So then he had forsaken her. So easily his promise to protect her had been forgotten.

It had been foolish of her to have believed it would be otherwise. He was a soldier of Leoth. His loyalty was to his realm, his people, and his Dark God. Would not she have done the same given the chance? Saved herself. Had not she done the same over and over again when given the chance? She hated him for a great many things, but not for this. For this she lay no blame at his feet.

On the contrary, she recognised, begrudgingly, the honour in it. In his abiding duty to his realm and his people.

Where is your honour? Have you any, Princess?

It took Theodan's female a moment to recover from the Visier's revelation, glancing with open-mouthed astonishment at Fara before moving to stand in front of her.

'I am to guard the... female... until the Commander's return, Visier,' She said respectfully, lowering her head. Her men moved also, forming a circle around them both, their bodies alert and ready. The allegiance shining from their sharp Leoth features and poised Leoth sword sent a stab of envy through Fara. To command such power, to command any power at all - what must it feel like? Even as a princess she had been powerless. The third born, the only daughter, of a king afforded privilege, yes, but very little power.

The guards that surrounded the Visier stood as still and as immovable as the large statue that overlooked them. Their inky black helmets and armour gave them an almost otherworldly presence, and their dark obsidian eyes focussed straight ahead without feeling or expression. Both sets of warriors looked formidable. But only for the fact that she could see agitation and uncertainty in some of the eyes of Vala's men, she decided that the Visier's men would triumph here were it to come to any kind of combat.

'Lady Vala, your duty to the Commander is of no importance to us,' The Leoth female advised, the merest suggestion of a smile lifting the side of her delicate rose-pink lips. Almost invisible as it was, Fara found it laden with meaning and intent. 'As you well know the princess is under the protection of the realm, and thus a subject of it. The High One requests her presence in the Garden of the Moon forthwith so I must advise you step aside,' The warning in the woman called Ismene's tone was clear.

Vala shifted on her feet, her allegiance torn. Fara knew from Theodan that the High Visier was superior to all who dwelled in Leoth, and yet, Vala had clearly made some promise to Theodan that she did not want to break.

Fara felt empathy swell within her. What use was more fighting, more bloodshed? Unnecessary and pointless deaths which solved no quarrel. Furthermore, she found within her a curious kind of freedom at the notion that she had, all things considered, nothing left to lose. She would meet with this Visier of Theodan's. With this being who spoke with Gods, and who could see through time and truth.

'I accept the High Visier's request,' Fara said, stepping around Theodan's female. 'I will go with you, Visier Ismene.'

Argent eyes closing, she bowed her head in exaggerated gratitude. 'But I would request that the lady Vala accompany me. If that would be permissible?' Fara asked with a forced meekness.

Ismene smiled. 'As you wish Princess,' She turned her gaze to Vala. 'Your men remain without,' She told her. It was another order.

The air cooled a moment in heavy silence before Vala spoke. 'Very well, Visier,' she said, 'I attend the Princess alone.'

Ismene remained expressionless before taking a small step to the side, indicating Fara should move into the space to the centre of the clad warriors. When she did so, the Visier came to stand by her left side, with Vala taking the position by her right. Then, all at once, they began to move toward the great stone gate as a single group. Through it, the statue became all that she could see, dominating everything beyond it and before it. She tilted her head back to marvel at its scale and beauty. The fingers gripping the sword were carved with such skill that she could see every crease and strain of the skin, the tendons in the thighs taught as he knelt, veins the size of small streams running pronounced down his neck and arms. The depth of his anguish was evident in every inch of him. As she passed beneath it her vision and standing wobbled and so dizzied, she brought her head back to its proper position. In the attempt to keep moving she tripped over her dress, stumbling clumsily.

'Many believe this was the moment of his death,' the Visier said, paying Fara's ungainliness no mind.

Fara glanced round at her, and then back at the statue, curious. 'It is not? But he looks to be in unimaginable pain.' She brought her eyes back to Ismene.

'He was.' The visier's voice was heavy, sad. 'It was the moment of Azura's death.'

''Twas he who killed her? What right had he to mourn her passing?' Fara shot before she had time to consider her words.

