Chapter Text
Despite the fact it’s just him in the workshop he shares with Liesl, Elios has lit as many candles as he can to give the room a soft glow. The old seamstress has gone to bed early this evening, the complicated garment she’d been working on taxing her arthritic knuckles. She’s left him to finish a new pattern they’d been working on together, and he’d been pleased to have her confidence in his ability. He still has much to learn though, and so he checks each measurement and dimension twice over.
He’s just putting away the pattern paper and his tailor’s chalk when the door opens behind him. He startles hard and drops the chalk, unable to suppress the reaction, despite the fact no one in Kaer Morhen would summon him to anything. Most of those who know to find him here though, would knock before entering.
“Careful not to drop things precious to you,” a smooth, female voice says. “They might break.”
Elios turns around, trying his best to hide how he’d been frightened. The woman has closed the door behind her. He’d seen her at dinner that evening, but she’d been seated at a different table in the hall. She is tall with long black hair spilling down her back, her dress leaving little to the imagination. Half hidden in the dark locks is a pair of beautifully curved horns, shimmering like polished onyx.
“We haven’t been formally introduced,” she says, holding out a bejewelled hand to him.
Elios cannot help but notice her nails look rather sharp. He has to push himself to do it, but he manages to introduce himself in a soft voice, letting go of her hand as soon as he can. He feels slightly uncomfortable to be alone with her, and wonders why she’s here.
“Brenne,” she says, gesturing to herself in a way that draws attention to her lavishly curved figure. “We have a mutual acquaintance.”
“Oh?” he asks, surprised, wondering who she could be talking about.
Brenne smirks, her full lips curving to show a hint of teeth. “He hasn’t told you? I can’t imagine why,” she says. “After all, it’s been years since Eskel and I laid together.”
Elios startles, but this time manages to carefully suppress any outward sign of it. “Eskel will be glad to meet an old friend, after years,” he says neutrally.
Brenne scoffs, crossing her arms just under her chest, long fingers tapping against her bare arm. “Not as glad as I’d been expecting,” she says. “Then again, I hadn’t expected him to have someone like you,” she murmurs, dropping her gaze down over his body.
Elios feels the hairs on his arms rise, and tries to unobtrusively take a step back from her. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
Brenne’s lips curl, and Elios knows well enough to recognise when someone doesn’t like him, and is out to hurt him because of it. Still, he can’t help it when her words sink their barbs of hurt and doubt deeper into him than he wants.
“You’re pretty enough. But, Eskel is a big man, isn’t he?” she says lasciviously. “In more ways than one. You cannot tell me, little thing, that he can satisfy all of his desires with you.”
It hits a little too close to home. A little too close to the worries Elios has had himself, even though Eskel has never mentioned anything of the sort and has never complained. He knows the witcher never would. He shares Eskel’s bed, but he has yet to share himself with the witcher entirely. Eskel doesn’t push, and so far, Elios has believed Eskel enjoys what they do in bed together.
“Oh,” Brenne tuts, looking at him. “I know, dear. He’s a kind man, isn’t he? He wouldn’t ask, but believe me, I know what he wants.” She gestures to herself, “Succubi always do.”
Elios can’t help but glance at the gorgeous curve of her horns again. Even though he’s never met one before, he’d suspected that’s what she is. He swallows and backs up when she steps closer to him. He feels the rough hewn stone of the keep wall against his shoulderblades, preventing him from further retreat.
Brenne’s nostrils flare in a way that’s so very reminiscent of when Eskel scents him. When the witcher does it, it doesn’t leave his skin crawling like this.
The succubus scoffs again. “You haven’t even given him pleasure, have you?” she says sharply.
Elios’ heart hammers in his chest and he feels frozen, unable to respond. He’s staring past her, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall somewhere over her shoulder. Brenne tilts her head and lifts a finger, tapping at the base of his throat, her fingernail sharp against the place where his golden collar laid against the skin not so very long ago. It’s all he can do to keep his knees locked, to keep from dropping down to the floor.
“Selfish,” she says after another deep breath. “You haven’t even taken him into your body. Eskel is territorial like the rest of them, and you haven’t given him anything. Don’t blame him, when he goes looking for it somewhere else,” she says with another smirk of her full red lips.
