The voices I could hear, I realized, were not of my imagining as I'd first thought when the last dregs of sleep dissolved. One was deep, angry and interrogating, while the other seemed defensive and admonishing. I could not understand what was being said, but I understood their tone of emotion — both were distressed. And then I was too happy to care what either of the interlocutors were saying because it also occurred to me that I had, at last, reclaimed some small sense of my hearing.

"But not to this degree, Lucian! It was never this acute!" Anne seemed harried in her attempt to reason with her son.

Lucian! My perception wavered once more and the voices became muffled as I swam desperately to the surface of the stuporous liquid that held me under.

"You tell me now that you did not summon the physician?" he accused.

"And to what purpose? He would have taken but one look at her, declared it all to be no more than a fainting spell brought on by her condition and then departed again! Be reasonable, Son. You see yourself that she is undamaged."

I peeled one lid back and then another. Seeing that I was conscious, both Lucian and Anne leaned over and began exclaiming at once.

"Dear God, we were so worried! What ails you, my child?

"Aria, you are awake!"

"Very perceptive of you, Lucian," I replied sarcastically, but tempered my words with a smile as I tried to sit up. To Anne I said, "Nothing ails me, Mother. I am hale." But I collapsed back onto the pillows the instant the words left my tongue, and thereby bellied my affirmation for the effort of sitting was far too great an endeavor.

"She needs rest, Lucian," said Anne, depositing a mug of some foul-smelling tincture into my hand. "Drink this," she instructed. "I heard you screaming..." She wiped at her cheeks and took a moment to compose her thoughts. "You took a fall last night! Astrid found you at the bottom of the stairs." She sounded distraught. My brows knit in consternation as she related what had befallen me.

"But I feel fine." My bewilderment was evident and they could plainly see that I spoke true; moreover, I was neither covered in bruises nor riddled with the cuts I should have sustained when I had fallen. Well, if they were present, I did not feel their sting. Both mother and son considered me quietly with varying degrees of perplexity and suspicion.

"Mother said you were covered in contusions when she found you," Lucian asserted.

"I had a manservant summoned," Anne resumed the telling, "to help Astrid and I, but by the time we restored you to bed... your lesions were already visibly diminished. I sent Gerald and Astrid away lest they see what I had." She shook her head, mystified. "And now your skin has healed completely! You are certain you feel no pain?"

"None," I averred once more. In fact, I felt strangely revitalized now that the dizziness had passed.

"What in God's name happened, child?"

I closed my eyes tight and pushed my palms into my forehead as I struggled to remember, but she mistook my reaction.

"Never mind, sweeting, you can tell us another time, when you are up to it." Then, looking at Lucian, she said, "Perhaps I am wrong and she might have been sleepwalking after all?" But, by the looks they shot each other, they both seemed to doubt that theory.

I was about to confess that I had been awake ere I lost my senses, but Lucian spoke afore I had a chance to.

"We shall talk later," said he with an impatient flick of the wrist. Anne nodded and focused her attention once more on me.

"Drink," she repeated, using her index finger to gently encourage the mug to my lips. When I had dutifully complied, she received the mug from me, placed a sprig of chamomile into the vessel and, from the kettle o'er the fire, poured some hot water atop the herb to steep as my eyes took their fill of Lucian.

"You may leave us now, Mother. As you say, she is undamaged." Now that my husband had assured himself that I was whole, by all appearances, he walked Anne to the door and closed it behind her, but not before she'd kissed my cheeks and told me to send for her if aught should feel amiss.

The silence stretched an agonizing length ere I could take the strain no longer. "Lucian, I must tell you-"

"What happened last night?" he demanded. Why does no one ever let me complete a bloody sentence!

"I cannot remember," I shrugged.

"What do you remember." He looked so unapproachable just now, and his timbre was like oak, so hard and unyielding.

"Only that I awoke in a lot of pain. It was excruciating." I placed Anne's herbal brew to the side.

Lucian's brow withered still further as he sat beside me on the mattress, eyes narrowing with a pensive intensity, as I recalled the night previous.

