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Beneath the fractured glow of a thousand crystal prisms cast from the chandeliers that Rella refuses to count, Heinrix’s face remains inscrutable from across the floor as she moves through the sea of revellers that part for her like waves sliced by the sharpened prow of a watercraft.
He is not looking at her. He is pointedly not looking at her.
But she can feel his attention nonetheless, an awareness that infuses her body in the same way his warp energies tangle with hers every time they enter the Immaterium. Perhaps he is reaching for her similarly right now. She feels for him with her own power - just a small, playful nudge - and is rewarded with a stiffening of his shoulders and a ripple across his jaw.
He is looking at her now.
To his right, past the musicians and the long tables laden with an ostentatious display of refreshments, Solomorne hasn't so much as budged from his self-appointed post at the foot of her dais where he surveys the room with his sharp eye and even sharper ocular augment. She can feel his attention on her, too, as the band strikes up yet another overwrought waltz, the reedy blasts from the instruments cantering in a dizzying spiral melody over the whinnying strings.
She crosses over to him. Glaito is still as a statue at his side - always alert, always ready.
“Anthar,” she says, her mouth curling into a smirk. “It seems the Emperor has seen fit to bless you with a chance to make amends for your poor performance on Thassera.”
Solomorne’s eye twitches and his face pulls into a barely perceptible frown - Rella’s grin only broadens in response when he opens his mouth with an objection poised on his lips that she stops in its tracks with a single gloved finger.
“This is my Magnae, Solomorne,” she reminds him. “Surely you aren’t about to refuse me?”
She can feel more than see Heinrix stiffen again, can feel his hand open and close - it's definitely biomancy, and not her imagination, she realizes - and a glance in his direction all but confirms it. He is not looking at her. He doesn't have to.
Say what you came here to say, she thinks, forcefully willing the thought in his direction. She's not a telepath and neither is he, but surely he can feel her intent nonetheless. He has something to say to her. She can feel it bursting beneath his flesh, crawling towards her through the space that crackles between them. Is he waiting for the right moment, or the right provocation?
She intends to give him both.
“As you wish, Rogue Trader,” Solomorne replies through clenched teeth, drawing her attention back to the imposing Proctor who now stands before her. His dress armor is oiled and his beard is close-cropped, tightly trimmed, and bisected by both his slowly spreading smile and the violent raised scars that slash at opposing angles across his ruggedly handsome face. “I find myself compelled, as always, to indulge you,” he adds, lowering his voice to a throatier rasp as he leans closer to her and offers a large, leather-wrapped hand for her to place her much smaller, silk-clad one in.
She rewards him with a genuine smile, letting it reach her eyes as she takes his hand and leads him towards the dancefloor. Glaito settles onto his haunches at a gesture from his Arbites master as she turns away, but Rella knows if she were to look, his mechanical eyes are surely still glued to their backs.
She doesn't have to look to feel Heinrix’s eyes on her. The Interrogator hovers on the sidelines, a shadow settled into her periphery almost certainly at the behest of his own master - a master she can see now over Solomorne’s shoulder as he turns to face her. Calcazar is smiling, sipping amasec with the younger Drivestem heir, but there is menace to his movements, an implied threat in his calculated smiles that brings to her mind the image of a knife poised beneath a regicide board.
There is more going on than Rella knows, and she is not one to wait until she is goaded into a foregone action once all other available avenues have been excised. She knows this game well, and the only sure way to win is to make the first move. Yet here she finds herself pondering the pieces of an inherited, half-finished match, left to baffle out the stratagem of Theodora's placements, just as Heinrix once did in her study before they cleared the board and began anew.
Perhaps that is what will be required of her now. If only her protectorate operated by such relatively simple rules - if only her board could be so easily cleared of the schemes left in median res by her late predecessor.
Solomorne places a hand at her waist while his other awkwardly grips her shoulder. His eye darts to the dancers that surround them; his feet do their best to gracelessly mirror her movements. He is not noble-born - perhaps he learned these steps at the Schola Progenium. It has likely been decades since he was last called upon to perform them, his fumbling attempts at the ill-fated farce of festivities on Thassera notwithstanding. She meets his uneasy gaze and gives him another reassuring smile as he steps back and bows to her, then draws her into a stilted spin. All eyes are surely on them, now. Each and every noble beast, each and every hidden master, every Citizen and every Ecclesiarch on the board awaiting her play.