Elios squeezes his eyes closed and turns his face away. He wants to deny what she’s saying. He wants to tell her she’s wrong and ask her to leave, but the words are stuck in his throat. When he finally manages to blink his eyes back open, she’s gone, and he’s alone in the workshop.
—000—
Eskel looks up from his book to glance at his door. Elios said he wanted to finish a pattern, and the other man had suggested it wouldn’t take him long. He’s already read quite a bit further than he’d expected he would be able to, and he still cannot hear the blonde’s footsteps. The fire has reduced to a mound of smouldering embers, and Eskel gets up and stretches, reaching for another log to put on to keep it alive. Though Elios will undoubtedly burrow into his warmth for the night, he’s hoping to get a few glimpses of his pale skin before that, flushed with more than heat from the fire.
He thinks back to the evening meal. Brenne’s presence had been unexpected, and he doesn’t think she appreciates how he rebuffed her advances when she approached him after dinner, however gently he tried to do so. Elios had already left at that point to finish his work, but he’d seen Brenne take in the blonde’s scent on him, a grimace chasing away the seductive smile. He’d shrugged at her, content in the knowledge she could smell the both of them, their scents intermingling on his skin. Her smile had returned quickly enough, and she’d suggested she’d find someone else to entertain her for her stay at Kaer Morhen. He hopes she does.
Eskel is about halfway through another chapter when he finally notes familiar footsteps on the edge of his hearing. Elios is walking a little faster than usual, and he thinks there’s something agitated in the rhythm of his steps. He frowns and puts his book to the side. He almost expects the former slave to barge through the door when he is near, hopes for it even, but as always, Elios knocks.
Eskel rises from his seat and moves to let the other man in. He takes a deep breath, and frowns when he catches hints of misery in Elios’ sun warmed scent even through the thick wood. When he opens the door, Elios isn’t looking at him, his gaze directed downward. Eskel desperately wants to know what’s wrong, wondering if something happened in the few hours Elios was alone, but he doesn’t want to ask in the hallway where other witchers might overhear. He steps aside, and heaves a relieved breath when the blonde moves inside, stepping past him without hesitation.
He closes the door behind him quietly, fully intending to take Elios into his arms and murmur the soft question in his ear. He turns, and freezes in his tracks.
Elios has his back to him, standing close to the bed, and is pulling off his clothes with quick, graceful movements. Eskel’s tongue seems to be stuck to the roof of his mouth, and though something is very, very wrong, the sight of Elios bare before him has his body respond.
The flickering light from the fire lights up the blonde’s skin in hues of pale gold, and when Elios reaches for the pin that holds his braid, Eskel’s feet finally unstick from the floor and he moves toward him.
Elios’ quick hands have untangled his hair by the time Eskel stops behind him, and he reaches out carefully to lay his rough hands on the soft skin of his hips. “Elios,” he murmurs. “Tell me what’s wrong,” his worry puts a damper on his arousal, even more so because up close like this, Elios’ sun kissed scent is almost wholly consumed by agitated nerves.
Instead of answering, the former gold collar twists to face him. There’s something distant in his pale blue eyes, and Eskel’s heart rate picks up. Elios steps forward and presses himself against him, all soft warm skin and silken blonde hair.
“Touch me. Eskel— please. Touch me,” Elios breathes.
Eskel frowns, but there is no spike in the blonde’s heart rate or scent that belie the request. Slowly, he lays his hands against the man before him again, dragging them gently up and down his spine. Elios reaches his slender arms around his neck to pull him down into a kiss, and Eskel goes.
Up until this point, Elios hadn’t lost the slight, nervous hesitance in every initial contact between them. A hesitance that Eskel carefully worked to erase, to have it make way for eager arousal and pleasure. This time Elios’ fingers wind into his hair and his tongue sweeps past his lips without a shred of hesitation. The taste of him is heady and welcome, and for a moment Eskel forgets his unease and kisses him back fully, his hands grasping to pull their bodies more firmly together.
He still can’t smell the familiar scent of Elios’ arousal though, and his stomach clenches as he carefully breaks the kiss. He wants to repeat his question, to implore Elios to tell him what’s wrong, but there’s a flash of hurt in those lovely blue eyes, and Eskel is momentarily distracted by the urge to reassure him with another kiss.
