His place was not among a budding sunrise – nay, his place was here, amid the inhospitable stone of his wasted ruins. Yet, Don sought the prospective dawn he so abhorred, prepared to chance the harsh, concentrated light for one final glimpse of her.
Throughout the remainder of the night, he had prowled his quarters like a caged and restless animal, tipping a tankard and imbibing far too much mead that would otherwise inebriate a weaker man, seeking a deep end that could not be met. A score of refills and hearty swigs failed to relieve the pressure in his chest or slow his tortuous brooding. Those said thoughts cluttered his awareness now, filling the shadows of his mind with all the terrible untruths he had spewed into her.
Before his rash and very uncharacteristic bargain with a heedless farmer, he had simply endured his mundane existence; drifting astray in the thick of desolation with grim acceptance. Now, he could hardly bear the oppressive air, for she had lent a hopeful touch. His generally unfeeling heart could not compete with the harsh sea of varying emotions. All of the things he would ordinarily abstain from: the self-loathing and immeasurable regret; a feeling of hopelessness and loss, the unrelenting thoughts of "what if", were an unflagging constellation of grief that refused to be quelled.
He wasn't this feeling man. Where was the welcoming reprieve of icy numbness? His innate ability to withdraw from the onslaught of heartache and anger?
Braced before a window, filled with hopeless sentiment, Don waited with bated breath, his expression carved in graveness. As the dawn's early light banded across the horizon, he gripped the rough stone until his knuckles turned white with pain. Watching. Waiting anxiously for her to appear. Greedy for the sight of her and just selfish enough to steal one lasting image.
A dash of roseate pursued the retreating night, the frosted moon slipping away on a soft adieu at the yawning sun's behest, rousing birds to take flight amid the misty air of the pink and lavender hues. For all its breathtaking splendor, the sun-kissed morning engendered no warmth or the admiration it justly deserved. It did not percolate the dark fog of Don's pensive mind, for an arresting, irrefutable thought struck him.
He loved Elle. Loved her. More than he'd ever loved anyone or anything.
In light of this staggering revelation, he felt an inward shock to his core as it sapped all the breath from his lungs, divesting him of his readiness to desensitize from the living. Instead, he ignored his intense affinity for numbness, his preferred avenue of emptiness, and invited the raw, agonizing pain hurtling through him. He would not shut it out as he was prone to do, for he deserved every bit of it.
As short-lived as their time together had been, the chaste and fleeting moments they had shared would never be enough to sustain him. What he wouldn't give to have had all of her – body and soul – to have fully known and possessed the sensual and passionate woman beneath that self-effacing nature.
Internally, Don ruminated over all the things he resolved to eternalize of her, to keep alive in his mind, things he would adhere to until his end of days. The lissome and unsure sweep of her slender fingers, feathering across his scars, skating bands of muscle that flexed in earnest to touch her. The sweet and heady taste of her lips, although steeped with shyness and shallow breaths, filled him with insatiable longing. The velvet brown of her telling eyes that, when marked with fire, could easily be depicted as a man's favored spirits. Her unapologetic candor and naiveté. Her soft, alabaster skin. That wealth of jet-black hair. It left something to be savored in the quiet moments ahead of him, and the thought of another man coming to know these intricacies of her, these infinitesimal parts he relished best, struck a visceral chord of jealousy and outrage in him. He wanted to be the man to nurture her desires, to stoke her passions, to school her in all things carnal.
As much as he yearned to be that man she needed, deserved – he couldn't. He had too much working against him. He hadn't the ability to give her the world, much less his damaged heart, assuming she would even have it.
In short, he was of two minds where Elle was concerned. A part of him resigned to forget her, even the parts he marveled most, whereas the other refused to let her go. Elle was better off without him, he gathered firmly, but that enlightened truth didn't make it any easier to accept.
There was a reserved pit of fire and ash for him in the afterlife. Hell was a befitting and inevitable destination for one grotesque and incorrigible beast. Given that he had perpetrated far more evil than good, eternal damnation was forthcoming. Albeit, it bears questioning, did the netherworld really differentiate from hell here on earth? Could the suffering to be had in the everlasting fire eclipse the suffering endured in the flesh?
