'Come now, lady.'

She regards me warily as I carefully take up the slim fingers of one pale hand, tucking them into the velvet-clad crook of my arm. I walk her to the door of the windowless, cheerless room where she has spent all her days since I brought her to the northern fastness. Do I burn her, I wonder, through the cloth of my robe, with the life running through me and the purpose of the east in my veins? There is a burning in her, a cold fire that chills me through the rich fabric. My flesh repulsed by the touch of her, mayhap.