Yet there is an echo of humanity in her, or so it seems to him, and it is difficult to entirely condemn her.

After all, she is right. She has every reason to wish for her survival.

"How long is too long?" It falls from his tongue without thought, without consideration of where that question leads.

"Two months, or thereabouts, and I would lose my mind to the hunger. It has been a month now, and I would have drank more than she could have suffered." She could have drained her, really, and spared herself the trouble for some time, but outside, here, where anyone could pass by as she is most occupied with her victim, she would scarcely have made it past the point of death before she would need to flee. Most mortals were no trouble at all, but hunters did exist, and more than she fears the blood madness, she fears the idea of silver stakes, and bullets drenched in holy water. And panicked, terrorised mortals tended to draw those things like flies her way.

"It cannot be more than a couple weeks, if I never meant to do lasting harm, but that is frequent enough to raise suspicion, would you not agree?" That is a lot of people to put under the thrall, and to hope they obey the order to forget, which is doubtful practice at best. Celeste much prefers a final, clean option, something that asserts her dominion over anything living by taking that precious bit of breath away.

"I don't remember it hurting," she says, as though he made any uncouth suggestion, but for all the ways he has not yet responded like a man under her spell, she is out for blood still. Even in life, she had a soft spot for the overly honourable and chivalrous sort, even if they drove her properly insane midway into every conversation. Now that he sees her as so obviously foul, and himself so blithely good, it seems almost unfair to expect her not to have a taste of that saintly glory of his.

He made no uncouth suggestion; and yet, perhaps her power has worked itself beneath the skin after all, for that suggestion does present itself. It is a mad thing to think, a horror to even consider helping to sustain a monster in this world. And yet...

He can feel the strength in her, the hunger that burns in her eyes. If he tried to stand against her, what hope would there be in that? He cannot prevent her from following her unnatural hunger, and he cannot save every poor soul that she sets her sights upon; and she will live forever, in this hideous way, and how many must die for it? He is no priest, no brave hero; he is a researcher's clerk, and his pen is no sword to strike down demons from the earth; and yet, is he to walk away, and leave such a hunter to stalk the nights unchecked?

"It is frequent enough," he agrees, and his tone is guarded. "But you can do it? You could feed yourself, and do no fatal hurt?"

"It can be done. Offers are few and far between, of course. Most want the curse for themselves in return, which I cannot grant, and there has been an attempt to use the threat of hunters over me." In truth, it has been decades since she last tried to turn another into a vampire, and she can only guess at whether or not she has reached the point of strength where it can be done with ease. The mention of hunters is a warning: she is faster by far than they can be summoned.

She does blink, and watches him in the making of his decision. Ill at ease he is – no soft curve or tender thrall has loosened his senses yet. He is debating something he deems greater than himself, and it is fascinating to her, who has lived for a long time now unattached to others and unencumbered by higher morals.

He recoils a little, not at the implied warning against hunters, but at that other part. Most want the curse for themselves in return? Who, he wonders, could ever wish for such a thing? To wander half-human through the world, without hope of salvation; to kill to sustain one's own shadowed life; to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that nothing but damnation waits if you falter? It is a nightmare, and an unending one; and he pities anyone who would wish for such a thing; and in the same moment, wonders whether she did. Whether the woman she once was asked to become the demon she is now, and whether she would choose it again, knowing the cost.

But that is a thought for a later time; there is no space to linger on the philosophical. The question before him is a blunter one. He sees it take form between them, the shape of a choice, and if he had time, he would pray on it, but there is no time. That wildness in her allows no time. It is his own thoughts he must trust, and not wait for the guidance of some higher power; he can only hope that he is able to rise to the need.

"Two weeks." He says it softly, mostly to himself. "Would you spare others, if there were such an offer? If you need not kill to live?"

He is not, then, one enamoured with the idea of eternal life, and all by itself, that is a curious thing indeed. There are reasons aplenty to fear death, most of all for a man of faith, for the rules of faith are strict and relentless; Celeste remembers this well. Salvation had not been in the cards for her, well before she offered her blood, and drank deep of that of her maker in turn.