Don would go so far as to refute it. Hell was mockery and contempt found on barbed tongues. It was devastation and loss. Innocent lives cruelly stamped out. It was loneliness, and above all else, it was a woebegone heart.
This. Was. Hell.
"Alas, he grieves for his maiden."
Don stiffened, crushing an expletive.
And she was the devil incarnate. That sweetened voice, disguising its nether hostility, crawled across his skin in prickling awareness, much like sharpened talons scraping flesh.
It fanned the fires of hatred in his heart. Hatred was a practical emotion; one he could easily indulge and utilize to incinerate all of the exaggerated sentiments that left his skin feeling flushed against his bones.
"In order to grieve," Don seethed, grudgingly turning away from the window and channeling all of that heated emotion into a cutting glare. "It requires one to possess a heart, and we've already established that I haven't one. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."
With an artful grin, Sera sauntered into the bowels of his chambers. The shadows seemed to cradle her as she crept towards him. Emerald eyes reached from the dark, missing nothing, sweeping over his emptied tankard. Then, appraising the length of him, that beguiling green ignited with carnal hunger as it perused his stalwart frame, coming to rest on his hooded face. "You need not wear your cloak around me. Remove it."
His mouth thinned with disdain, the scar there pulling tight, thwarting a would-be sneer as he muttered, "Why? So that you may admire your creation fully?"
As she drew opposite of him, Don was taken aback by the alarming changes in her appearance. Gone was the deceiving elegance and grace of a statuesque beauty. In its place, were cruel, sharp angles that met beneath the volleying firelight, harshened by the shadows that had favored her a moment ago. In lieu of her lustrous, auburn tresses, earlier adorned with hints of red and gold, was now a mass of dry, brittle hair streaked with wisps of white. Ivory skin formerly dusted with freckles emerged gray and paper-thin, emphasizing the weary lines that bracketed her dulling eyes and strained mouth. Hunched shoulders and a shockingly skeletal frame were a sharp delineation against the glowing backdrop of lambent light.
At such an alarming rate, her lifespan had aged dramatically overnight.
"Does this body fail you, Sera?" Don queried in a mocking tone.
Green eyes narrowed to horizontal slits at him, "I am moved by your concern, or the lack thereof. I'm sure it gives you immense pleasure to know that this pathetic bag of bones is wasting away. Indeed, it won't be long before it deteriorates entirely."
"Have a care," Don warned, "You wouldn't want to parade your weakness. I'm half inclined to confine you here and relish in your waste."
"Were the odds in your favor, my dark one, I'm sure you would leap at the opportunity. Should you have a need to distress me or foil my plans, I propose you subdue it. It would be very unwise to provoke me for you know not what I have conjured in the wind." Sera admonished, growing vexed. "It would be most unfortunate to have another village ravaged by your hands, would it not?"
Those taunting words fueled the rage gnawing at him, and he had to curl his hands, an increasing habit of late, to suppress the violence roaring in his veins, and a murmur of panic, for he had sent Elle back to the village. "So, what's next, then?"
Twisting on her soles, she coasted across the room in a fluid and graceful way that was decidedly incongruent to her waning self. Settling upon the bed, she plucked at her splayed skirts – to still their trembling? He wondered. Noticing their visible shaking. "First, I require a new vessel to replace this one." She motioned with a gnarled hand down the length of her body, her features collecting in repugnance. "Sooner rather than later, of course."
Don was hard-pressed to steal a longing glance out the window. Resisting that unreflective impulse, he straightened away from the windowpane and moved deeper into the room, schooling his features to divulge nothing of his inner turmoil.
"I will not kill for you," Don felt compelled to remind her. "You will not steal any more bodies. Lest you forget, my cooperation depends solely on your ability to refrain from taking life."
"You strike a hard bargain," Sera countered, smirking. "Given that I have death on my side."
"I'm warning you, Sera."
"What other recourse do I have?" She snapped, her haggard face bunching in anger. "Without the elemental host, I am forced to move from one shell of bones to the next. That is a very unpleasant way of existing. I will not accept that, and should I not acquire it, you will never be rid of me... or your curse. A fate you are unlikely to accept. So, we are at an impasse."
