Kire let out a chortle at that. “Ah yes, a woman’s heart is through her stomach, indeed,” she said solemnly, before she chuckled. “That’s just another way of saying ‘useful’—but it doesn’t hurt, I’ll admit,” she said, watching him work, chin rested on her hand. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you’re a stubborn blonde who runs into danger and cares for his family. Sounds vaguely familiar to me.” She smirked briefly at that, before shrugging. “You may not feel the same way. I know you don't want me getting too close. But I just don’t want you to think you’re some tool I mean to discard when it’s become useless.”

Ruli tilted his head in response, rolling his eyes. But he listened as he turned his attention to his task, working to get the flames the height he liked before he went to work chopping vegetables and meat. "That helps, I suppose." He said after he'd diced a few potatoes from the store bins near the wall.
"Fine. Before I regret it, after breakfast, before you go home, I'll give you one question that you get to ask. And I'm going to use this question to judge your intentions. So think carefully on it. Now," He gestured. "Hand me a dozen eggs from behind you."

One question. Kire drew in a deep breath and nodded, before turning to hand him the eggs. She kept quiet as he continued his task, now and then handing him the ingredients he would ask for, also slightly relieved she wasn’t involved in the cooking beyond that. She mulled over the question in silence as she ate breakfast, though she did compliment him on the food. She had so many thinks she wanted to ask about him, but ultimately they all coiled around one thing: his past. She pieced together what she had so far: that he was found by Envy, that he was a half-breed—half-elf, most likely, given his shared abilities with the Shadow Elves and Kartaians. She remembered the shame with which he had admitted this. And his scars… He knew the agony of the poison from some period in his life he wouldn’t name.

At some point, Ed came in looking for her. As expected, he looked like he had a very pleasant evening. “Could you give them my apologies? I won’t make it to the meetings today. If possible, move them all to tomorrow. Or late in the afternoon, if it can’t be helped,” she said when Ed asked her about coming back to the Tower.
He looked curiously at her, then at Ruli, but said nothing else. “I’ll see you later, then,” he said, giving a nod in farewell to Ruli before going back outside.
She returned to her meal. “Mostly well-wishers,” she said in explanation. “The usual kiss-ass-to-the-new-old-Empress,” she added with a chuckle. “They can wait.”

Ruli kept himself busy, not allowing himself to wonder what question she would ask. Truthfully, if it wasn't about either the poison or his dislike for sugary foods, he'd be surprised. He cooked about seven meals, not including their own, pocketing the coins offered to him, and taking his own bites of breakfast in between.

When Ed appeared, Ruli glanced his way and nodded in greeting, not failing to notice the marks the fuchsia-haired elf left on his neck. "Breakfast?" He asked, raising his hand to off Ed a plate of fried vegetables and egg wrapped in a flat toasted bread. He wasn't sure if Ysaryn would have remembered to feed him between latching onto him.

"So can I, if you need to go back." Ruli said to Kire when he'd finally finished. He wiped the sweat from his face with a cloth he kept at his side while cooking and rose to his feet, opening the door the step out. He sighed at once when the cool breeze hit him. "I'm not going to rescind the offer just because you're needed elsewhere."
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked her way. "We can go hunt down your boots?" He offered. "Or, if you'd prefer asking in private, we can head back to my house."

Kire shook her head. “Eh, they’ll live. They can always just assume I’m away on some Paladin business,” she said, gesturing vaguely. “I have admittedly squirreled my way out of boring meetings using that excuse before,” she added with a grin, standing up to follow him out of the hall. When he asked where they should have their conversation, she paused to think about it, then gestured for the beach. Kire figured they both might need the comfort and distraction of open air and the sea breeze, in case the conversation became too heavy.

She looked around to scan the sand for her boots, albeit rather lazily, not really invested in the task. “So, how is it that someone who bakes great cakes doesn’t like eating them?” she said nonchalantly, before smirking, shaking her head. “Don’t answer that. I’d like a little mystery in my life.” She tugged at her own hair, which had dried in knots. Out with it, Kay. He probably already knows what you’ll ask. “You said you’ve had the poison before,” she said after a long pause. “And—you told me once that you were a half-breed.” She looked at him, her hands clasped behind her. “Do your scars have anything to do with either?”

