To all those part-time creatives out there struggling to give their dreams wings to fly. Life is hard sometimes. Keep striving, creative. The world needs your art.
Previously, on Forsaken by Shadows, from Rismyn’s perspective.
I’m not conscious when Toloruel begins his goading of Mazira, revealing that he’s known her name from the very first time he met her. He tries to mock her with the meaning of the name, Shining, but Mazira already knew it. Still, he maintains his power over her, returning to his henchmen who wait outside.
A wizard wakes me, and it’s not actually hard to be brave. We’ve already lost, so there’s nothing left to lose. So I taunt my brother, determined to ruin his joy in the kill. In response, he cuts my face from temple to jaw, relishing the sight of my blood whether I show pain or not.
He tells me I have a choice; I am allowed to stay behind if I want, but Mazira has no such freedom. There is an altar for her, and she is commanded to walk.
Yet something overcomes her. That brave, shy, quiet girl I’ve come to love finds boldness in her. I see her swallow her fear, look into Toloruel’s eyes, and defy him. She makes a beautiful declaration, and I’ve never been more proud of her, even though we’re about to die.
Toloruel is enraged. In his fury to see her ruined he turns his blade on me and yet, something miraculous happens. A shield of light surrounds me, and his blade bounces off and falls from his hand. It seems Mazira has cast it, though she looks just as stunned as the rest of us.
But we have a second chance. I get the blade before Toloruel and we fight once again. The wizard breaks the light shield, and from the corner of my eye, I see Mazira challenge him. I shout for her to stop and take another wound for it. But then, again, she casts magic. White, blinding, radiant fire.
We run, though I can’t see. We run and run until suddenly the stream we are following vanishes over a cliff, the water falling into a river deadly far below.
Toloruel follows us, and it seems like the end. But I cannot…no, I will not let us die this way. So I toss down the blade in surrender and then do the unthinkable. I grab Mazira and leap into the currents below…
~4. Drenched~
Mazira
They hit the river with a crash that should have shattered all her bones. Or at least, all of Rismyn’s bones, since he managed to twist around so that he would hit the current first. But his iron grip on her body never wavered. His innate levitation magic was probably the only reason death didn’t come immediately, as he pulsed the spell enough times to slow their mad descent.
It still hurt, though.
And then, all she registered was cold and darkness and a distinct lack of air. Mazira would have gasped, but some instinct to survive kept her mouth firmly shut. She didn’t know which way was up. Panicked, she kicked wildly. Rismyn still clung to her, and for one wretched moment, she thought he was trying to drown her on purpose. She tried to fight him off, but the more she struggled, the tighter he held.
She was going to die. Her chest was burning, her head throbbing. Of all the horrendous ways she had imagined she would go, this had never crossed her mind. This was worse than anything she could have concocted.
Then her face broke the surface. She gasped at last, breathing in great lungfuls of sweet, sweet air. Somewhere close to her she heard Rismyn doing the same.
It didn’t last long. Water crashed over her head again and she had to flail to keep herself afloat. Rismyn still hadn’t released her and it wasn’t doing her buoyancy any favors. The current shoved them along at a breakneck speed, buffeting them to and fro. She didn’t even consider trying to swim to shore. It was all she could do to remain above water.
“Ris–” she tried to call, but his name got cut off as they were dunked under the surface again. She bobbed back up, coughing and spluttering. “Rismyn! You have to let me go!”
“No…” he called back, and though she knew his face was close to hers, he sounded far away. “No...I’ll lose you…”
Dark water swallowed them again, and this time the current crashed them into a rock. Rismyn took the brunt of the impact, but her arms scraped across the stone before they peeled away and were sent along. It took longer to resurface that time.
“Please,” she begged, when she caught her breath again. Her teeth were chattering. Her blood was ice.
“Alright,” he shouted, though his voice sounded weak and shaky. “We’ll readjust. Put your arms around my neck, and I’ll swim us…”
His voice trailed off, and for a moment, Mazira thought he had simply realized how hopeless that plan was. When he started to slip away from her, she realized what had truly happened.
He’d lost consciousness. Or at least, that’s what she hoped. The alternative was unfathomable.
“No!” She grabbed onto his arm before he could drift too far.
It wasn’t enough, though. Without sentience, Rismyn began to sink, unable to keep himself afloat in the raging current. Mazira kicked desperately, flailing with one arm to keep them both up.