She contemplates Solomorne as he turns them once around the floor, his broad, spauldered shoulders relaxing only slightly as he settles into the dance. The other couples keep a careful, respectable distance, which has the added effect of keeping sightlines clear for all the gathered spectators. She keeps her eyes fixed on Solomorne - his brow is furrowed in concentration, but that rare roguish smile is fighting for purchase across his face yet again. He’s enjoying this more than he’s letting on. She still isn’t entirely certain how genuine he is in his affections - his courtship often appears at once too smooth and too clumsy, as though he has stumbled onto a stage as the unexpected understudy for a part he has not entirely perfected. Her experience and training have taught her to sense such machinations, yet it seems to her that there is something unguarded that slips through sometimes as well, something she glimpses and catches from him in moments where she least expects it. Moments like now, when his eyes soften as he sets her down from a short lift. He has a powerful, commanding presence - Cassia described his colors as brilliant gold and steel, and though Rella’s abilities don’t lend her the same level of visual insights into her companion’s psychospheres, she can feel the pull Solomorne’s soul has on the space that surrounds him, the way that even a soft word from him commands her attention. He is a generous, fastidious lover, and a welcome distraction from the heated looks Heinrix pins upon her and the way his lips linger on her fingers when he greets her on the bridge. Goading the Interrogator to action had not initially been her intention in welcoming the Proctor’s advances, but if Heinrix proves to be too bound by duty to take a further step towards her, she is not one to stand on ceremony.
And yet, she has always sensed a deeper regard underpinning Heinrix’s reservations. He withholds his affections, she suspects, not only due to the demands of his vows, but out of a desire to protect her from the institution he represents and all he is compelled to bring with him into the intimacy of her orbit. And beneath that still, there is something she can sense most strongly as they plunge into the warp time and time again, when his energy ripples over and through her - something bright and brimming, pulsing against the walls in which it has been contained, something both tenuous and overflowing, a room bursting with enormous colors and shapes that would cascade out onto the darkened corridor that stretches between them were she simply to open the door…
He is looking at her now, and he is gripping his amasec as he leans against a pillar beside the Gaprak heiress and her retinue. He is watching her. His jaw is set, and she is sure his knuckles would be white if she could see them beneath the red leather of his gloves. Solomorne turns her yet again, and this time her eyes graze Calcazar, the very leash that rests upon Heinrix’s throat.
When the steps of the dance round her view back towards the pillar where Heinrix stood sentinel, his empty glass on the nearby table is the only remaining evidence of his presence.
She twists her neck, searching for him in spite of herself, but doesn’t find his features among the familiar and unfamiliar faces that she scans.
Where is he?
What did he want to tell her?
The sinfonietta brings the song to a shuddering close, the softened brass blasts signaling the culmination of the dance. Solomorne bows to her, then raises his head with a smile on his lips that she reflects back to him warmly and in kind just as she feels a soft tap on her shoulder. Rella turns - hardly daring to hope - to find herself face to face with the hulking, charmingly disheveled silhouette of Calligos Winterscale.
Well. She should have anticipated this.
He grins at her - a lopsided, lazy, unrestrained grin reserved only for those of his station. And hers now, too, as of tonight, she supposes.
“My turn, von Valancius,” he says.
“Bold of you,” Rella replies, taking his offered hand as the band starts up again in a series of low, sharp strikes from the string section.
“Who else am I to dance with?” Calligos retorts, tilting her into a practiced twirl. “One of those vapid, simpering heiresses? Chorda?” He huffs a laugh. “What a bore. Do you suppose she's ever allowed herself so much as a smile in the direction of a suitor?”
“Is that what you're calling yourself?”
He laughs again, loud and unbridled. “An incorrigible flirt, perhaps. But a suitor? Void, no. Certainly not. When would I find the time for such pursuits? I've a protectorate to wrangle.”
