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Chapter 13
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2022-02-26 00:22:46The last thing she manages to see before the carriage and Brendan grow too small for her to see with much clarity is the ring of bandits descending upon Brendan.
Alcina feels as though she cannot breathe.
Even as she clenches her eyes shut, she cannot stop visualizing the dark and determined light in Brendan's eyes, as he used his only moment of time to get Alcina astride their only chance at escape.
As he’d looked directly into Alcina's eyes, and told her not to get help, but to ride fast and don’t look back.
Brendan, the Shadowed Beast.
Brendan, the man who read a book on stars and constellations and the galaxy from cover to cover, retraced the lines until the pages thinned with his attentions.
Brendan, he who they call that born of all the terrible and dark things of the world, under his grim and detestable birthright.
Brendan, the man who’d rescued a useless and crippled wolf from certain death, a
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Brendan extends his hands to help her up, but, Alcina flinches back.Brendan’s hands are still in his beastly form, Hands turned into his claws, thick hair is covering the whole of his harms. Brendan looks at the terrified girl in front of him and at his extended hand.No wonder, what can he expect from her? One look at his beastly form – and whoosh - everybody starts to cover from him. And his wife-to-be is no different.He is not even in his full form, but here they are -The two of them ride back to the castle with complete, wordless silence, broken only by the constant clopping of the horse’s hooves on the floor.Alcina, seated in front of Brendan, Brendan’s arms around her to hold the reigns, cannot seem to stop shivering.But it is not even a particularly cold night.Brendan makes no comment on it, instead urging the horse to ride faster through the night.When they arrive at the castle, Brendan di
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Alcina awakens to a room that is not her own.In the light of day - sunlight streaming through wide-open windows, bathing the entire floor in a warm glow - it's almost unrecognizable.The entire room was immersed in the ghastly, inky blackness of earlier.Every inch of the four walls, the entirety of the floor, is bathed in thathorrifyingpitch darkness, gaping andimpossible to comprehend,terrifying.Slowly, still caught in between consciousness and that shadowy world of dreams, Alcina sits up, the silken sheets pooling at her waist.It's then that she notices she's laying under the covers at all and frowns blearily, trying to recall-Brendan's hand, wrapped loosely around her neck, his thumb resting just above Alcina's pounding pulse, his index finger tapping gently against the side of her neck in time with her beating heart-Alcina's eyes spring open, the memories of the night before returning in a
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After a brief moment in the morning, Alcina doesn't get another chance to speak with Lord Brendan for the remainder of the day.She'd hoped to catch him at dinner but finds that the man is entirely absent at dinner with little explanation.Forwhat she is looking for, the man, she hasn't yet planned; she just feels unsettled, as though there's an entire world left unsaid and unresolved, without any particularities thought out.Alpha Warner simply explains that Brendan had claimed business he must attend elsewhere.Alcina noticed that Alpha Warner's rumors of growing absentmindedness had not been exaggerated.It is no doubt true, then, that Lord Brendan must succeed his father's rule of the Western Plains in the next year, at best.As it is, she spends the dinner mostly looking down at her plate, wondering where it is that Lord Brendan could have had such urgent business to attend to.And when she catches herself with these
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"Then why are you weeping like a child who's had her favorite teddy stolen from her?"Alcina scowls.She catches the tug of an amused smile at the edge of Brendan's lips, and it makes a flush rise on her cheeks. "I am not a child," she mutters sourly."I just. I have been- I just. There was a letter," Alcina finally says lamely, explaining absolutely nothing about their current circumstances.She's been sold off like a particularly unwanted cattle by her family to the man. The man they only whisper about cautiously in the safety of their own homes, as the nightmare ghost in human form.She has had to leave everything, her home, belongings, and the only family she has ever known and loved.And had to come to these unfamiliar lands, which she had long thought would be a terrifying lair fit for a monster.She has been entrapped by terrifying bandits nearly lost her life. And then witnessed other men lose theirs in a display o
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That night, Alcina stays up late once more, organizing the genuinely astounding number of parcels she now has in her room. And wonders had she indeed purchased this many things. She's halfway through organizing some of the items on her dressing table when she hears it. This time, that quiet, muffled whimper all the louder for how acutely her sense is attuned to the sound. This time, she wastes little time in letting herself through the door. And she realized, then, that while she can lock her side, Lord Brendan cannot. She starts wondering what the implications are that the man had prepared an acknowledged cagefor himself to be locked into. When she sees the floors and walls, once more, covered in that endlessblackness, again, she can't help the fear that rushes up inside of her as if a dam had broken. But she cannot leave Lord Brendan as he is, in whatever pained hell he has trapped himself into-