'Every right,' Ismene replied, calmly. 'His sacrifice was unimaginable. His sacrifice condemned him.'

Fara gaped at her, speechless. His sacrifice? The Leothine really did believe their own falsehoods. Their own alternate history. That the monster whose name they bore was not a monster at all, but some noble and injured hero. A jolt of something hit her. Horror. Cold icy doubt clutching at her chest. Around her heart. Squeezing tight. When she glanced at Ismene she found her smiling softly, hypnotic eyes quietly assured.

The assuredness of someone who could see. Who had seen. Was it... possible...?

They had not gone straight ahead and inside the grand looking stone building as Fara had expected, but instead around it, into the grounds of an impossibly beautiful garden. Flowers and blooms exploded all around her with scent and colour and yet she wondered how many of them could kill her at the first touch. She found them no less beautiful for it. This strange land she had long thought would be brutal, harsh, and colourless, surprised her more each moment she spent on it. Its people were exotic and dangerous - but with a beauty that stole her breath away. Its landscape was too. A deadly, wild, breathtaking realm she never thought she would ever see for herself. She had misjudged it.

All of Ethis had misjudged it. Was it possible it had also misjudged its dark god?

'Is it true your High Visier has spoken with him?' Fara asked, tentatively, casting a sideways glance at Ismene. 'With....' she felt a chill sweep over her as she prepared to speak his name, '...Leoth himself?'

Ismene did not look at her, but that same wry smile flitted across her mouth. 'To converse with long-dead Gods,' the Visier mused. 'It is almost impossible for the mind to conceive of such a thing is it not?'

She thought of the moment Theodan had kissed her; of how her body had seemed to split apart, pulled by an incendiary force of pure white light much more powerful than anything she had ever before conceived. She thought of the sensation as she'd flown through the air on the back of a large horse with wings. She thought of the power the moon's gaze had held over her body in those moments before all had gone black, of how she could feel it's cold grip fuse with her blood, sinew and bone turning to marble.

Many things before Theodan came into her existence had been impossible for the mind to conceive. Now, she supposed, anything was possible.

'Almost,' replied Fara, distant.

They walked on wordlessly through the rich gardens of the Court of the Moon, the sounds of distant birdsong weaving in and out of the bright fauna that surrounded her. Marching rhythmically beside the women, the armoured guards felt out of place amongst such beauty. The discordant sounds of their weapons and armour disturbing the gentle quiet of the garden. Chancing a glance around at Vala, she found her expression unforgiving and serious as she stared straight ahead. A short way ahead of them, through a break in the trees, she saw a sparkling blue pool come into view, and as they passed under a white marble archway the same colour as the Leoth moon - the top of which was inscribed with odd foreign or ancient lettering - she saw that in the centre of the pool was a stone canopy of the same polished white marble.

Stood beneath the canopy was a lone figure. With hair as dark as night, hanging down past her hips, the High Visier was pale and slight - almost as though she were made of marble herself. Fara believed she might have been until a gust of air from beyond the cliff edge caused her hair to whip up about her face, and her small hand came up to move it from her eyes.

As they drew closer she saw that her eyes were closed, her head slightly bowed as though deep in prayer. The guards turned and began to move around the edge of the pool, coming to a stop when they were each a length apart from the other in practised spacing. A hush fell around them then, the birdsong too drowning out so that all that remained was the soft sound of the wind skipping gently across the surface of the blue pool. Ismene turned to Fara and smiled warmly. It transformed her face into something so sublime, something so... other, that Fara was momentarily stunned by it.

'Princess Fara Ninerveh, the High one awaits you,' she said in that same soft voice. Unthreatening, hypnotic, lulling. She held out her arm, palm upturned, in the direction of the High Visier. 'You must go alone beyond this point.' She cast a sideways glance at Vala who looked tense and uncertain.

Fara looked across at the female who awaited her with growing unease. Had she not faced far worse this and survived?

