Work Text:
Liandrin walked carefully across the gleaming floors, the midnight hours were approaching, the Tarasin Palace was dark.
The rooms were luxurious, as it was befitted a Senchan High Lady of Blood. Delicate, precious screens, engraved with strange, exotic animals, from a shadowy corner, a slight snort could be heard.
Liandrin tensed, as she heard the clatter of claws.
It was awake, Toram.
Suroth's pet.
A shiver of disgust flooded Liandrin's skin, that skin that was now visible to all, beneath the translucent veils. The creature with three shining eyes and bronze-hued scales, larger than a horse, stretched, it watched.
Liandrin set down the tea tray and glanced into the large mirror that showed her reflection. The veils brought her pleasure, though it was scant, bitterly bitter, for by these strange laws she was property, a slave, Da'covale, all for her, for Suroth´s amusements. One day she would make her pay. Over the years she had sworn many oaths, and broken most of them. The Dark One was here too. He was everywhere.
Liandrin stroked the veils, her fingers remembering the feel of soft red leather, her very being yearning for the bliss of saidar, the power of it, forever out of her reach.
Adapt or die, except that she could not die.
A thousand times Liandrin remembered the words uttered in an amused voice, that order that the Mogheidian had given her.
Live.