“I was wondering if you would like to visit the night market in town tonight.” Brendan askes.
Alcina stares.
Brendan shifts minutely. “It is an outdoor market, open twice a week at night. They have an interesting selection of stalls and crystal wares if you’d like to go.”
Alcina's, eyes widening, nods her head so furiously, that Brendan mildly worries her neck might snap.
“Yes, please,” she says, sounding painfully earnest. “That sounds magnificent, I’d love to-” Abruptly, Alcina's cheeks color, and she folds her hands carefully in her lap.
“Yes,” she coughs, clearly embarrassed at her eager display.
“Thank you for your kind invitation, Lord Brendan."
* * * * * * * * * *
The two of them take a small, compact carriage into town, manned only by their driver.
A typical protocol would command at least a few guards, but Brendan had said that having more guards with them would only alert their presence even more, and so the two of them would enter largely unattended.
Upon their arrival, Lord Brendan flips the large hood on his heavy cloak, such that it nearly conceals the entirety of his face.
Alcina, startled, cannot help but inquire, “Why are you wearing a hood, Lord Brendan?”
Alcina can see the line of Lord Brendan's lips, quirking into an unamused smile from underneath the hood’s edge.
“My face is quite well known around these parts,” is all the explanation he gives, before exiting the carriage.
He pauses, however, to help Alcina down with surprising gentleness, and Alcina can’t stop staring at the massive hood that conceals most of his face.
What does it mean, that he must wear a hood because his face is well known?
Because the people fear him?
Once again, Alcina cannot help but wonder at the way Lord Brendan seems to willingly hide himself away, from the people who fear him.
She wonders, if the reason he seemed so scarce around his own castle, was for the same reason.
Alcina can’t help but wonder if that’s what she looked like, all these years.
If she, too, had carefully and quietly and willingly snipped and folded away from the parts of herself that others looked down on, and if that’s why Alfred and Nordin had looked most heartbroken of all.
That’s when she sees the night market.
It’s like a vibrant, magical circus of colors and noise and life, abounding and overflowing with effusive energy over the full of the enormous open-air space.
Stalls of every color, aglow with the bright strings of lanterns and bulbs strung criss-cross overhead, were bursting with all manners of goods and wares and people, bargaining and gossiping and shouting with laughter and good cheer.
Alcina's never seen anything like it.
Like a moth drawn to a flame, she finds herself walking closer as if subconsciously pulled forward, her eyes wide and reflecting the dancing lights in front of her.
“Wow,” she breathes, eyes darting this way and that, trying dizzily to take in every inch of the wonderful display in front of her.
“Is it always like this?” she asks, looking to Brendan - who, though Alcina can no longer see his eyes, seems infinitely amused, somehow, in the small line of his lips.
“I’ve only been myself a few times, but generally, yes, it would seem so.”
Alcina's eyes flicker back to the market, transfixed.
Alcina doesn’t know why it shocks her so - why she’d imagined a gloomy and dull place, of the Western Plains when it’s so vibrant and colorful and lively.
But she thinks, then, that perhaps this is why someone like Brendan - who comes from the shadows and those things dark - is feared and excluded even more.
“Go on,” Brendan says quietly. “I’ll follow behind.”
Alcina goes.
* * * * * * * * * *
For hours, Alcina loses herself to the splendor of the market.
She marvels over the beautiful glass displays and jeweled pieces offered to her by craftsmen, and gasps at the mouthwatering food stalls selling the most delicious treats she’s ever tasted.
Even the castle chefs couldn’t come close to the taste, here, in the open night air and surrounded by the bluster of an entire village of people, come to life.
It’s a manic, uncontrolled sort of energy, the kind of life that makes Alcina feel like she’s truly among people.
Here she is not judged, she is not stared at as a Pierrot. Nobody cares if she has a gift or not.
She loves it.
And though she’s never really ventured out into a city like this, not without attendants or guards, Brendan's looming presence at her back provides not fear, but comfort, this time around, like an assured weight that Alcina finds each time she turns around.
She gets so caught up in the rush of it all, that at some point, when she discovers a stall filled with rare books and manuscripts, she whirls around, stars glittering in her eyes, to pull excitedly at Brendan's draped sleeve.
“Lord Brendan, look-” she urges, pulling the man in beside her to show him the store.
And then, all at once, she remembers where - and with whom - she is, and drops the sleeve with embarrassment burning at her cheeks. “Oh, I- I’m sorry, I didn’t-”
But Brendan merely leans over her shoulder for a closer look at said books, and Alcina's embarrassment reduces in favor of showing to him the particular book she’d had her eyes on.
Written, she’d noticed, by the same author as the well-worn astronomy book she’d found in her room.
It doesn’t go unnoticed, either, that Brendan purchases that very book before they leave the stall.
* * * * * * * * * *
All in all, Alcina grows nearly drunk with all the excitement of the market.
By the time the two of them head back to their waiting carriage, Alcina's arms are loaded with too many packages to count.
She’d even purchased things for her two brothers, and Mary and her purse is considerably lighter.
Brendan even has to graciously carry a heavy portion of her bags, as they are too numerable for any one person to carry.
Alcina is so delighted, still poaching with rampant energy, that she chatters happily away about all the charms she’d purchased and stalls she’d enjoyed, at Brendan, who merely listens with that half-smile on his lips.
Until, suddenly, there’s a thunderous roar of hooves clopping on the floor from all sides.
In seconds, their carriage comes to a screeching halt.
Immediately after, there’s a muffled groan and a thump from the front, where their coachmen ought to be.
Alcina freezes, eyes wide.
Brendan's expression has grown dark and sharp.
“Come out with your hands up!” comes a rough, gravelly shout from outside.
Alcina's heart leaps in her throat.
Are they being robbed?
Her heart thunders painfully in her chest, horrified as she is where she sits, shuddering with fear.
Brendan, from the seat across from her, has grown a grave - almost murderous - expression.
“Come out, now!”
Brother Nordin, Brother Alfred, Alcina think fearfully. It is not by the hands of the Shadowed Beast that I was to die, but common road bandits--
“The second we get outside,” Brendan hisses to her, low and smooth and for Alcina's ears only. “You are to get on the horse, and ride.”
Alcina stares at him, stock-still and eyes wide. “But-” her voice will not come out louder than a hoarse whisper. “But you-”
Brendan leans in, close enough that Alcina can see the storm brewing in his dark eyes. “And don’t look back,” is all he says, firmly, before he curls a cold hand firmly around Alcina's arm.
The two of them exit the carriage, immediately surrounded on all sides by at least ten masked bandits, each one wielding a shining, silver sword towards their throats.
Alcina finds herself so startled and terrified, that she stumbles down the last step, only kept from collapsing to the ground altogether by Brendan's steady hold.
And then, all of a sudden, in a series of movements too quick for Alcina to track, let alone register in her mind, Brendan has, with surprising strength, bodily lifted her by her waist up onto the horse.
Alcina's hands slip automatically onto the reigns, too shocked to react, her body moving instinctively to slide her feet into the stirrups.
Dimly, she registers the growls and shouts of the bandits around them as they lunge and close ranks.
She catches the steely glint of Brendan's eyes for one brief second, before Brendan, using a dagger Alcina only then realizes Brendan has in his hand, cuts the straps restraining the horse to the carriage.
Just as the first bandit reaches Brendan, Brendan reaches out and smacks sharply on the horse’s side, sending it flying forward.
Alcina's, eyes wide and terrified, gasps, looking backward just as Brendan had instructed her not to do, as the horse pitches her forward and farther away from the growing battle by the second.
The 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.
The 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 toride 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
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
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
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
"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
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-
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
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