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Chapter 15
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2022-03-07 01:43:05Alcina 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 that horrifying pitch darkness, gaping and impossible 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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Except, Alcina doesn't quite let the matter rest.The following day, with much effort, she manages to rise early enough to follow Brendan to his practice match with Lincoln.She reaches the courtyard just in time to see Brendan narrowly avoid being skewered by the sharp end of Lincoln's sword and can't help the quiet squeak that flits from her lips at the near-miss.Brendan's eyes snap to her, having just noticed her presence.Lincoln seizes the opportunity to slam the butt end of his sword into Brendan's side, sending him clattering to the floor."Brendan!"Alcina doesn't think she's ever run so fast in her life as when she flits to Brendan's crumpled side, worry pounding in her chest. "Are you alright?"Brendan, where he's sitting on the ground in the middle of sending a particularly scathing look in Lincoln's direction, turns his incredulous gaze to Alcina next.Alcina, who's gingerly grasping his arm and trying unhelpfully
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The human mind, it is said, works by creating associations between experiences, memories, objects, and ideas.Despite all signs to the contrary, Brendan would seem to be a human.For how else could he explain the way his mind seems to have - without his permission - bridged an association between Alcina and the benediction of reprieve from his nightly terrors?Undoubtedly, the way that Brendan finds his gaze and his attention drawn to Alcina like the subconscious weight of a gravitational pull.It can only be explained by the mysterious abnormalities of how the human mind works.She is unlike anything Brendan has ever laid eyes upon before.She is not immune to the fears that plague all men. Still, unlike any man Brendan has known before, she seems impervious to the kind of paralysis that confounds all men in the face of their fears.The comparison of the pretty, delicate features contrasts with the surprising strength of tempered ste
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When Alcina manages to trudge her way to her room in the palace, she has hardly made it past the doorway when Brandon is instantly at her side.Brandon grips her by the shoulders, expression blank but eyes almost frantic in the way they run over her frame from head to toe, as though cataloging any possible injuries. And then, at last, Brandon lifts a hand to rest gently along Alcina’s cheek.Alcina shudders and sinks into it, sighing. “I half feared the Duchess may have buried you somewhere in the courtyard, and I would have to go digging for my wife,” Brandon drawls, teasing and insouciant but with genuine worry in his eyes when Alcina peers up at him.Alcina manages to muster a scowl, though she loses the energy for it right after.Drained, Alcina allows Brandon to help her change into her silken pajamas and guide her right to bed, where Alcina sinks gratefully into the pillows. “I really ought to shower,” Alcina murmurs uselessly, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I’m quite disgust
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The courtyard is a ruined wasteland.Everywhere the eye can see, the ground is shattered into nothing more than rubble, uneven and dusty and jagged with uneven footing.But there is one woman who maintains perfect balance, even as the ground shakes violently underneath her precarious red heels: the Duchess, hair flawlessly coifed with not a single strand out of place, even four hours into their training session.She lifts her chin, and a massive, tapered boulder, narrowed to a lethal point, separates itself from the ground.And then, it goes shooting forward, soaring through the air to hurtle towards the two figures hovering in the sky. Alcina sees it coming and grits her teeth as Orion dives sideways in a spinning tumble to avoid it.The Duchess straightens up.All of a sudden, the ground falls still.The silence that follows feels oddly deafening in Alcina’s ringing ears, after hours of its cacophonous din. She, too, straightens up, peering down at her mother in confusion. The Duc
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“Survive.”It is all the warning Alcina gets before the ground erupts.That is the only word that can be used to describe the way the earth shifts and jagged little spears come hurtling upwards, all around her, tall enough to pierce Orion’s underbelly should she be standing over one.With an enraged shriek, Orion hurries to take to the air, and Alcina has to scramble to hold on as she frantically takes off.When she is airborne, and Orion has steadied herself with measured, powerful flaps of her great wings, the ground finally stops shaking.Again, she finds her mother standing effortlessly even amid the ruins she had created. “You were lucky, before.” When Alcina had recklessly charged into Elton’s stronghold alone, with nothing but an untrained dragon and a flimsy sword. “The soldiers then had been wholly unprepared for the sight of a dragon, and had been too stricken to react.”She lifts her hand once more. “But you will not be so lucky the next time. And you must be prepared, to f