“Don't we all,” Rella says, raising an eyebrow.
“Well,” says Calligos. “Only the three of us, as it currently stands.”
“Indeed,” Rella agrees, allowing herself to be dipped into the next turn. They circle each other, then break apart, then step together once again. There is still no sign of Heinrix amidst the throng, but as she turns she can see that Solomorne has retaken his place at the dais, his hand loosely resting on Glaito’s massive neck, his face once more arranged into its usual stoic glower.
Void take these men and their vows, their uniforms, their unwavering devotion to the Imperium above all, above even their own senses.
Such thoughts could easily be called heresy, Rella knows, but she has just assumed a mantle that now allows her such indulgences. She supposes Calligos is right - he is her only true equal in this room, in many ways. The third Rogue Trader in attendance is as castigatingly dogmatic as the rest of them.
She doesn't understand how Heinrix can have experienced all he has, all the painful tales of his past he shared with her in fits and spurts over their games of regicide, all things she herself has experienced - exile from the comfort of her world, her family, her nobility; those hellish months of brutality aboard a Black Ship, accepting that the whole sum of her life would likely amount to nothing more than another nameless, faceless sacrifice for the continuation of the Emperor's eternal power; her selection for the Scholastica Psykana followed by the terror of her sanctioning and nearly a decade of grueling, tortuous honing of her talents; the grim years spent in the Navis Imperialis where her unnatural proclivities marked her as both an outcast and a weapon - and still come out the other end with such a dogged allegiance to the institutions that grind through human lives like feed for a herd of grox. So perhaps it is in the later divergence in their paths that the explanation lies for the differences in their respective loyalties - while Heinrix was snatched up by the Inquisition for his unique abilities, Rella stood accused of being touched by a malevolent warp entity and was unceremoniously stripped of her titles and the mantle of commodore they had been all so eager to drape across her capable shoulders.
And there was truth to the accusations - she can feel the warp now as she couldn't before, can reach for its threads and tug in ways that she knows are… different. The dancers flow around her like the threads of a great braid, one she could reach out and untangle, or even snap, should she so desire.
She wonders how much Heinrix has sensed of her talents.
If not for the Kasballica contacts she’d painstakingly nurtured over the years, she very likely would have wound up on another heretics pyre, rather than risen through the ranks of pirates and criminals and made a relatively respected and feared name for herself within the whispers of the syndicate. And now, by the virtue of her blood alone, she stands above them all. Above each and every soul in this room, save Calligos Winterscale and Incendia Chorda.
And perhaps Xavier Calcazar, a cold fact she is reminded of when her eyes collide with the Inquisitor’s cold gaze, and when the smile he slips her as they wheel past him slides against her spine like a knife flicked from across the floor.
Perhaps that is what it comes down to, at the heart of it all. Rella’s freedom remains an illusion so long as the arm of the Inquisition reaches its hand into her retinue and the icy fingers if its very agent tap tenuously at the door to her heart. Perhaps Theodora learned this same lesson at a much higher cost. Perhaps that is the gambit Rella is playing at tonight - to test the bars of her newly gilded cage, to see just how far and high the cold appraisal of the Inquisitor will allow her to fly.
“They're all watching us, you know,” Calligos says in her ear. “Calcazar and all his wretched cronies. Let's give them a show, shall we?” He grins at her as he whirls her around, his crooked smile dangerous and brash, the gleeful glint in his eyes garnished by a glimmer of listless brutality.
“They are,” Rella agrees.
Calligos has been playing this game for hundreds of years, Rella knows. He witnessed Theodora's ascension, has more than likely shouldered the rise and destruction of countless colonies and garrisons across the Expanse. He exudes a restless, rippling boredom that crawls across Rella’s senses like a cold frost creeping lazily across a stained glass window, seeping it of its colors. She does not want to become him. She does not want to become whatever Theodora was, either.
