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Miraak hadn’t been surprised in over four thousand years. The arrival of a tiny Breton woman in his realm, practically landing at his feet… It was startling, but not shocking.
Immediately realizing that she was dovahkiin, like himself, and that her soul cried out for his just from being in close proximity? That was a surprise.
As his shock spell struck her to the ground, distorting her delicate features into an expression of pain and fear, he could not suppress the urge to stop, to run to her, to… The instinct was absurd, and he struggled to suppress it, but he knew. Deep down, he knew that she belonged to him the very second she entered Apocrypha, and he to her.
He nearly hated her for it, or maybe he hated himself. It didn’t matter – it was one and the same.
Arya felt something the moment she opened the Black Book for the first time. It felt as though something was tugging at her very soul, lapping at its edges to pull bits away like the tide against the beach. It was jarring, it was painful, and it was wonderful.
It wasn’t until their second meeting that she realized Miraak was the tide, the unstoppable force of nature forcing itself into her life and mind and heart.
Briefly, she questioned her sanity. By the Divines, why would she feel attracted to a man whose face she’d never seen? To a man who enslaved an entire island to facilitate his betrayal of his Daedric master? The implications unnerved her, and she simply cut off that line of thought. She would put an end to his schemes, and move on.
And that was what she believed she would do, until his body hung limply from a bloodied tentacle above the Summit. Her own heart may as well have been pierced. Through choking sobs she swore her soul was Hermaeus Mora’s, but in truth, it already belonged to him.