"Might I suggest curbing your craft, thus preserving your energy and slowing your imminent decline." Don scoffed.
"Why conserve my energy when I have you?" Shoving off from the bed, she gathered to her wilting height. "You are just the right amount of incentive needed to ensure that nothing stands in my way, and that I am free to wield my power as I see fit."
"Why not summon your hounds to do your wicked bidding?"
"They haven't the necessary savagery that is needed for this arduous undertaking." Sera grinned, "I require a bloodthirsty beast."
Crossing to stand before him, she raised a misshapen hand as if to touch his chest. With a rough sound of his throat, Don seized her wrist in a bruising vise. "I would snap your softening bones and not think twice of it."
Undaunted, Sera fixed him with a lascivious stare. "I want you."
He flung her hand away in disgust, "I'm more partial to a corpse."
She cradled her hand to her chest, feigning insult, then dropping it, she threw back her graying head and released a throaty chuckle. "Then you need look no further, for in a sense, that is what I am."
Don stalked away from her, his expression twisting in revulsion. "Were I to condescend to touch you, rest assured, it would only be to execute your death."
A flash of anger lit up her green eyes, making them appear, in essence, like transparent gemstones. "Pity, for you will not find another willing woman – not with a face like yours."
It doesn't feel wrong when you kiss me. You are not your scars any more than I am my blindness. You don't sound like a monster to me.
Thinking of Elle and her sweet nothings served to mollify his rage, but in the same breath, it deepened the pain and understanding that she was gone.
Sera hissed hotly beneath her breath, muttering something unintelligible before exclaiming in a grating voice full of jealousy and ire, "Mayhap I should take her body for keeping! Would you find me more appealing, then?" Wagging a spindly finger at him, she gave a snide, harsh laugh. "You are deceiving yourself if you think that damaged sightless girl could want you. Without functioning eyes, she will never know your hideous face, she –" Sera gasped, drawing up to her remarkable height despite her bowed shoulders, an idea taking shape in the widening of her sunken eyes.
Don stiffened, every muscle tightening as unease coiled through him like a deadly serpent.
She ambled away from him, saying partially to herself. "Why hadn't I thought of it before?"
"Seraphine..." Don growled low in warning, sensing her thoughts taking an incredulous, unforeseen dive into the unthinkable.
She couldn't. There was no way. It was impossible.
Don felt it then... an unhinging of the air. A pulsing vibration. A displaced stirring that had his heart answering in alarming leaps.
Sera splayed her fingers wide and he could just feel the formidable energy pooling from her fingertips, tips that had blackened. It dispersed like a charged static as gooseflesh rippled across his unnerved skin; the hairs at his nape standing erect. The walls around him quivered, spitting dust and film as the emerald of her eyes flared otherworldly in the encroaching gloom. An unnatural gust struck him, blasting his face, ripping at his cloak. Shadows slithered across the mottled stone and gathered around the gaunt mage in the room, thickening to a dark, impenetrable mass that all but hummed with menacing force.
In the shadowy center, Don could just see the black flooding her eyes, absorbing all of that illuminated green as she began to chant a hushed incantation that didn't quite reach him, the words muffled by the blood pounding fiercely in his ears.
He was eerily familiar with that fathomless stare, for the last time he had gazed into those vacant, obsidian depths, he had become an unsightly creature that could not age.
"Sera, no!" With a guttural growl, Don lunged for her, but had barely taken two steps when an invisible fist slammed into his chest, dislodging the breath from his lungs, its violent momentum flattening him to the floor.
As quickly as it had materialized, it ended. Within the space of a few rapping heartbeats, Sera regained awareness, the strange wind withdrew, her indistinct words ceasing forthwith. The heaviness in the room evaporated, retreating to unearth a deceiving calm.
Sera swayed on her feet and then staggered as the black receded from her eyes and fingertips. Then, knees buckling, she crumpled to the floor in a heap of depleted bones.
Heedless of the hood resting upon his tense shoulders, Don sucked in a ragged breath, demanding in a harsh tone replete with apprehension and disbelief. "What the fuck have you done?"