“You know this one, don't you?” Calligos guesses, and doesn't give her a chance to respond before he sweeps her into a more elaborate series of steps, culminating in a daring lift. And his gamble pays off - Rella does know this dance. She learned it in the halls she once called home, when she was still Rella Aeos Venria de Vahl af Calixis, before the Black Ship, before she beheld the withering light of the Emperor, before the Imperium named her Lord Captain and dispatched her to the Koronus Expanse, before her fated fall from grace and her wretched rise to fame. And yet here she is - in the throne room of the von Valancius palace, elevated and cursed by yet another accident of her birth, rediscovering steps that her body has somehow not forgotten.
She sees Heinrix again as the song crescendos and then simmers to a stop, but this time he is waiting for her, his intent clear in his gaze. Perhaps her provocation has paid off. Perhaps this was his intent all along. Calligos’ grin sours to a scowl as the Interrogator approaches, but he bows to her and steps aside, flashing her a final, insincere grimace that bristles sharper than the spires of the towers that glitter in the sunset beyond the massive windows at his back. Despite his age, the elder Rogue Trader reminds her of a clumsy cub who has yet to grow accustomed to the strength of his jaw. Or perhaps that is simply another part of his affectation. It's likely that the next time they meet will be as rivals, or even enemies.
She supposes the same may someday be true of Heinrix.
Heinrix does not bow to kiss her offered hand, he simply takes it in his and carries it up to his lips, his eyes burning with a cold fire when she meets them with her own. The air between them seems to thicken, a waged war between the latent fire in her veins and the ice in his. Knowingly or not, he has made the depths of his desire for her clear, and she detects no treachery in the naked want he seemingly cannot help but wear on his sleeve - the trap lies elsewhere with him, she has come to realize. And maybe tonight, armed with the headiness of her newfound power, she will pry that desire from the tomb he keeps it frozen and buried within, locked at the heart of whatever labyrinth the circumstances of his life have forced him to construct for himself.
“Rella,” he breathes. “May I?”
She nods, and feels something invisible arc across the narrowing space between them as he steps close to her, perhaps closer to her than he ever has - even in the wreckage of the Black Ship, even when he pressed his fingers to her temples to calm the warp energies warring in her mind within hours of meeting her on Rykad Minoris - and lays a gloved hand carefully at the curve of her waist. His other palm comes to rest at her shoulder, his thumb caressing her collarbone as his fingers find their way to their proper placements, as though he cannot help himself. His eyes meet hers again, his lips part slightly, and then he is leading her into the dance as the sinfonietta strikes up a tremulous, soft waltz.
He is a more elegant dancer than Calligos. She supposes this should not surprise her - he has had all the training befitting of his noble birth. She wonders what his surname and titles once were, before the Black Ship stripped him down to his marrow and the Inquisition granted him the van Calox name.
“You were speaking to the Gapraks,” she says conversationally. “And the delightful cousin of our Master-at-Arms, as I recall. Did you learn anything of note?”
Heinrix breathes a laugh against her temple as he draws her close into a turn. “Macharius Sauerback is all but throwing darts at your portrait,” he remarks, his voice low and his words enunciated like burned velvet. “He is more astute at choosing women than enemies. He is trying to entice Gaprak to his side, but she is too frightened after the fiasco on Kiava Gamma.”
Rella leans closer to him, smiling into his shoulder. “Interesting conversation?”
She can almost feel Heinrix’s grimace. “It's been very illuminating. Given me plenty of food for thought.” He inclines his chin so that his breath curls across her neck as he speaks before spinning her out and away from him, his hand guiding her at the small of her back. His gaze is heavy as she steps once more towards him, their palms pressed flush as they circle each other, their feet pacing in perfect tandem.
“Is there anything you would like to tell me?” she asks him, lifting her jaw to search his face.
Heinrix opens his mouth as if to say something, but the words seem to halt on their journey from his throat. His eyes dart away from hers to sweep above and behind her, and then his palm at her spine pulls her to his chest once again. She can smell the cool tang of his soap, his shaving ointments, and whatever oils he uses in his hair - being so enveloped in his scent feels like a stolen luxury, and she can’t stop the indulgent inhale she allows herself.
And then she feels his lips brush her hair, grazing the upper shell of her ear. “Yes, Rella, there is,” he murmurs, his voice pitched low for her and her alone. “We need to talk. Immediately.”