“Rismyn, Rismyn wake up!” she cried. Her eyes burned, but she was too wet to tell if she shed any tears. “I need you. I can’t–”
Her words were knocked out of her as the river swept them into another stone. She groaned and her shoulder throbbed. Desperately, she tried to grab onto the rock, but her hand slipped off the slick surface. Once more, the river jarred them on.
“I can’t do this,” she moaned. She pulled Rismyn’s body close to her, struggling to find the best way to keep them both afloat. In the end, she pulled his chest against her back and wrapped his arms around her neck. His body was still warm, which gave her hope.
“I can’t do this,” she repeated, struggling to keep their heads above water. “I don’t know how to save us. Rismyn...please wake up…”
She hadn’t realized just how desperately she relied on him. She needed him. It had been Rismyn who kept them safe. Rismyn who made the plans. Rismyn who knew how to survive. Without him, she didn’t know how to function.
And now she was completely and utterly helpless, and Rismyn was dependent on her to be better than she was capable of being.
She was running out of breath. Her muscles were cramping and it was getting harder and harder to stay above water. “I can’t…” she breathed, though she didn’t know why she wasted her breath on words no one would hear. “I can’t…”
Another breaker washed over them, and when they surfaced again, she found herself turned around. Instead of floating on her belly, with Rismyn on her back, she stared up at the ocean of darkness above her head. Rismyn’s body drifted beneath her own, his head held aloft only because his arms still draped over her shoulders. Their skulls would be the first thing to crash into any more rocks the river threw their way. The situation was less than ideal, but she didn’t have the energy to turn them over.
So, she just lay there, watching the nothingness. It was disorienting, feeling the river rush them along but having no visual proof of it. She was weightless and frozen; the only warmth being Rismyn’s body pressed against hers, and it was fleeting. Her chest ached with every ragged breath she took. But, for the moment, she didn’t have to struggle.
And that was enough.
–
Mazira wasn’t asleep. At least, not truly asleep. She was cognizant enough to be aware of the constant cold and darkness and Rismyn’s shallow breath in her ear. But after an eternity of drifting along, she had closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift away, too, waiting for it all to end.
At first, she had been afraid. Any second, they would crash into a boulder and her head would split right open. Or else some horrible monster might swallow them up, or the current would drag them down to a murky tomb. She expected to see Toloruel at any second, somehow hovering above them, ready to fish them out and finish them off.
But as time slipped away, her fear ran its course and she was left with nothing but regrets. Why did life have to be this way? What curse had been placed upon her cradle that forced her into the jaws of darkness, doomed to never see the sky again? She had only been a child when the raiders came. What had she ever done to deserve such a fate?
Or was this even fate at all? Did the gods or the multiverse even care what happened to her? Or was her misery simply their amusement, her life one of the epic songs of love lost that her father used to sing. Tragedy was beautiful until it was your own. Then it was cold and raw, a bleeding in the soul that couldn’t be staunched.
But even her regrets faded over time. And there, at the bottom of her well of sorrow, she found it.
Her rage.
Perhaps the anger had always been there. A warm bed of coals buried under a coat of ash that had settled over the years. A fire that was born the day Toloruel ruined her. She’d been careful to hide it, to smother it even, for she knew the dangers of fire. Carelessness with flames got you killed. So it was with careless rage.
But the embers hadn’t died, they had only simmered. And now the water had washed all the ash away.
She was just angry. With the world, with the drow, with the gods. Even, shamefully, with Rismyn.
It didn’t seem right to be angry with him. He was on the brink of death because of her. He had given up his whole life just to take her back to the surface. If it hadn’t been for her, he could be living the life of a prince right now.
Granted, the life of a drow prince seemed like a miserable existence. But it had to be better than awaiting death in a freezing river.
Yet she was angry nonetheless. This whole adventure had been his idea. He was the one who dragged her out here. He was the one who refused to take the fight to Toloruel. He was the one who insisted she live when it would be so much easier to die.
He always had to keep fighting, knowing full well she wasn’t strong enough to fight.
And that was what made her the most furious. She was weak. In every sense of the word. She was so tired of being weak.
Her toe bumped against solid stone, and her eyes fluttered open. Blue light suffused everything, illuminating the black silhouettes of stalactites and crystalline formations. No, that wasn’t right. The light was the crystals. Or rather, the crystals emit the light.