With a nod, Ruli started up the stairs, his bare feet finding the steps with practice as he wandered over the cliff toward the northern beach. When she asked about the baking and his dislike in eating the baked goods, he laughed. "I knew that was coming, to be honest." He grinned at her, fishing around in his pocket to withdraw a tie so he could pull his hair from his face.

As did he predict that second question.

He didn't answer until they were on the sand, strolling toward the small pile of charred wood that was the remains of his fire. "Both." Ruli answered, falling into a slow walk beside her. He felt anxious, but he reminded himself that she'd told him about her own scars, and with their few times in seeing each other unclothed, she never shied away from the marks on his skin.
Ruli inhaled.
"Think, slave. And then think lower." Ruli said. "Then, think dogs who are bred for viciousness and strength, and think slightly higher. That's what I was." He stared at the ground as he walked, very away of every move he made, every stray strand of hair the wind played with. Even aware of how warm he felt. "I didn't have a name until Envy gave one to me."

She drew breath when he finally said it. Between a slave an animal. That’s what Ruli was telling her. She looked at him, remembering the way his body shook, the desperation in his voice while in the hot springs. The fact that it was Envy who had given him a name, an identity beyond that of some nameless thrall, underscored to her how important his bond with the Kartaian was, how he really was practically Ruli’s father. She felt a little guilty, then, knowing Envy had asked her to be careful with him. Be careful with him, she reminded herself. “They—elves, I assume?” she asked, her pace matching his slow one, letting him have time to think. “And the poison, did they give that to you as punishment for something?” She paused, gauging his reaction. “If you don’t feel like answering more questions, just tell me.”

When she asked if 'they' were elves, Ruli nodded. He had already admitted to being a half breed, so she knew he belonged to some tribe or the other. And she moved on to the poison and Ruli only blinked, glancing ahead as they neared the wood pile. He deabted on not answering. he'd told her one question. But the poison, she had faced that, as well. She'd experienced it.

So he nodded.

"I told your cousin when she looked me over. Its not exactly a poison, but a drug that effects your mind." There it was. He could talk clinically. Distance himself. "Mix it in water, the only water available, and all it does is make you lethargic. But wean off it, your brain tells you you're missing something vital, and it begins to shut you down. Its excruciating. The dose the Gemini fired at you must have been enough to give your body a taste, masked by the adrenalin, and when it started to leave your system, you reacted like you'd been poisoned."
Ruli glanced at her cautiously. "It was to control us. As punishment, they'd wean us, some even died. None of us dared to run, knowing we would be doomed. One day I just didn't care."

Kire hadn’t realized at first that she had stopped walking after he finished talking. A drug. Constantly administered, to keep them collared. Between a slave and an animal. No wonder. “That—that’s terrible,” she breathed. That anybody would subject another living being to this. “Evil. Why?” She felt anger grow in her, the same kind of anger that would bubble up whenever she wondered why men like Ikegai or Itallo existed, why the Gemini would mutilate whole towns, whole cities, for their blood magic. And just like those other times, she knew there was no easy answer to that.

But more than anger, she wondered how he could have borne all this pain alone.
Cautiously, she stepped back closer to him. She raised her scarred hand, gently touching his cheek, close to the scar where he had been poisoned. “You ran away,” she murmured. “Was that when you were alone? Weaning off the poison?”

He raised his eyebrows in agreement, pausing in his walk to turn partly toward her, waiting, without looking her way. Terrible. One of the many words he'd heard himself repeat in his head on the days he'd allowed himself to look back. He looked at her again when she asked why, his brow furrowing. After all the things she'd seen as an empress and a paladin, she still needed to ask why? Because cruelty will always be found.

She stepped closer, and he tensed just slightly, feeling her touch the line embedded in his cheek. "I ran away." He confirmed. "The only one to do so and live, as far as I know. Unless others did before me and we were just lied to." Which, frankly, wouldn't surprise him. "I kept crawling through the sand until I couldn't. Woke up in the company of buzzards after days, I think. I didn't keep track. Found Ziad a few days later. I did the same thing Envy did. I went underground. To shade."
Ruli inhaled, reaching up to grasp her wrist gently, prying her hand away from his face. "I gave you one question, and you've gotten far more than that. I think I'm due the next five. And I don't see your boots." Ruli jerked his head to point out the lack of footware on the beach, which meant Narda or Envy likely had them.