Familiar green eyes, ebbing in their vitality, alighted upon his scarred visage. Hair nearly white tumbled around her shriveled face as exhaustion and pain seeped into her slackening limbs.
With a trembling grin that congealed the blood in his veins, Sera replied, "I gave her sight."
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The horse's massive body shuddered beneath her, its powerful muscles shifting in tandem beneath a satin coat as its hooves drummed a rhythmic four-beat gait. The mare gave an indelicate snort and tossed its mane as if sensing Elle's unease as her frozen fingers fumbled over the short, coarse hairs of its arched neck before finding the pommel.
The acoustics of her mount were the only sounds to be discerned in the uncomfortable silence shared between her and Givens, her less than affable escort. Not that she would have much to discuss with the older man. What light and pleasant conversation could she manage when her heart felt so heavy? When tears threatened with every bat of her tired eyes and the coldness in her bones had nothing to do with the wintry air.
As Givens led her mare by the reins, coincidentally the same horse that had delivered her to Rossetti Keep, the stable boy had informed her, Elle clutched tighter to her saddle as they began their jostling trek back to the village.
Despite the frigid cold, her lungs burned with the effort to not cry. Even when she and Lucy had exchanged their heavy-hearted farewells, embracing one another tightly, missing each other already, not knowing if they would ever share words again, she had fought back tears.
I feel nothing for you. What makes you think I could love a woman like you?
A woman like her. Unfit. Invalid. Unlovable.
There had been no explanation. He had offered up no sound excuses. Not even a touch of subtlety or hesitation. Just an urgency to send her away and a direct cut that had cleaved her heart in two. After the attack, he had been different with her, colder, as if in his mind he was foothills away, as if their fragile camaraderie had fallen apart. At one disorientating point, she thought she had overheard a woman's voice in the corridor outside of Don's chambers, but she'd still been reeling from the assault, caught in a plight of panic and pain, so she couldn't altogether be sure. Did Don find fault within himself for what had happened to her? Is that why he had sent her away? She couldn't fathom his reasoning. Whatever the whys and wherefores of his callous dismissal, they hadn't mattered enough to warrant explaining. She had not mattered – at least, that's the impression his harsh inflection had rendered.
Elle straightened in her saddle and bit down on her trembling lip.
She hadn't believed any of his clipped words, recognizing them for the lies that they were... and yet, uttered with such concise and steely conviction, they had humiliated and hurt all the same. Don would just as easily shut her out like all the rest, as if their time together had been meaningless, as if the chemistry between them had not existed, and his willingness to do so sowed the seeds of anguish and self-destruction. It brought all her insecurities flooding to the central part of her rattled and vulnerable awareness.
It was unlike her to wallow in self-pity, but since the attack on her person now paired with Don's insensitive rebuttal, she struggled to regain her fortitude, her strength of character, her precious airs instilled in her as a young child. Instead, she found herself combating destructive and disparaging thoughts, thoughts that shoved her further and deeper into a shattered state of mind.
Although Don had never professed to loving her, she thought there had been something extraordinary between them, fond sentiments worth engaging, finer feelings that could arguably become so much more. It had her questioning whether she had meant anything at all to him, if she had affected him even in the slightest whereas he had irrevocably changed her. Had her fanciful hopes and dreams convinced her to trust in something that hadn't been real – to yearn for something that could never be feasible? Had he been manipulating her? Was she so gullible to think that he had found her desirable? Was she not worthy or wanting of a man's affection? Would she ever be enough? Would she ever find someone to love her just as she was?
Elle had opened her heart to him, and he had shuttered his in response.
Something cold and wet coasted down her icy cheek and she wiped it away, wincing from the tenderized skin there.
The bruise was a sore reminder that called to memory his quick defense of her and how he had saved her from brutalizing hands. And afterwards, he had held her to his massive chest, cradling her in thick arms designed to rekindle a soothing embrace. A man who, on more than one occasion, had staked his heated claim, declaring her his for the keeping. An unfeeling man would not care if she filled her belly, nor would he placate her curiosity. He would not entertain her stubbornness or relate color with such deep understanding. He would not have kissed her so passionately. Touched her. Not one or the other was behavior indicative of a man who claimed to feel nothing for her.