More importantly, the water around her was calm. Not still, but no longer thrashing wildly. The mighty roar of rapids had given way to a steady rhythm of trickling. Her toe bumped and this time dragged, and Mazira realized she was touching the bottom.
She inhaled sharply and jerked up, floundering to stand. Rismyn’s weight was too much to bear, so she shook out of his arms, clutching onto his wrist to keep him from floating on without her.
She stood waist-deep in an eddy of swirling calm, surrounded by a cavern of glowing sapphires. She was soaked and shivering, but she was alive.
She was alive.
She could feel Rismyn’s pulse on his wrist and knew that he was alive, too.
Miracles came in threes.
The shore was not more than ten feet in front of her. Mazira waded towards it, letting the water bear Rismyn’s for as long as she could. She ought to be relieved, even overjoyed. Instead, anxiety knotted deeper in her chest, strangling her desperate heartbeats.
Where did they go from here?
Shelter. She needed shelter. There were drow looking for them. There was no telling how far the river had actually swept them, or if it would matter. Toloruel was coming for them. He would hunt them, and he would find them. The conclusion was inevitable, yet she moved on anyway, telling herself that shelter would somehow make a difference.
When she got to the shore she knelt and cradled Rismyn’s head in her lap. The landscape around them was flat, except for the forest of crystals and limestone. As far as she could see, there was no cavern or crevice to hide in. At least, not nearby. She couldn’t leave Rismyn to go scout for one, and she couldn’t carry him, either.
Her anxiety twisted into frustration, but she breathed deeply to control it. Mazira brushed back the wet locks of Rismyn’s hair, which clung to the sticky wound he had received on his face. A vertical slash, starting from just above his temple and descending all the way down to his jaw. A perfect crescent, artfully done. Like all of Toloruel’s work.
“Rismyn,” she whispered. “You have to wake up. I need you to walk.”
Rismyn didn’t stir, which shouldn’t have surprised her. He had taken a terrible beating and then jumped into a river. Of course he didn’t stir.
But that didn’t stop her ire from rising. If he couldn’t walk she couldn’t get him to safety. He had to wake up or else they would die.
“Rismyn,” she tried again. She shook his shoulders gently and called out once more. “It won’t be far. You have to wake up.”
This time she got a small groan, which was encouraging. She called again and again, getting slightly more forceful as her fear manifested as impatience.
Finally, his eyes opened. He gazed up at her, though he didn’t quite focus on her. In the blue light, his ruby irises looked almost purple. “Ma...zi…?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she said, unable to keep from smiling as the tension released in her shoulders. The expression felt strange and foreign on her lips. “Your plan worked–we’re alive! But we’re not safe. I need you to stand up. Can you do that for me?”
He didn’t try to stand. Instead, he raised a hand weakly to her face and marveled as if he couldn’t believe she was there. “Zira,” he said, and her skin tingled at the name.
He’d never called her that before. It had always been Mazi, the first part of her name, trailing off uncertainly as though he was too afraid to say the rest. This had been different, intentional.
Affectionate.
She shuddered, and she wasn’t certain it was because of the cold.
“I’m...sorry…” Rismyn said.
Mazira shook her head briskly. “We can talk later. Right now, I need you to move. Can you do that? Can you try to stand?”
Rismyn took a deep breath, winced, and shut his eyes. He lay like that so long she thought he lost consciousness again. But just as she was about to call his name, he groaned and started to roll over. Mazira jumped and moved to help him.
It was slow and painful going, but eventually they got him mostly to his feet. He leaned heavily on her shoulder, and she knew if she stepped away he would collapse.
“How...far?” he asked, between breaths.
Mazira didn’t answer. She just started walking.
She didn’t know what to look for in a hiding place. Rismyn had always found holes she would have walked past without ever knowing they were there. He did his best to shuffle along, but the going was still awfully slow. The longer they moved through the blue-lit cavern, the more exposed she felt. As if eyes were upon her from every side.
Not far from the riverbank, Rismyn stumbled and dragged them to their knees. He muttered a curse. “S-sorry. I–” but he cut off with wracking coughs.
Her arms shot around him. More than his comfort, Mazira needed to muffle the sound. He clung to her, but all she could do was silently will him to stop, shocked at how the sound sent fury rippling through her. Not fury at him, per se, but anger at their whole situation and her helplessness to do anything more than hold him and pray. When at last the fit was over, she pulled back and looked at him.