Kire listened to him explain what had happened after he ran away. What an ordeal that was, to survive an agonizing withdrawal, in the middle of the desert, and to find refuge under a city you had never seen before. She lowered her hand when he gently pried it from his face. She gave him a small smile. “Fair is fair. The next five are yours.” She had guessed as much when he pointed out that her boots were nowhere to be seen.

She walked back along the beach just as slowly, reluctant to leave it. As much as she wanted to ask him what he thought of her questions, what intentions he had read into them, she let him mull it over. She knew what he had just confessed to her was no easy thing to unburden onto someone else. “Thank you. For telling me.”

He felt ... strange when she continued walking. Grateful that she'd offered no argument and didn't ask anything further. But also ... longing. Like he wanted her to ask more because it was refreshing to open up for once and not feel terrified. In fact, she'd been angry on his behalf, where instead he'd been haunted.
Ruli watched her for a few seconds before he began walking after her again.

"No one else knows." Ruli said quietly. "Just Envy. I'd like to keep it that way. Please." Gods, please don't let Ysaryn put the pieces together. Her shrewd mind would instantly put together his whole background, and as much as they got along, he wouldn't put it past her to put a knife through his heart. "I did a lot of horrible things that I'm still trying to make up for. Its easier without people watching me."
He inhaled deeply, trying to push it all out of his mind, to redirect his thoughts to something more positive. Slowly, he started toward the stairs again.
Clearing his throat, Ruli started the climb. "So. If you were never offered the Ring, would you remain empress?" He asked quietly, still not sure that that was shared knowledge yet. Granted, few of the elves passing them would care an ounce. "I get the feeling you never wanted it to begin with, is being a paladin just an out?"

Kire nodded when he asked her to keep it from everybody else. “I understand. I promise.” She paused. “I see a little more clearly now why Envy wanted me to be cautious.” She climbed up beside him, thoughtful. When he asked her about the ring and being empress, she smiled, shaking her head. “I think I would have reached this conclusion at some point, with or without the Ring,” she said, though her expression was somber when she pondered his other question.

“When I was first offered this Ring, I was told I have a chance to atone for something terrible I had done, when I was a young empress. Protect my people with extraordinary means, certainly that’s what I was told I’d be doing. I think I mentioned that before. But the one thing the Seer dangled in front of me that I couldn’t quite resist was that I could use this to cleanse me of my guilt. So. I suppose you could say I wanted it, in a way.”

She remembered Gael’s voice, how he had rubbed that in her face, how the Gemini used it as their motivation for their war with her. She clenched her jaw, then realized what she was doing and took a deep breath to relax it. “Besides, it’s hardly an ‘out’ when it’s given me an even bigger responsibility. A crown gave me one world, this thing gave me two.” She sighed at that. “It has its perks, though.”

Ruli grinned, thinking about Envy. "He's family." Ruli summed. "My first and oldest friend, too."

He listened as they climbed and she spoke about the offer to atone and fight for a clean slate. He glanced sideways at her, raising his eyebrow. "The horrible thing." He began, knowing she knew what he'd ask. "Was it the Gemini?" He wondered. They reached the platform that would lead to his house unless they went into the caves instead, and he stopped, offering them time outside of prying ears. "What started the feud between your families?"

When they stopped, Kire turned to face him. “The feud has been going on even before my time. Generations and generations ago, all the way back to the founding of the Empire, as far as I know.” She sighed. “I certainly didn’t make it any better, though.” She glanced back down the stairs, at the beach. “After the Black Storm, and I was crowned, there was a massive campaign to hunt down every single magic-wielding Gemini. Figure out the source of the gate they had tried to open. And we found it, within Gemini territory. We had an agreement prior to that not to cross, but of course we disregarded that. Their whole town had gone mad, along them the mages. There had been a ban on sorcerers on the Wyvern side of the empire, my advisers reasoned. And I was too young, too angry anyway, to see any other solution. Ed tried to dissent, but he was one of few voices, and he was only two decades older than me, after all.”

She glanced at him. “So I had the whole town razed. Put to the sword. I convinced myself there was no other way. The gate was exacting its penalty on them, and I was showing mercy. They were in the middle of the blood magic transformation. There was no way to be sure, though, that they were beyond curing. I was not interested in curing anyone back then. Years later, I’d find out that it might have been reversible. That they might’ve been seeing illusions, and all we had to do was find the rune and destroy it.”