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Alcina watches wordlessly as the Gifted medic heals Brendan’s palm. She stares intently at the white glow emanating from the woman’s hand, as she hovers it over Brendan’s burned palm. Slowly, the reddish hue of the burn recedes, until Brendan’s palm has returned to its normal state.Alcina wishes she could have been born with a Gift like hers, something that would allow her to chase away the bruises and ailments and scars on Brendan’s skin; not something that would hurt him. Human nature, she realizes, is greedy beyond all belief. How many years had she yearned for a Gift, any Gift, she remembers wishing desperately in these very halls? And now that she has been graced with one, she yearns for something more, still.With a respectful bow, the healer excuses herself, leaving just the two of them in the otherwise empty room. Alcina doesn’t move from her perch, sitting ramrod straight in her chair. Stares at Brendan’s hand, every fiber of her being longing to reach out for it so that
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Alcina sips dutifully at the glass of water Brendan had forced upon her, eyes doleful as she peeks up at him from underneath her lashes.Brendan stands over her, arms crossed, not unlike an ominous guard watching with keen eyes as if to ensure Alcina truly is drinking the water. They had hardly made it to the closest parlor room from the courtyard entrance when Brendan had promptly sat her down on a chair and ordered a terrified attendant to fetch a pitcher of water.Alcina sips obediently at her second glass now, shoulders slumped both in exhaustion and misery as she glances up at Brendan through her drenched bangs.“Why do you look as though someone has slaughtered your childhood pet?” Brendan demands.Alcina recognizes the terseness of Brendan’s awkward attempts at caring for someone, but cannot help the slight grimace all the same. “You were watching, weren’t you?” she says sullenly, mouthing at the rim of her cup. “I was terrible-”“You were not terrible,” Brendan begins to say,
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Two hours in and Alcina is already exhausted.It is midday, now, and the sun beats harshly down on her back, thoroughly drenched with sweat. The wind whipping at her face and limbs from Orion’s movements as she darts through the air does little to cool her down, perspiration dotting her temples and her hair matted to her forehead and neck.Alcina can barely hold on to her sword as it is, while still maintaining her tenuous hold on one of Orion’s spikes to steady herself on her back.A pair of arrows whistle as they just barely miss her cheek, her hair whipping upwards from the projectiles spinning past her just a millimeter away from her skin. “Pay attention,” Percy says from the ground, where he stands, perfectly relaxed with his hands tucked into his pockets - not at all unlike the form he’d assumed, that day of the ruinous wedding.Darla, seated beside him still in her panther’s form, licks her lips in a manner that sends a shiver down Alcina’s back.She yelps, then, as Orion jerk
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Back in the Western Plains, a Commander General continues his vigilant observance throughout the night, long after all the castle lights have been extinguished.Alone, he sits, eyes sharp as he assesses each unobtrusive corner of the room.It is none other than Lord Brendan’s own private study, a room that is locked and forbidden to all those aside from the lord himself, and his most trusted advisor: the General who has tasted only the sweetness of victory, each time he has stepped onto the battlefield.Lincoln tilts his head.And then, in a motion too quick for an ordinary man to catch, seizes the dagger laying innocently across the desk, and hurls it across the room.It sinks itself into its target.A gasped expletive fills the air.Lincoln picks up a second dagger, its blade gleaming under the single line of moonlight spilling in through the sliver in the curtains. This, in the next breath, he throws with lethal accuracy.“My, would you look at that,” he says cheerfully, brightly.
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“No.”Alcina fumbles with the straps currently adorning Perseus’s broad back the contraption that, she claims, is meant to strap a person in. Brendan stares at it with an unmoving expression.Alcina pouts.Brendan remains firm. “You do realize,” he drawls. “That I am, technically, still in recovery, yes?”Alcina winces.“I don’t know about you, but I’m rather certain that falling hundreds of feet to my death is not what the healers advised for a speedy recovery-”Alcina whines at him. Stomps her foot, even, in a way that Brendan resolutely does not find at all endearing.“You won’t fall,” she says. “I have been practicing very hard this entire week, at flying with Perseus!”Brendan raises a solemn brow. “You mean to say that this is a newly acquired skill that you are attempting to pass off on me, then?”Alcina flushes. “Brendan,” she wheedles. Brendan briefly spares a moment of appreciation, anew, for the two older brothers who have raised this petulant little thing, all these years
