**BOOK II OF THE FOUR REALMS SERIES**
When war came for Azura, Fara of Calate lost everything. Her husband, her new home, her freedom. When her captor - the formidable commander of the Leoth army - saves her life, she begins to see the enemy as som...
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He had slept again because when he woke the moon was high and the night's chill seeped through the small windows cut into the cell on the wall opposite. It was not Leoth's moon; it had not the scent of it or the grace of it. Nor did it have within it the power to imbue any kind of restoration to his weakened body.
He felt death wrapping itself around his neck, upon his tongue, creeping closer to his heart. It was like the moments close to sleep when one thought meandered into another, where the lines between reality and dream moved and thrashed like waves so they could not be told apart.
Without blood to sustain it, the Leothine could survive no more than half a moon's turn before it surrendered itself. Before it would fail to pull the air into its lungs and the heart would cease to thrust the blood around its body. What happened then was but a myth, for none had suffered it and returned to tell its grave tale. But it was a state just beyond life, but preceding the true death.
Still, he felt calm.
It mattered little what they did to him. His duty was done. It was a noble death he faced now. It would satisfy Theodan to know his female was returned safe; Xanthus would be proud of the justice delivered to the traitor Torrik of Zybar. How he met his end now was of no consequence, for he did it as a true and loyal warrior of Leoth.
He closed his eyes and thought of Xanthus now. The taste of him, the sweetened scent of his desire, the warmth and contentment he found in his arms and in his body. He'd had hoped to tell Xanthus of the love he held for him, and it saddened him he may never know the depth of it. Would never know that he had saved him. When they first found each other, Elyon had carried the burden of an unrequited love so long that he had not recognised it for what it had been. A lifting of the weight, a weight he had finally settled down at last.
How deeply would Xanthus mourn him? For how long? It was only this which gave him regret now. That his end may bring sadness to him he'd loved. Perhaps, on balance, it was better to have not shared one's soul?
He heard a sound then. The sound of a lock being turned, a latch being lifted, a door opening. A soft scrape against stone.
Female.
At first, he thought it was the princess come to visit him, but the scent was not that of Theodan's female. It was less... rich... less sweet. The scent in fact was... strange, familiar. It was as though.... No. It could not be.... His weakened, hungry mind played tricks upon him.
She drifted toward him, the heels of her shoes hammering softly on the stone as she walked.
Her scent reminded him of woodsmoke; of how the remains of a forest fire may smell days after the last branch had long burned. Though he could see nothing for the cell was dark and she kept close to the shadows, an acrid bitter taste touched his tongue as she drew closer. He felt a thrum of power move over him and he shifted against the binds which held his hands and feet, the cage they'd forced him in creaking as he did.
