“Lucero!” Rowan awoke with a start, her scream pierced through the stillness of the air.
Beads of cold sweat clung to her skin and dampened her back. Her eyes darted around, frantically taking in her surroundings as her vision slowly cleared of her brother’s bloodied face. A hand instinctively reached for the scar on her shoulder that stung with a bitter reminder. The faint taste of iron and ash still lingered on her tongue.
She was back in her bedchamber, tucked safely into the sea of pale purple that made her poster bed. For once, she was glad to see the spread of disturbing colours.
It had all been just a nightmare. She sighed and sank back into the comfort of cotton and feathers. She'd nearly let her guards down. But the memories from the preceding night came flooding back before she could.
Rowan straightened. Alarms blared in her mind. It wasn’t all a dream. The creature, the shadows…the Duke. Yet, except for the faint throbbing in her ears, she felt no ache, found no scar on her body to justify as prove.
But she could not move her arm.
Rowan blinked, her mind was more disoriented than ever. Was it all only a part of her imaginative mind?
Her gaze slowly travelled down the length of her paralyzed limb. A tangled mess of dark silk were clutched tight within her hand. With a jolt of realization, Rowan gasped and withdrew her hand. For moments after, her gaze darted between the strands of black that had slipped from her grasp and her own hand that now felt like it had just touched burning coal.
The creature—no, man, who had been asleep in the chair beside her bed stirred awake with a soft groan. Dark blue eyes bored straight into hers, rendering her mind useless at the sight of her brother’s face overlapping with his.
Rowan shook her head hard and tried to clear her vision.
She had noticed their resemblance the moment they first met but never had he had such a look in his eyes as he stared at her now. His had always been a storm of silver or the ice pikes of light blue—never this calm, never this…loving.
Cornelius Darkwoods blinked his eyes into focus. His brows narrowed as soon as they found her. He reached out to her, towering even seated.
Rowan flinched involuntarily. Her body trembled and her teeth clattered, the echoes of the nightmare haunting every inches of her. Tremors still ran through her veins no matter how she tried to calm herself. But the look in his eyes froze her in place.
He noticed the quiver of her lips but did not stop himself as he usually did. The Duke was just as lost. His eyes widened, his fingers trailed her features over and over again—as if he needed to confirm not just with his eyes, but with his touch as well that she was really here with him.
The moment his skin met hers, a sense of serenity washed over her.
She stared at him, confused. Through her fogged mind, she was made to wonder if he had the same abilities Walter did. Yet, Cornelius himself seemed unaware of what he had done as he gently wiped at her eyes with a thumb. It was as if he had drained her of all her fears, her uneasiness with a single touch.
Was it a part of a Magus’s magick too?
The face of the creature that tried to maim her surfaced in her mind. Its disfigured features haunted the delicate ones near her. She thrashed against him but still, he would not budge. His hold on her firm, just as his gaze was locked steadily with hers.
“Hush, little one. It was just another nightmare,” he murmured in a soft voice, pulling her close as he stroked her hair. His gesture gentle, as one would when trying to pacify a small animal. “You’re safe with me.”
Was this really the same man who had set those wraiths on her?
“Why would you save me when you clearly want me dead?” she asked, her voice strong despite how she knotted her insides was. Was it part of his game? To hunt her till she was near death and heal her so that he could harm her all over again? If he thought she could be duped as easily, he was wrong.
Rowan felt around her thighs instinctively. Her heart sank as she came across nothing but her own skin.
“If you’re searching for your weapons, don’t bother. The creature took them with it when I threw it off the cliff.”
Her claws reflectively sprang out at the sound of his voice. “Not all weapons.”
Cornelius looked from her threatening gaze to her trembling fingers and back again. A sigh left his lips as he took her hands in his. “The last thing I want would be to have you killed.”
She could have freed herself from his grasp if she wanted to but the look on his face stopped her. Not even for split seconds had he broken their gaze. His thin lips were pressed into a firm line, thousands of words unspoken passed silently between them.
They looked almost remorseful.
“A week. I was only gone for a week. You have no idea how devastated I was when I return to find you gone. Had it not been the gargoyles, I couldn’t have reached you in time. ”
He guided her hands to his eyes, the tip of her claws only inches apart from the blue orbs, the light in them dimming. Still, he held her gaze unblinkingly. “If you doubt me at all, you can kill me right here and now. I would not dodge, nor will the life magick in me be enough to repair any wounds you were to inflict upon me now.”
The mist that clung to her mind immediately lifted. With a gasp, Rowan yanked her hands free and tucked them under the rich velvet that blanketed her. In all states of disarray, she had not noticed how Cornelius had been holding her bare hands. His life magick steadily funnelled into her to replace the emptiness of her own.
She snapped her head around and stared into the mirror of her vanity table. A pair of startling red stared back, dark hair curled with renewed lustre framing a face of perfect porcelain white. Unrestrained powers coursed in her veins, awakening the Nyphillie in her. She was more powerful than she had been in a century more.
Rowan turned back to Cornelius in disbelief. How deep must the Magus’s magick run for him to heal her to more than she was before, after she was rendered half dead?
“That creature you saw in the West Wing wasn’t me,” Cornelius tried, this time finding no retort ready on his consort’s lips. “It was a part of the darkness in me, created in my youth. It was a miscreation, nightmares given life. If I wanted you killed, I wouldn’t have asked for your hands in the first place.”
Rowan blinked twice before his words finally sank in. “You asked for Anastasia Lockhart, not me,” Rowan enunciated each word slowly, confirming she had not heard him wrongly. As drained as her mind was trying to wrap itself around the creature of nightmare, she was even more tired of the Duke’s relentless act.
