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 to ride 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
Alcina wakes up in the morning alone, as she has grown used to in the nights since she'd begun to sleep in Brendan's bed. The lord, it would seem, is an incredibly early riser. She finds out from Mary that it is because Lord Brendan has swordsmanship practice with Commander Lincoln most mornings. As it is, the piece of information sparks the beginnings of an idea in her mind. She can't stop remembering what it had felt like to be so utterly helpless. When all she'd found herself able to do, was clutch desperately at the horse's reigns that had carried her away from Brendan, where he stood fending off the bandits on his own. How even when she'd returned, she'd found herself at their attackers' terrifying mercy (or lack thereof), with nothing to defend herself with. Alcina had never been permitted the opportunity to take up the sword as her elder brother had. A runt like her, after all, could not be permitted anywhere near the ba