More curious is the offer, and his inclination is so clear that she already licks her lips. She must tread carefully now, but she is greedy by nature, and often unwilling to compromise on her multitude of desires.

"Killing takes a toll, good sir, even on my kind." She does not mean guilt and damnation, those she has grown immune to. Yet she has chosen to preserver her beauty eternally, and a budding pile of corpses in her wake tends to rob her of the admiration she craves. It is difficult to snake her way into the embrace of better society to begin with; it is all the more difficult when its members keep vanishing, only to turn up bloodless a little while later. Time and time again, she must leave a city, invent herself anew, start over, only to vanish again, a cycle as old as she is by now. It is an effort, she would rather stay a little longer. "I would take the offer, and be grateful for it."

So long as the blood is strong, this she does not say. He looks healthy, though, smells clean and good, and she remembers a mortal affection she once held for a man now dead for a good century, who had carried in him that same seriousness and that same devotion she has begun to see in him. "I am called Celeste," for it is pretty and French, and she had liked France, before the revolution had made it so grim a place to be of any sort of respectable blood.

It is madness. He is all too aware that it is madness to even consider such an offer, much less to actually make it. He damns himself, and does he not damn others, too? Will he bind himself in compact with a demon, for any reason at all? Place his life in her hands, give her such power in his comings and goings, turn from God to the Devil?

Killing takes a toll, she says, even on her kind; and she gives him her name, and makes of herself something a little closer to human in the process; and it is not easy, now, to turn away. Even if he could, even if she were not more than capable of killing him if he should try.

He closes his eyes, and his hand moves instinctively to cross himself, without immediately thinking of how this may affect her. It is not, in a sense, to protect himself from her. He would rather protect himself from his own fallibility, from the mistakes that he may make here, and the dangers they may pose; he would rather call on his faith for guidance, right now, than for material protection.

"Francis." He opens his eyes, and there is a harder edge to his expression, a determination behind it. "What is it that you need me to do?"

He crosses himself; it comes so natural to him, a habitual thing ingrained by what she presumes is a lifelong devotion to the faith. Once upon a time, so many years ago now that it seems entirely out of reach, though her memory does not fade in any mortal fashion, she and her family had visited the church on every Sunday, and every high holiday, and whenever else their presence was called for. And there had been true faith, once, when her mother was still alive, and reprimanding her quietly for whispering with her twin.

Now, there is no gentle reprimand: that jolt of discomfort brought by the gesture strikes immediately and with little warning, and she flinches with the force of it. By itself, it does little more than give her a painful moment's pause, but her eyes dart to his throat, his chest, searching for a thing far, far more uncomfortable than this.

"Are you, perchance, wearing a cross around your neck, Francis?" Even in light of the question, she cannot deny herself the pleasure of tasting his name on her tongue.

He is; of course he is; beneath his shirt is the same simple pewter crucifix he has worn for all his adult life. It is only now that it occurs to him anew that it must serve as some protection from her - now, that is, that he has resolved himself not to be protected.

Faith is, he recalls, a shield against such creatures. It shows in how she recoils, in that pain in her expression when she flinches back. One hand rises to his chest, to feel beneath the cheap linen of his shirt the small weight of the cross. It is not an expensive one, or a particularly fine one: it is what he could afford, and that has rarely been much. But it is important, nonetheless, and to put it aside seems to be a crossing of some line that may never be uncrossed. To put aside the cross, for the creature lost to God... there is a hideous poetry in the thought.

"I will take it off." Faith, he reminds himself, does not lie in the workings of some cheap metal, no more than it lies in the movement of a hand across the body. Faith is in the hard choices, and in trusting where they lead. "When you swear that you will not turn on another, that you will feed from me and be done; I will take it off, and you may have your fill."