“I asked for the princess of Lucidus,” Cornelius corrected with a defeated sigh. For the briefest moments, the Magus appeared his age. When he spoke again, she heard no hesitation in his voice. “I had never asked for her. What makes you think I did?”
Pause. Had she drained enough life magick to make him delusional?
“It had always been you, Rowan Lockhart.” He kept his distance from her then, though his fingers remain locked with hers—delicately as if he was afraid he would hurt her and not the other way around.
Who was this man and what had he done to the Duke of Noxsidus? The Duke who had given her nothing but icy glares for the past month?
Reading her doubts, he continued. “Love, I have watched you long before you came to me.” He put two fingers to his lips and blew between them. Rowan stared at him, rendered even more clueless for two heartbeats before her ears twitched at the sound of wings beating.
A swallow the size of his thumbs combined swooped in from the small window above the doors and landed in her laps. Its pale brown body glinted as it titled its head to one side and regarded her with a pair of familiar dark blue eyes.
Rowan stared at the creature, eyes widened in instant recognition. “How did you get here?” the words slipped from her tongue before she could stop herself. She would know the creature anywhere. No other swallows had eyes of the same shade.
It was the strange bird—only creature alive, in fact—who had not ran away from her. She remembered its chirps, a comforting sound that had accompanied her from the other side of the barred windows throughout the years she was kept hostage within the castle’s walls.
On occasions, she had seen it perched on branches nearby while she ventured out in the death of night, accompanying her in her race against the wild hares as she spurt across fields and flipped over walls.
A few days after Cornelius’s proposal arrived at the castle though, she no longer sees the creature. She had thought it had finally returned to dust, having accompanied her for decades. Animals, like lower Fulgels, were fleeting creatures after all. Never had she thought she would see it again.
And here, of all places.
Cornelius’s deep chuckle answered for the creature. “Do not look so surprised, it is mine in the first place. You met it in Lockhart’s Castle only because I sent it there.”
Though his answers were meant to clear her confusion, her mind only got cloudier with each. For over centuries, the Duke was the only man who had rendered her speechless.
Cornelius and the swallow blinked twice in sync. A soft smile of nostalgia tinted his lips. “It had been my eyes and ears since the day of Princess Anastasia’s coming-of-age ceremony.”
Anastasia’s coming-of-age. Ten years, two months and six weeks ago. She remembered it all too well.
It was the day when she had first gained the King’s trust. The day she did the unexpected and saved the princess. The day she was finally free to roam the lands but was chained as the princess’s shadow in exchange.
It was also the day she had met the Duke for the first time, though only briefly. Back then, he was a mystery of a man she had been curious of as a child, the man that was often brought upon her brother’s lips.
But for what? Why would he want to watch her? Did he thought she would be a threat to his beloved? Had he asked for her to draw her away from the princess?
Just as the man she had once loved in her youth had chosen the princess, the notorious Duke of Noxsidus had crashed through the windows and purged the assassin sent after Anastasia on that fateful day.
She could never forget the look on his face then. A wild look that stemmed from rage and ended in confusion. As if he was not sure why he did what he did, spilling scarlet across the white carpet leading up to the dais. As if a devil had whispered in his ears for it.
All for Anastasia.
Otherwise, who would possibly want a ‘Cursed’ as his bride? Her touch could kill and her blood brought misfortunes. Had she not proven enough when she was the only one who survived the fire that took her brother?
But Cornelius shook his head as if denying her thoughts. “I was watching you.”
A small smile found its way to his thin lips as he gazed into her eyes with such endearment, her mind was frozen in place once again. He placed a hand behind the small of her back, tracing slow circles on the scar that ran across the length of her spine. One carved deep into her flesh and bones, one that, unlike the one on her shoulder, was one only she and a selected few knew of.
“You surprised me. I’d thought that loyalty was long gone with the justice in the world. Yet, you proved me wrong time and again. Never once had I seen anyone selfless enough to shield another with her own body, much less the daughter of her enemy.”
Silence.
“I do not understand what you meant.” He would not know. Surely it was just another bait to make her slip, a trick to gain favour from the King so that he may wed Anastasia once he was rid of her. “The King was the one who had saved me from the fire. If not for him…” she trailed off.
If not for him, my parents would still be alive and Lucero would still be here.
Anyone she had met before had taken her silence for the confession of an overwhelmed victim, the trauma of her childhood too hard for her to bear. Anyone. But not the Duke of Noxsidus.
He laid his forehead to hers, his eyes closed as he whispered to her, “You do not need to hide anything from me, Rowan.”
Her name sounded like a spell upon his lips. Feeling the warmth of his breath on her, her own lips trembled. They were so close, she could almost hear his heartbeat as clearly as her own. While hers once threatened to burst its way out of her chest, his hummed to a gentle lullaby that guided hers to a steadier, calmer rhythm.
"You have nothing to fear here. This time, you won't have to face it all alone again.”He pried open his eyes and bored straight through her. He saw her then. His penetrating gaze cut through the darkness clouding her heart and shed light unto the trembling toddler inside of her.
“I will face them with you.”
She knew then, she could never hide anything from the blue eyes that implored her. They were the first who had ever seen pass her charade of steel and blood, the first who had glimpsed the frightened girl in her.
She was undone. She found herself falling into the depth of the two pools of ink despite the warning blaring in her head. Before her was a man she could never comprehend. He was mad, his moods unpredictable just as his powers were a bottomless abyss. She should not give in to him.
Yet, all the warnings were but a distant sound as she buried herself into his chest, basking in his scent and life magick. It was a battle she had lost when the girl inside reached out for him on her own.
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