His tone is not amorous. His words are urgent, strained with concern. He sounds almost frightened.
She leans her neck away from his chest to scan his impassive features. For an inscrutable man, his face is currently somehow even more unreadable than his typical countenance. But the slight tick in his jaw gives him away, as it always does, as she has learned by observing him across the regicide board cycle after cycle. He is frightened. This is important.
“Is something wrong?” she whispers.
“Not here,” he says, tilting his mouth nearer to her, his voice barely audible. She feels his fingers flex softly into her flesh where he grips her at the waist. “After this dance, find me in your study. This won't take long.”
His eyes don’t leave hers as they pull apart - their fingertips maintaining contact - then come together, arms outstretched and his hands sliding around to cover the backs of hers, his elbows resting against her own. A step apart, a flourish, his head to the right, hers to his left. She continues to hold his gaze. The warp around them seems to shift, like silent sparks beneath her skin and behind her eyes. The temperature drops, and she can feel his awareness of her movements like a cool mist filling her lungs, sending shivers through her core as he pulls her close again, his hand sliding back down to her waist. She looks up at him. His face is hard, but his eyes burn into hers.
The waltz comes to an end. Rella finds herself dreading the moment when he will have to step away from her. As long as they keep dancing, this thing between them won’t be shattered, or dragged into the light and burned at the pyre, or torn asunder by the demands of their stations. She feels the force of his attention pushing at the edges of the crucible within which he keeps it constrained, choked, compressed, like the sun seeping through the cracks of a boarded up door.
Heinrix bows and kisses her fingers, his lips lingering on her knuckles as always, his breath heavy in her hand. But when he straightens, he is not looking at her - his eyes track the movements of the revellers around the hall. Looking for Calcazar, she imagines. He gives her a short nod, then turns on his heel and vanishes into the crowd.
Abelard is at her side suddenly, guiding her away from the dancefloor towards a table boasting a pyramid of crystal decanters, each containing amber amasec, aged to perfection, imported from the Imperium before the Maw closed. Rella idly wonders if any Kasballicans she knows had a hand in smuggling it.
Heinrix must certainly be aware of her past. It is something she has pondered before. Her exploits garnered quite a bit of fame in the Expanse, and her reputation tends to precede her. She has told him, by now, in some detail, of her time in the Navy, and he has shared stories of his own. She has learned quite a bit about his childhood - summers spent with his sisters at the seaside court they were raised in, his dreams of piloting a Knight like his father and cousins. And she has been generous with this part of her life as well - there are few dangerous secrets in their early memories of childhoods spent in noble captivity, wanting for nothing, their lives laid out for them. Until, of course, their respective psychic awakenings sent them careening on a different course.
Hers is not something she enjoys recounting. Another thing that she and Heinrix share.
She has not told Heinrix much of the years since her departure from the Navis - their conversations have danced around it, yet she can only assume his own research has spared him no details.
Which makes his obvious interest in her all the more confounding.
She allows a servant to hand her a glass of amasec. She mimes sipping it - both paranoia and prudence stay her hand. She trusts that every precaution has been taken, and yet between Voigtvir’s betrayal and the Drukhari attack, there is no such thing as too careful. And beyond that, she would prefer to remain sober and sharpened, her wits firmly planted at her sides.
The skin at her shoulder still burns where Heinrix brushed his fingers as they parted. He is waiting for her. She can feel it in her chest like a physical itch - he is still reaching for her through the warp. She can almost see it: a door held open, a blanket laid on a lawn, a curtain pulled back beckoning her to step into its sanctuary.
“You’re quite the dancer,” her Seneschal says, his eyes crinkling at her despite the gruffness in his tone.
“Would you like a turn?” she asks him with a wink, and Abelard rewards her with a low chuckle.
“My dancing days are behind me, Your Ladyship,” he says, and she detects a small amount of wistful regret in his voice now.
“A pity,” she tells him. “If your skills in combat are any indication, I’m certain there was a time when you had no match.”
Abelard snorts. “Oh, I certainly had plenty,” he jokes, taking another sip of his amasec.
