Tala stepped down in front of her with the parchment still in hand, and leaned to examine her. Just as he thought she was mute, she opened her mouth to speak.

"I am bringing a message from Angelus to–"

Tala half crushed her face as he slapped his hand over her mouth and smothered her words. Angelus was Vincent's organization, a bunch of depraved vampires and mages who would slaughter their own kind if it gained them something. Even dead, Vincent still thought he could stick his hand in the cookie jar and get away with what he desired.

He'd be damned if he listened to a word they had to say.

This woman would die now. He'd been hasty in his initial assessment. Anything related to the filth that was Vincent would die screaming.

"I didn't say you could speak," Tala said darkly, wanting her to know her place. "A letter from Angelus?" Tala fingered it and then slid it into his pocket, and the human's fear spiked for some reason. Did she think anything in it would save her? How foolish. "I don't like reading. It's boring, not at all as interesting as music. What type do you prefer?" Tala asked, leaning forward and making sure to show his fangs as a precursor to her pain. "I prefer the shrill timbre of a woman's screams."

The woman trembled and tried to tear her mouth from his grips, but he just dug his fingers in and smiled wider with each pull and jerk of her body. The quickening beat of her heart excited him and he took in a long breath of her scent, relishing the fear of his prey before he silenced them.

"Perhaps if you sing, it will get me in the mood for a story and I'll read your letter."

Nothing was nicer than the feel of his hands snapping from her face only to sear into her sides. Vincent would burn, and every single thread of his legacy would crumble under him. The touch of his skin to the woman's sides had her screaming just as he'd requested, shrill cries of agony as he boiled her insides until they burst under her skin, warping the shape of her stomach as he refused to let her go. This was no torture, but a death sentence to all who dared come into his territory with Vincent smeared on them. Tala made sure she knew that as he burned his gaze into hers and dropped her on the ground only when he was through with her.

On the tile, her arms jerked in spasms as blood leaked out of her mouth and soaked the area around her stomach, staining the pearl white of her blood slave clothes with crimson that satisfied his hunger to break something of Vincent's. Tears dripped from her eyes, but they clouded as she passed out. The girl would perish in a matter of hours, and he'd expedite the process shortly.

Breaking the seal on the envelope released magic into the air, marking the sender with their house's aura. This one he knew, and it was Arc magic. Dread consumed him as he flipped it open and read the first words.

Hey Tala, I know it's been a while, but I need some help and I was hoping maybe you still remembered your promise to me? I sent Silvia Copse to speak with you, and she was quite frightened, so please treat her with care. I really like her.

Shit. Tala stuffed the letter back in his vest pocket to read later. If he didn't save this girl, he was about to be in the worst circle of hell. Why hadn't he just listened to her when he'd seen that something was off about her coming here?

"Shan! Get her to the infirmary!" Tala yelled, and his general's eyebrows jumped up. "She's Neil's. Fuck." Tala stormed off as his general scooped the girl up and carried her off in the other direction.

There was no way to save her.

None that he had. He'd killed the last mage they'd had earlier that week when it hadn't shut up for days. It kept spitting profanities about his people, and he'd even thought the guy was pissing Wren off, so he'd done away with him.

Wren Song.

Would the man even help him? There was no time to wonder because the mage was all he had. Flying down into the cell, he wrenched the door open to Wren cursing as he came at him more swiftly than the man was used to. Unhooking the shackles' chain, he grabbed the man by the back of his mage cloak and dragged him out of his cell.

Wren either couldn't keep up with him or he didn't want to go with him, because it was a struggle to get him up all the stairs. Panic and fear wafted to his nose as he pulled Wren out of the dungeon door and into the sunlight. A hiss escaped the human's mouth, and Wren collapsed on the ground to shield his eyes with a whine. Tala had forgotten how long it had been since the man had seen light, but he had no time to cater to him.

Lifting him, he took off and tossed Wren onto the floor of the infirmary. Wren skidded practically and lifted himself up onto his elbow, his grey streaked red hair trailing the floor with how long it had gotten uncut. Silvia was patched up as best as Shan could manage, but there was no touching the burns on her side and she had little time. It drove a spike of fear through him as he removed the man's shackles, but Wren was too weak to harm him and he needed his magic.

"Heal her!" Talamayas demanded, his voice coming out as more of a hoarse yell.

Wren lifted his head to look at Silvia and after his eyes adjusted, he examined her, frowning from her expression of pain and wandering his eyes to the burns on her side. Silvia was all that was here save for some machines and another two beds. There wasn't much need for an infirmary when he killed any mage who came here. Wren turned back to him, and Tala's shoulders lifted in anger and frustration that he had not yet complied. It wasn't like the pain and desperation wasn't plain on his face and form.

