Rowan picked up one of the wooden roses that crowded the vase of clear crystal on her bedside table. Among the many misunderstandings he had had about her, he was right about one thing—she does love roses.
Each petal was carved with precision, thin and polished to smoothness to match the hue and texture of a true rose. Its stalk, now crowded with thorns that were smoothed of sharpness, rested comfortingly within her palm. Though she had never seen a true red rose, she knew it could be planted among the real ones and never be found.
A sad smile found its way to her lips. She could only imagine the look on her brother’s face if he was here with her now. She still remembered the way his pale eyes lit up as he told her the tales of Noxsidus’s rare red roses. Never had she seen her brother as excited as he was each time he promised he would bring one to her one day.
Yet, here she was.
She was not sure if it had been the Duke’s resemblance with her brother that had rendered her mind vulnerable to such thoughts. The strange pain in her chest from a week ago still gripped at her heart, slowly carving its way into her blood and bones.
She had not seen the Duke, not during the day, not even in his study anymore. Even Alfredo was gone. Walter had refused to tell her their whereabouts when asked. It was as if the Duke and his beloved pet had evaporated from the Keep, as if they had been deliberately avoiding her. But the number of roses had not stop growing in her vase even after he had clearly had enough of her.
Was he trying to imply she was just a false rose to him? One with her thorns on display but tamed—that she was just a mere décor he was forced to keep, unable to defeat him even if she wanted to?
The thought unnerved her.
Rowan rose the stalk in hand high in the air, about to fling it to the wall but stopped. With a sigh, she dropped it back into the abundance of red and slipped out of her bedchamber. Letting her feet guide her, she wandered the hallway without a destination in mind. Over the weeks, her unconscious mind had sketched out each and every small turns of the Keep upon her heart.
Initially, she had come to Noxsidus both out of curiosity and the false sense of hope that she might be able to convince the Duke to aid her cause. Now, she was not so sure of herself. She was not even sure if she could make it out of the Keep alive at this rate.
The Duke’s hostility was apparent, a stark contrast to his false pretence of a welcoming host when she had first arrived. It made her wonder if the Duke had been born with a twin brother—that the kinder of the twin was kept locked in the dungeons since the seventh day of her arrival.
But that was impossible. If there was another Magus in the Keep, wherever he was, she would have noticed it long ago. The Duke was a walking fountain of life magick.
By the time she returned to her senses, she found herself upon the old staircase leading to the West Wing.
Though the Keep’s hallways were dark and gloomy—personification of the Duke himself—the West Wing was darker still.
The windows of stained glass that lined the Wing had more holes, broken, than they did glass. The walls crawled with thick mosses. Dark woods grew into the cracks of the stones, holding parts that were falling apart together with their roots.
Half a dozen gargoyles with features deliberately distorted to give them a menacing look were perched upon the pillars that supported the ancient aisle. True, Rowan had yet to see any of the statues move the way the water pails did. But instincts told her there was something off about them. Their beady eyes trailed after her as she passed, urging her feet to move one before another.
Cold air kissed her skin and sent a wave of tingle down her spine. It brought with it a metallic odour she was all too familiar with as she passed under a velvet curtain slashed to half its former glory.
Rowan stopped in her track. She knew what lies ahead even before her eyes adjusted to the darkness beyond.
Battle marks, traces of blades skittering and blood spilled remained etched into the marble floor of white. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the ghost of swords and armours clashes thundering around her with screams of women and children echoing their battle.
The smell of ancient iron still clung to the tapestries and charred carpet of dark brown—whether they had been originally coloured so, she did not know. Just as she was not sure if the voices ringing in her ears had been echoes from her past or indeed of those who still haunted the blades laid at her feet.
Her fingers glided across the torn tapestries, the only decorations afforded of the deserted wing. Most were indiscernible, golden threads shredded by blades and, judging from the splinters of wood that remained, some wooden weapons she did not recognize.
Rowan could barely recognize the shapes of what remained on the tapestries.
One depicted a single man with at least a hundred of silver-haired Fulgels kneeled down in front of him. Golden branches of the Tree of Life spread behind the crown of his head like light from the sun. Only slashed threads remained on where his face was supposed to be. As if one with vengeance had deliberately done so upon the man’s face. Another depicted the same man, now with a woman of equally brown hair wrapped within his arms, a babe within hers.
Though she had not been a witness of the time, Rowan knew the story like her own.
The Genesis.