For a moment she waits, as though she expects him to break into an ill-fitting burst of laughter at what comes closet at best to a humourless jest. The moment passes; his expression remains sincere. Of all the ways he thinks her doomed, he remains faithful to the idea that there is enough goodness left in her to make a vow she means to keep. Even in life, even in the days when she still held a shred of faith, her relations with oaths has been duplicitous at best.

It doesn't mean she minds them – she likes very much to be on the receiving end. There is just not a single one she has made and kept at all.

Even now, the weight of it is almost absurd: what if he perishes of any of those mortal diseases? What if there is already a taint to his blood that renders it sour on her tongue? However, she sees no ready way around it, and the breaking of the vow can wait until after the making of it. "Give me your hand, then." She extends her own, pale and cold.

He is resolved. He must be resolved; to hesitate will win nothing, at a time like this. He said that he would consent, if she would swear. If he does not give her the chance, or does not accept her promise, then all this fragile negotiation crumbles. It does not matter, either, that she may not keep her word. What matters is that, if she swears it, he has done all he can do; and if she forswears it, then he has every right to withdraw what he has sworn himself to. (How that might be done, if it can be done at all, is a trouble for another time.)

He reaches out, and, taking her icy hand in his, is acutely conscious of the heat that pulses beneath his own skin, the blood that rushes red and rich beneath the surface of his slender hand. The seal on the bargain, and the prize he offers, all at once. Does she slaver at it?

Has she, at any time since this began, ceased to slaver?

"I do not know what your kind can swear to. But so long as you hold to it, I will hold to my part, and let you feed as you require. Is that just?"

"I can swear on my mother's grave, and my father's, and my brother's, and my own empty one." And why not? There is nothing else to swear on but the dead, for they are real without doubt, and eternal in their own way. His hand is so warm, so living, and her smile holds the same promise it once had when her inappropriate flirtations did not so openly tease her own death.

"It is just." It is the first just thing that has come her way in some time, and teeth seem sharper now in the dim light, her eyes now wide like those of a predatory cat on the hunt. This is not the look of a lady about to make a wise choice, and this finally seems to occur to her, too, as a more human sentience creeps back into her expression. "The deal should not be sealed out in the open like this. I have been interrupted once on this night, and I cannot count on your fellows to be so humane."

There is little she could have sworn to that would convince him more, or solidify his resolve; for in that oath, she once again makes herself closer to human. She had a mother, and a father, and a brother; she was a woman once in truth; and if she is damned to Hell for what she has become, as she surely must be, then it is an act of Christian mercy to hold off her final end.

And he will not consider the other thoughts behind that; the weight of the smile she gives him, or the decidedly un-Christian stirring it awakens in him. He forces it back, and swallows, nodding.

"I have lodgings down the street." He is already damning himself in making this deal at all, and she will no doubt kill him in the end whatever he does; to allow her into the small apartment he rents will not make matters worse. More embarrassing, perhaps, if his landlady sees him return home with a woman; but despite his earlier ambitions, he is not a priest, and it is not against any law for him to bring a woman into his home. (It is against his own conscience, and the obvious implication is enough to bring a little colour to his cheeks, but that cannot be helped. None of this can be helped.) "That should be safe enough, I think."

Besides the large crucifix hanging above his bed, in any case. But that can be taken down, if he must.

With the thought of blood flooding her senses, how could she not notice that blush creeping into his cheeks? It takes nothing at all to figure what has him in such embarrassed straits: he is a man of all sorts of honour and morals, and she doubts those stretch to bringing women into his home. Of course, he is of an age where he is like to be married, with children well along the way, and so perhaps she is misjudging him, and his embarrassment comes from needing to explain his choices to the lady of the house.

Neither option matters when she can relish in her teasing. "It is always a pleasure to be invited into a handsome man's home." She offers him her arm for guiding, and perhaps to drive in deep the stake of her salacious tones.

He does not want to take her arm, does not want to accept that undeniably loaded invitation. He is also unwilling to accept what she is saying, the tone in which she says it - and, perhaps most of all, that part of him that stirs in response to it, whether he will or no.

