Ick.

She expected a handshake, and gets a kiss on it instead. What is this, the 18th century? This looks like something Milo would have done, given the flowers he brought after their hookup. Creepy.

( Never mind the fact that the flowers were never for her... but that's neither here nor there. )

Queenie slides her hand back and rests it as a fist against her hip. She smiles, "Nice to meet you Deimos. Is that your name or your code? Oh shoot, should I have called myself Asura this entire time?"

She turns to Tiur at her dismissal with a wave. "Sure thing, Tiur."

And then they're all alone. Suddenly the heat of the flames feel much more apparent against her skin. Queenie doesn't really hear the joke; instead, she stares at the licking fire before her, a taut line pressed against her glossed lips.

Fire is not an enemy for her—her first few missions relied so much on aquapyra, after all, it's a good subordinate. It almost seems like it had come full circle... only that there is hesitance when she sits down.

"You're gonna toss me into the fire for my death?" she asks slowly, uncertain. He might construe it as her being afraid, afraid of death, afraid of failure again, but—

"I'm not gonna get scars from this, am I?"

Her face and body are far too beautiful to be marred.

"Elias," she repeats thoughtfully, committing it to memory. Ellie? She'll settle with cupcake in her head for now.

Queenie tears her eyes away from the flames, to his smile, then to the blue vial in her hand. Walk in? He's seriously expecting her to immolate herself to death? Isn't that just one of the absolute worst and painful ways to go?

This guy must be a psychopath. At least Queenie gave Rebecca a pretty quick death.

She takes the vial in her hand and examines it idly. Well... at least she has a decent amount of salve in her bag among another things.

"... I might as well rip the bandaid off, hey?" she mutters, more to herself than him, and starts to tip the liquid into her mouth before abruptly stopping in her tracks. "Oh, hold on!"

The girl rummages through her own bag. Glass clink together noisily as she keeps on digging, until she finally finds it: a vial of light pink fluid. She knocks it back in one shot—mm cherry-flavour... the classic flavour of medicine—and crushes the glass to be one with the sand again.

She gives Deimos a small grin.

"Tyle'o'nol. We'll give it a minute for it to work its magic before I go." Might as well minimise the pain she's going to go through in that fire, right? "So, how long have you been out here? I guess this is going to be my post after I get initiated back in too?"

"..."

Queenie exhales from her nose rather sharply, and tilts her gaze to the side. "Mm... You really need him out here? Okay..."

From within her shadow, beaten down by the desert sun, it ripples with her mana. Adelais emerges from the darkness silently, coiling his body around his witch, amber eyes peering pointedly at Deimos and the firepit.

The look was subtle, but apparent, as her lips turned up ever so slightly as Queenie showers her attention over the lion. She scratches behind his ear, crimson eyes soft—perhaps Adelais was the only entity on earth who receives such genuine affection from someone like Queenie.

"I'm gonna have to drop down to part-time, huh. So much for retiring at forty."

She presses her cheek against Adelais' just to feel the low vibration of his purr, another pink vial of her Tyle of Nol in her hand, for him instead of her this time.

"Okay!" she chirps, breaking open the blue potion and downing it like a shot. It doesn't really taste like anything—in fact, it feels like her tongue and throat have gone numb.

How in the hell is she supposed to speak now?

"Let's do this," she thinks out loud with a voice in Deimos' head instead, and makes her way to the fire.

It burns. Even through her Tyle of Nol, it burns severe. The numbness of the blue potion stops her from screaming, leaving her to only writhe along with Adelais sharing her pain. The lion curls in the sand, muscles tense and searing until the burned nerves force him to slump like a puddle of meat.

It's hard for Adelais to focus. Of course the pain is unbearable, and despite being under open air, he can't catch one breath. A sense of intense dread envelopes him—but it's not his own.

Over the course of Quynh Le's young life, she has been called many things, running the gamut from bimbo party girl, to a psychopath.

Now even psychopaths have one thing they fear without fail.

Sure, one can argue that it's purely physiological.

But if losing your breath—if drowning is enough to make the heartless beat, then is that not fear?

I am scared.

The beer bottle slams against the counter, splashing droplets of the hops on the back of her hand.

"Ah, crap," Queenie mutters with a wince, wiping the liquid off with her fingers. The touch stings the first degree burn she sports, but there was only so much witchhazel salve could prevent, and there was a limit of how quickly repth could recover her cells.

Adelais lies beneath her feet with his eyes closed, finally in focus as mana shifts between them.

The girl looks over to Farah with a pout, a real puff of her cheeks.

"After all I confessed to you, Auntie! What if I actually didn't come back?"

Never mind that she was the one that stepped into the fire on her own volition. Never mind that stayed in that fire until she could no longer breathe. Never mind that she came out of it charred like a burnt chicken breast and the fact that she's currently expending all of her damn mana regenerating her beauty. Never mind that at the end of it all, her question becomes rhetorical.

"—but he is pretty cute, I'll give him that."

She stops herself from rambling anymore. Farah probably doesn't have the patience for it. Silently, she counts on her fingers.

The time Ives stabbed her.

Her first true initiation.

The stupid ship at sea.

And now.

If Farah did care to ask what she was doing, Queenie would grin, albeit ruefully, and answer: "Just checking to see how many lives I have left."

She'd totally love it if she could get the Philosopher's Stone before the ninth.

For a moment Queenie is at a loss for words. She blinks back at Farah, a brow scrunched in confusion. Was that... Was that a joke? Two jokes, even? From Auntie?

Her gaze drops to the box in the Leviathan's hand. It's a non-descript and unmarked ring box; she sees them all the time in the backroom of Jadeflower. The silence breaks with her laughing—"Hah, good one, Auntie!"

It melds into the rest of the clamour of the bar noise, and Queenie holds out her own hand as the box drops into her possession. She opens the box with a grin splitting her face wider.

"Did dad make this? This is so not his style."

It shouldn't be weird for a parent to know what their child likes right? Despite arguments and superstitions about skulls and homunculi and playing God, Queenie takes out the deco skull ring from it's nest and admires the cut obsidian gem under the dim light.

Dad probably thinks she likes skulls for their symbol of rebellion. She does. But now it takes on a whole new meaning.

Queenie considers which finger to wear the ring. Originally it was her left ring finger but... well look at it now. Hm... She takes off her prosthetic finger and glances between the two metals—they're close enough in colour. Great. She'd be in a bit of a pickle if they clashed.

The ring transfigures itself onto the prosthetic, soldered tight, with no chance for it to break off anymore.

There is no going back this time again.

Queenie tilts her head, hand outstretched, as she regards her new accessory. Her eyes crinkle up in way of a fox's grin and she returns her hand to grab the half-finished beer bottle.

"Cute!"