Before he can, Elios’ hands fall to his clothes with that same quick efficiency. He doesn’t waver, but there’s no emotion in it either, nothing tender, and Eskel feels like he’s decidedly on the back foot. He hadn’t been wearing much to begin with, the room around them pleasantly warm. When he’s naked, Elios’ hand wraps around him. Though the touch is perfunctory and decidedly impersonal, it’s still Elios before him, and his cock swells and hardens in the blonde’s grip.
Eskel is just about to grasp onto Elios’ wrist to pull him away, when he lets go and turns around. He gathers his hair over his shoulder, and Eskel’s gaze is drawn to the long, lovely line of his spine, all the way from his nape to where it dips between the curve of his buttocks. He makes a noise despite himself, and sees Elios shudder. It isn’t the good kind.
Everything about this is so unexpected that Eskel has to desperately search for the words to put a stop to this, words that won’t hurt the man before him. He watches as Elios kneels on the bed, and then lays down on his belly. His lovely, pretty blonde spreads his legs and cants his hips up slightly, and Eskel has had dreams of this, but never, never like this.
“Elios, what are you doing?” He manages eventually.
“I want this,” the blonde says, a flush high in his cheeks when he glances back over his shoulder without meeting his eyes. His voice wavers slightly and his body is tense. Usually Eskel enjoys when Elios colours, his fair skin blushing easily. This time it’s different. The flush is there, but the scent of desire and arousal is wholly absent. Instead, Elios smells of shame, anxiety, and determination. It’s a confusing mix of scents, and he still doesn’t know what caused all of it.
Slowly, Eskel moves around the bed and takes a seat next to him. Elios flinches minutely, and Eskel is pretty sure he would rather get stabbed in the gut than provoke that sort of reaction in the former gold collar. “My heart,” he murmurs, reaching out to trail his fingers over the delicate arch of the blonde’s flushed cheek. “Don’t mind me saying it, but I don’t think you do.”
To his horror, Elios goes entirely rigid, the scent of his misery sharpening in the air. Finally, after long moments of baited silence, Elios rolls onto his side. As he’d suspected, the blonde’s cock is completely flaccid, not a shred of arousal in his scent or in his body. When Eskel looks at him he finds tears have blurred the pale blue of his eyes.
He reaches out achingly slowly, threading his fingers through the soft hair at Elios’ temple, caressing him. “Please, talk to me?” he murmurs.
Elios swallows and blinks, moisture dripping down into his hairline with the movement. “You can take me, it’s fine. I can learn to want it,” he says quietly, and Eskel’s heart clenches.
He shakes his head. “I don’t want anything that makes you feel like this,” he says as gently as he can. Another tear escapes from Elios’ eyes, following the same path as the one before it. Eskel keeps petting through his hair carefully, listening to the way his heartbeat takes long minutes to slow, beyond relieved when it finally does.
Elios grabs onto his hand eventually, shuffling back and pulling him along. Eskel yields to it easily, settling across from him on his side, their faces close together while he keeps a careful distance between their bodies. When Elios doesn’t say anything, he silently continues his caresses.
“I have to want it,” Elios admits eventually, teeth worrying at his lips and looking up at him through his golden lashes.
Eskel’s immediate gut response is to deny that statement, and he has to bite his tongue to keep back the words. “Why?” he asks instead.
“I’ll lose you, if I don’t. And I don’t— I don’t want that.”
Eskel stares for a moment. He’d suspected Elios might feel a bit unsure about what they’ve done together so far, but he knows the former slave wasn’t afraid of losing him because of it, not before. There’s one thing, one person, who could have changed that. He does his best to keep the growl to a minimum, but the angry sound of it spills over into his voice despite his best efforts. “Brenne found you,” he says. Elios’ shoulders hunch forward slightly, and he won’t meet Eskel’s eyes. “What did she tell you?” he asks, though he thinks he could guess reasonably accurately.
“She— I—” Elios begins and halts a few times, before finally looking up at him, a sad twist to his mouth. “She said I haven’t given you anything,” he admits.
Eskel closes his eyes for a long moment, trying to hide away the anger that briefly threatens to consume him. Elios’ touch to his face is unexpected, making him catch his breath and look at the man in his bed. Elios’ blue eyes follow the path of his fingers where they trail over his brow and across the edge of his scar, next to his eye. They slide down his cheek and over the cut of his jaw, before tracing feather light over his lips.