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Alcina wakes first.This time, she awakens with the immediate and keen awareness of precisely where she is. That is not her own bed, but the one she'd just shared with Lord Brendan.Lord Brendan, who is evidently still asleep when Alcina looks to her right.Alcina can't help but to stare.In sleep, the lord's features seem impossibly young - with none of the heavy presence that bears on him like an ever-present weight when the lord is awake.It's something about his eyes, Alcina thinks; those dark, fathomless depths that speak of years much, much beyond the lord's age of twenty-five.And there's a fascination here, too, of being permitted to observe such a feared man up close like being allowed into a tiger's den when the ferocious tiger is declawed in its slumber."If you leaned in any closer, one would think it ismyperson people should worry about, rather than yours,"Lord Breandan's low, rough timber - pitched mo
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Brendan's never slept so well in the twenty-five years he's been alive, as he does now.Brendan had learned early on that being able to control something did not mean the same thing as being immune to those same terrors. Born with theGiftof being permitted to command all those wraiths, terrors, and horrors that haunt the minds of men, made him suffer the same every day.Most nights, ever since he'd personified his Gift as a young child, he'd found his dreamless sleep plagued by the same terrible things that he can command unto others.As he'd explained to Alcina, these shadows cannot kill him the way he can kill others with them.But it does not change the fact that he nearly dreads sleep with the anticipation of an endless, all-consuming despair each night.Even if the terrors don't visit him every night, the nights when he is given the brief reprieve, he spends trembling in fear, teeth grit and back ramrod straight, bracin
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Alcina wakes up in the morning alone, as she has grown used to in the nights since she'd begun to sleep in Brendan's bed. The lord, it would seem, is an incredibly early riser. She finds out from Mary that it is because Lord Brendan has swordsmanship practice with Commander Lincoln most mornings. As it is, the piece of information sparks the beginnings of an idea in her mind. She can't stop remembering what it had felt like to be so utterly helpless. When all she'd found herself able to do, was clutch desperately at the horse's reigns that had carried her away from Brendan, where he stood fending off the bandits on his own. How even when she'd returned, she'd found herself at their attackers' terrifying mercy (or lack thereof), with nothing to defend herself with. Alcina had never been permitted the opportunity to take up the sword as her elder brother had. A runt like her, after all, could not be permitted anywhere near the ba
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That afternoon, Alcina takes off for the Heartlands with Perseus to inform her family of House Warners’s decision, while Brandon remains behind to see Percy and Darla off.When Brandon makes his intentions known to the soon-departing lords of the Ranges, there’s hardly a pause before Percy shrugs.“Very well, then.”Brandon raises a brow. “Is that all?”Darla grins, razor-sharp and vicious. “I’ve wanted to gut those pathetic vermin for a while now,” she says as she stretches her neck, languid and incredibly dangerous.Conversational. “Ever since they reared their stupid heads and tried to act like lions instead of the prey that they are.”Ever since they managed to escape unscathed from the massacre of the wedding at the Heartlands, Darla’s been unsettled. Like a shark that smelt blood in the water, only to have lost its prey.Darla has the kind of bloodlust that won’t settle until she’s standing above the carcasses of her chosen prey.Percy merely smiles, as warm as an indulgent love
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They say that Captain Lincoln of the Western Plains’ military is a man unmatched, for he carries with him the favor of the goddess of victory, herself.Stella thinks they might be mistaken.For watching him now - watching the way he leaps into battle with nothing but a sword and his gleaming armor, having stepped down from his steed because he does not wish to risk harm to his horse makes Stella think-He is the god.Stella wishes to never fight another day in her life and has loathed fighting and everything it means and entails, but even she cannot deny that Captain Lincoln in battle is nothing short of mesmerizing.What a frightening man, to make something that Stella loathes like no other, into something- strangely beautiful.Even as the other men under Lincoln’s command have charged in to engage the others in combat, Lincoln remains at the front lines of the conflict, a dancing hurricane flitting across the ground to leave devastation in its wake.He takes on two, three, five, eve
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A figure has come to stand beside her, tall and broad and armor gleaming under the moonlight, white teeth sparkling in a roguish grin-“Commander?”It cannot be.But it is.Commander Lincoln stands before her with all the casual grace of a man out for a stroll, confidence is as alien as it is captivating on the shoulders of a person who stands on a battlefield and yet still somehow manages to look as though he is at home.Stella gapes at him.Lincoln smiles.“What- wh- what are, what are you-““The cavalry has arrived,” Lincoln announces grandly, cheerfully. Always so bloody incomprehensibly cheerful, how-“What?”Lincoln’s smile turns just an edge softer, for just a moment. He tilts his head backwards, and Stella swivels her head, only to choke at the sight of- of soldiers, several hundred of them, bearing the glorious banner of the Western Plains-Stella’s wide eyes must betray her stupor, for Lincoln drops gracefully to a single knee beside her.Stella’s stupor turns into a stilted
