Clack...Clack...Clack...
Every inch of her nerves tensed as he slowly stepped out of the shadows. She could hear his breath, clear as if he was breathing down her neck. Darkness clung to his feet, a string of invisible chains that echoed his heavy steps as he ate up the distance between them. The way he stared at her without seeing made her swallowed hard.
Rowan had heard his names, Master of Noxsidus, Beast of the Dark Forest—but never had she thought they would mean it so literally.
It was a look that was almost…possessed.
“Lord Darkwoods…?” the words left her lips before she could stop herself. She regretted. The quiver in her voice stocked the dimmed fire in his dark orbs. They blazed alive, blood red of madness shining within two pools of pitch black.
He tilted his head, his neck crooked at an odd angle. His lips parted as he regarded her. His smile stretched the skin of his face taut, cracking his skin. Lines of charcoal black crept from the cracks on the left side of his face to his ear.
An inhuman growl vibrated through his throat. His cracked skin quivered and shattered, a puzzle that broke and rained onto the floor. A dark, bark-like hollow replaced the part of his face where flesh and skin was supposed to be.
As if on cue, shadows peeled away from him and sprang at her in the form of spears. Rowan somersaulted between the rain of blades, dodging most but not all. She landed on one knee, her azure dress tattered in more than one place. Scarlet trickled down the length of her grazed arm and thighs, darkening the rugs that were already soaked in the blood of her predecessors.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Rowan taunted, her voice sounded raspy and weak even to herself. If she knew he would so openly attack her, she would have drained more of his life magick when he had let her. She could barely see straight with what little that remained in her escaping from the open wounds.
Ignoring the throbbing pain in her sides, she clenched her teeth and with a single yank, tore off the layers of satin that formed her skirt. Her crescent daggers glinted in the moonlight as she lurched towards the shadows.
“You’ve got to try harder if you want to kill me!”
Dark whips lashed out, each alive with their own will to maim. Her blade deflected one and slashed another on its way down. The shadows fell and merged seamlessly into the darkness that clung to the walls. Another wave immediately replaced them and whooshed past her cheeks. She dodged it but lost a lock of her wig. A few more caught her by the ankle just as she tossed the ruined wig into the heart of the shadows.
They lifted her into the air and flung her across the distance. She cried out once, air knocked out of her lungs. In her stead, her wig was devoured within their bowels. In split seconds, what remained of it was spewed out of the shadow—shredded beyond recognition.
Had she not dug her daggers into the floor in time, she would have crashed right through the gaping hole of the window. The pointed branches awaiting her fall were not any friendlier than the raging shadows before her.
The Duke’s sinister grin grew wider as his inhuman eyes trailed the streaks of red her grazed knees had left across the rugs. He prowled towards her, eyes unblinking in the hollow of his face. “Kill…Kill…” he repeated in the voice of a phantom, feral and raspy.
She hurled her daggers at him then, burying them to the hilt in his chest. One went straight for his heart. Her aim was true. He should have fallen. Yet, the Duke’s eyes stayed wide open, unblinking as his feet continued to scuff before another.
He’s a monster.
Rowan could not stop the tremble in her lips. Her breath wheezed and her lungs collapsed. She forced her unwilling legs to move but neither budged. Invisible flames danced across her eyes but their heat only fueled the ice that froze her limbs.
She could not move, could not breathe. She could only gaze upon the distorted face of the beast that loomed before her, feeling as vulnerable as she had when she was a toddler.
The ghosts of her past haunted her, their screams filled her ears. It was them. She was sure of it now. Golden blood splayed across her vision. She saw splashes of it on the Duke’s dead white face, momentarily replaced by the features of her family’s murderer.
“Are you alright?” he had asked, reaching out to her with hands still dripping with her brother’s blood. The man had wanted her alive, knowing she could not ascend the throne as a Nyphillie, knowing her presence would make him a hero—the one who saved the last of Lockhart’s bloodline.
Back then, the fiend had had his use of her. The beast that watched her now had none.
She would not survive.
“No…” she clutched and shook her head, her memories as a child flooded her mind and clouded her vision. Her head swirled and her teeth clattered. The two faces overlapped, blinking in and out of focus until she was no longer sure if the two was one or the same.
Her nails dug into her scalp as the beast neared her, its dark fingers extended. She would not go with him. She would not touch the hands that had dug into her brother’s eyes.
Blood. His hands were stained with blood. Silver blood.
No…brother…no…
“LUCERO!!”
Pandemonium broke just as her brother’s name left her lips.
Through her fading vision, Rowan could not comprehend the scene before her. A sudden howl of wolf assaulted her ears and fluttering of heavy wings stormed overhead. She had seen shapes, blurred dark silhouettes that dove towards the Duke but could not differentiate one from another.
She remembered hearing the growl that tore from his throat and a familiar voice trying to reach her. Her name echoed in the hollow of her ears. The only thing she remembered was the strange eyes of the man who saved her before darkness claimed her whole.
Silver.
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