To further emphasize her point, she stabbed him again for good measure.
"Aack-" Davoren managed. Then he could only look at her, stung and furious.
"I wasn't finished," she said.
She wrenched the dagger out, causing Davoren's eyes to water, and raised it before his face. His dark blood mingled with an amber jelly smeared along the blade. Then she reached down and pulled out the vial of poison, to wave it in front of his face.
"I carry more of this than you might think. If you try something like that again-if you even think it-I'll pump you so full of venom you'll be able to do nothing but lie helpless while the vermin of this hellhole start with your eyes and work their way toward your brain." Her eyes bored holes into his face. "How does that sound, Lord Hellsheart, servant of Asmodeus?"
Davoren could do nothing but stare daggers at her. She saw a touch of pain in his eyes, and she took it for fear. So he was just a bully.
"Remember," she said. "You betray us again, and I won't bury you."
The warlock kept silent. He could speak again, but he could barely move, Twilight knew. She left him then, and Davoren could not follow.
"Twilight?" his voice floated after her. It was pained-broken. "Twilight!"
She rounded the corner, losing sight of the half-paralyzed warlock. Try as he might, Twilight knew that he could not catch up, not for a while. Long enough, hopefully, to make her point sink home, like a finely crafted blade between a certain pair of ribs.
Twilight shook her head to clear the image. One could dream.
Davoren's despairing cries echoed as she went farther down the tunnel, just loud enough for her to hear, but not for the others to do so.
"Twilight!" he shouted. "Come back here! Don't leave me alone like this! Help! Please! He-" Then the sound faded. He would catch up.
Probably.
Twilight's grin widened.
When Twilight found her, Taslin was sitting alone, in a chamber far from the others. Wrapped in a grimlock cloak, her acid-eaten armor removed, the priestess sat with knees pulled up to her chin. She was on the edge of a chasm in a great chamber where many sewer passages met. The place probably smelled foul centuries before, when waste flowed through the sewers, but the cool emptiness of the deep underground had replaced it. Only a slight mustiness hinted at the filth that filled these halls in an era long dead.
As though the priestess sensed her, Taslin spoke as Twilight crept up behind her. "You would have loved Asson as well, had you known him as I did-as he was once."
"He was not always such a noble old man?" Twilight sat and pulled her knees to her chest, as Taslin did.
"He was not always so old, as humans measure the years," said Taslin. "Asson lay in my arms for fifty summers and fifty winters. I knew that our parting would come one day. I have dreaded the moment of loss, but not the leave-taking itself."
"You did not fear to lose your lover, then," said Twilight.
"Not a fear that I would lose him-that fate I knew to be inevitable," the priestess said. "Rather an acceptance of the truth and a choice to see past it."
"See past death?" Twilight kicked a stone off the edge of the chasm, watching it disappear into the darkness. Hollowness spread through her. "You'd have to be dead."
"Endings and leave-takings are of this life, just as meetings and beginnings," said Taslin. "To fear losing what you love is to abandon loving it here and now. To fear losing one you know you will lose makes less sense still."
"Life to be lived in the moment… I've heard it before. The life of a human."
"The life of an elf," Taslin corrected. "You are young, and do not understand what it is to live as we do. To know the joy of every moment, to release love of the past and fear of the future."
Twilight looked at her. "No." She meant to be firm, but her voice betrayed the slightest tremble. What was this she felt? And what did Taslin know of her?
The priestess met her gaze. "Asson and I knew many years of happiness together. And while they endured, each of us loved to the fullest, knowing that our time together would end. And now those years have ended, and I can be content, knowing that he rests. It has been the same for the four lovers I have known-all of them human."
Twilight raised a brow at that. She looked into the chasm- its beckoning darkness comforted her. Or at least so she told herself.
"I lost a lover once," she said. "His name was Neveren. He died in my arms. I understand how you feel."
Taslin sighed. "You know what the greatest irony is? If we could recover his bones, by Corellon's grace, he could be restored to me."
Twilight's gaze snapped to her. "You have that power?" she said, stunned. "Why not use it? Would Asson not answer?"
"He would return if I called him," said Taslin. "But I would not call."
"You do not grieve for him?" Twilight reached out and laid her hand, ever so lightly, on Taslin's shoulder.
The priestess closed her eyes gently. "I do, in my heart," she said. "But I…" She trailed off, her eyes soft. Her hand reached for Twilight's.
Twilight eluded Taslin's touch and brushed a lock of her golden hair away. With techniques long practiced, Twilight ran her fingers through Taslin's golden hair and over her shoulders and neck. She felt the tension in the sun elf's body-sensed the vibrations in the priestess's bones that spoke of buried grief. Twilight shifted, leaning against Taslin's back, and stroked her hair gently. She told herself to stop, but that self didn't listen.
"Sometimes," whispered Twilight, knowing the words, "grief can-cannot…"
Then, inexplicably, she stumbled. She couldn't say it-couldn't speak that lie. Who was this priestess, who had such power over her? Was this Erevan's doing?
In a matter of heartbeats, tears began to fall down Taslin's cheeks, through the acid-etched furrows like streams of pain and sorrow. The priestess wept in Twilight's arms for a long time, her strength and endurance bleeding away into a fragility not even Twilight would have thought possible. It staggered her.
Twilight knew that Taslin did not weep as a champion of Corellon Larethian, or as a mighty priestess, or even as an elf who had seen more than three hundred winters. In that moment, Taslin was merely a woman, crying from her heart for the man she had loved-still loved, though he was gone.
And through it all, Twilight felt again the terrible pain and anger in her own heart, boiling and festering like a sore, a canker that would never heal.
Never would she let herself weep for love. She had known too much treachery for that. It was an aptly named sword she carried, Betrayal, its blade dyed the dusk of stone after the darkness that had bled from her pierced heart into its steel.
Twilight was so lost in her rage that she almost did not notice when Taslin turned in her arms. She did notice, though, when the sun elf bent in and pressed her lips to her own. For a single, stunned breath, Twilight did nothing but let Taslin kiss her.
Then hot blood flowed through her veins. She looked into green-gold eyes and saw there the light and hope she wanted-desperately needed. Her hands clasped both sides of the priestess's face and pulled her deeper into the embrace. As though Taslin suddenly realized what was happening, she tried to break the kiss, but Twilight clung to her, pulling her and throwing them both to the stone.
Then the priestess let out a muffled gasp and Twilight felt her surrender. Supple arms wrapped around her back, and she felt nails through her blouse but she was hardly aware of the world outside the kiss.
All of Taslin's fiery passions poured into that kiss-all her wrath and rage about Asson's death, all her determination and love. She kissed hard, violently. Her hands gripped Twilight's arms with white-knuckled force, the nails nearly drawing blood.
Then it was broken. Twilight rolled away to lie beside Taslin, both of them panting heavily in the murky torchlight. The two women looked at each other for many heartbeats, neither speaking. They merely breathed.