The smile Rella gives him is a genuine one. “If you will excuse me, Seneschal,” she says, placing her hand on his forearm and stepping deftly from his side. She has spotted Calcazar currently engaged in a conversation with Incendia Chorda - they are standing between her throne and the raised walls that surround the dais, granting her a path to the corridor that leads to her study beyond the reach of either of their eyelines. Rella takes the opportunity, moving as quickly as she can without attracting notice or betraying her intent - she is simply floating across the floor, exchanging polite smiles and nods with each guest she passes.
As soon as she rounds the corner out of sight of the throne room, she quickens her pace for the final twenty steps to the ornate, newly repaired blast-proof doors of her study.
Heinrix is waiting for her as she slips inside - he stands halfway to Theodora’s old desk, silhouetted in the sunset behind him, his head haloed in gold. Rella lets the door fall shut behind her with a heavy thud, dampening the sanguine sounds of the sinfonietta, and places her untouched amasec on the mantle, her eyes fixed on Heinrix’s face.
His expression is unreadable. He is looking past her as if he cannot bring himself to meet her gaze. She takes stock of his tightly clenched jaw, the concern creasing his eyes - she has never seen him like this before. Her heart beats slightly faster as she takes a step towards him. She wonders if he can feel it. She suspects that his biomancy - and its interaction with her own talents - grants them each more awareness of each others’ physical tells than either of them has let on. Even now, she can feel the air cooling as she nears him, can sense his tightly reined distress stretched taut through the warp between them, as tangible to her now as any physical sensation.
“We don't have much time, Rella,” he says in a rushed breath. His voice thrums with tension, the words pressured and clipped. “I brought you here, away from prying eyes, because I have something very important to tell you.” He breaks off, looking past her, still not meeting her eyes. His jaw muscles tick in his cheeks; the corner of his mouth twitches. He flexes his fingers, then closes his fist, and she can feel the effort it's taking him to restrain whatever emotion has overcome him in this moment.
Rella swallows hard, taking another cautious step forward. Heinrix flinches, as though he cannot bear her any nearer. Yet she can feel his body bend towards her, like the trees on Janus bowing to face the sun.
“What has so alarmed you?” She pitches her voice soft and low, as she would if she were approaching a frightened animal, trying to fight down the fear that rises in her own stomach. Whatever has Heinrix so distraught is surely something to be taken seriously.
His face twists into a strained smile, yet he continues to look over and through her. “I am trying to choose the right words for what I intend to say to you,” he says through clenched teeth. “Give me a second.” He exhales and closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, they finally find hers, and the look in them is one of anguish, his features painted with a strange sort of torment that she has never witnessed from him before tonight. His chest expands, then contracts. “Listen to me,” he breathes, the words pushed out, harsh and low. “Tonight, something very important is going to happen.”
Her heart hammers in her throat. “What-” she begins, but Heinrix raises his hand, stopping the thought before she can finish it.
“Steel yourself and be prepared. Do not do anything foolish - I beg you.” His voice is frayed, pleading. “Bear in mind that you are not being threatened with anything right now. Remember that,” he presses. “I give you my word.”
The possibilities careen through Rella’s mind like images across a flickering vox screen. Drukhari? No, surely he would warn her outright if it were that. The Final Dawn, perhaps? Voigtvir? More genestealers? Has he learned of some planned court posturing from the Sauerback cousin?
“Be prepared? For what?” Rella takes a step toward him. “You are scaring me.”
“No.” Heinrix shakes his head vehemently. “Don't be afraid. Fear is your worst ally. You will be fine.” He says it as though he is willing it to be true.
“Heinrix, you are talking in riddles.” Rella hears the quaver in her voice as she searches his face, taking another tentative step closer. “Explain exactly what you mean or I shall turn around and leave.”
“No, wait!” Heinrix grabs her hand, then immediately drops it as though it has burned him. “I'm sorry. I hadn't finished.” He lets out a strangled sigh. “I- I swear on the Golden Throne and all that is holy, Rella... I cannot reveal everything without contravening prohibitions and vows that are far more important than you or I. There are… lines I cannot cross.” He is speaking quickly now, the words tumbling forth in a torrent. “And yet, despite all that, I knew I had to give you fair warning - if you can call it that.” His breath hisses through his teeth. “Let them charge me with whatever they want later - I had to make you aware that there is no genuine threat to your life. Because…” He hesitates, his lips still parted, the half-finished thought still between them, his eyes desperately scanning her face.