She gave a slight nod wondering if it would be possible to make herself look graceful as she waded across the shallow pool toward her audience. Taking a step toward the lip of the pool, she froze when the ground beneath her began to shift, and a deep rumble rose from within the foundations of the clifftop. The still water of the pool rippled and shifted before its surface was pushed apart by a length of pure white marble that stretched from where she stood to the canopy itself. Solid white stone slicing vividly across the clear blue.

She stifled a gasp and glanced at the High Visier, whose eyes were still firmly closed, serenity and calm exuding from her. Fara peered over the edge, watching as the platform continued to rise, the sound of stone scraping against stone until it came to rest just above the surface of the water. When the water had settled, Fara took a tentative step onto the walkway.

The sun's rays had dried it at once, leaving behind a warmth which radiated up through her thin sandal. Except, the heat felt alive somehow, comforting, like the heat from the floor of Theodan's atrium. So perhaps this heat was not the sun's doing at all.

The wind picked up her dress as she moved across it, blowing gentle cooling air about her legs, the back of her neck, through her hair. As she grew near to the end of the walkway she slowed, not sure what to do once she reached it, how to greet this being who had the power to see inside her. A living breathing Goddess.

Fara stopped moving when she reached the lip of the canopy, taking a moment merely to look at her. She wore a diaphanous white gown which tapered in about her feet which were bare. The fabric sat off her shoulders, just above the peak of her bosom, and was trimmed along the neckline with fine decorative silver. Atop her head was a thin crown of intricately shaped silver which came to a peak in front, where there sat a triangular motif shaped from three distinct moons. A crescent moon angled towards the sphere of a full moon, and the reverse crescent on the adjacent side. The same marking was etched in black across her throat, like a thin decorative collar. She was more than beautiful. Soft, pale skin untouched completely by the sun, small delicate features which were perfectly symmetrical in size and placement. When Theodan had spoken of her, Fara had imagined an old crone, twisted fingers and aged bones, skin like paper through which her Leoth Blood would show. But she was nothing of the sort. Fara could feel the power emanating from her, and yet she looked no more than a girl.

Theodan had sought her counsel? Her guidance? Did he find her beautiful? Gods, how could he not? She was a spellbinding and majestic thing.

To possess the power and beauty of a Goddess and to be worshipped and obeyed by the most feared race in the realm... to be worshipped and obeyed by a male such as Theodan...

An unbearable surge of envy moved through her, molten and hot.

She did not know whether she should speak, whether the High Visier knew she was there. So still was she - her eyes still firmly closed - that she looked to be fast asleep within a beautiful dream. As though she would not take kindly to being disturbed. Another soft breeze blew between them and at once the Visier's eyes snapped open. Fara was unable to stifle her gasp. Staring back at her were eyes as black as a moonless night, much darker than Theodan's at their most emotive. A fathomless, pitiless black. That, however, was not the most striking facet of them. It was that in the centre of each obsidian eye was a silver disc-shaped exactly like a Leoth moon. Each shining bright and deadly. Ito Fara's mind it made her no less appealing, no less beautiful - but it made her something else with it; something terrifying.

'Princess, you are welcomed to our Gardens,' She said finally. Her voice was even more gentle and hypnotic than Ismene's but had within it a melodic cadence. A rise and fall over every word, the sounds drawn out like one might speak the most passionate of poems. 'Please, I bid you converse with me out of the glare of the Goddess' eye. The day does not agree with me as well as it does you.' She smiled, waving a hand to welcome Fara under the shade.

Fara hesitated only a moment before stepping over the threshold and under the roof and the welcome chill of the marble-cooled air. Looking down at where she walked, Fara noted that carved into the floor was the same symbol the High Visier wore on her crown and around her throat.

'You have many questions for me,' stated the High Visier as she drifted gracefully across the space. 'Only some of which pertain to the Commander.' She turned and smiled a small secret smile, her eyes glimmering with their own impossible moonlight. Why did she smile like that? As though she knew some truth Fara dared not admit even to herself? 'But I will permit you to begin with that which is most pertinent to you.' Fara never dared dream she would be able to ask questions of her. For it was true she had thought of many as she was escorted through the Court Gardens - some of which had indeed been about Theodan. What would happen to him at the trial? Why promise to protect her when he had given her up so readily? Did he live still? Momentarily speechless, she gazed around them at the guards, at Vala who stood watching them by the poolside, Ismene who stood silently serene by her side, before settling her eyes back on the High Visier. The most pertinent of questions bobbed helpfully to the tip of her tongue.