There was blood on his lips, and the wound on his face had started to ooze scarlet.
Time was up. They needed shelter and they needed it now.
Desperately, Mazira glanced around and found a terrible solution. She hooked Rismyn’s arm over her shoulders and hoisted him up. Fortunately, he made an effort to stand with her, or she would have gotten nowhere. Drow men were usually slighter of frame. Even Toloruel was only a little taller than her, now that she was fully grown. Why did Rismyn have to be the exception?
They reached her terrible solution, a small space under a ledge created by a formation of blue crystals. It was hardly the dark and shadow she was used to hiding in, but it would hopefully obscure them from view. At least their body heat wouldn’t give them away; just their shadows. An unusual problem in the Underdark. She helped Rismyn to lie down and then lay next to him, gracelessly pulling him as far under the ledge as she could manage.
Rismyn moaned the whole way and put an arm over his eyes when they finally came to rest. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again.
His teeth were chattering, his whole body shaking. He needed more than shelter. He needed warmth. But they had nothing to make a fire with. No flint, no steel, no material to burn. No supplies whatsoever. He might survive the beating only to die of hypothermia.
No. She wouldn’t let him die. Not while she still lived, her heart pumping hot blood under her skin. Even in the depths of the river, Rismyn had been warm against her. She knew what needed to be done.
But as she stared down at his trembling, ashen face, she hesitated. The closeness, the purposeful proximity, made her nervous. It was one thing to cling to him when they soared through the water. It was an entirely different thing to drape her body around him like a wool blanket.
A drenched, equally frozen blanket.
But it needed doing. So she lay down near him, willing her body heat to leak into his. The minutes ticked away. Maybe a few, maybe a hundred. She couldn’t know. She only knew they were still trembling. Rismyn was still aching.
A memory played in her mind. Once, not long after she had been brought to Menzoberranzan, she had been shoved into a vat of icy bath water the slaves were given liberty to use. She couldn’t remember why anymore, just that it had been purposeful. All she remembered was how desperately cold she had been, huddling in her corner for hours out of fear of further harassment. When Toloruel found her, he’d given her a second, clean and dry dress to wear.
And a beating for being too stupid to get out of wet clothes.
But she hadn’t been too stupid to think of it. She’d been too afraid of being vulnerable. It was before she had spare clothes or a blanket to hide in, and she hadn’t yet learned where to go to help herself.
As she lay there now, propped up on elbows and staring down at Rismyn’s quaking form, that same vulnerability returned. There was nothing to cover herself in, nothing to protect her. It was more than just the physical risk of abandoning their armor. Something inside of her whispered that the adamantine guarded more than her body.
She tried to lay back beside him again, a little closer this time, but nothing changed. Rismyn was breathing hard, his muscles taut with strain. She couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep and she didn’t dare ask. She shut her own eyes and did her best not to think about being cold. The more she tried not to think about it, however, the harder it became to ignore. She pressed the back of her hand against Rismyn’s cheek, as though feeling for fever, and his skin was cool to the touch.
And that all too familiar anger returned.
No. He would not die on her. He would not leave her again. If she had to live, then so did he.
Mazira rose to a crouch and started to undo the hooks at Rismyn’s throat. She got three loose before he suddenly grabbed her wrists, his eyes snapping open in a glare.
“What–” he began sharply, then seemed to realize it was her. He groaned and relaxed, letting her go. “What’re you doing?” he asked, his tone now tired instead of hostile.
“I’m…” she trailed off, flustered by the answer. It seemed a silly thing to be embarrassed over when his life hung in the balance, but here she was. Blushing at the thought of confessing her plan. Her words came out in a rush. “We’re soaked. We have to get out of these clothes or we’ll freeze to death.”
Rismyn frowned. “This armor–”
“Keeps us safe, I know,” she finished for him. It was like his own personal mantra, one of the many survival phrases he had repeated often. “But right now, this armor is killing you.”
Rismyn shut his eyes and sighed, rubbing his forehead. Then, suddenly, he barked a wry, bitter laugh. The sound made her jump. It seemed so out of place.
“Damn,” he breathed, with a ghost of the smile Mazira had been longing to see. “This isn’t how I imagined this moment going.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just...do what you think is right. I trust you.”
