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Chapter 24
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2022-04-06 23:11:04Under the subtly growing attentions of Lord Brendan, Alcina blooms like a sunflower in the sun.
She's never had someone treat her like something special, after all.
Sure, there had been her brothers. But given their place in her life - as her older brothers, obligated under their relation to love her. Though, she supposes her parents never seemed to feel that same obligation.
It had been difficult for her to find any legitimacy in their proclamations of her worth.
A child's first and foremost ideation of her worth, after all, stems primarily from her parents; and then from her peer group.
Alcina had lost the affections of the former when she turned ten with no Gift to speak of.
Alcina rapidly lost her peer group when the former decided that she was to be hidden away in the hopes that out of sight, out of mind would apply to the significant mark of failure on their House.
Having, suddenly, the kind of hypothetical gaze that Lord Brenda
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Brendan, who has undoubtedly noticed Alcina’s presence flitting behind him, keeps his eyes trained on the newcomers.“Must you always arrive in such an abrupt manner?” he sighs, and something about the tone relaxes some of the anxiety that had been building in Alcina’s chest.Alpha Percy’s pale lips quirk into a sharp smirk. The Alpha’s face remains as impassive as ever, though his eyes - bright and curious andkeen, like an eagle who’s spotted a bird of prey - remain fixed, for some reason, on Alcina.Alcina feels as though she’s been pinned to the floor she stands by the cat-eyed stare leveled upon her.She shifts, unconsciously, just an inch closer to Brendan. He brings a hand to curl around her hip, a weight that feels comfortingly likesafety.Like an assurance.The Alpha’s eyes, piercing, zoom in on the minute shift.“There is an urgent manner.”A
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“It is alright,” Darla says, with the kind of snappy openness that accompanies an uncharacteristic honesty for someone of their class.“I am a lot to digest’, or so Brendan says.”Brendan.Alcina wonders, not for the first time, if the semblance of normalcy and familiarity she’d been allowing herself to imagine in her head had simply been that: an imagination.Being suddenly confronted with all the bounds of a life she had no knowledge of reminds Alcina with sharp and bitter acrimony of just how little she knows about the lord.“Have you,” Alcina begins, hesitantly - but unable to help herself. “Have you known Brendan long?”Darla stares at her curiously.In Darla’s piercing and sharp gaze, curiosity feels more like being broken down and dissembled than merely inquired after.Alcina fidgets.“Brendan,” Darla drawls as though testing out the nam
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She only knows a stark and ugly honesty that her brother Nordin has constantly sighed would be her undoing one day.Nordin hadn't been wrong.Brendan is silent.So I am simply yet another burdensome thing to be set aside, out of sight.Alcina is sotiredof being set aside.Somewhere, in between Brendan looking at her with a gravity underpinning his gaze, as though Alcina were something particularly remarkable, and Brendan, allowing Alcina to cling to him, Alcina had forgotten what it felt like."Why am I not permitted to know?" It sounds childish and sullen, even to Alcina's own ears, but she feels so-choked up.The words come tumbling out without her control. "Would it really be so burdensome if I were allowed to-"Brendan's brow furrows harshly. "Because you do not need to know."Alcina physically jerks back as though stung. The bewilderment in Brendan's gaze grows more pronounced, as though he c
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When Alcina is ten years old, she learns, for the first time, what it means to bediscarded.It’s a strange concept for a child so young to learn; at the age of ten, most children are preoccupied with learning how to navigate that peculiar space, of beingeverything that matters, the center of the universe, to their parents.Instead, Alcina learned the deafening quietness of the spaces in which she’d been placed, out of sight, out of mind, and the hushed whispers that followed her wherever she went.Like the spare, which wasdefective.At twelve, Alcina loses herself to the fantasy world inside her head. She imagines what her life might have been like if she had been born with a Gift -anyGift - like she’d been supposed to have.At fourteen, she begins the painful and not at all pleasant process of learning to hide herself away, even before anyone asks.This is also the age where she starts t
