Ash woke curled comfortably against another warm body, uncertainty of when she fell asleep her only initial thought. She attempted to move, to force her legs under her to stand and head home so as not to burden the person she was curled against any further.
Sidus' hand slid gently along her mane, his voice a light murmur in the serenity of the night that enveloped them, "Sleep, Ashterra. It is hours yet 'til dawn."
She disobeyed, moving instead to rest her head on one of his legs. She felt small next to him, safe. That safety, though, felt like a fragile illusion now that she'd revealed that the hunter from her world seemed to be looking for her. Despite knowing how strong the gods were, she also knew a great many of their faults from years spent serving one. She was not as hopeful as Luna that the hunter's intents with her and all the others that had gone missing were harmless.
Sidus slid his hand along her mane again, a small smile lifting his lips a bit at how wonderfully sharp witted and sharp tongued the young Starborn had grown. Eventually, though, he spoke again, "Things will be fine, Ashterra. We will all work together to assure it. Though it could be said that I have the highest stake in your world, we all have things there that we cherish or we would not have been able to strike a deal with Lucrum. If our only connection to your world was that of gods, he would have been quite as powerless to act as we were."
Lucrum, she tried to keep him from her mind but he kept popping up both physically and in conversation. She'd come to the conclusion that she didn't hate him but that was where her reminiscing ended. She wasn't ready to contemplate the fact that a god seemed to have developed an infatuation with her and she wasn't the type to use it to her advantage to get her magic fixed. It would be simple to do so but it would haunt her forever even if she did eventually return his feelings naturally.
She felt Sidus's hand still at her thoughts about Lucrum, felt the barely contained rage beneath the surface. Many of his followers thought of him as a being that was always calm and gentle, which was what he tried most often to be. He had a wild side to him though, a part that was more than willing to fight and bring harm if the cause was worthy. He also had a temper though it generally didn't show itself with violence.
"Lucrum angered you greatly," she used her magic to weave the words rather than letting him continue reading her thoughts because she knew he hated doing it, felt it an invasion of her privacy.
He heaved a sigh, lowering his head slightly as if ashamed of how great his anger at the young god had grown, "I had just told him to keep his hands off of you. I had just told him that you were only barely starting to recover your desire to continue living, that I wanted you to be on stable footing before he started trying to play games with you. I told him that you were off limits. Not only did he fail to listen to me," his fingers ran softly across her mane as his voice dropped to almost a whisper, "He hurt you, Ashterra. I could feel it in your magic…So much pain and only a very small part of it was from the process of fixing your magic. If I did not feel that this connection is the best way to find a solution to your world's problems I would have ended him for hurting you like that."
A small wave of shock ran through her at the way he described her feelings of the event. At the time she'd just attributed all of her feeling off to the pain but there had been a lot more to it that she just hadn't wanted to delve into. She'd been ashamed as well: of being frightened enough of dying to accept the bargain in the first place, of clinging to the kiss after the pain had begun, of the exhilarating feeling that his twisting of her magic had left her with when it morphed the pain into pleasure.
She sighed and shook her head slightly, as if to shake away the thoughts, "I will be more cautious in my future dealings with him," she promised before settling her head back down, "Am I keeping you from work?"
He chuckled and shook his head, though he knew she couldn't see it, "Not at all, dear Ashterra. While you may not remember it well, I have only spent time with you when I have been available to do so. I do not shirk my responsibilities. I would leave if I had no other choice, though generally I have always made sure to do so when you were sleeping and return before you woke."
Unable to settle herself, Ash asked a question instead, "Were you like this with all of the Starborn, Lord Sidus?"
He was quiet for a moment, contemplating the answer or how to phrase it, "Yes, though perhaps not quite so much as with you. Your magic was an echo of my own in a very different way than theirs, something that held great importance to me. If no other needed me, I would always choose to be with you," he went silent again, "I worried for a time, and still occasionally do, that my doting over you is how you survived over the others…Even though I know it is not so. I could not see what had happened but all of the others travelled with guards beyond you. All of the guards tell me that my protections warded them from the first lethal blow…After that, it was up to them to escape…and none did but you."