His confidence in her was alarming, for she had no confidence in herself. The pressure to keep him safe was too much to bear, but she couldn’t let him down now. So, she went to work, unfastening the hooks of his outer garment. Rismyn did what he could to help her, but it was clear his energy was spent. Every time he moved, he clenched his jaw as pain she was all too familiar with seized him.
Finally, Mazira had him stripped down to the linen trousers he wore under his garments, which seemed a good enough place to stop. She spent more time than she would have liked trying to figure out how to spread the clothing out so it would remain hidden and still dry.
When she finally turned back to him, the sight of his bare chest made her heart seize. His ebony skin wasn’t dark enough to hide the bruises over his ribs, and the gashes on his side and shoulder leaked a small puddle of blood.
“Oh, Rismyn…” She leaned over him and laid a hand on his chest.
He grimaced and gently removed it. “It looks worse than it is. I promise.”
Mazira only shook her head. She knew that wasn’t true from personal experience. Toloruel had beaten him the way he had beaten her, and it was all her fault. She knew what those kicks felt like, and now Rismyn did, too.
She wanted to cry, but she didn’t. Not this time. Instead, she began removing her own outer clothes, her simmering anger igniting a furious heat within her. She was weak, and she was helpless, but she was warm. And Rismyn needed warm.
She made it halfway down the hooks of her blouse when Rismyn noticed her, exclaiming in a tone far more alarmed than before, “What’re you doing?”
“The same thing I did to you,” she said, a little more brusquely than she’d intended. “Could you...um...maybe not watch?”
Rismyn darted his eyes aside and squeezed them shut. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, a little too innocently.
Ironically, it made her smile. Despite everything, despite his obvious pain and their horrible situation, he still blushed. Like the little boy who’d been almost too scared to touch her spider-bitten ankle.
When she wore nothing but the thin black camisole and breeches closest to her skin, she hesitated. She and Rismyn had curled up together several times when they were children, but they were both decidedly less innocent now than they were then. Aside from her embarrassing meltdown when she had first awoken and found herself freed, she had avoided physical proximity with him. For his part, he had never sought it. Every accidental brush of their bodies reminded her poignantly of the last time he had.
But Rismyn still shivered, and her skin was still pebbled. It wasn’t enough to remove their wet garments. They needed each other to survive. Her heart beat a little faster than usual as she lay down beside Rismyn, wrapping as much of herself around him as she possibly could.
Rismyn tensed and actually whimpered–a heartbreaking sound. “Not the ribs, please.”
Mazira drew her cheek back swiftly from where she had rested it on his chest. She had tried to touch him where he was least bruised, but that didn’t seem to be the best indicator. It took a few tries until they finally settled into a position that was comfortable for them both. Where her skin touched his, fire burned. Where their remaining wet garments touched, there was ice. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.
Rismyn had his arm draped over his face again, and his breath was still coming quick and sharp. “I’m sorry,” he said after some silence had passed. “For not protecting you better.”
“What’re you talking about?” She had repositioned herself so her head lay over his shoulder. Her face was so near to his. “I’m fine. I’m barely hurt. You saved me. I had given up, but you saved me.”
Her throat constricted suddenly with unshed tears. She hadn’t realized how true that statement was, and it didn’t just apply to their current circumstance. She would have been dead a long time ago, in heart if not in body, if it hadn’t been for a little drow prince who had come to ask her to sing. She couldn’t decide if she was better off for it. Dead things didn’t feel pain.
Rismyn made her feel everything. Potently.
He had fallen silent again, and she was content to let that be the end of it. Then, at length, he said, “You deserve better than me, for a guide. You could be home by now if I were better at this.”
Her brows knit together. “Rismyn, that’s not true.”
But he didn’t seem to hear her. “I’m sorry I’ve been so angry,” he went on. “I’ve really just been scared–scared I was failing you. Scared that he would find us. Scared that you’ll realize how scared I am. I was so afraid it just made me angry all the time. You were right. Gracious, I was so terrible to you. I’m sorry.”
The confession was chilling. Which must mean she was getting warmer if she could feel chilled. Her instinct told her not to believe his words, that he was lying just to control her again.
But, no. It wasn’t instinct, it was fear. A learned behavior to defend herself. But his words made sense. She didn’t understand before, but she understood now, because when the burden of their survival fell on her, she had chosen anger in place of fear, as well.
