Kavaugn stood and began pacing. His sister was hiding, he knew it, couldn't blame her after all she'd been through, but it was time she emerged. "Des, come on you can't hide forever!" There was no answer to his shout.

His pacing continued. After Chandra and Chase attempted to murder her he had hidden her here deep in Theryn's lair to keep her survival a secret. Not only from the Chosen but from the wyvern leader as well. Theryn hadn't been pleased by the plan Des and their brother Lup had come up with to rip Chandra and Chase apart. On that, he agreed with Theryn. The plan was doomed to fail. The two loved one another and ripping the Ivers apart with a love spell was an idiotic plan. It had ended with Lup's death and Des near death. If Theryn discovered Des survived he'd kill her in the most painful way he could come up with. The wyvern leader wasn't keen on failure.

The rustling of the curtains he'd hung to divide the space alerted him to his sister's emergence and he turned with a smile. "See, now that wasn't so bad."

She ignored him and moved to stand before the mirror hung on the wall. One she'd insisted that he hang there despite his protests against it. A hand lifted and she ran it down over the scars that marred the left side of her face. A product of whatever spell they had used in their attempt to kill her. Her fingers trailed over the scars, following their path until they vanished beneath the neckline of her blood-red sweater.

"I can't possibly leave the cave looking like this? You should have let me die if you couldn't fix me."

Kav sighed. They'd had this argument many times since she began her recovery, from the moment she'd seen the scars. "I had no idea what spell they used, I told you that. I did all that I could to heal you. Whatever spell they used was extremely powerful and the healing spells I used had little effect. It's a miracle that you survived."

She took a last look in the mirror before she nodded and moved away to sit down, her head bowed so her hair hid the scars. That was not his sister. She didn't hide, she faced the world head-on. Chandra and Chase had broken something inside of her and he hated seeing her cowed like this. There was much he had to tell her, information that he hoped would light that defiant fire inside her once more and urge her to help him seek revenge against Chandra and Chase, against the Chosen, so they could end them.

Yet, he hesitated in his telling because he feared how she might react. There was a time when she harbored deep feelings for Chase Ivers. The information he needed to impart to her might anger her and an angry Des was not something he wished to face, though he preferred it to this new, quiet, and defeated version of his sister. From the moment his sister laid eyes on Chase she wanted him, it mattered little to her that Chase didn't return her feeling, what Des wanted she took. When he'd managed to escape Theryn's hold and attached himself to Chandra he knew Des had buried those feelings as deeply as she could, but to her brothers, the hurt was obvious to see. Despite knowing how much Chase hated it here when Theryn held him, his sister foolishly held out hope he would choose to return.

He sighed. She and Lup hatched a plan and cast a love spell on Chandra and Chase in an attempt to rip them apart. It was a foolish plan. Love spells were unpredictable, and to try and place one on a couple as deeply in love as the Ivers were was plain stupid. Nothing could erase that kind of love. It may suppress it for a bit but never overwrite it.

The time for his hesitation was over. Des was healed, at least physically. Her mental condition he would deal with over time. He took a seat in the chair facing her. "Desdemoynah?"

"What is it you have to say, Kav?" Her voice sounded defeated, strained, and tired. "If you're using my full name it must be important." She lifted her head slightly to look at him. "Or it's something you don't wish to tell me."

He sat back with a deep sigh. "I have a lot to tell you. A lot happened while you were recovering."

"Have you been keeping things from me, brother?"

He silently cursed Theryn and his war against the dragons. If it wasn't for that beast they never would have met Chase. He frowned, they never would have met Chandra either, nor would they have discovered that their Uncle Fredrick still lived. If none of those events had taken place then his sister wouldn't be a shadow of her former self.

"While you were recovering Theryn launched another attack on the dragons. I searched out Chandra and managed to get my hands on her during the battle. I wanted revenge for what they'd done to you and Luperco."

She jumped from her seat and for the first time in a long while there was excitement there in the ice blue of her eyes. "Is she dead?'

He knew when he told her the rest of the information the excitement would die. His eyes lowered to his hands where they were clenched tightly together in his lap. "I chased her down, her mount twisted violently and flipped upside down and she lost her seat. She didn't attempt to transform as she did in the past. I thought it was some trick, though what she might have been attempting I couldn't imagine. I didn't want her to die that way, I wanted to do the deed. I snatched her out of the air." He paused and looked at his sister. She had moved behind the chair and her hands gripped the back of it tightly as she waited to hear what had taken place.

"Well?" she urged.

