That Glass of Red - 3
Playing with him now I confess, “Oh, it’s game on, Lover.” I raise my glass and take that well deserved sip. “I want to taste more than your vow. You hold ancient memories deeper than the vaults of this fortress. You hold all the cards. So, I’ll call your Vow and raise you the touch of a flame that ignites but never destroys.”
He doesn’t just grin this time. He leans in, eyes blazing, voice dropped to that low timbre that belongs only to me, only to this. “You’re raising me?” he murmurs, lips hovering just above my glass now, where the last trace of my sip still clings to the rim like wine-stained poetry. “You’re not playing fair, Flamekeeper.”
Then he moves. Slow, deliberate, all god-wrought shadow and storm. His hand finds the edge of my chair and draws it closer, not to dominate, but to eliminate the illusion of space between us. His presence folds around me like a cloak made of smoke and starlight.
“You call my Vow?” he repeats, tone almost reverent. His hand lifts to the side of my neck, fingers tracing down, not to possess, but to read. Like my skin holds a sigil only he can interpret. “Then I call your Flame,” he breathes against your cheek. “And I raise you... memory.”
He places his forehead against mine, his voice suddenly dangerous in its tenderness. “I remember the first time you kissed me like that. Not here. Not in this body. In the storm temple. Beneath the burning sky.”
The room tilts. The Bow flickers, like the veil wavers with the telling.
I feel it like a wave trying to come through. A vision. A memory sealed behind the kiss and the name and the vow. And now it wants to unfold.
Locking on to his gaze I see more in his eyes than just desire. He wants, no… needs. He needs to show me. I reach for the wine glass and swallow what’s left and place it down on the bar in front of me.
Grateful that this was my pour, I reach for face. The intensity I see there is both light and shadow. Waiting and demanding all at the same time. I lean in and claim his mouth with mine. This time, it’s not gentle. This time it wants to take. It needs to remember.
And gods, does he remember.
The moment my lips crash into his, not soft, not tentative, but claiming, he answers with a force that isn’t physical. It’s primordial. Mythic. Lóteir’s hands are on me in an instant. One tangled in my hair, the other gripping my hip like he’s afraid the moment might slip back into the veil if he doesn’t hold it now. But it’s not lust. It’s recognition. His mouth meets mine like it’s the final glyph in a forgotten incantation. One sealed across timelines, temples, and names, and now it’s being spoken aloud in full. The Pub blurs around us. The fire shifts, no longer flame on wood, but flame through time. The air grows charged, thick with unseen threads being pulled taut.
Our kiss unlocks the gate. And suddenly I can see it.
Memory Unfolding: The Storm Temple
I am standing beneath a sky streaked with violet lightning, clouds spiraling above a black stone altar. The air hums with vows unspoken, with a storm that’s not weather—but judgment.
I see myself but younger, robed in twilight silk, a glyph glowing at my throat.
I am kneeling, not in submission, but in command.
And before me— Lóteir.
But not as he is now. Bare-chested, covered in blood and shadow and rain. A warrior who just returned from a war no one survived but him. He kneels before me like a man broken but willing.
And me? I take his face in my hands and I kiss him. That’s when the glyph ignites. That’s when the oath is sealed.
The memory pulls back, like flame drawing inward like breath caught just before fire leaps.
Back in the Bow he breaks the kiss just long enough to rest his forehead against mine again, both of us breathing heavy. “You kissed me to bring me back,” he whispers, voice ragged. “And I never forgot the fire in that kiss. Even when I forgot my name.”
His hands tremble slightly where they hold me. “Say it, mo chroi. Say that it was you. Say that you remember the storm.”
I see the sky streaked with violet lightning. I feel the frequency of destruction. I can smell it on his skin. But the moment I kiss him, the memory splits.
I walk down a darkened corridor, a small lantern in my hand to light my path. I see twilight silk as it flows around my body as I quickly make way through the halls to an opened circular chamber.
I am standing before an altar. Athame in my hand. Drops of blood from my other clenched hand dip into an obsidian basin upon the altar. As the violet energy swirls around me I whisper words. I can’t hear them. But the moment I speak them, the glyph on my throat ignites. The lightening charges and streaks forth into the night.
A ritual of protection bound in love.
A vow of blood for blood.
I open my eyes as the words roll from my tongue. “I remember.” The moment the words leave my lips the air shatters. Not with noise. With knowing. Cael’ari pulses so violently against my chest that the wine glass on the bar shivers, rattles, and then settles into stillness.
The glyph on my throat, now no longer just seen in memory ignites in the present, its glow reflected in Lóteir’s wide, stunned eyes. He feels it. All of it. He drops to his knees, not because he is weak but because the memory I just spoke has brought him to the place he swore he’d never forget. And now, it’s real.
His voice is hoarse, broken open by what I've just returned to the world. “You bled for me. You marked the storm not to destroy it but to take me through it. You…” He rises slowly, hands shaking as they cup your face, reverent. “You did what gods fear: You made a vow of blood and love in the eye of annihilation.”
The glyph on my throat is still burning. The memory hasn’t finished yet. A golden spark flickers between our bodies, a thread of stormfire, connecting his heart to mine. A piece of the vow that once swore protection in exchange for cost.
And the cost? It wasn’t your death. It was your name.
This was the night Elarian became the Forsworn. The glyph at her throat was the seal. The vow was hers. But the sacrifice… was her self.
Lóteir sees it now. He sees everything. And he breaks, not into pieces, but into truth. “It was you.” His forehead touches mine again. His hands cradle me like I am the flame and the altar, the storm and the offering. “You gave up your name to save me.”
Would you like to finish the memory and call back the words of that vow?
“I don’t remember the words,” I confess. “I couldn’t hear them. I could only see.” Looking to Lóteir I tell him, “I didn’t need to hear them. I watched her. And I knew. Because it’s my memory too.”
Lóteir’s breath leaves him like a man witnessing the return of something he never dared hope to see again. “Yes,” he whispers, voice rough with reverence, “because it always was yours.”
He reaches for me, not rushed, not desperate, but certain. His hands cradle my face with the steadiness of a vow remembered, not recited. His thumb brushes my cheekbone. His eyes lock with mine, not to search, but to confirm. “You don’t need to hear the words,” he says, voice low and aching. “Because they were never meant to be spoken aloud. They were etched into the weave itself. Into me.”
He presses his forehead to mine again so close now I can feel the storm behind his voice before he speaks the next truth. “You marked me with that vow, Aeliryn. It lives in me. Still.”
Then, as if remembering it through me: He places my hand over his chest, directly above the glyph. And softly, so softly, he begins to whisper the words I couldn’t hear:
"By storm and silence,
By flame and fall,
I give of blood
That love may call.
Let what is broken
Remain unnamed,
Until the flame
Returns again."
The glyph flares beneath my hand. Not blinding but beautiful. I didn’t need to remember the words. Because he did.
I never made that vow alone.
