#i wish i could feel without fearing id be insulted or not taken seriously

[gluupor]

audoldends replied to your post “Okay, first off I have to say that you are one of my favorite fic...”

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ID KILL MEN FOR YOU TO FINISH THIS!!! OR AT LEAST ADD A REUNION SCENE!!!! PLEASE OH PRETTY PLEASE YOU GIFTED GENIUS!!!

Your wish is my command. Do I get to choose which men you kill?

The fight was chaos. It took almost all of Andrew’s considerable concentration to keep an eye on Kevin while cutting his way through Riko’s guards. Neil flitted into Andrew’s peripheral vision from time to time, taking full advantage of his raven form by dive bombing the unsuspecting men and pecking and clawing at their eyes.

This was not what Andrew had planned. It was supposed to be a stealth mission, in and out like a scythe, leaving only Riko’s bloody, dead body behind. He should have known that it wouldn’t be that simple. Neil was involved, after all.

It had been a long couple months, travelling across the Kingdom to get to the capital of Evermore. They’d had to keep off the beaten path to avoid being seen and recognized. Kevin, pampered by his life of luxury, had not coped well.

He’d whined and complained and waffled over whether or not he want to be complicit in the murder of the prince. Andrew had seriously considered killing him and being done with it. Only his promise and the potential to end his curse had stayed Andrew’s hand.

It was a cruel twist of the curse that Andrew was the one who was human by day. He envied Neil’s ability to simply fly away when Kevin became too annoying.

As they neared the capital, Kevin grew more and more sullen as the effects of Riko’s instability and mismanagement became more and more clear. Rumours of beatings and murders and thefts by the crown were common. Once they passed through a small village that had been razed to the ground for insulting the prince, Kevin became absolutely resolute. Staring at the bodies of men, women, and children that were strewn through the formerly picturesque village, Kevin had at last conceded that Riko must die.

He was easier to deal with after that, but he was still Kevin: arrogant but still fearful of the wrath of the royal family. He’d taken to training Neil in swordplay in the early evenings after Neil’s transformation, much to Andrew’s satisfaction. He’d always wanted to teach Neil to defend himself but after their curse he had no way to do so.

When they were a day outside of Evermore, Andrew had sat Kevin down and gone over their plan. It wasn’t foolproof and it carried quite a lot of risk, but it was the best they could come up with considering their resources. Therefore, it had been incredibly surprising to find that they had more resources than any of them had known.

They found them a couple miles from the town gates. They were entering during the day because trying to sneak Andrew in wolf form into the city was impossible. Instead, Neil was going to fly over the stone walls and meet them inside, hopefully not getting shot down or captured by any of the city guards. Again, Andrew hadn’t been particularly happy about it but he couldn’t risk being seen with a raven; especially here, where all ravens were thought to be the property of the crown.

Neil had been the first to alert Andrew to their reinforcements. He’d been flying high, surveying their path to Evermore, before giving a shrill cry and swooping low to circle Andrew in increasingly erratic circles. He’d led Andrew and Kevin deeper into the trees surrounding their path, until they camp upon a busy, makeshift camp filled with familiar people.

“Finally,” sighed the sentry, Matt Boyd, as Andrew came into camp. “We hurried to get here, but we worried we missed you. How dare you stage an assault on the castle without waiting for us!”

Andrew hadn’t answered, instead looking around in amazement at the people getting ready for battle. He and Neil had taken shelter in Palmetto after they’d been cursed. They were circumspect and tried to keep to themselves—turning spontaneously into an animal was a good way to encourage a mob to burn you at the stake. Neil, of course, had been noticed by the townspeople and had even made friends. Andrew wasn’t particularly surprised. Neil was the type who inspired loyalty easily.

However, it wasn’t only Neil’s friends that had come to help them kill the prince. Andrew glimpsed his own twin brother and his cousin, along with Renee, the woman who had taught him everything he knew about how to properly wield a blade. They all caught his eye and nodded in solidarity.

After that, a plan was made. Kevin and Andrew would still sneak into Riko’s rooms, but they had a distraction now. The others would take care of that.

Still, Riko, the coward, had a fair number of guards in his private rooms that stood between Andrew and his goal. He stabbed and parried and deflected his way through them on the way to Riko.

He was almost there when he heard a cut off raven’s shriek. He froze as he looked up and caught sight of Riko holding Neil in a death grip. Riko had scratches down his face, bleeding profusely. He grinned sadistically at Andrew, his teeth red with blood.

“Take another step and the bird gets it,” he threatened.

“Let him go,” snarled Andrew, relaxing his stance. The guards backed off to witness the tableau in the middle of the room.

“Not until you drop your sword and surrender,” sneered Riko. “If you do that, I’ll let you both survive with your lives... although Nathaniel might wish he was dead as he spends his nights entertaining me.”

Andrew couldn’t help the growl that escaped him, as close as he could get to his wolf’s while in human form. He took a step forward.

“Ah, ah, ah,” chided Riko, holding Neil tighter. “Get a hold of yourself, dog.”

“Fine,” Andrew grit out, taking another step forward as he moved to lay out his sword at Riko’s feet. At the very last second he sprung, swinging his sword to slice through Riko’s arm like butter. Neil fell to the ground with a thump, still held in Riko’s severed hand.

Riko screamed and stumbled back, scrabbling against the floor as Andrew advanced on him. The guards started forward, but we cut off with a yell from the outer chamber: their backup spilled into the room and started fighting.

“Get him, Andrew!” shouted his cousin, Nicky.

Riko was crying and begging, interspersed with threats about how Andrew was going to pay for his actions. Andrew ignored him, easily sliding his bloody sword into Riko’s heart.

As soon as he did so, he was hit with an invisible force and was thrown back against the wall. His bones felt like they were on fire, like they were snapping and adjusting as he changed shape. But changing shape had never been this painful.

The agony left abruptly, leaving him panting on the floor. It took him several moments to gather his wits; when he did, he looked up to see Neil lying naked in a pool of sunlight on the grimy, bloody floor, staring at his hands in wonder.

He grabbed for the closest covering he could see—the curtain from the window behind him—and rushed to Neil’s side, wrapping him up before anyone looked too closely. His eyes watered since he didn’t dare blink; it had been so long since he’d seen Neil with his human eyes that he didn’t want to miss a single second. He ran one hand along Neil’s neck, revelling in the feeling of warm skin against his own, and tangled his other hand into Neil’s hair. He’d forgotten how red it was in the sunlight—he had been unable to see red as a wolf and Neil was only ever human at night.

Neil, for his part, was looking up at Andrew with awe, tracing his fingers lightly along his jaw.

“I forgot how short you are,” he said in choked voice. “You always look so big when I’m a bird.”

Fuck, thought Andrew, he’s such an asshole. After forced to be apart for so long, that was the first thing Neil said to him? He loved him so much.

The fighting around them had calmed—Andrew spared a glance up to make sure that his allies had won—as he leaned down to kiss Neil desperately. He broke it off before anything more could happen, standing and hoisting Neil into his arms.

Neil whined in complaint, but Andrew shushed him. He had plans. They had to get a private room and Neil had to be thoroughly washed and then their bodies had to get intimately reacquainted. They could wait until they were alone. They had all the time in the world now.

#tfc #andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #my fic #bits #ladyhawke au part 2 #audoldends #cw violence #cw murder #cw gore #cw allusion to rape