His coughing, his slowness, his choosing to lose consciousness when she needed him most, had all sent her into overdrive. But fear was crushing, paralyzing. Anger spurred forth. Anger kept her alive. So she’d let the river sweep away everything else, and held onto the anger.
She’d never been angry with him directly, but she’d wanted to take that anger out on him. Had he not been such a bloody mess, she might have done it.
“It’s alright,” she said, surprised by how calm she sounded. Now that they were here, discussing it, she found her malice evaporating. It was hard to be upset with a bared soul. “I was scared, too. And it made me angry. But it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Which wasn’t entirely true, but he was hardly in the condition for discussing it. And, if she were being honest, neither was he. She just wanted to sweep it all away, the heartache, the fear, the tension, and just move on. They could deal with this if they survived.
But Rismyn had other plans.
“It does matter,” he insisted, and then turned his face away and coughed. He wiped the blood from his lips and sighed. “I can’t promise I won’t make the same mistakes again. I don’t know how to stop, how to be different.”
Mazira was silent, contemplating his honesty. She didn’t know what to say. She understood him now, in a way she hadn’t before experiencing the burden he bore for herself. But though she understood him, she didn’t want to live with that Rismyn again.
He’d turned his face to hers, so close their noses almost touched. His eyes enveloped hers, full of question and hope. As if she held the answers he was looking for, the way to be a different kind of elf.
But she was hardly a village wise-woman, and she didn’t exactly have a grasp on her own heart, let alone his. Still, he needed something from her, and without the energy to try and puzzle out what it was, she said the first thing on her mind.
“Just remember, I’m trying too.” Her hand, which she had laid on his stomach, tightened into a ball. “I know I’m a burden, that I don’t do anything but hold you back. But I’m trying, just like you, to be better. So we’ll probably both keep making mistakes. But…Rismyn…please don’t shout at me. I’m doing my best.”
Rismyn’s eyes sharpened as if he suddenly focused on her properly, and his expression crumpled. He reached a bloody hand for her face and Mazira tensed, though he never finished the touch. “Mazi, you’re not a burden.”
But Mazira didn’t believe him. Tears stung her lashes and she shut her eyes, willing them not to spill out. “Yes, I am. I contribute nothing to our survival. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be bleeding now.”
His hand found the one she had fisted and he worked it apart, lacing her fingers into his like they had when they were small. “That’s not true.” His own words were tight, but when Mazira looked his eyes were as dry as the stone around them. “I’m sorry I made you feel like it was. Oh, gods, Mazi. I’m so sorry.” He let his hand slip out of hers and covered his face. “And I promised never to hurt you again. Damn, I’m really awful at this.”
If the river had washed away everything but the anger, Rismyn’s apologies cast water on the embers. Not like his other sorry’s, the ones he handed her after he saw the look on her face. These apologies struck deeper, mined from understanding and grief rather than guilt and obligation.
He had lied to her. He had betrayed her, abandoned her, and spoken harshly to her. All of those statements were true. But he’d also cared for her, kept her safe, and risked his life for her. He’d never once complained out loud about anything, unlike her. Rismyn was a contradiction she couldn’t solve, a complexity she didn’t understand.
Her lip trembled and she wished he’d hold her hand again. It was a comfort she hadn’t realized she’d been missing.
But they both remained where they were, unmoving save for the steady rise and fall of their breaths. Mazira closed her eyes. There was more to be said, words hovering in the shadows between them, but she couldn’t quite grasp them. So she said nothing and hoped it would be enough.
It took some time, but eventually, Rismyn stopped shivering. His breathing slowed, and she could feel his body relax beneath hers. With his descent into sleep, a weight tumbled from her back. If he was resting, he wasn’t feeling the pain.
Mazira sighed deeply and nestled down a little more. She should try to stay awake. Someone needed to keep watch. But she was exhausted and her eyes were growing heavier. The steady rhythm of Rismyn’s heartbeat echoing through his chest was luring her to sleep.
She was so tired she didn’t even jump when Rismyn’s arm draped over her, the tips of his fingers managing to find the small gap of exposed skin at her waist where her camisole had rolled up. She considered moving him, but she didn’t want to risk waking him.
It would be alright, she decided. He was asleep. And very soon, so was she.
Forsaken by Shadows is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
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