Things had gotten pretty rough for awhile, what with the shadow dragon looming over Denaar like the perfect storm about to happen, as it waited on a precariously balanced scale for Melchaiah to keep his promise and find the dragon's eggs, while those who had paid for the valuable eggs led Chai and Schae on a merry old chase all the way across the ocean to the untamed lands of Arithendor, the wilder country. Months they had traveled, over land and sea, over rivers, through unbroken wilderness and over many a mountain, all the way to the Black Hills Kingdom, where finally, a little more than three years later, they found the last person to have purchased the clutch of six black speckled grey eggs. Chai did not have enough money to buy them; he had let Schae handle finding out how much he WAS willing to part with them for, and having plead his case to the man, promising to pay him when he got home with the eggs, the guy refused, saying none of it was HIS problem, and so, in the dark of night, they broke into the man's keep and STOLE the eggs. They had almost gotten out undetected when one of the old codger's dogs had spotted them and started barking, and so they were forced to face and fight the man they had stolen the eggs from. To begin with, the man's keep had been warded, he was an old gelflin (half goblin half elven) mage, but Chai if one remembers had a knack for getting around wards through his Quantum Weaver Aspects, as he had at Sekura Palace. Magic or technology, he could work around security. It came from being a Trecouri renegade. In any case, he was on fairly equal par with the greedy little fellow they had robbed. He had 'tricked the wards' not to detect them rather than actually bring them down, but the dog alerted him to their presence. The gelflin had proved a very skilled warrior and mage, more specialized and skilled in his paths than even Chai was in his more motley abilities, which gave them both a unique edge against each other. The fellow'd had enough honor though not to attack Schae, who made no move at all to fight. She had left that to Chai the entire journey, because where Chai WAS a warrior, and a fairly impressive one, Schae was NOT. Her talents were in her charisma and presence, and she had SUCH a natural face of innocence that only the most wicked of malfeasors would dare attack her. In any case, Chai shed no tears when he finally came out on top and killed the gelflin, because he would have let his village and parish burn all for greed. Three years and two months coming and going brought them home to Denaar, where the dragon was still terrorizing the people while taking only one life each month they were gone. Only, because the dragon could have done a LOT worse. When the dragon was returned his eggs, he offered his respect and left Denaar to return to the mountains named after his kind. Those eggs were all he had left of the mate he had chosen for life which humans had killed for the price of her hide. Only because the youngster who had stolen the eggs had nothing to do with his deceased mate's death, and because Chai had bravely sworn himself to recovering his eggs, had he spared Denaar an all out slaughter instead of the one life he took each month he was divided from his eggs. Thirty-eight dead was a high death toll, but thousands would have been much worse. The child who had stolen and sold the eggs in the first place? He was made very aware that the thirty-eight souls who had died and had their souls drunk because of HIS actions, and he was held in indentured servitude for five years to EACH of those families as their serf, from the first killed to the last.

All was back to normal now, the dead buried, the child responsible a slave to all those families, and finally, at long last, Chai could beg Schae to marry him again. And that is exactly what he did.

Aurelius had returned to Noct'maire more recently, a few months after Chai and Schae had resolved their quest. Chai couldn't believe it when he heard that Aurelius had been defeated. And no small defeat either. But had the Black Dragon Lord submitted to his enemy? No. He was regrouping, and recruiting soldiers to replace those thousands he had lost. He had very nearly lost Melisseant, his wife, the queen, but had managed to storm the tower dungeon before Hesstromeph could flee with her. It seemed like he had won the battle at that point, he had Hesstromeph on the run. It had all been a ruse to lead him and his men into the desert to his last stronghold, far from any gate markers.

It was a beautiful night, cool in just the right way, the stars bouncing off the lake's smooth mirror, the sound of nightwings on the air. Chai looked to his beautiful Schae and all he could think and feel was how much he loved her, and how wonderful the pain of that constant ache for her was. It seemed... like every day made his heart swell a little more, and when he was sure it would just burst, she filled him more. He could not get enough of her... His duties alone and sheer exhaustion keeping him from holding her prisoner to his lusts and their bed, but it was not one sided. No, not in the least. He was as much her prisoner of desire as she was his.

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(02:51:53) LiftTheDarkness: Schae had welcomed that merry goose chase, dangerous though it may have been, because it had given her the time to get to know this man she had fallen so madly in love with. Sure, they had known instantly they had chemistry (with their combined appetites, they were like rabbits, honestly), but between all the roadblocks they had faced in their admittedly young relationship, she just hadn't gotten to know him that well, yet, as an individual. Their little adventure had shown her many sides of him, and truly, she found herself loving each and every one of them. Even seeing him fight, though she was decidedly non-violent, was just another thing she came to enjoy. He was graceful in battle, and he never let anyone harm one hair on her curly thistledown head. Not that they ever seemed to try to. But really, one look at her said she wasn't a threat. Five foot nothing, a whisp of a girl, really, with those china-doll features that she could arrange to look so utterly innocent.

When he begged her once more to marry him, she had answered him readily this time. There was no uncertainty. She knew that she wanted him, and she wanted him to be hers for as long as she drew breath. She had answered him excitedly, in the affirmative. The wedding had been lovely, quiet and intimate, with not many in attendance. The guests were bound to be low in number, anyway, since Schae really had no friends. She had, for once, worn mostly white, with only the most delicate of floral embroidery over the bodice in black. It was likely the only time Melchaiah would ever see her in so much white, since she did tend to favor black, for the way it set off the porcelain tones of her skin. The honeymoon, too, had been quiet. No grand adventures for these two, not after they had spent so long hunting down dragon eggs. Time to unwind, to explore one another entirely.

Schae breathed deeply of the cool night air, and glanced to find Melchaiah looking at her. Her expression softened into that vaguely flirty smile, and she moved to wind her slender arms around him, fingers sneaking up to bury themselves into those masses of pale curls that she loved so very much. "What are you thinking, when you look at me that way?" She inquired, in that smooth, silvery voice of hers. She affected that playful tone that said she knew exactly what he might be thinking. She just liked to hear him say it! She loved him more than she thought was possible, more than Sytri would have ever believed was possible of anything that came from him. She knew he had never believed that he could love, but Schae knew what she felt, and there was no mistaking what it was.