– If We Shadows Have Offended –
A/N: Same disclaimer and comments from the last chapter. Enjoy…
The Royal Palace on Romulus…The Romulan royal palace – in which the Senate rotunda was to be found – was resplendent and imposingly magnificent in the light of the dying sun. Its walls and many tower, domed caps of roofs, and pillars gleamed in the ruby-red twilight; and one solitary figure stood on a balcony, looking out over the palace grounds, and the city beyond it.
Each world had a kind of magic in it; she knew this all too well, and reveled in the knowledge. Every planet had a kind of inner enchantment held within its sphere, no matter how subliminal.
Romulus – and Remus – was no different.
Closing her eyes of vibrant sapphire: eyes that were flecked with the entrancing, radiation-like glow of green, she surrendered to the deep, exotic aura of nightfall…
A gentle, warm wind out of the east swept up to her then, catching around the dazzlingly beautiful and mysterious sorceress's black-silk clad figure and playing with the loose blue-black strands of her long, full tresses of jet. Isis, consort and lover of the Praetor Shinzon, smiled: her lips softly curving as she became aware of a familiar, powerful presence behind her.
Her mind formed a picture of him before she had even begun to turn around. He was standing there, only a scant three feet behind her, garbed in his customary uniform of magnificent gleaming black, the evening sun's light catching the jewel-tones in its depths. The breeze that had whirled around her now went on to spiral about him, causing the long, full-cut tail of his coat to snap and undulate elegantly about his slender, erect figure.
He was so confident: so proud and utterly unafraid, so urbane and completely captivating – a man worthy of holding sway over the fate of not one, but two planets. A man truly capable of ruling – over both Romulans and Remans…and her heart. A man, young and handsome, who held the depths of great, all-consuming passion in his soul…
Isis turned, ever so slightly, as his well-muscled, long arms came around her from behind then, locking about her slim waist and drawing her to him. Shinzon's full, velvet lips brushed against her ear, his breath stirring her hair as he murmured lowly to her, "My beloved…"
Both Shinzon and Isis knew full well what would have been if Fate – extraordinary, unbelievable Fate – had not mercifully intervened in their lives.
He would have lived a short, bitter life, filled with cynicism, rage, and the shattered, brittle shards of broken dreams: burnt out in a moment of regret and uncertainty, to become embers, space dust, in the endless void. She would have forever remained a runaway slave, an outcast for life because of her strange, potent powers.
But now…now their lives had begun – they had found one another. He was healed, and she had discovered her place: it had taken a good deal of effort on both of their parts, complete with time travel and stopping a war that had been about to begin. But it was worth it…oh, it was so worth it all…
"It was all worth it, my love…" she whispered to him, closing her eyes and leaning it back, against his gently heaving and residing chest, twining her arms about his graceful neck as he bent his head down to kiss her, gently, again and again. "Everything…it could not have ended any better…"
"Oh, but it is not over yet, my ravishing black rose; far from it, in fact…" her lover commented, as he continued to caress her, longingly.
Isis let her exotic features take on a disapproving expression, and she twisted in his arms, turning so that she could face him.
Shinzon looked down on her with a vastly amused expression in his blue-green eyes. Isis ran a slow and daring hand up his high collar, to sweep her fingertips lightly and deftly over the back of his smoothly shaven skull.
"The Praetor is certain that he should so contradict a lady?" she mockingly questioning him, one eyebrow lifting.
The full lips of the Praetor quirked, in tandem with the dark eyebrows. Drawing nearer to her, as he gathered her hands into his, he replied, "Ah, but you are not just a lady, my beloved, my goddess…you are a lady and a sorceress."
Isis was considering making a return-fire retort of how he would do well to remember it, when Shinzon appeared to have already read her mind, and known her thoughts. For, with his characteristic wicked smirk, he simply – wordlessly and inexorably – pulled her into his arms, bringing her up against him. Then, the two figures on the balcony came together for the inevitable kiss, and the final words that the warm breeze carried away into the approaching night were…
"And I cannot think of anyone I would rather share the rest of my life with; embrace me, my beloved…"
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding than a dream…
One last note – the follow-up Shinzon and Isis fic, working title Swing Time, is in the works…look for it, if you wish, in the next month or so…