No genuine threat to her life. How could he know that? Rella’s mind struggles to catch up with the implications of what he is telling her. Something is going to happen. Someone is going to threaten her. Or rather, something will happen that she will likely perceive as a threat. But… she mustn’t react as such. That is the warning he is trying to deliver.
So what, then? A test?
The image floats again to the surface of her mind of a knife angled beneath a regicide board, of the unseen hand holding it. Of Calcazar’s menacing smile. Of Heinrix puzzling over the pieces of a half-finished game. She senses that she is poised at a great precipice - that the next moves she makes will determine the course of the remainder of the game. She does not want to become Theodora. She does not want to finish the game that was begun long before her arrival.
But neither can the pieces be knocked asunder. All she can do is decide where and how best to move them from their current positions, herself included.
And remain one step ahead of her opponents, whenever possible.
Rella reaches out cautiously, her fingers finding Heinrix’s hand. “I understand,” she whispers, giving it a small squeeze. “Thank you for the warning.”
He releases a breath, as if a staggering weight has been lifted from his shoulders, then grasps her hand between his with an earnestness that threatens to unmoor her. “Thank you, Rella.”
She is standing close enough now that his exhale ghosts across her face. Much closer than the distance he has rigorously enforced between them has ever allowed for, prior to tonight. His scent again envelops her, filling her chest, causing a dull ache to bloom within.
He is everything she should hate. He represents everything she stands in opposition to, the very yoke she has struggled against her entire life. She cannot explain the pull she feels towards this man - it is as if something in their souls simply recognizes the other, some childlike part that remains unwilling or unable to comprehend the intricate scaffolding of the society that surrounds them, the circumstances that preclude and complicate this inexplicable gravitation that continues to draw them towards each other again and again and again, circling closer with every turn.
To the Void with it, she thinks.
“Enough hand-wringing,” she murmurs, and rises onto her toes, pressing her mouth to his.
Heinrix goes utterly stiff, and then expels a wretched, broken sound into her mouth. His body caves to hers as though all the willpower he has amassed towards holding himself apart from her has left him in a rush, and he nearly falls into her, his mouth surging forward to meet her own, his lips capturing hers with an open-mouthed hunger that catches her by surprise with its ferocity. His hand slides down to grip her waist and his other snakes around the back of her neck, threading his fingers through her braided updo as he drags her against him, gripping her tight, pressing her body flush to his. She feels it thrum through her with absolute certainty - he has been yearning to taste her for a very, very long time. The air around them crackles - she can feel his biomancy coursing through her veins, and her powers respond to his in kind, igniting across every inch of her. Heinrix moans around her tongue, running his thumb across her cheek, then follows the movement with his mouth, dragging his lips along her jaw to the soft hollow beneath her ear. She feels his body pushing against hers, feels where he is straining against her stomach, swollen and rigid and wanting. A soft whimper escapes her lips, and Heinrix responds with a sound like a wounded animal, his breath hot on her neck, and then he is returning his mouth to hers with a ravenous intensity that leaves both of them gasping for breath, drinking in each others’ air. Her hands are tangled in his hair, running across his shoulders, trying to draw him even closer still. She is burning, she is lost.
And then, with palpable effort, he tears his lips from hers. He pauses there, panting heavily into her mouth, seemingly unable to pull away further. His power pulses around her and through her, flaring against her own, pushing and pulling and alighting her every nerve. She is sure that he can feel it, too.
“No,” he breathes, the word ripped from his throat, guttural and ragged. “This isn't right.” He takes a step back, chest heaving, his gloved hands still tightly gripping her hair, her waist. “I'm sorry,” he stammers. “I shouldn't have-”
“No,” Rella murmurs, blindly fumbling for him, pulling him back towards her. “No, don't go.”