"No," Wren said, dropping his head.

Tala grabbed him by the throat and shoved him up against the wall. "Why?" His voice cracked in despair, not understanding the man's refusal. Wren was able. He'd healed countless of his own people before. "She is your kind and she'll die if you don't," Tala tried to reason with him.

"If you wanted her, you shouldn't have forced yourself on her and sated your lust for burning flesh by harming her," Wren whispered into the air, knowing better than to yell at him, but Tala's fingers constricted around his throat until Wren couldn't breathe, and he struggled with his hands.

"I do not rape women," Tala growled, frustrated that the man had gone there twice in his captivity. He got that Wren didn't like him, but understanding that he wouldn't go that far didn't seem out of the realm of possibility. "Heal her... please..." Talamayas begged, allowing Wren to breathe, and when it appeared to change Wren's decision none, Tala's palms started to sweat. It was from his magic superheating heating the air and making his cold skin warm, and not from perspiration, as he didn't do the latter. When Talamayas got frustrated, he got hot.

It tore a hole in Tala's chest as he knew what he had to do, but this was for Neil. That boy deserved every ounce of happiness he could pry from life's cruel hands. There was only one thing he could give to Wren, and it would break Tala, but there was no other choice.

"I will release you." The words fell shakily from his lips, and Wren's eyes widened as if he didn't believe he'd commit. "I will put it in blood writ as long as you heal her. You will be protected from my house, and I will escort you to mage territory. Please heal her." Each and every word of explanation hammered the nail into his chest as he imagined his life without him.

"No," Wren hissed, and Talamayas trembled.

"Why? What can I give you to save her?" Tala was watching the girl lose her grips on life, and he didn't know what else he could offer.

"I won't heal her to be your pet and tortured as you did to me. My freedom isn't worth it if I trade it for some girl's. If you bored of me and wanted a younger replacement, you should have been more careful with her."

Replacement? Nothing could replace him.

"She's not mine!" Talamayas roared, dropping Wren on the floor and taking a seat next to Silvia Copse. Losing his face in his hands, he spoke more quietly. "She belongs to another house head. I didn't know, and now I've done something I can't take back."

"You're worried about diplomatic backlash?" Wren asked as he tried to find meaning to any of this.

"No!" Talamayas growled, knowing he'd get nowhere if he wasn't honest. "The man is a personal friend of mine and is unfathomably gentle. I did not know she was his. I'd have never touched her if I had. Please Wren Song, heal her, and you can have your freedom."

The man still hesitated a moment, and Tala was about to snap a limb when he spoke. "My freedom... and hers."

"I have no control of what claim my ally has over her." That much was true. What relationship Neil and Silvia Copse had, he was unsure. If he liked her though, she was no doubt treated well, but that did not mean that Tala could change anything if she was Neil's property.

"That is fine, Wren finally said. "I want her freedom from here. Allow her to leave with me and escort us to our destination, in blood writ, and I will heal her."

"Done."

Talamayas let out a breath of relief as he inscribed what they'd spoken about onto parchment with magic and dropped it into Wren's hands. The final touch was a cut to his thumb that he used to sign the bottom, binding him by the law of magic to comply or die. That was what it would take to keep him from Wren, but it was a price he had to pay for his mistake.

"Add your blood to the bottom seal, and you will have to heal her under punishment of death from the pact magic. I cannot harm you anymore, Wren Song," Tala uttered the last with growing despair as he knew that the man was no longer his. One thing had been constant since his mother's loss and it had been Wren. Without him, he would be lost.

"Nor can I harm you," Wren observed as he read the terms. "You have included a non-aggression clause in here between both my house and yours, meaning none of my blood can ever harm or control you and vice versa."

"I will free you no other way, Wren Song," Tala said. It was his choice to give up his prisoner, but he could not do so if it risked his house's safety. It was his responsibility to protect them. "If I am bound to not harm yours, I will not suffer your attacks without the ability for recourse. It would be sacrificing my entire house to do otherwise, just as letting this girl die would be."

Wren hesitantly dripped his blood onto the parchment, and the pact seals appeared on both of their wrists. The man took no time about sitting in the free chair on the other side of Silvia Copse and hovering his hands over her. It tossed Tala's stomach, feeling the hum of Song magic flowing through the room for the first time in half a century, but there was no way that Wren could direct it at him.

Tala couldn't stop himself from becoming absorbed in the calm it brought Wren to feel his magic, relaxing all of the muscles in his face and making him look as young as the day he'd first been brought here. Time and torture had driven a streak of grey through the man's hair, but as a mage, they lived a few hundred years, so he still had the youth of a man in his early thirties and plenty of time left on his clock.

And Tala wanted every second of it.

Word Count: 2142