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“And where were you, when this intruder managed to slip past our defenses?” Brandon drawls.“Sinking the edge of my blade into his stomach, my lord,” Lincoln replies.They share a grim smile.“I only regret that I could not do so sooner, before he had killed the serving girl,” Lincoln sighs. At that, Brandon’s expression darkens.Alcina had been near catatonic with grief.Ridiculous, in some ways, that a princess should have grown so attached to her servant that she’d mourn Mary’s death like so. But that ridiculous heart is Brandon’s.They’ve hurt what belongs to the Shadowed Beast, and penance will be forcibly wrenched by payment in blood.“They’d likely been searching for Alcina,” Lincoln says. “Or at least, any viable intelligence on her command of the dragons.”“Yes.” Brandon has been made all too well aware of Duke Albrecht’s interest in the dragons. An interest that had spanned years before Alcina’s ever came into the world, if that dilapidated fortress were any indicator.For h
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Brandon emerges from their shared bedroom with keen intent in every step, cloak swirling behind him. Alcina remains in their room, curled along the window seat, Orion’s quiet rumbles bringing her whatever semblance of peace is possible.He pins a standing guard with a raised brow. “And where, pray tell,” he says. “Is Commander Lincoln?”The answer makes Brandon’s brow curve higher and higher on his forehead.* * * * * * * * * *Long before he becomes Commander Lincoln, the man they whisper to be graced by the goddess of victory, the man who leads the greatest military force in all the land to nothing but absolute triumph and glory, Lincoln was just a Lin, a penniless street urchin who’d grow up in an orphanage that had too many mouths to feed and too few beds.It’s been a long time since Lincoln was that skinny, trembling boy in rags with dirt smeared across his cheeks and an aching in his belly; a long time since he’s tasted anything but the sweet, euphoric taste of victory and iron
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With a bloodthirsty vengeance perched on her shoulder in glittering hues of ruby red, Lady Alcina arrives back at the Western Plains to find the castle sunk deep in discord.Although nothing looks to be amiss, it is undeniable in the very tension that permeates the air, that something is wrong.As the two of them enter through the main doors, Alcina can see the flicker of trepidation in the gazes of every guard and attendant who welcomes them back home.Something has happened.“Brandon,” Alcina murmurs, and feels the weight of her husband’s hand pressed against her back in response.“I know,” Brandon says. He too has sensed the unease.Even Lincoln - who ordinarily would be the first to greet Brandon upon his return from any excursion - is glaringly absent.The party has long ended and the lavishly dressed throngs of attendees have long since waltzed out of the castle doors to their own homes. It isn’t odd, then, for the castle to be so quiet, given the circumstances.What is odd, how
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The iron shackles laying at their feet, massive and heavy and bolted to the floor with chains so great that even in their rusted state, have not deteriorated in strength, were clearly once used to contain a beast of unimaginable size and power.A beast terrible - and fearsome - enough, to have warranted such an egregious means of constraint.Alcina’s hands - those gentle, kind things, soft to the touch for how few hardships they’d ever seen, so tender that they’d blistered and bled when she first began to take up swordplay, unused as they were to adversity - curl into fists, still resting against the ivory.Brandon watches as they curl so tightly that he fears Alcina’s nails may draw blood on her own palms, shaking - not with fear, but anger.That is when something new catches Brandon’s eye.Something that catches one of the scant few rays of light, flitting in from the broken doorway.Something that looks like a massive jewel, curved vaguely in the shape of an egg.Something nestled
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Mary catches them just as Perseus dips his head low for Alcina to climb aboard.From beside him, Orion paws at the ground with an irritated snort, displeased at being left behind. But with Perseus’s darker scales, Alcina had thought it would grant them a far better chance at going unnoticed at all, in the inky blackness of the night.“My Lady!”Alcina turns, just in time to see Mary run up to her, her breaths visible in foggy clouds in the night chill. In her arms is a dark bundle, revealed to be one of Alcina’s warm cloaks, lined with fur. Mary heaves for air as Alcina turns to fully face her, having evidently run the entire way from the palace.“My Lady,” Mary says breathlessly, expression lined with worry as she holds up the cloak. “You cannot simply take off into the night without even a cloak,” she says, edging close to a reprimand.Even as that pull pounds with a vengeance in Alcina’s chest still, ever stronger now that she’s recognized the call for what it is, Alcina can’t help
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Alcina catches Nordin's eye from across the room, and though her brothers are unable to extricate themselves from the political small talk they are caught in, they send her a warm smile nonetheless.She beams back, and something in Nordin's smile softens, ever so slightly, at the sight of the sheer happiness the Lord of House Warner has managed to put on their sister's lips.When Brandon had suddenly declared a ball at the week's end, he and Alfred had shared a momentarily skeptical look. But then, Alfred's eyes had dawned with recognition, and he'd stifled a quiet laugh into his hand. Had, as Nordin demanded what was so funny, explained-It would seem that the great beast is entirely bewitched by our willful little sister.And Nordin had felt his own lips twitch into a helpless smile in turn, at the frankly ridiculous lengths it would seem the Lord was willing to go to if it would bring a smile on their little sister's lips in such dire times.Brandon leans down to ask if Alcina woul