But he is nothing if not dutiful, and nothing if not polite; and he cannot leave her holding her arm out in expectation, waiting. Red-faced and with his blood pounding in his ears, he takes her arm gingerly and begins to steer her towards the rented rooms that are, indeed, not all that far from here.

"You will need to be quiet." He is all too aware of the absurdity of scolding a creature of the night as though he has any means to enforce his demands. Then again, perhaps he does - he has something she wants, after all. "My landlady does not approve of guests at this time of night." Least of all female ones, although he doubts she would evict him for it - indeed, he has a suspicion that she worries about their lack. Still, he agreed when renting a bachelor's rooms that he would not bring loose women home, and he is, historically, more a man of his word than this.

All told, she prefers her men too caught in the bliss of having her in their rooms at all to still consider decency, landladies, wives, and God himself as factors in what is ultimately her equation. That he still thinks to ask – nay, order – silence of her seems to earnestly take her aback, and there is a flash of displeasure marring her otherwise so beautiful features. Even in life, she has not been a creature who oft heard the word 'no', or learned to hear it with any manner of grace and respect at all.

"I do seek to be invited again in the future, and so I shall keep your gentile request in mind." Still, he took her arm, and still, his cheeks are flush as the first red of morning, which seems to mellow the waves of her agitation just a tad. "Do you ever honour her wishes? In life, I would have given much to rent rooms of my own, far from prying eyes, to invite whoever I so please."

It's a teasing, lowly jest so obvious she cannot hold it back. "And whoever so pleases me."

Edited 2022-05-29 19:47 (UTC)

His flush does not darken, at least - though that may be because there is only so dark it can go. He will not, he decides, justify her lewdness with a response. He learned a long time ago, by instinct as much as experience, that sometimes the best shield against mockery and dishonesty is simply to take all things on their face; at times, he may seem simple for it, but he is not proud enough to mind. The same, he is sure, goes here: he need not acknowledge the undertones of what she says, no matter how unhidden, if he addresses what is explicit.

"I am not a wealthy man, and her rent is reasonable. I would be a fool to jeopardise my lodgings for the sake of fleeting pleasure."

And if she chooses to read deeper into that, to understand that it is not only the roof over his head that he will esteem more highly than carnality, then that is her choice. It is not dishonesty to tell more than one truth at a time.

Over the years, she has been made familiar with ideas such as rent and how a lack of funds can trouble lesser men and women, though frankly, the wealth that has been made hers by sheer virtue of outliving all her family has sustained her until this day. It won't do to dwell in the same region for too many decades at a time, and the risk of discovery has seen her rent on occasion, though she prefers whole purchases of lands and lodgings, for privacy's sake.

Still, she tilts her head to the side, watching him. "How odd. By the looks of you, I took you for a nobleman's son." The sort of man who never had to worry about upsetting a landlady, someone who only rented to have a space away from a nagging wife or other troublesome relation. A space not to live in, but to use and discard, away from the sort of prying eyes a manor might attract.

He lets out a low, wry laugh at that. There is something rather reassuring, he finds, in how wide of the mark she is: it is a comfort to know that, at the very least, she cannot read his mind, or know more about him than he tells her. Not that he means to hide or dissemble, now that he has come so far that he cannot turn back, but it is good to know that her power has clear limits.

"Hardly. I am no-one's son at all." A fact whose sting has long since faded into the background, after some thirty years of orphaned life. He wonders, of course, about his parents and what fate brought him to the sisters' doors; there will always be times when, in quiet moments, he finds himself in melancholy search of clues in the scattered remnants of his earliest memories; but in the end, he has come this far with no father but the Heavenly one, and no family but those who took him in. He lengthens his stride a little, but his tone is easy enough. "I hate to disappoint you, but I cannot offer noble blood to slake your thirst. You must settle for a poor clerk's, or else call an end to our agreement."

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