Iona gazed longingly out over the lake toward the sun setting over the mountains to the west. A bottle of Black-Briar mead, half empty, sat on the table in front of her on the back porch of Honeyside. Where, she wondered, was her thane, the mysterious Myrna, who had stormed into her life and then vanished almost as quickly? Raised from birth to be a soldier in the Riften guard, Iona was rarely given over to deep emotion. But Myrna was almost like some supernatural force, a presence unlike any the young warrior had ever experienced before. In the mixed barracks of the guard, sexuality had been a carefree thing, partners swapped haphazardly, gender almost immaterial, emotional connections faint, the pleasure of the moment the overriding concern. But from the moment Iona had received the Jarl's summons to serve as a new Thane's housecarl, from the moment she laid her eyes upon the voluptuous raven-haired Imperial with skin as pale as snow and eyes as green as spring leaves, her heart—her body—wanted no other. She remembered the pounding in her chest as she led her new thane through the streets of Riften, how the small talk she tried to make sounded so empty and stupid, how self-conscious she was in the presence of this stranger. "Get a hold of yourself," she remembered thinking. She who cared about nothing except the sharpness of her blade, the deftness of her reactions, the strength of her arm, was suddenly a bundle of nerves. "Gods damn you, my thane," she said, half-bitterly and half-amused.
It was only the next day from their first meeting that Myrna told her to pack her things. There was work to be done. Off they went, two young women tramping across the countryside. Myrna spoke politely but sparingly. Iona had continued to struggle with her emotions, but relished following the taut but curvy frame before her, wrapped in some mysterious, skin-tight black armor; something like leather, Iona thought, but both more supple and sturdier. It hugged her hips and ass and thighs such that Iona could scarcely take her eyes away. She tripped over roots or loose cobbles more than a few times.
They reached Ivarstead that night and took a room at the inn. Myrna sat quietly in the corner of the common room long into the night, watching those coming and going carefully, saying little. Iona drank more than her share of mead, or perhaps in her emotional state it just had a stronger effect than usual on the large-framed warrior maiden. She remembered Myrna's hand over her mug, and the look in her eye that said, "stop." Then she had smiled. "There's work to be done tomorrow. I need you at your best, Iona." Hearing her name come from the Imperial's dark, luscious lips for the first time sent a chill up Iona's spine and a warm tingle around her nether regions.