“She said more,” Elios says eventually. He huffs a breath, fingers still across Eskel’s lips. “I shouldn’t have listened to her. I believed her for a moment, but I think she’s wrong, about most of it.”
Elios trails his fingers down from his lips now, across his chin and over his throat, dancing around his Adam's apple for a moment. His scent is losing the sharp edges of shame and anxiety, slowly but surely turning warm. Eskel flares his nostrils on a breath, and Elios’ lips curve in a hesitant smile as he slips his fingers across the scar that runs along Eskel’s collarbone.
“She was wrong about most of it, not all?” Eskel rumbles inquisitively, grateful Elios at least believes that much.
Uncertain blue eyes blink up at him, and the blonde shrugs a little, fingers pausing where they’d been eliciting pleasant tingles in their path across his chest. “She suggested that you’d want a claim,” Elios says softly. “I wish— I wish I could give that to you.”
Eskel rumbles soothingly but doesn’t move, waiting to see what Elios needs from him. The former slave bites the inside of his lip and keeps trailing his fingers over his skin in smooth, seemingly random patterns. When the tip of his ring finger slides gently over one of his nipples, his breath catches. When he meets Elios’ eyes he sees the blonde’s pupils have expanded slightly. Eskel carefully breathes him in, relieved to find there are traces of arousal in his sun kissed scent. He doesn’t move, but lets the former slave see the way his muscles tense and relax with every caress over especially sensitive skin, and when Elios eventually returns to his nipple and drags over it slowly, exerting gentle pressure, he makes no effort to bite back a low, hungry growl.
Elios smiles at him, and when he leans in for a kiss, Eskel gladly gives it to him. After they break apart he lifts Elios’ blonde locks, sliding the silk of it between his fingers before tucking it behind his ear. Eskel leans in to brush his mouth against the delicate cartilage. “A claim works just as well the other way around,” he murmurs softly. He hears Elios’ breath catch, his blue eyes widening in surprise before a confused frown draws his brows together.
“What do you mean?” he asks, uncertain.
Eskel smiles and leans in to kiss him again, grateful that Elios’ scent softens further, the hints of arousal getting stronger. When he breaks their kiss he carefully rolls onto his back, bending his knees and planting his feet while looking up at the beautiful man in his bed.
“What I mean, is that it would please me greatly to have you claim me as yours,” he rumbles quietly, taking in every quick emotion that flits over Elios’ face. There’s shocked surprise at first, a bit of disbelief maybe, but then there’s wonder, curiosity, and finally, gratifyingly, there’s definite interest in his expression and in his scent.
Slowly, Elios sits up and shakes his head. “I don’t want to do something you don’t like,” he says.
Eskel chuckles and allows his knees to slightly fall apart, affording the blonde a view of his flushed erection where it’s already leaving behind drops of sticky fluid against his skin at the mere idea.
“Oh,” Elios says softly, twisting to shuffle a little closer, until he can lay a hesitant hand on Eskel’s knee. “You would like it?” he asks, still unsure.
“Yes,” he says simply, and watches Elios blink in surprise.
Elios sighs a little and he tilts his head. “I know you say it’s not supposed to hurt,” he says. “But for me it always has. I don’t want to cause you pain.”
Eskel spreads his legs a bit more, carefully watching Elios’ eyes, and licks his lips. “It won’t hurt if we take the time to prepare. Only if you want, Elios,” he says.
There’s definite arousal in the blonde’s scent now, but he still looks unsure. “You’ll tell me if it’s not— I can’t smell you, like you can me.”
Eskel briefly sits up and kisses him again. He takes Elios’ slender hand in his, and presses a vial of oil into his palm. “I’ll tell you,” he promises, before lying back against the pillows.
Elios kneels between his thighs, his fingers trailing over the glass, but makes no move to pull the cork from the vial. “You’ve done it before?” he asks, looking up at Eskel from under his golden lashes.
“Yes,” he answers.
“Often?” Elios asks.
Eskel shakes his head. “Not often.”
“It’s not your preference,” Elios says, and it’s a conclusion, not a question.
Eskel knows that his honest answer might change Elios’ mind, but he’s not about to lie to the blonde. “It’s not,” he says, and sees Elios’ fingers tense around the vial. “But right now with you, I can’t think of anything I want more.” Elios’ hair hangs in loose, soft waves of gold down his back, and Eskel reaches out to gently tug on a lock that has slipped over his shoulder. “I mean it,” he rumbles softly, meeting his light blue eyes.