'Why have you summoned me here?'

A flicker of surprise, or perhaps disappointment, blew across her features. 'For two reasons. The first, most important reason, was that I desired to give you a gift.'

'A gift?'

'Indeed.'

Fara swallowed, unsure of why the hairs across the back of her arms had tilted upwards at the notion, 'And the other reason?'

'Ahhhh. Merely curiosity.' Fara frowned and the Visier shrugged. 'It was our desire to meet Theodan's Azurian treasure in the flesh,' She clarified. Fara's body warmed and cooled at the same time. It warmed at the insinuation that Theodan treasured her, yet grew tense by the intimate way the High Visier said his name. 'Now we would ask you a question.'

'Very well.' Fara nodded, reluctant.

'Tell me, when you stole the Prince of Azura's heart, did it make you feel powerful?' Fara's chest tightened, sharp hot shame coursing through her veins, stealing her breath.

Oh, her desire to lie was great. And the Visier knew it. She smiled, comfortingly. 'There are only truths here, Princess.'

Fara was certain she could feel the collar throb dully against her throat, as though she were being compelled by a part of her own soul she had not yet become aware of. Unlike when the moon had called her, the call of the collar now did not frighten her - it comforted her, softening her.

'Yes,' Fara whispered.

The High Visier expected this answer, and so her expression did not change at the revelation. 'What else did you feel?'

'I felt... free. Finally, hopefully, free.'

The High Visier nodded with understanding. 'But only for a short time,' Fara continued. 'Before the guilt came.' She looked down at her hands as guilt showered her, filled with wonderment at how easily the truth had just fallen from her tongue. When she had kept it locked up tight inside her for so long. She lifted her head to find a look of sadness on the High Visiers face.

'Now you may ask me another question.'

This time Fara knew exactly what to ask her. 'I would know why you sent Theodan to Azura.'

The Visier narrowed her eyes, allowing the small smile to ghost across her mouth once more. 'Is that a question?'

Fara hardened at her apparent amusement. 'Yes. You told him that the four realms would once again be as one. That this war would bring that to pass? How can that be?'

The Visier sighed, loudly. 'It is not my will to consider how things can be, Princess, only what will be.'

'But it is your will to have the Commander of your armies wage war on realms which do not deserve it, on souls who did not ask for it?' Fara shot back, riled. 'How many more will die to bring about this unity? You seek to destroy a land that would still today be unified if your depraved God had not torn it apart!'

The moonlight in the Visier's eyes flickered tempestuously and the very air around Fara seemed to cool in an instant. Ice cold.

'You dare speak of Him with such insolence?' She took a step closer, her voice horribly calm as her small form shook with rage. 'You will respect The Dark One and his subjects while your feet are warmed upon His realm.'

The collar about her neck began to tighten and warm then, and her breath froze as her fingers flew to the band and slid under its weight. Pulling at it, she clawed at her neck to try and separate the heavy steel band from her throat. Lifting her eyes to the High Visier, she pleaded desperately.

Behind her, she heard the sudden noise of disquiet; shouts and the sound of weapons being drawn. Vala. She'd be killed trying to protect her charge. For Fara's own insolence she'd be slaughtered by the High guard. No. No more would die because of her. She would not allow it.

'Please...' Fara gasped. 'Forgive me... I spoke... out of... despair for my... home... for my husband. Please.'

The tightening around her throat eased almost immediately, and the air around her returned at once to the warm balmy opacity it had been before. As the steel cooled against her skin she sucked in a breath, and then another, coughing to clear the injury from her fragile throat.

The Visier's expression returned in an instant to the quiet tranquillity it held before, almost as if it had not been moved from it at all. When she brought her hands before her to lace together her fingers and Fara noticed that on the backs of each hand were again the three moon insignia. Across the pool, Vala was urged back from the waters edge by two of the High guard, her sword drawn against theirs as she looked defiantly over their shoulders at Fara. When her eyes met Fara's she stilled, observing her closely before lowering her sword. Had she really been about to attack the Visier's guard? To risk her life? All to keep her promise to Theodan? How deeply she must care for him.

