Obsession is the height of passion, but what does one do when they find themselves enthralled with their enemy. Talamayas Sol loses his mother when he stumbles upon a mage in the deserts of his territory, and he is plunged into a despair he's never...
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Neil hadn't come back after visiting his father, and Tala was pacing his castle restlessly. It had only been a day, but that was all it took. Tala wanted to invade the Arc territory and tear the boy out of that man's hands, but he had no right and could start a war if he did so. The few communications he'd sent had come back unanswered, and he headed down to the dungeons. His prisoner hadn't moved from where he'd left him, and Tala was procuring another mage to heal him, so they were on one of the off weeks without torture.
After ten years of this, Tala was unsure if the man liked it when he wasn't tortured or not. Each time he came down here, Wren Song's pulse jumped in fear, but at the same time, his aura vibrated as if he were happy to not be alone anymore. It was a strange mix, and he met the mage's hollowed, grey gaze as he waited to be dragged away for torture.
That wasn't why Tala was down here tonight.
Something was just eating at him about Neil, and he couldn't bring himself to hassle Shan. Talamayas opened the cell door and crouched in front of Wren, just short of kneeling in the water that coated the bottom of his cell. They'd fed him this morning and he'd had clean clothes for the last few days, but neither made him look any better. The man's red hair was still uneven from the last time they'd cut it at his chin line to keep it out of the way, and a streak of grey was working its way in a few hairs at a time. Wren Song was gaunt, scarred, and terrified.
There are no slaves here.
Tala looked over Wren Song and the man was trembling, waiting to be hurt, and Tala wondered if he hadn't been wrong to keep him around. At first, it had been anger, but it had been near a decade and that had faded once he'd gotten over his grief. Now, he just had a mage in his cells waiting to die, begging for it half of the time, and Tala didn't even feel like torturing him much anymore. On occasion Tala had nightmares about his mother, and it felt better to come down here and beat his anguish out of the man, but more often than that, he wondered about what Neil would think if he knew he had this man down here.
Or those vampire twins. They were so terrified of his kind, and wary of him as if he was going to lock them up. If they knew he had a human down here chained and tortured nearly every day, it could scare them away. No matter how he thought about it though, he couldn't bring himself to kill Wren Song. There was some part of him that didn't want him gone, didn't want that remaining connection to his mother severed. It wasn't healthy, he knew, but he was attached to his prisoner.
Tala reached out a hand to touch Wren, just grazing his fingers across his face as he did with Neil sometimes. The boy liked to be soothed when he was upset, which amazed Tala because he wasn't great with physical affection. He'd always been a fighter. His mother had been the one with the gentle touch around here.
Wren watched his hand as it harmlessly rested on his cheek, and the human swallowed a lump in his throat as Tala touched the other side of his face and brought his forehead to his, inhaling his scent. It was just the dank aroma of water from the dungeons and the sweat of human fear, but part of this man had stolen away into him and latched on. Tala met his eyes, trying to figure out what it was.
