*Weekly updates* "There are no leashes now, no bindings," she says, her voice a dark lullaby in the flickering candlelight, "and it is their sacrifice that gave us this. Nothing can ever repay it. No one can ever take it from us. So now, in this hal...
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The candle lights burn low in Hiran's palace quarters. He's sitting in one of the armchairs, pouring red wine out of a decanter into the twinkling crystal glass in front of him.
This marble room lies in the cold shadows of the night now and Hiran can feel his eyes droop, his pulse slow, as the day—from the tea shop to his... well, eventful meeting with Feuilles—and the long journey before finally catch up with him.
"I'm getting too old for this," he mutters to himself, half kidding and half not, and his fingers touch on the shell of the glass when another voice drifts through the room:
"Do you always talk to yourself?"
Hiran jumps, the cup of wine clattering on the table and spilling its contents everywhere. There's a hard laugh behind him, and Hiran whirls around to see Ben sidling through a window into the room.
"How—?" Hiran splutters, on his feet now, the sleepiness only a dream as his hand flies to the blade at his side.
The other man sees this last motion and laughs again.
"If I wanted you dead, you'd already be dead," Ben tells him, as if that is consoling. "Settle down; we only have so long before I need to sneak back out again."
He gestures toward the armchairs, and Hiran notes the black leather gloves on his hands. As he looks further, the candlelight shows dark circles under Ben's eyes, darker even than the ones that had been there in the woods of Helm's Hollow.
"I have been reading much as of late," the man says and Hiran starts, realizing he had been staring. "A wonderful activity that inevitably infringes on sleeping time."
Hiran, who has never in his life sacrificed sleep for a mere book, grunts and takes his chair.
"Uh... wine?" he says, gesturing to the decanter, the wine glass, and the messy table.
"No thank you," Ben replies, as if it is common for his mortal enemies to offer him wine, and he sits in the chair opposite of Hiran. "I've come to discuss how we move forward."
The man pauses, takes a surprisingly long breath, and his fingers seem to twitch. Hiran catches this, then how a twitch seems to flicker on the man's face, and he wonders what must be causing Ben so much pain.
"You've seen Feuilles, then?" Ben asks.
"Yes," Hiran answers, pulling his thoughts back onto the conversation. He then adds: "It was useless. He wouldn't listen to a word I said."
"Or he did, but he did not wish to take you into his confidences," Ben surmises, shrewd bastard that he is. "I'm not surprised. No one has ever called that man a moron."
Hiran is still trying to work out if that was a personal insult when Ben follows up with: "I've been thinking about plans and contingencies. I have a plan set to spring in Tazdahur, but I wanted to ask you something first."