Kire glared out at the ocean, her jaw clenched again, then cleared her throat. "I was--around Gavin's age. Or a bit younger. Not that it's an excuse."

Ruli turned away from her as she turned to face the ocean, letting her speak without the weight of his stare. Her words made a few things more easy to understand. Ikegai. Gael. Gavin's presence here.

"Not an excuse, but not a condemnation, either." Ruli said. "I guess we're both trying to fight for redemption. Maybe that's why we run headfirst into danger. If we die, at least we will have died trying."
He shrugged, then sighed. "How do you feel now, about the executions. Not just the act of it, but what it means."

He asked about the executions, and Kire pursed her lips, looking down at her feet. "I thought it would make me feel better. I'm no stranger to executions and bloodshed, but--I don't like what it brought out in me. I don't know." She tilted her head back for a moment as she sighed. "My first and second coronations are marked by blood. Somehow I feel that might be the problem. Starting off with ill omens, you know. And the thought that I defeated my enemy by practically eradicating almost all their prominent line--and that Gavin might be the last branch of that tree. It's..."

She remembered when they had confronted Akuma. I am a part of you, she had said. "My forebears were bloodthirsty warlords who built an empire over the bones of their enemies. I thought I was better than that. I guess not by a lot."

"I would day your remorse makes you better. But I don't have much ground to stand on." Ruli said sheepishly. "Maybe Gavin is your salvation. The last of the Gemini. The ally. He can help to mend the bridges, I don't know. This sort of advice is better from Envy. Not that you asked for it." He shrugged again, hands back in his pockets.

There was another question he wanted to ask, but he had no idea how to ask it. How it made him sound. So he stared at the sea, thinking. "Can I make you dinner done night? I'll promise cake."

What Ruli said about Gavin made sense. "That's... comforting. A little. I'll think about it. I just hope I don't fuck it up," she said, a small smile on her face. Maybe she could talk to Envy about it sometime.

At his next question, she smiled a little wider. "I'd like that," she said as she glanced at him. "Cake or no cake." She paused, then grinned sheepishly. "But the cake will be much appreciated. I'll bring you a fresh bottle of wine, seeing as I finished off the one I gave yesterday. I promise I won't drink this one." She turned towards the caves. "I'll see you tonight, then." She smiled at him before walking on ahead.

When she made it back into the Tower, she stood for a moment in the empty chamber, staring out one of the eight windows. A soft smile still tugged at her lips, before she headed downstairs. In the living room, the air heavy with the smell of herbs, Daryll and Gavin were still asleep, with the table between them filled with scattered notes of incomprehensible writing. She tried reading one page, but it looked like both of them wrote on it without making much sense. Shaking her head, she left them be, and headed back to the Palace to bathe and change.

While Ed had managed to move most of her engagements to the next day, she still had duties to attend to in the afternoon, on top of overseeing what was left of the reconstruction efforts. More importantly, refugees from the Capital had begun to return, to rebuild their lives here again and help in the restoration of the city, too. Despite the busy day, Kire felt energetic, both from the renewed hope of beginning again in her home city and from the giddiness of looking forward to tonight's dinner. She chastised herself a little for the feeling, but not too much.

After the last ambassador for the day had been met, must as dusk had arrived, she went to get a bottle of wine, then wondered if she should change out of the dress she was wearing. It was a much simpler affair than the royal attire she had worn during the celebration rites, with slimmer sleeves and a less voluminous skirt, her ears adorned with more understated earrings. Deciding to leave the outfit be, she walked to the Tower and crossed the gate.

Ruli watched her go. He hadn't meant dinner tonight, but now that it was happening, he felt excited. Despite the disaster that was their last dinner attempt, he was glad they were doing it again. He turned toward his house and jogged up the stairs, needing to gather the ingredients from the next town over.

When Kire crossed over that evening, it was Ysaryn who found her first, the elf sitting in the chamber just beyond the gate. "Well met." She grinned toothily. "I am hearing you are here for a meal? Maybe a bit of dessert?" She said the last word with a flick of her eyebrow.
With a chuckle, she fell into step, walking with Kire. "He make me clean house. I demand to know why."

As they stepped outside, the Ziadi side of the cliffs were bathed in purple shade, the air still warm and humid. It smelled heavily of smoke from all the lit fires, the aroma of cooked fish. "So, is this a good thing? Rulitus refused to answer."