'It is whispered amongst the heavens.. that all beings, Gods included, are capable of two things, and two things only.' The Visier's voice cut through Fara's discordant thoughts. Jealous confused lonely thoughts. When she turned she found her staring out towards the sea, delicate strands of spun silver dancing lightly around her face like thin ribbons of silk.

She was silent so long that Fara wondered if she was supposed to guess what those two things were. But then the Visier spoke again: 'Love and War.'

Fara frowned, unconvinced.

'You disagree,' The Visier stated, without looking at her.

'In truth, I do not know,' Fara replied, unsettled. Her throat still scratchy and raw from its attack.

Were humans capable of more than love and war? She had known both. Had lived through both. All kinds of love, each more devastating than the last. Now she knew nothing but war. Nothing but loss and destruction. A new kind of devastation. But she had known hate too. And pain. And guilt. She had known hope and joy and peace. Until Leoth had taken it all from her.

She doused her thoughts in blackness quickly lest the Visier read the truth of them and punish her for it.

'Now, our thoughts turn to our gift.' The Visier said, turning to her.

A moment ago she sought to harm her? Now she spoke of gifts? How changeable these Leothine were. Fara tightened her hands into fists.

'Is it my death? Was that taster of my execution? For in truth Visier I have faced death many times these past few moons and I have grown weary of waiting for it to take me.'

The Visier's mouth turned down, sadness creeping into the set of her lips.

'Was that why mere moments before I summoned you, it was in your heart and mind to hasten your own end, Princess? As though death itself nought but a lost friend you wished to meet again.' Shame and remorse rushed toward Fara, guilt flooding her throat like a gasp of ice-cold air. She swallowed. Lowered her eyes. Clutched tightly the velvet of Theodan's mother's gown. 'Do you really desire that which so many of your own kind fought to avoid? That your king and your husband fought valiantly to avoid? You would add your own soul to the list of the fallen? A rather ignoble end don't you think?' She sounded almost sad, almost as though she had not brought the war herself.

'They are mourned,' Fara replied. 'My death would be of no consequence to any soul still alive on Ethis.'

'Oh but you are wrong about that, Fara Ninerveh of Naharina,' the Visier said. 'For you still have a part to play in what is yet to come.'

Another ripple of unease coursed down Fara's spine. It was as though she were no more than a puppet. Like those Galyn's Farceur would use on a model stage to delight his drunken court. Playthings. Azura had been made a jokers toy. The thought made her fists curl once more. The Visier turned out her palms and took a step toward her, causing Fara to shrink back, fearful, her heartbeat speeding up.

'Visier, I do not require any gift..'

'And yet you do. We would show you this, we would spare you some of the pain you carry.' On each palm, the three moon motif was repeated, and they began to grow and move as the Visier moved closer toward her, spinning slowly on the pale skin of her hands.

'Do you consent to this gift, Princess? Do you accept it freely and with an open heart?'

Fara's heartbeat quickened, her breath short and uneven as her body began to tremble. She was afraid. And yet... We would show you this... would spare you some of the pain you carry. She wanted to see. As Theodan had seen. As Visier's could see. She wanted to feel less pain. Oh to be free of some of it.

'Gifts such as this can humble the soul and play heavily on the mind,' The Visier continued, 'we would have your consent.'

Her mouth was dry, and her head sparse and light, fear and anticipation crawling across her skin in equal measure.

'Will it hurt?' Fara asked, breathless.

'On the contrary... it is to ease your hurt, Fara.'

'I... I consent.'

The Visier smiled, lowering her head graciously in acceptance. 'Give to us your hand,' her eyes had been eclipsed completely in silver, black night completely suffocated by a shining moon.

Hesitating only a fraction of a moment, Fara reached out her hand.

'Leigeatha tè dorcha...' The Viser whispered.

As the tips of the High Visier's fingers touched hers, the world turned purest brightest white.