"I caught her before she fell very far, nearly missed her too. I snatched her up by a wrist and dislocated her shoulder I think." He jumped up from his seat and began wandering the room. He felt an overwhelming need to put space between them and escape her eager expression. "I needed to understand how they'd broken your spell. I took her to a ridge to question her. She was reluctant to talk, not that I expected her to blurt out her every secret. She sat there and allowed me to torture her. She made no move to defend herself."

The look he gave her was filled with pain. The loathing that he felt wasn't for Chandra or what she and Chase had done to his siblings, no it was loathing turned inward. Loathing at himself for what he'd done to her before he discovered the reason she allowed him to torture her without interference.

His sister's fingers flexed where she gripped the chair and there was glee in her gaze. "Kav, tell me the rest!"

"She didn't fight me, she suffered the pain until she passed out." When Des opened her mouth to speak he raised a hand to stop her. "They broke the spell by the simplest of means, one you could never understand. They love one another deeply, Des, all it took for them to escape the spell was something that forced them to remember that love." He dragged a hand down over his face.

"I don't care how they broke the spell! Is the bitch dead?" Des snapped at him.

The hesitation crept in again. "She finally flung a fireball at me and attempted to run. My anger was extreme because she refused to answer my questions. I chased her down, tackled her, and began pounding on her injured shoulder. I wanted answers and I didn't care how I got them. She was terrified." He gave his head a small shake. "Her fear wasn't for herself. I pounded on her and demanded answers. I wanted to know why she refused to defend herself, why she was allowing me to cause her pain."

Des waved a hand at him to continue when he paused.

He knew what she wanted. His sister wanted details on how Chandra had died. It was something he couldn't give her. "The moment she realized I was sitting on her, pinning her down she began to fight wildly. There was suddenly a deep need for her to protect what mattered the most to her."

"Dammit, Kav, either explain and get to the end or I'll beat it out of you!"

"I couldn't hurt her, Des, you know how I feel about that! I had to let her go!" There was a pleading tone to his words that he couldn't help. He needed her to understand.

A frown formed on her painted lips. A frown that pulled on the scars on her face making them more grotesque. "She attempted to kill me and succeeded in killing Luperco! What reason could you possibly find to let her walk free?"

"She's pregnant. Chandra is pregnant." After he made that statement his shoulders slumped forward and he flung his body into a chair to await her explosion of anger.

"She's what?" she replied in a quiet voice.

"Pregnant. With child, in the family way," he muttered before looking up at her. "You know how I feel about that. She's probably had the child by now," he finished.

Her response was a slow nod as she stared blankly at the opposite wall. "Chase will never leave her now, not if they have a child," she replied in a voice devoid of emotion.

"He was never going to leave her, Des," he told her gently. Though, he figured that was something Des would never understand. Things like love were a foreign concept to her. There was only what she could possess. He rubbed a hand over his face. He was tired. Tired of war, tired of fighting, and most of all tired of Theryn. They needed to end things with the Ivers, but now wasn't the time for it.

"We will kill them both. We'll do it for Lup." There was determination in his sister's words. The fire was back.

"The time has come for us to leave Theryn behind. If we're going to do this, kill them, we're going to need help. We cannot go rushing in next time. No idiotic hastily made plans. We take the time and we put together something they can't counter. I'm not going to lose you too," he told her.

"No mistakes the next time. I understand, Kav. I don't care how long it takes us, I want them dead."

He rose and crossed to where she stood, squeezed her shoulder, and left so he could return to Theryn before the beast took note of his absence. Later tonight would be a good time to leave. Theryn would be asleep and they could slip out unnoticed. That beast could rot, he no longer cared to serve him. During the last battle, he'd lost a good deal of his wyvern army. It was likely that the Chosen would defeat him soon. He grinned at that, as badly as he wanted to leave, to get his sister away from Theryn, he would like to see that monster beaten down by Chandra and her husband. It was Theryn's stupid fault he ended up in this position. If the wyvern had killed Chase instead of keeping him alive then the Chosen would never have come together. He shook his head. Theryn had believed that he could continue to control Chase and that ended with the boy escaping and joining Chandra so they could become the Chosen destined to defeat the wyvern and save the dragons. He hummed as he moved down the corridor. After the battle, he'd made certain the wyvern leader had difficulty rebuilding his army. Not because he cared about the dragons, but because a small part of him wanted to allow Chandra to make it to the end of her pregnancy unscathed. It was also satisfying to watch Theryn rage over the fact nothing was working in his favor. A small spell on the eggs in the wyvern hatchery kept them from reaching maturity. They died long before that point. Without him here to reinforce the spell once he and Des left, the spell would wan and the eggs would begin hatching once more.

At that point, it would matter little to him. They would be long gone.

Someday they would return and the lovebirds would die.