He marveled sometimes at the pale fragility of her beauty, marveled at the way its delicate frailty blended so seamlessly into the dark solidity of her will. For as long as he could remember she had been as lovely and as cold, beautiful as a distant star is beautiful; detached and radiant and unattainable. To the untrained eye she appeared only as another meek, naïve maiden, but he knew her too well for that; knew that she was no more naïve than she was submissive. A good sword was unerring and deadly in those delicate hands, only waiting to be wielded as her decisive nature saw fit.

She was like a wild thing sometimes, barely suppressed rage bubbling beneath her skin and emerging as a raw spark kindled in her eyes, captivating and half-feral. Strength gilded every line of her slender body even as it reinforced her resolution, and he had watched her long enough to know that any man who meant to capture her, friend or foe, would do well to watch his step, for she was as lawless and uncontained as the dawn, or conflagration, and all mortal men know that one cannot walk forth into a fire and not be consumed.

He had seen the rage emerge on few enough occasions, spewing forth in a tangle of violent, uncontrolled blows and bared teeth and yells caught through with tears of anger, but he knew that it was always there. He saw it shining in her eyes, heard it as a barely perceptible tremble lacing her voice, detected it in the stiffly controlled grace of her poise. Tis true he loved her, or rather, the thought of her. For men shall always lust after that what they cannot have. It ached his heart to let her stay but a little from his side, and yet, she never would bend nor bow to him, and he had yet to fathom that she could not be called to heel like a coursing hound.

It occurred to him that in some ways she was almost like an untamed bird; so small and fragile, so easy to break, and yet so full of passionate anger that nothing was too foreboding to fight. Like a hawk she was, used to soaring the pallid skies, the feral snarl of woodlands, always straining to escape the net of the huntsman, which constricted round her with each passing day. Like the bird, she was beautiful, volatile and evasive; like the bird, she feared only the brutal repression of captivity. In her eyes he almost fancied there was a flicker of affinity when she glanced at him, a flicker he clung to like a drowning man clings to a twine thrust at him. Yet she would but toss the twine in a little, a flick of her wrist, and let it dance on the surface, surrounded by the miasma of light and sound, before

she was off, launching off from him as would a hawk loosed from hunting take wing from the up thrust falconer's wrist; her cry ever distant and forlorn as she soared to embrace the Charioteer of Heaven in her wings.

Drowning. He had been drowning for years in the icy wash of her loveliness that was as treacherous as a double-edge sword, slicing forward, but also backlashing the hand that palmed it for far too long. Lost. he was lost in his mind, wanting to claim her as his prized hunting, hawk, and yet afraid. For as much as he loved her, he knew what she would become if caged. A lost soul that disperses and then departs, her triumph lost evermore, like a broken-winged hawk, proud banner-like wings trailing in defeat, yearning for the sky and yet afraid. And he wept, oh, yes, he wept as he became lost in the impulsive, fiery intensity of her temper. To see her cross a room in passing was as if he had been granted a vision of angels, awe inspiring, yet cold as the stars, eyes sorrow-filled at what she could not change. He watched her so closely, so avidly, that whenever the merest breath of wind caught in the voluminous folds of her gown he found himself tracking, all in a second, the pattern of the fabric's movement from her shoulder to the floor. He watched, silently, the gentle shadows of doubt and anger and anxiety as they passed over the elegant features of her face; watched the steady flicker of firelight on the hard curve of her collarbone, strands of her long hair tumbling unheeded over it. And her gaze would met his, full of confusion and a clandestine yearning, for something, someone, she dared not name. Yes, he knew she was a Knight, and her loyalties pledge to none save herself and the King and Queen, and a handful of her friends she held dear, and never ceased to confess that they were worth her life. But still...he wished to obtain her. To do so, he must track this she-wolf into the den of her heart, and enter so softly, the alpha female of heart would not snarl. A flicker and a sigh, and she was gone, always to find out why the winds die, and where the legends go.