Chapter 9

In the south, in a castle fortress that towers atop a rocky terrace, three men commence the planning of the war.

“So House Clair has chosen to align itself with House Warner, then, with those animals” Duke Cedric drawls, a silken murmur. At the table’s head, he sits elegantly upon his chair, draped comfortably along one arm with his legs crossed.

“It is more than I expected from them,” Lord Casper, Duke Cedric's younger brother, hums. “For a while, I rather surmised they’d attempt to refrain altogether and would have to be put down like the dogs they are once we’ve settled the dust.”

Cedric's lips curve into a small, amused smile.

For two men who’ve just learned that the last player on the board has chosen to join the other side, they are remarkably, unnaturally calm. To an observer, it may even appear that the members of House Albrecht seem almost pleased at the outcome, as puzzling as it may be.

“Pity, that they’ve chosen the wrong side,” Cedric says. “That lovely brain of their eldest would have been a nice Ornament to keep.”

“Alfred Clair will burn with the rest of them,” a third voice - far more brazen than the first two - joins the conversation.

At his seat across from Cedric, Duke Elton of House Johnson leans forward onto the table, his expression dripping with bold eagerness.

“House Clair should be the first to fall to ashes, for their foolishness. They should have stayed neutral just like all these years so that I could have left them at the last to deal with."

Casper rolls his eyes. “And you will be the one to eliminate House Clair, then?” 

In a head-to-head confrontation - the only kind of confrontation that House Johnson is known for - it is well settled that Duke Elton cannot hope to outmatch Lord Alfred's tremendous Gift. 

Elton snarls. “With our two houses, he-”

“You fail, yet again, to look further than your own nose,” Cedric's voice - as pleasant and unhurried as ever - murmurs.

“Do you think it makes sense, for us to expend our resources now, felling House Clair - the least of the three threats - when it will then leave us weaker to handle Warner?”

The word Warner - unlike Cedric's usual leisurely drawl - is sneered, laden with such malice that it produces a harsh effect in contrast to his normal tempo. 

Brendan Warner.

The Shadowed Beast. The man who holds the power to control the darkness itself; the unholy Gift that, in a direct conflict, will likely overwhelm any other.

“Then we get Warner,” Elton shrugs. 

“Your impatient blind bloodlust will be the reason it is your head that rolls. Do you expect us to go and confront Brendan now, when he is safely at home, protected by the greatest military force of all the houses combined?”

Elton's nostrils flare with anger at Cedric's deride tone. “Then what,” he grounds out, eyes flashing dangerously. “Do you suggest we do?”

Cedric leans back in his chair, lips curling into a sharp, predatory smile.

* * * * * * * * * *

At house Warner,

Alcina checks the book collection again, this time with the revelation that it had been Lord Brendan who’d put these books here; that these books are his, and that he’d selected a particular selection to place in Alcina's room.

She had already noticed before, that the thirty-something books were of every varied genre.

She realizes now, it might be because Brendan did not know what kinds of books Alcina liked - that he’d been considerate enough to think of this, and then to include a wide variety of genres.

Alcina picks one of the books up, peering closely at the binding, the page edges, and even going as far as to flick through the book carefully, looking for signs of wear.

All the books are in untarnished condition, but upon closer inspection, she can see that all of the books have, in fact, been read at least once.

And that some even show subtle signs of having been read several times, such as a slightly worn crease in the spine.

For the next hour, Alcina sits on the floor of her room, carefully inspecting each and every book in the collection with acute focus, like a woman obsessed.

She can’t help it.

These books - this collection of literature that Lord Brendan has, at some point, read - are the first and only true window into her husband-to-be, the man whom they call the Shadowed Beast.

Alcina isn’t exactly sure as to what the rules of etiquette are in regards to attempting to intensely examine and set theories on one’s future spouse from a stack of books.

But, Alcina is trying her best, here - it’s not like she’s got a lot to work with.

Admittedly, she’d thought so little about what kind of a person Lord Brendan might be, in her weeks of preparation for her move here.

All she’d been able to think of was- was nothing more than just the mythological concept of Shadowed beast, as the man they refer to as the combination of all the dark things in the world.

It hadn’t occurred to Alcina, to think that there was a person behind it all, all the same.

But being here, interacting with the man - who, yes, is a man, and not some ghastly beast as some stories had made Brendan out to be - whose only faults thus far have been his sharp and abrupt nature but little else.

It makes Alcina suddenly greedy for any sort of information she can get, as to what kind of person her intended is.

So she’s not at all ashamed to admit that she digs the books in front of her with the passion of a woman possessed. 

What she finds baffles her.

The books read most often are not any sort of novels or fiction at all, but rather, a set of books on astronomy and cosmology.

Alcina tries to imagine him - that bored, disinterested gaze - looking up at the stars, and pondering on the origins of the vast universe, and it makes her head spin.

Brendan seems to also have enjoyed a rather thick volume on a collection of fairy tales - which would be similarly baffling, was it not the kind of fairy tale that ends more in a ghastly, unexpected end for the nominal princess, of the grim variety.

This falls more in line with what Alcina might have expected, but still.

To imagine Lord Brendan reading fairy tales - even grim ones - is a thought that had not once occurred to Alcina as within the realm of possibility. 

What Lord Brendan had read most of all, though, is a novel about a man who, on the full moon, turns into a wolf-like beast.

Alcina, hunched over on the floor with her back aching and squinting in the dimming light, reads through the passages on the very spot. 

It talks about a man, who is cursed with the misfortune of being forced to transform into a Lycan creature each month, in a terrifying and excruciating transition.

The man spends each of these nights as this beast, terrified of the body he is in, and terrified of the things he could commit in this monstrous form. He is trapped, the narrative says.

He feels like a man’s soul trapped, screaming futilely, in the confines of a monster’s form that he fears.

And though he only spends one night of the month in this form, the beast that he becomes for this lone night is the creature that rules the remainder of his days.

He lives the other 29 nights in constant terror of what he will become, and despairing the things he has done while he was the monster.

It is dark and tragic and not at all amusing, in any way.

'In the nights I spend in this monstrous form, I begin to fear, as time passes, that my soul, too, reflects the beastly form I am housed within.'

* * * * * * * * * *

Alcina spends that very night reading the book.

All the while, she cannot help but to think-- of Lord Brendan, reading these same pages, over, and over, until some of the pages have faded where his fingers have run over the lines with countless abandon.

She traces these same faded lines with her own finger, trying to imagine what it is Brendan had been thinking of when he’d read these words.

'In the nights I spend in this monstrous form, I begin to fear, as time passes, that my soul, too, reflects the beastly form I am housed within.'