I'm thinking how much I like touching you. It's all I think about. I desire you as a damaged man can, like a darkness that steals across your moonlit skin. I want for nothing but your touch and untried lips. It is not easy wanting you in this form. I can't be anything other than a beast. These were not the words of a man alleged to have no heart.
With Don, her blindness had not mattered. He had never made her feel frail or crippled, but rather, beautiful and wanted.
How could she return to the village and resume her former life as if he had not impacted her in ways she fully did not understand? How could he expect her to forget him when he was ingrained in her for the rest of her days? How could she part from that bold flavor of leather and sea? Those perfectly flawed lips that kissed with tender yet hungry persuasion. His abrasive yet gentle caress. The weight of his shadow as it fell around her. She would never want for another man's kiss or touch. She would crave only him.
No one in the village would believe her were she to illustrate the man she had come to know. Don Rossetti was not some cruel and ruthless beast, but in sooth, a tragically broken and woeful soul that, despite tremendous grief and regret, could still find kindness and tenderness in his heart for her.
She would convince them, persuade them somehow to listen. She would prove to them just how incredibly wrong they were of Don Rossetti.
So deeply engrossed in the musings of her thoughts, Elle was unprepared when her horse suddenly reared from step, nearly throwing her sideways, pitching her heart to a frightening lurch. Readjusting her grip on the pommel, her thighs tightened to maintain a firm upright position as the mare weaved wildly as if to wrench free of Givens' grip, all the while, exhaling a sequence of nervous snorts from its nostrils.
"What is it?" She cried out to her escort in mounting unease.
They had come to a complete stop, both horses now emitting fair amounts of anxious breaths, their hooves battering the dirt.
"They caught a trace of something they don't much like." Givens answered ahead of her, followed by the unnerving sound of a sword sliding from its scabbard. "Just sit tight, miss."
With the unsheathing of the weapon, icy tendrils of fear slid down her spine, its steely presence a preamble to danger.
With a jerky nod of her head, she slanted a keen ear to the woodlands flanking them, anticipating the sounds of wildlife scurrying through heaps of parched leaves that littered the ground – only, there wasn't any. Everything had gone frighteningly still. An ominous quiet had emerged on all sides of them. Not a rustling to be heard. No rousing of limbs. No swaying of branches. It was hair-raising, the stillness of the oak.
Elle had the uncanny sensation that something stalked them, an intangible threat poised for the fitting moment to strike. Was it an animal? Could it be the rest of Solomon's men bent on avenging their defeated partner?
Her heart nearly gave out in fear at the latter prospect, and the terrifying realization that it was just one man that stood between her and potential danger.
And then suddenly, there was an explosion of sound, namely, a swift and violent wind that soared through the trees. A high-pitched shrill assaulted her sensitive ears, snapping brutally of branches, shredding limbs, their shattered clippings an audible warning before its icy front slammed into Elle, its mighty impact knocking the breath from her lungs and likewise, her body from the saddle.
When she hit the rock-hard earth, it wasn't so much the pain echoing through her battered body that gave her cause for alarm, but rather the disembodied voice that proceeded it. A woman's voice. And for a stunned moment, Elle wondered if she had struck her head, vaguely aware of Givens calling out to her. But there was no pain, just a breach of hissing words that lay siege to her frantic mind. She couldn't understand them, but they flooded her, an unclear mantra fraught with rancor and venom, its purpose palpable as a terrible burning started at the backs of her eyes. All the while, the wind persisted. It was unforgiving, unrelenting, wrought by an unseen hand. It slammed into her from every angle. Wrenching at her clothing, tossing her hair about her face.
As Elle scrambled to get her bearings, every indistinct word grew sharper and with it, the fire in her eyes. The pain doubled, intensifying to the point of excruciating. Its white-hot intensity forcing her to her knees as a scream erupted from her throat. She pressed her fists to her eyes as white spots danced before her vision. Her stomach heaved with nausea, and she feared at any given moment unconsciousness would take her.
And then it did.
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