"I could neither see nor hear as I crawled for help, and all the while I felt as though my insides had been viciously..." I clutched at my abdomen. "Stabbed... or burned. I cannot decide which for the pain was of both fire and steel," I concluded.

"Nothing wrong with your memory after all," he remarked with irony, though distractedly as he meditated over my account. "And now?" he persisted.

"I feel in perfect good health, if a bit tired," I admitted.

He nodded grimly and dropped the matter entirely. "I have something I believe belongs to you." Reaching into his tunic, Lucian pulled Ulfrlykyll, my wretched key, from where it had rested around his neck.

"My necklace!" I bit my lip anxiously, feeling relieved to see it despite that it had failed me. I had felt its loss acutely...almost as much as I had the man who held it out to me. Rose had been right, it felt as though it had always belonged to me.

"I found it in Niflheim; when I awoke."

"Thank you," said I, replacing it over my own head and reveling in the warmth it had procured from him during its tenure beside his heart.

He cocked his head as he regarded the object. "You were not wearing it when...you were attacked that night."

"No."

This seemed to intrigue him. "Who gave that to you?"

"Rose did. She said it belonged to me."

He mulled that information over very carefully, but was still and all frustratingly unforthcoming with his deductions; if indeed he even harbored any strange epiphanies.

"Do you know what this is?" I asked him patiently, inviting him to share his knowledge.

"Useless," said he. "A baseless family legend."

"Will you tell me?"

"I have only ever seen a picture of it; in sooth, we thought it lost." He reached his fingers to lift the key from my chest, rubbing his fingers over the large disc where the two ravens rested. "It was said to belong to a great witch — Brenna. Tis also said the gods sought to ensure her protection with it," he snorted dubiously, "but as you see it has no power." He shrugged dismissively. "And the legend has no truth to it."

"Perhaps it was made just for her?" A talisman then, just as Rose intimated. "But did they make keys that long ago?" My brow furrowed perplexingly. "Wait, how old is Nørrdragor?"

He sighed, though I could plainly see that he was holding back his amusement at all my questioning. "The key was added when the keep was built, if I'm not mistaken. The bow of which was actually once a pendant; the chain and the wolf blade are not part of the legend. As to the latter question, Nørrdragor was only erected about half century ago."

"There is so much I don't understand," I repined, thinking about all that Rose had said, or withheld, but mostly where it concerned my origins. "Perhaps one day I will know."

"Perhaps." Lucian's smile was sad and wholly unconvincing.

"I think Rose knows more than she lets on."

"Rose is not altogether sensible, you know," he scoffed, giving my hand a light squeeze. "She talks to birds, for God's sake." He punctuated the last with a comical raise of his eyebrow.

I laughed despite the jest being at her expense, for he had forgot himself and become the old Lucian again — and there was, for the nonce, no rift betwixt us. I wanted for him always to be this carefree and easy with me. "Lucian, there is something else I must speak with you about."

My feelings for this man had developed by piecemeal stages, and my roots had grown slowly towards his. They were now too entwined — some having fused with each other completely — to be removed without causing a fatal wound to either of us, or to myself at least. I could hold these emotions at bay no longer!

"No! Whatever my afflictions were last night, they are gone now. I am quite well and I must have my say, here and now... afore you abandon me again." My lips turned down into a moue of reproach. Is this how you shall make amends, Aria? I could hear the tsk tsk of my own voice as it upbraided me silently. His eyes darkened perceptibly and his frame grew ever more rigid, if that were even possible.

"Aria," he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose, "I might have a powerful nose and excellent smell, but even I cannot scent what you are thinking. Your wishes, when last we spoke, were quite unequivocal. I had a need of space... and you certainly inferred that that was what you wished too."

"Then hear me now," I beseeched. "I merely want to tell you that I love you!" There now, the words were out at last.

But it was that one, singular word that seemed to stoke his anger for he stood abruptly and marched across the chamber to take a stance by the window, glaring furiously into the darkness of a predawn sky. Though he was as remote and frigid as the Drakkentörn Ranges to the north, I drank of his cold beauty nonetheless for it had been nearly an entire month since I had seen him last. However, his reaction still chafed because it was not the reaction I had sought, obviously.