Begging does not become her, but she cannot seem to help herself when it comes to this strange, tragic, contradictory enigma of a man.
He stares at her, at her lips, his eyes wild and dilated like a man possessed. He briefly closes them - Rella can feel him attempting to summon some lingering reserve of sense, to regain control of his galloping heart - and then he is covering her hands with his, caressing her palms as he gently removes them from his body. A caustic grimace creeps across his face, as though the act pains him greatly.
“You don't understand…” he manages. “Not yet, at least. I- I had to stop. I'm sorry. You... You'll see why.”
But Rella’s hands move of their own accord as soon as he releases them, and she places a palm flat on his chest. “Heinrix…”
He groans slightly and grasps her hand, dragging it to his lips and mouthing at the inside of her wrist. His other hand comes to rest at the side of her throat, his thumb caressing her collarbone as he did before, during their dance, yet now there are no voyeuristic masses to witness this small, stolen indulgence. He takes her face in his hands, cradling it between his palms, and rests his forehead against hers, eyes fluttering closed, breathing her in like a drowning man.
“Rella.” He says her name like it is being torn from him, coarse and bloodied. “Being near you is… a trial for me,” he confesses, his breaths labored. “A trial I was not prepared for, and so even speaking of it is... difficult for me.” He swallows hard, his throat muscles constricting. “As it always is when it concerns my own desires, rather than my… responsibilities and obligations.” His eyelashes rest against his cheeks, twitching slightly as he speaks. “My duty comes first, even before myself. Please, Rella…” Her awareness of sensation narrows to where his thumbs paint circles on her cheekbones, to where his fingers lace themselves in the tangle of her hair. “In our position, I can allow myself... very little,” he continues, speaking with great effort, his tone pleading, apologetic. “And for you it is no different, really. Just... let me be here for you and help you.” He opens his eyes, finally, and finds hers again, seeming to search for something in them - permission, perhaps, or maybe absolution. “That is… more than enough for me,” he promises, but his voice breaks slightly over the statement, as though he is once again attempting to convince himself of its truth.
Rella can only blink at him, lips parted, as his words burrow their way into her skull, burn down her throat, and settle somewhere in her chest. The moment lingers between them - she watches Heinrix’s expression shift slightly in response to whatever her face has now revealed to him. The silence presses in around them - all she can hear now is his breathing, and her own pulse pounding in her ears.
A cold chill washes over them both as Heinrix finally pulls back, releasing her and dropping his hands to his sides, flexing his fingers and composing himself with a deep, steadying breath. He runs a hand through his hair, smoothing where she has disheveled it in her eager explorations.
For a moment, they regard each other silently - his face is limned in the dwindling twilight, carving his features like stone. Then he gathers her hand in his and brings it to his lips once more with a sigh, ghosting his mouth across her silk-clad fingers like they are some infinitely precious thing. He shakes his head mutely as he tilts his face back up towards her, his eyes full of things she can sense he is as yet forbidding himself to give voice to.
She will grant him this grace - he has already given her far more than she ever hoped for from him tonight.
Far more, and still not nearly enough.
His eyelids flutter, and the inhale he takes is tremulous and heavy as he gently lets go of her hand and takes another step backward with a shaky exhale, like it is taking all the remaining conviction within him to do so.
“You should return to your guests,” he tells her. The clipped formality that has crept back into his tone sounds forced and hollow, each word another brick in the tenuous and shattered wall she can feel him trying in vain to erect between them again. “The absence of the Rogue Trader will definitely be noted.”
She nods slowly. She can still taste him on her lips. Her mind still reels. Her body still burns.
He says nothing for a few seconds. The hum around them does not settle. He swallows again. “Until next time,” he promises, and there is a strange sorrow to the way he says it that makes Rella take a half step towards him, almost unconsciously. He mirrors the movement, taking a half step back, then gives her a curt nod and steps past her. Rella does not turn to watch him leave. She hears the door open - the band is playing a rousing march, now - and then he is gone, and the silence surrounds her once more.
Steel yourself, he said.
She takes a deep breath, her power coalescing around her, cooling into the armor she has worn so well for so many years. Steel yourself. And so she does.