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The Warrior of Light finds herself pushed against the wall to an inn room in the Forgotten Knight.
Tomorrow they’ll be attacking the Vault. Committing high treason (is it still high treason when you’re an outsider to the land?), and heresy, and a dozen other crimes besides. But tonight…tonight, she’s free.
And the blue-haired girl from the bar trails a tongue along her neck.
What was her name again?
Something starting with I. Isabel? No, that wasn’t right.
There’d been something familiar about her, though.
Something alluring, that drew the Warrior inexorably towards her. That had their small talk while nursing glasses of wine turning rapidly towards the flirtatious.
“Wine from Vylbrand? Expensive taste, my lady.” The line had been a weak opening gambit as they both ordered the same La Noscean merlot from the tavernkeep. And yet, for whatever reason, it causes the woman to smile.
“And yet you drink the same,” she notes, swirling the red, red wine in her glass and regarding the warrior. Her eyes are a pale purple, striking even in the evening’s candlelight, and seem…older than they should. She’s entrancing.
The Warrior of Light tilts her head in acknowledgement. “Perhaps I have expensive taste, as well?”
“Mm…no, I don’t believe that you do.”
The woman - Isabel? Isal-something? - sucks rough and eager on the warrior’s collarbone, provoking a hiss.
She looks up, smirking and showing her teeth. “Oh, did I hurt the fragile traveler? However can I make it up to you?”
The Warrior pulls her in, fingers knotting in her hair - and kisses her. They press together as if they’ve been doing this for eternity, bodies pressing together. Isa-whatever scratches her nails across the spot on the back of the Warrior’s neck that always makes her knees weak, and the Warrior retorts with a rough nip at her earlobe, garnering a pleased gasp and a tightening of her fingers.
“I’m an adventurer, of a sort,” the Warrior of Light says. It’s technically true. She is still an adventurer, even if her role within the Scions is far larger than that now. Or…had been far larger than that, before their near-annihilation. “I’ve seen much of the world, and…I suppose a taste for La Noscean wine stuck around.”
The woman’s smile softens at the edges, her eyes kind. Whatever the Warrior isn’t saying, she seems to understand. “Well, then you have good taste, at least.”
“What about you?” the Warrior can’t help but pry, a little. “Is it good taste, or expensive taste?”
She thinks about it for a few moments. “I suppose I’m like you,” is the answer she seems to settle on. Her eyes flick across the Warrior’s face. “…I’m a Traveler.”
“What’s your name?” She can’t help but ask, blunt and to the point as she’s so famed for being.
To her credit, the other woman seems to take it in stride. It doesn’t seem to bother her. In fact, she laughs. Low and smoky and terribly amused by this adventurer’s crassness. “My name is Igeyorhm. Your name, I already know.”
She - Igeyorhm, she remembers now - is the one to move the two of them to the bed. She settles atop her Warrior like she was made to be there, hips canting dangerously downwards as they lose themselves in kisses and touch and endless, overwhelming feeling.
Igeyorhm’s fingers are cold - colder than one would expect even from the Coerthan weather - as she traces them across the Warrior’s ribcage, trailing upwards. She laughs in amusement as the adventurer shudders and arches. “Eager, are we?”
“Yes,” she says, all of that drilled-in Ishgardian manner and restraint collapsing like so many houses of cards as she’s driven wild with the lightest of touches. She needs more. She needs– “Please, Igeyorhm.”
They work through the rest of the bottle between the two of them, then a second bottle (Igeyorhm’s recommendation, and near twice the price) until deep into the night.
The Warrior of Light knows with her preternatural gifts she won’t be nursing any sort of hangover in the morning. But she can’t help but feel a little bad for however Igeyorhm’s hangover will go. She is, after all, an ordinary mortal.
“…I should return to my lodgings,” she eventually concedes, knowing that Alphinaud and the others will want an early start tomorrow - and that the boy is probably already worried about where she is, waiting up for her to return to House Fortemps.
“You could,” Igeyorhm begins, in a tone of voice that the Warrior could not misplace or misconstrue. It sends a jolt of warmth through her already wine-warmed chest. “Or, you could share the room that I have here for the night.”
“That sounds fairly suggestive, my lady Igeyorhm.” The Warrior of Light smirks, soft and easy, but doesn’t refuse. She has no intentions of refusing.
“Oh, good.”
The Warrior watches as Igeyorhm climbs to her feet, and lifts her wine glass. Watches the way she tips her head back to drain the last drops of wine. Stares at the flex of her throat as she swallows.
“Full glad am I that my ability to flirt has not yet abandoned me.”
She holds a hand out to the Warrior of Light.
She takes it.
Igeyorhm rocks herself, breathless and half-broken, locks of her hair sticking to her forehead as the Warrior of Light’s fingers press into her in exactly the right way, leaving her gasping and biting down on her Warrior’s shoulder to muffle herself.
Her breath is rough, her skin feels like it is burning, and the warrior - Her Warrior - touches her like she’s been doing it forever. Like she remembers.
Her fingers press just deep enough, just at the right angle, and Igeyorhm comes undone. Her hips buck, her body tenses and shudders, and she collapses against her partner’s chest.
And a name spills from her lips. The wrong name.
The right name.
“Azem.”