Elios swallows, and nods. “So, do you want me to—?” he asks, and makes a gesture with his hand that has blood rise to his cheeks in a heated flush.
“Yes,” Eskel growls, taking deep breaths, revelling in the way the blonde’s scent is now entirely filled with curiosity and arousal.
Elios sits back on his heels, still between his thighs. He puts the vial down and lifts his hands to his hair, evidently intending to braid it back to keep it out of the way.
Eskel arches his back and spreads his legs a bit more, watching blue eyes track over the most intimate parts of him. “Leave your hair loose?” he rumbles.
The former gold collar looks surprised for a second, and then smiles in a way that Eskel recognises all too well. It’s that same, beautifully playful smile he’d seen for the very first time when Elios made him lose at Gwent. The blonde holds his gaze for a moment, and then instead of pulling his hair back he slides his fingers through it, looking at him shyly, his mouth still curved. Eskel’s cock twitches against his abdomen, and he curls his hands into the sheets to keep himself in place.
The muscles of his thigh jump when Elios slides his fingers down the inside, all the way up toward the crease of his groin, and then the blonde shuffles a bit closer to him still. Eskel looks up at him, haloed in gold, the slender form of him cradled between his thick, scarred thighs. He’s a vision, and he can’t do anything about the low, rumbling growl that vibrates in his chest to fill the room. He hears Elios’ heart beat increase, but it’s not with stress or anxiety this time, the scent of his excitement flowing around Eskel and fueling his own. When he glances between Elios’ legs, his cock is hard and flushed, the same colour as the heat gives to his cheeks.
Eskel has been truthful. Being on the receiving end is enjoyable enough, though not his preference. He hasn’t done it often, and not at all recently. Still, when Elios’ slick fingers carefully touch the sensitive skin behind his balls before slipping between his cheeks to find the tight ring of muscle there, his hips twitch off the bed and his cock trails clear fluid over his abdomen.
Startled, the former slave’s fingers retract immediately, until he actually takes in the way Eskel lies panting before him, his broad chest heaving with every breath. “Oh,” Elios breathes, and before Eskel can so much as think about reassuring him, those fingers are back.
He thinks Elios prepares him like he has prepared himself in the past. Eskel pays careful attention, since this is the way Elios touches himself to avoid pain or discomfort. He starts with slow circles of the tips of his fingers, spreading the oil over skin and muscle, massaging carefully to get rid of any initial tension. It’s slow, careful, and maddeningly arousing. Before long Eskel has to repeatedly tell himself to let Elios explore at his own pace. There’s no way he’s going to rush the former slave, but he’s afraid that by the time Elios will slide inside him, he’ll be so wound up he won’t last long at all.
When Elios finally slips one of his slender fingers inside him, Eskel tilts his head back and bares his teeth on a growl.
“Sorry,” Elios murmurs, immediately stilling his hand. “Too fast? Does it hurt?”
“Not at all,” Eskel rumbles, making eye contact and reaching down to give himself a single, slow stroke. “It feels good. Keep going.”
Elios watches him for a moment, his pupils wide and dark, and Eskel avidly tracks the movement when he quickly licks his lips. He makes a few more rumbling noises of approval as the blonde stretches him, his free hand lightly pressing against the inside of his thigh. It’s not that he’s exerting pressure, but the suggestion of Elios pushing his leg to the side to give himself more space to work has a shock of heat shoot down his spine.
Eventually Elios carefully pulls his fingers out, heat high in his cheeks. “Are you sure you want—”
“Yes,” Eskel answers immediately. And he does. He desperately wants Elios to push inside him. He wants to feel the other man. He wants to show him how to take pleasure in his body. He wants Elios’ claim, but more than anything, he wants him to notice how it can be pleasurable, and good, and intimate.
Elios’ leans forward to kiss him then, and Eskel’s shoulders leave the bed with how he surges up to meet him. The two of them are curtained by Elios’ golden hair falling around them, the scent of them together intoxicating to Eskel’s senses. He reaches down between their bodies and finds Elios has thoroughly slicked himself. He can’t help but smile into their kiss, as he guides the blonde’s hard cock to his hole, and consciously relaxes into the hot pressure against him.
