A/N: It's me again. Yeah. Me, with the insane plot bunnies hounding my footsteps.

Review, kthxbai.

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai.

It was not quite a nightmare, though it came very close. I woke panting, sweating, hot and tense and very alone. It was then that I at last decided to set words to paper, to document the things I had held to myself since the days I had first realized their meaning. I burn, every day, my thoughts a tangle of memory and regret.

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai – her sapphire eyes, her feather soft touch that ignited flames within me. Of the first time I had used my signale. First, and only – save one other, also to her. She terrified me. She fascinated me. She drew me in and flayed me alive, cleaving skin from muscle, muscle from bone, bone from body. Tearing away the veils over my heart, clawing me to shreds and leaving me limp and helpless. I could not resist her.

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai making love to me, her nails sunk into my shoulders as she kissed my mouth, my neck, my shoulders. Straddling me, her bare legs, white and smooth and slender, brushed against my skin, igniting fires I didn't even know I had. My mind whirled and abandoned me altogether, breath short, heart pounding wildly, erratically in my throat. There was no fighting back against that overwhelming need. Nothing to do but give in. Give in, and fear.

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai, the sight of her dream-face sending emotions whirling in circles in my head and breast, around and around and around and around forever. Hatred, anger, fear, desire, need, maybe even love, in its own peculiar way, tangled together and made love to each other, begetting children that danced and cavorted and tangled again, a lovers dance within me. Man was not made to hold such emotion. I was not made to hold such emotion. Ah, Elua – there was no resisting that terrible, terrible desire that surged in me, held me tight and close and suffocated me, sucking away every resistance I thought I had had. Hoped I had had.

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai, and the mere memory of a dream of her left me panting, limp, boneless and helpless with hot desire for her, and rank fear of what she might do…rank fear of what I might do.

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai, holding me close, naked bodies tangled together, sweaty and solid and utterly impossible…legs twined as tightly as my own emotions, her eyes blazing with cold, blue, cruel love as I knelt abeyante before her.

Kushiel's Chosen. Phédre nó Montréve, the only anguisette in living memory. "I yield," the motto of the house that might have been mine. And ah, how I wanted to. How I wanted to. But how does one yield to love with fear? How does one temper hatred and desire?

I dreamed of Melisande Shahrizai; and I dreamed I was afraid.