Her brother had read the ancient volume to her once when she was but a babe. He had told her then, that it was during the Genesis that the Fulgels, once mortal, first gained their affinity with the elemental sprites. If the first of Magus had not shared his bond of nature with the Fulgels, they would never have the magick they now have pulsing faintly through their veins.
This was where it all began.
One after another, she scrutinized the remaining tapestries. With each that passed, the air seemed to take a chilling dip. Still, Rowan marched on, unable to take her eyes of the strands that remained intact.
Her eyes widened involuntarily. She was suddenly made aware of how precious each scratch and crack left on the walls were, wondering if they had been around long enough to bear witness to the legendary moment. Over the few weeks she had tried to impress—and annoy—the Duke, she had forgotten entirely about the strange Wing. Now, she only wished she had returned sooner.
Yet, Rowan’s string of awe was cut short as she soon reached the end of the hallway. An ancient door she had yet to stumble into loomed before her. She was about to place her hand on the knob when she noticed the strangeness of the door. A lock of dark steel hung from it. Its surface of obsidian black glinted faintly in the dimmed hallway.
Dark steel? Rowan narrowed her eyes, reconfirming that she had not seen wrongly. The whole Keep was grown from wood, its walls crawled with dark branches, its furniture and pillars of the same dark wood. Aside from the cutleries and candelabras of pure silver, never had she came across anything of metal the whole month she was here.
Yet, compared to the rest of the Wing, the lock appeared new. Perhaps several centuries old at most, but not long enough to be what remained from the Purge.
Could the Duke be in this room? She had not seen him since he had stormed off the other day. Their game of hide-and-seek recommenced without her consent. But a glance at the lock still sturdy in place denied her thought. Even as a Magus, he could not possibly lock himself outside from inside.
Rowan laid a hand on its uneven surface and inched nearer. Only one conclusion came to mind. What could the Duke possibly be hiding from her? What did he not want others to find?
The doors shook as if responding to her.
Or what did he not want to find others?
A familiar scent drifted through the gap between the doors. A mixture that reminded her of rain and burnt wood and strangely enough, sometimes the wet soil of Lucidus. It was a smell she recognized from the garden of rose and at times, from Alfredo—
—which reminded her, where had the wolf been? She had not seen it since the day she had been summoned to the rose garden.
“Wolf, are you in there?”
The doors shook again, violent, as if something was trying to force its way out. The sound of claws against wood echoed in the room beyond. Whatever it was, it was something huge, with claws and a bad temper—fits the wolf’s description perfectly to Rowan.
“What have you done to anger your master this time?” she sighed, a hand placed on the door to still the sturdy wood.
Once, when the wolf had tried to munch off a part of her bed, the Duke had locked it out of the Keep for the whole day. It did not seemed to mind then. At least it still had the freedom to roam the woods. Now, it seemed a tad too agitated a beast. Being locked up, reaped of freedom, could do that to one. Rowan of all people would know.
“Really,” Rowan sighed as she lifted the lock. “Being the Keep’s favourite…dog, one would think you would have better sense than I do. How could you not know how temperamental your master is?”
The lock’s metallic surface unnerved her unlike the blades she was used to. Its body weighed heavier and its steel felt colder against her fingertips than she had initially thought. The dents carved into its body on the other hand, were not merely a work from the careless hands of a rough work smith. They were the result of constant collision over the years. A look at the similar marks carved into the dark wood of the door confirmed her thought.
A shudder ran down the length of her spine. Is this not the first time the wolf was held hostage here?
“You’d better behave yourself after all the trouble I went through for you” She paused, considering. “If I let you out now, can you agree to the truce with me?”
Silence. No banging of door. No scraping of claws.
Nothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
As easily as a cat extends its claws, her nail sprang out of her forefinger. She felt her way within the lock, her ears perked as the tip of her weapon worked its way around its intricate maze.
The wolf was in luck that lock picking happened to be one of her many pastime endeavors back in the days. Had it not been, unlocking a lock as deformed would had been an impossible task even with its designated key.
Click.
The cold metal slipped from her fingers. Its crash echoed through the hallway, a bang as loud as the fall of her heart. Cold air licked the span of her neck as the doors creaked apart, dragged by invisible hands.
A paw—no, a foot, peeled itself from the shadows. The walls around her instantly darkened a few shades, painted by darkness from within that spread like spilled ink across the floor. Shadows spilled through its gap and clawed towards her, relentless in their chase even as she backed away.
Rowan took another wary step backwards, her claws set free as the doors peeled open an inch more. Even before he came into the light, her senses had warned her of the shift in the air. No one could read the look in his dark eyes better than one with the blood of the Fallens in her could.
Bloodlust.
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