"That is a fickle emotion," he growled. He could not even seem to say the word. "You are still young; and you do not understand its complexities."

"Do not tell me how I feel, Lucian," I uttered sadly.

"Then let me tell you how I feel: I do not require, nor do I need your love." The sharpness of his statement stung as he whipped them at me. "All I want is your forgiveness," he continued in the same harsh tone without sparing me a glance, too intent on the blackened prospect without.

"Well, you have them both regardless." Is this how he felt when I had rejected him. The hurt was near unbearable now, but I forged on, determined to win back my place in his affections. "Please... please hear me."

He turned with a sigh, the scowl still etched on his brow, and studied me a moment afore returning to the foot of the bed. "You are resolved?" he seemed altogether intrigued, impatient, and leery at once.

"I am."

"As you wish," he relented tensely and sat at the furthest edge of the mattress — far away from me. I took a deep breath and began the speech I had prepared and rehearsed a thousand times in my head, but somehow those words all vanished in the face of his heavy stare. Instead I simply bared my soul — his to accept or reject.

"I have loved you faithfully for... I know not the hour nor the day of its exact inception, but the point is that I do know it now! I am a fool," I admitted and watched as his brow arched in agreement, "but not for being the girl who fell in love with a beast. No, I am foolish because I did not own it when you tried to explain; and sought my understanding."

"No, you had a right to feel as you did. Those were normal, human emotions; and your reasoning was sound when you questioned whether you had ever truly known me."

"You are wrong!" I insisted. "It was my pride and hurt that deranged my emotions and curdled my words. I despise the girl who spoke thusly! I do not know her, but I do know you!" He was watching me raptly, the scowl finally gone from his countenance. I sighed in exhaustion as I explained exactly who he was. "You are Lucian..."

His lip quirked in amusement. "Very good, Aria." His drawled was tinged with humor. "Ever the perceptive one."

"You are sarcastic," I said, itemizing his first attribute with my index finger and a raised brow to indicate that we would start with that asset. "Infuriating, snide, frightening-"

"Do continue to expound my virtues, madam; I am in awe of your regard." Though he smirked sardonically, and with a wry shake of his unruly head, I could tell that I had annoyed him... again.

"You are also protective, loyal, and devilishly handsome." Is he blushing? I was utterly delighted by his discomfit. "But most important of all, you make me feel safe and cherished! There is not a day that I you do not scatter my thoughts with a look or quicken my heart; and yet I find peace there too. I had no peace while you were gone this time, Lucian."

"Aria-"

"Tis true." I hadn't always felt that way, but I did now. "Perhaps we were not always affectionate with one another, nor considerate of our words, but those weeks after our wedding have been the most wonderful of my life."

I crawled across the bed to him and took his beloved face into my palms so swiftly that he faltered and grew still.

"I have felt lost here without you — a part of myself has been missing and naught has been right with the world till the moment I opened my eyes just now to see you here! 'Twas you that saved my life," I lifted his hand to my abdomen, "and the life of our child." I could clearly see that I had surprised him with my asseveration. Did he really not think that I would guess it was he? That I was so blind as not to recognize my own mate. Now that I had had a month to think on it and digest the evidence, I knew it was he.

"I was wrong to make you believe I felt anything other than admiration and affection for you," I resumed, loathe to imagine a life bereft of him, despite his dualism. Verily, I loved him in spite of it and I thought now of that night in Niflheim, when he had shielded me from harm and laved at my wounds with styptic caresses.

I held his attention now as I never had before — his golden eyes nonplussed and intense. "Whether or not you reciprocate my feelings, does not matter for, you see, you have made me feel cherished." He seemed at a loss and the hush of emotion lay thick in the air as I took advantage of his bemused state and disabled tongue. "But if you will not love me back, then I ask only that you forgive me my heartless words, so that we can go on as we did before-"

"There is nothing to forgive, Aria."

"Then there is only one last thing I want from you."

"And that is?" He frowned warily.

"Merely this: that you repeat the last words you spoke to me ere you left for Faulkenbørg." I could see that he knew exactly what I was after, and thankfully he did not keep me waiting.

"Am I beyond redemption?" he asked carefully.





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