Dappled shade fell around Knotrium's shoulders, coating her hair in green and golden light as she and Edward sailed over leaf coated ground. Without thought or mind for what lay behind or ahead, they ran until each crevice of their body was cooled and satisfied with the early fall air. Knotrium stopped when she could no longer run. "So is this why you took me here? To run my out of breath then take my thralls with you?"

Edward leaned back against the tree besides her, puffing dark bangs out of his eyes. For a moment as the sun reflected the amber depths of his eyes, Knotrium saw him as he must have been once, a king, sitting proud on the highest of thrones. She remembered those days with painful accuracy. She remember the glamor. She remembered each person, their likes, their dislikes, what dresses they wore in the summer and suits in the winter. She remembered just being with Caesarion, no other thralls and no other worries. As Knotrium let the memories overtake, her heart throbbed with longing.

Finally, Edward answered her. "No."

"Why then?"

"To understand. To try and know why you care so deeply for all these thralls. You don't love all of them."

"I don't owe you."

"Maybe you owe it to them to give me an answer." He sat down next to her. With his right hand, he plucked up a leaf near her lap to shred into pieces.

"You answer my question first, then I'll think about yours," Knotrium relojes to the empty air he had been standing in until a few seconds prior.

"Fine." Before he began to speak, Edmund stretched back against the tree trunk so that the ends of his hair stood on end. With absent minded fingers, he traced patterns of swirls in mud trials. Knotrium began to see that he was drawing a face with remarkable speed. More than that, she recognized that face. She and her thralls had kidnapped and drugged the owner what had been less than two days ago.

The world quieted as Edward began to speak. "Because I wouldn't raise my children in a world where the coven's ruling. Every time your brother takes over, it just means war, death, and destruction. And if I wouldn't want my own flesh and blood to grow up in a broken world, then why should other people be damned to raise theirs in the same?"

Knotrium felt her lips twitch back into a smile. A sad one, but a real one. No mask, no illusions, no sugar coating. Just bitter sweat tears. "I'm more selfish than that. I made a mistake with Caesarion, plain and simple. I wouldn't have condemned him to life as a thrall, not if I had had any control over my self and my actions that day. But now..." she trailed off and stared into the leaves falling to the ground. "Save the lives I'm in place to, try and atone for that one mistake. I grow to love them. As friends. As brothers. Some of them maybe as more. But it never changes the guilt."

"At the very least you feel it. I can't support your actions. They're despicable, to enslave humans into immortal life to make up for some mistake thousands of years ago? Selfish. Cruel. But I can honor the guilt you feel. Your brother takes thousands of thralls, all to play with then discard. You have every grain of shame to turn you back towards ethics." Edward stood. "Changing Izem was the hardest thing I've ever done and we knew we wanted to be together."

"I've never given anyone that choice."

"Never." His frown seemed to overtake the sheen of empathy in his eyes.

Knotrium spread her hands. What else could she have done? When she found her thralls, most were dying. Certainly none of them had had much chance at a life beyond torture. "Sergio and I made a deal, and he chose this. Kukipici's father chose for him, Meallán had nothing left to go back to."

"And the rest?"

"Edmund was locked up in a hole underground never to see the light of day. What was I supposed to do, leave him there. Alexei was already a thrall. All I did was kill his old master and become the new one. Gavriil-" she broke off suddenly as a searing pain for through her head. Someone was taking a burning poker to her temple, she knew that. Someone was stabbing her forehead, or at least something was eating her head from the inside out. The world was burning and there was nothing she could do. Screams. Screams echoed in the distance. They sounded like her own and they sounded like someone else's and they sounded like someone was being torn to pieces and-

She fell back into Edward. His skin froze hers.

"Knotrium." Through the pain she was vaguely aware of his touch. He was shaking her, but his eyes only blurred together with his mouth and there was nothing to respond to. If she opened her mouth, the only sound that would come out would be of pure agony ringing through a dead and empty citadel. Her chest burned. There would be a piece missing, she knew, when she pulled her hand away. But there was no blood when Knotrium opened her eyes to look down.

Slowly, the pain faded to nothing but a dull ache, and then, only then, could Knotrium hear the pounding of telepathic voices ringing around the inside of her skull. Knotrium. Knotrium. Knotrium.

Just one word escaped her own mouth as she stared up at Edward with panicked eyes. "Run."

"The thralls. Tell me it's not them."

The look in Knotrium's face was confirmation enough for Edward. He bolted away from the clearing, the female vampire trailing just behind him in the dusty wake.

The closer they got to the van and picnic tables, the more Knotrium could smell blood and ash congealing in the afternoon air. And with each passing step? The sounds of screaming only transferred from her head to the open air. A count began. Five hundred more steps. One hundred. Fifty. Ten. No. Not him, not that much, not now. She could smell it. She could taste it. Blood. Too much of it to be coming from him. Yet there, in the middle of the clearing, lay Alexei's body.

There was no heart beat for Knotrium to pick out of the sounds of crickets and burning metal. And yet she still tried to find one. She brought her hands to his neck, then his wrists, then his chest, and again. Then again. Still nothing but dead silence and stillness.

Her scream resonated through the burnin wreckage, and tears of acid burned lines down her face as she cried.

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"Knotrium." Someone was whispering into her ear. "You have to get up." She recognized the voice from somewhere. The person slid a warm hand around her own. With gentle pressure, he tried to lead her away from the pool of blood and the now empty body from which it had come. "Please."

Cold hit her face, and she began to remember. The hand holding hers belonged to a boy named Kukipici. He had indigo hair, and she had made a promise to keep him safe once, in a time and place far away from this one. Then the burning came back , and Knotrium forced out one word. A name really, but a desperate cry for him to come back. "Alexei."

"He's gone. Look at me."

She couldn't. Everything came back to the body lying impales on a broken sliver of picnic table.

"Look at me. Not him. Look at me." His hand wrenched her head back to stare into his eyes. They were warm and brown. Comforting. But not enough. A slap came, hard on the side of Knotrium's face. For a moment, she couldn't believe that the same hands that had been so gentle before could have stung so much a moment later. But the pain began to clear her head, and with it, Kukipici's words began to sound like lore than just noise.

"The coven, Knotrium. The coven came and killed him. They have the rest. They have everyone but me and Gavriil. They have everyone."