Elios cries out softly when he slides in easily, suddenly enveloped in heat. There’s shocked pleasure on his face, but Eskel doesn’t miss the concerned wrinkle between his brows. He briefly touches his fingers to the blonde’s forehead, and then cants his hips up, taking him that little bit further inside himself. Elios gasps, his hips twitching between Eskel’s thighs, and he moans softly. Eskel cards his fingers through his golden hair and makes a pleasured sound, encouraging him to move.
Elios is still hesitant at first, and Eskel sees him glance between them periodically, as if he needs to reassure himself that Eskel is still hard, that he is indeed enjoying this. He lets his arousal show on his face freely, and drinks in the man above him, letting his hands slide over his hips to guide his movements. When Elios finally thrusts forward a little harder, his blue eyes closing and his mouth slack with pleasure, Eskel shifts a little against the sheets.
He knows Elios has been hurt, and he thinks he’s likely never found any actual pleasure in the act. He hasn’t missed that the former gold collar hasn’t been trying to find his prostate, not when he was stretching him, and not now, and he has a horrible suspicion he doesn’t care to investigate any further, that Elios likely doesn’t even know. He tilts his hips, changing the angle every second thrust, until blinding hot pleasure races up his spine and has him arching off the bed with a grunt.
Elios’ eyes fly open, and he stills. “What was that, what happened?” he asks, concern in his voice.
Eskel grasps his hips more firmly to jerk him forward, and wraps his thighs around him, pulling him in at the exact same angle. He moans roughly when Elios’ cock drags right over his prostate again, his cock leaking between them.
Elios stares, and for a moment, Eskel thinks he’s going to have to convince the blonde to keep going. Then Elios pulls back, and thrust back in, much harder than before. Eskel growls out his pleasure, throwing his head back against the pillows. If Elios didn’t know before, he most certainly knows where to find his prostate now, as he keeps the exact same angle, aided by Eskel’s muscled thighs cradling his hips. When the blonde starts to make soft, barely there whimpering noises, Eskel flares his nostrils and realises he’s close. He slides a hand between them and fists himself in time with Elios’ movements. When he comes, he tilts his head up to kiss his pretty blonde. He swallows the soft moans that pass Elios’ lips as he tightens around his lover's cock. Eskel groans himself, the pleasure of his peak ebbing away into awareness of Elios spilling inside him as his hips stutter in their rhythm.
Even after Elios slips from his body Eskel keeps his arms wound around him, cradling him to his chest, their legs tangling together. The room smells of the both of them and of sex, and he rumbles contentedly. Elios’ head is tucked up under his jaw, the blonde’s lips pressed against the skin of his throat. He drags the fingers of one hand through soft blonde tresses, slowly and methodically untangling the knots that resulted from their lovemaking.
—000—
“Esk, what the fuck?” Lambert says, eyes flicking to Brenne and back again. “What in Melitele’s mercy are you doing brandishing silver at her?”
Brenne moves in a way that’s clearly meant to entice Lambert over to her side, and Eskel growls, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his silver sword.
“I’ve dealt with scorned lovers before,” Brenne says to Lambert, blinking her long dark lashes and tilting her head to let the onyx shine of her horns catch the light. Her voice is warm and lilting, and Eskel knows all too well this is what she sounds like when she’s trying to seduce to get her way.
Lambert frowns, and Eskel can see in the tightness of his brother’s shoulders that he doesn’t appreciate the succubus trying to win him over like this. Lambert turns toward him, raising a questioning eyebrow.
Eskel doesn’t ever look away from Brenne, but he answers his brother’s unspoken question. “She told Elios he’s selfish for not—” the words devolve into a furious growl, and he has to take a deep breath to be able to keep going. “She told him I’d find someone else,” he bites out, and sees all expression leave his brother’s face, yellow eyes turning cold.
There is the sharp ring of a blade being drawn, and then another silvered sword has left its sheath. Now faced with two furious wolves, the succubus bares her own pointed teeth, fear heavy in her scent.
“Leave,” Eskel growls. “Don’t come back.”
Brenne stares at him, before looking at Lambert.
“What my brother means to say,” Lambert says casually, letting the light glint off his blade, “is that if we see you, smell you, or hear you anywhere near Elios ever again, we won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Brenne shakes her head, looking back at Eskel again. It takes no more than the look in his eyes for her to flee.