writing_shadows

Yes, I'm supposed to be asleep. Damn it. Anyway, here's a snippet. I'm not sure how much of this will make sense if you're not Reb, as a lot of it is (as far as I know, but Reb is a crafty bugger) not in the player domain yet. Also, I'm claiming complete poetic licence with regard to the topography of Saudi Arabia.

***

Reversal of Fortune.

So that was it. Her family were trying to kill her.

They’d come damned close today, too. Even closer a few months ago. Her nickname was “Nine-Lives,” and she’d gone through a fair few of them. Fortunately, as long her azoth burned bright, she had lives to spare.

Farhana al-Faroukh paced in the desert shelter that she’d built in the hills outside Jeddah. Not the one she used when she was masterminding the resistance against the drug barons who ran the area (her father and brothers) but a different one, a bit smaller, a bit higher up the rocky outcroppings, closer to God.

She dropped to her knees and said a prayer. She wasn’t allowed to pray in the mosques, but out here, who would know? And anyway, divinity was relative. All Prometheans knew that, Galateans especially.

Ah, yes. Galatea. She’d have a word with her when she caught up. Which she would. She’d set out tomorrow, having briefed her successors in the resistance on how to continue; the hidey-holes, the secret passages, the berths and vehicles her family used. So there was only one thing left to do.

She knelt by the prone figure on the floor, and looked at him. Fair hair, fair skin, and half-smile on his lips. She adored everything about him—the cut-glass accent, the vague gestures that belied a sharp mind, the very Englishness of him. Everything was ready. She leaned over and placed her lips in his in a lingering kiss. Spark leapt to spark, and her lover opened his eyes for the first time.

“Time to go, my love,” she said. “My Corsair, my Don Juan, my Byron.”