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The following day, Brendan is called into another meeting with Percy and Waylon before they've even had a chance to eat breakfast.As it is, Alcina - pouting blearily and still ridden with sleep - insists on walking out with him, until at least the main hall, before parting ways.Here's another thing about finding all the depths of Alcina's affections returned to her following a lifetime of being chastised and sent away.It'saddicting, intoxicating, and exhilarating like nothing else.Alcina finds herself rapidly growing attached in a way that defies common sense and rationality.Alcina takes the chance to wrap her hands around Brendan's, reveling in the small, amused smile Brendan sends her all the while. Alcina, unable to do anything but smile shyly, sheepishly back.She can't bring herself to stop testing out the boundaries of the space she's permitted to explore. Because each tentative step reveals to her that thereare&
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Darla finds Alcina in the orchard by her usual tree.For a moment, Alcina is almost fooled into believing that it isGhost,given that the Lady Darla comes jogging up to Alcina in the form of a pitch-black wolf.Alcina is, once again, startled into pitching backward when the wolf suddenlyshifts into a woman,shrieking with laughter.Alcina pouts.Lady Darla drops into a graceful seat in front of Alcina with that unnatural, animalistic grace she always carries."Sojumpy," she teases, but it's without any malice.Alcina picks at the fabric of her dress, flustered and embarrassed and a little sulky."That's not very polite," she mutters, and her ears turn pink when Lady Darla, apparently, finds it uproariously funny."You're cute," Darla grins, sharklike.Alcina barely suppresses a shiver.And then, Alcina realizes what it must mean that Lady Darla is now out and about rather than shut in t
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At that age, when children learn to differentiate and understand various human emotions as displayed in the faces around them, The first emotion Brendan learned to decipher in his childhood was fear.The close second had come as- not quiterevulsion,but. Rather close.His mother, in particular, had never quite learned to overcome her knee-jerk reaction offear, terror horrorat her own son.As surrounded as Brendan had been by legions of people who feared and worshipped his “Gift,” he had nonetheless had an intimate opportunity to learn these same emotions from his own mother’s face.- and, to an extent, his father’s.But a child’s connection to his mother is the most intimate, strange, world-defying thing in the world.Being rejected by his own mother then had brought a crippling sense of alienation that cannot be replicated by the same rejection by his father, as devastating as both
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Brendan wakes from his sleep in the same instant way that he has a tendency towards.This means that Alcina doesn't have the time she needs to pull away and pretend shehadn'tbeen hovering over Brendan. That she was peering down at his features with curiously fascinated abandon.Brendan opens his eyes to Alcina's face, floating just inches above his. Alcina's doe eyes are round and glittering in the morning sunlight streaming through the curtains, seeming almost comically wide from the present angle below her nose.Heat floods Alcina's cheeks as she freezes, flustered, mouth parting and no explanation forthcoming save for incomprehensible stutters.Brendan's lips quirk upwards, transforming the blank cold face into something undeniablywarm. Creasing her features with lines that pull a weak smile from Alcina's lips, despite the blush still marring her cheeks."May I help you?" Brendan rumbles, perfectly polite even in th
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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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Somewhere far, far below the grounds of the Western Plains, is an elaborate passageway of holding cells, built of heavy metal bars and lit only by the sparse torches.The dungeons, though no one quite likes to use the word.The dungeons have long been empty for years, having only been used once in recent times. And only briefly, too, given that the inhabitant had been quickly disposed of, once all the information had been extracted from his mind with Lord Alfred’s Gift.Today, the unused torches in the dungeons have been lit once more, for a new guest.It is a young woman, hardly older than twenty, her features lovely and delicate in violent contrast to the grimy holding cell she has been chained to. Everything about her seems like a sacrilege, here, in the dank walls of a dirty underground prison; as though she is something that does not belong in a place so dirty and murky.Even the color of her hair - pale pink locks, vibrant even in the darkness of the cell - stands at odds with t
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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
