forget stardust

They don't talk. Not really. Whenever Kasra chooses to stop ignoring her, it's only to fuck her, and then he's disappearing again, doing whatever the hell he does with the rest of the hours in his day. Roche would be annoyed, but she really can't complain—not when he's capable of satisfying her to the point that she's downright domestic, damn near purring like a housecat. Her husband was quick to figure out that rendering Roche desperate and needy also makes her shut the fuck up, and he's been quicker still to use that knowledge to his advantage; she can't find it in herself to be upset about it just yet, not when it feels like a straight shot of lightning in her veins every time Kasra touches her. She keeps telling herself that the feeling will fade, but she's not entirely convinced. She can't decide if she wants it to.

Today, they are going home. Kasra had taken her again before they left, she's quite certain to keep her as quiet as possible for as many hours as he can get. For a while, it works, and she lounges on the bench across from her husband, her gaze idly watching the windows. It's so very ostentatious, she thinks, to travel by carriage; it's no faster than her own paws could carry her, but it's certainly lazier. She wonders if Kasra would travel by one if he didn't have her in tow. Roche is distracted from that line of thinking when the scenery changes, diverting from the Kingsroad to guide them into the hills. She asks where they're going, but to absolutely no one's surprise, Kasra doesn't give her a straight answer.

When they roll up to a small militant encampment, she is simply ordered to "stay here" and left with a guard outside the door, because Kasra is wise enough to know that Roche would never simply just listen. She watches out the window for a little while as her husband speaks to some self-important looking lion, the stern planes of his face every bit as unyielding as he ever is. They're having some kind of debriefing, and whilst Roche is somewhat curious about the cause of their detour, she's more interested in the view from the window on the other side of the carriage.

There is a steep, serpentine path carved deep into the face of a mountainside that looms barely a hundred feet away across the clearing. A plan forms, and then she enacts it, slinking out the door on the far side and whining to her unfortunate guard that she has to pee. And then she not-so-kindly demands her privacy, accusing him of having illicit desires when he tries to insist otherwise—and whilst Kasra is wise to her antics, this poor fool isn't. By the time he realizes that Roche isn't where she's supposed to be, she's vanished into the underbrush on the far side of the clearing, making a beeline for the path that will give her the view she'd been looking for that first day in Sestrala.

It looms in the back of her mind that Kasra will likely figure out where she's gone sooner rather than later, but so long as she makes it to the lookout point before him, she'll get what she wants. So she goes without fear of her certain pursuer, clambering up the steep slope with the agility of a hunter, her eyes on the prize.

you are iron