marlowemuses | He leads me into the night, he drives away the light

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He leads me into the night, he drives away the light

The only sounds in the forest were the sounds of the horse's hooves, soft against the snow, and Laurent's breath, quick and ragged. It was well past nightfall, and he was exhausted, but there was no choice but to keep going. If he delayed, his father's men would catch him.

He'd left before dawn, riding hard, and had stopped twice to exchange horses. No message could outpace him, so his story was not questioned, and both his face and his gold were accepted everywhere he went.

His father's story had been richly detailed, never thinking that Laurent would use those details as a map. He had the rose, and he had the words that the beast had given his father, the magic enchantment that would lead him to the castle and his fate.

There was a certain clearing, with an ancient, tumbled-down ring of stones. Laurent stood there to speak the words, and the clouds parted, spearing moonlight down upon a nearly invisible path. Laurent put heels to his horse and followed it.

The path was clear, swept bare of snow, though drifts rose high on either side. Once, Laurent looked back to see the path lost behind him, clogged by deep drifts as though it had never been.

He emerged into a soft, warm autumn night.

The clock might have been drawn back by some months, with summer and the harvest still rich on the breeze, along with the heady scent of late-summer flowers, and, twined throughout the rest of it--roses.

The forest parted into a vast meadow of soft grasses, broken here and there by copses of wood and rising stone bridges that crossed deep chasms, and led to a soaring, overgrown castle. It was everything his father had described and more, a place of wild beauty. The castle was large enough that it could house a city, though it showed no signs of life.

Heart pounding, Laurent urged his horse forward, though there was no hurry now. He was within the spell, and thus had fulfilled his duty. His father's men would not be able to follow him here, even with the secret words. Or, if they did, it would be too late.

It was a beautiful place to die.

Laurent rode boldly up to the front door of the castle, dismounting and tying his horse at the bottom of the steps. Hungry and exhausted, he climbed to the massive doors of the castle and they opened before him as if by magic.

Laurent's heart thundered in the silent hall, beautiful and crumbling, of a fantastical construction such as he had never before seen. "Hello?" he called to the echoing corridors, but there was no answer. "I am Laurent of Vere. My father took one of your roses. I have come to fulfill his debt."

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Laurent's wary that this is a trap. He transgressed, but the Beast is behaving like it was well within the bounds of propriety.

"No. I never had any interest in it." Laurent takes a wary bite of his food, studying the Beast all the while. "I won't need the gloves. It seems your assurance that nothing in your realm would harm me includes the roses."

Another bite, heart pounding. He doesn't understand what came over him that afternoon, nor does he understand why the Beast isn't enraged.

And Laurent is wary again. Damn. Did he never let his guard down?

A creature knows when it could become prey at any moment.

Damen took his glass of wine in hand, feeling ill at ease trying to attempt normal dinner small-talk after years of solitude, much less the tumultuous events of the past week and the fraught nature of his relationship (if one could call it that) with the Prince.

"I am glad to see it extends even to that," he said, eyeing Laurent's hands, pale and unmarred by any streaks of red from wayward thorns. "I...did not think to warn you about that part of the garden. The blooms there are fragile, as you have seen. I do what I can to help them grow again, but I am no gardener myself."

He'd had to learn.

Feeling awkward, Damen groped for a line of conversation. "What are your interests, then? Besides reading, of course?" Who would guess that the huge, terrifying Beast would prove an absolute puppy of a conversationalist? At least subtlety would hardly be expected of him, he surmised with a grimace.

The Beast was trying to make conversation now. Laurent felt only irritation at the monster's puppyish attempts to make friends. The first night's offenses had been neither forgiven nor forgotten.

"Riding," Laurent answered, studying the Beast with cold eyes. "Diplomatic relations. Swordplay."

At least he still has his horse. His knowledge of trade routes and crop yields isn't going to serve any purpose here. And he doubts the Beast wants to put a sword in his hand. He left his own in Vere. He was here as a sacrifice, not in an attempt to slay the Beast.

The coldness was startling. Damen didn't know what to do with it. If friendly attempts were always to be rebuffed in this fashion, then there truly was nothing to hope for.

He was not one to give up easily, however. He arranged his fingers (claws) around the stem. There were no glass flagons here, but thick sturdy gold etched with fantastical scenes. Tonight's were nymphs dancing in a circle, a satyr reaching for one of them.

The things Laurent named were all things Damen had done as a man. But he could not say so, and he was far removed from that world now, the world of princely pursuits. He simply bowed his head. "Fine royal accomplishments. There is a small armory and training field in the southeast corner of the castle, if you wish to keep up your forms at least." Damen did not offer to join him. That was no doubt the last thing Laurent would wish for, an armed Beast attacking him. "And you already know how to avail yourself of your horse."

One claw tapped the chalice, Damen studying his prisoner in return. "Do you only practice diplomacy with men?"

"You mean, as compared to monsters?" Laurent arches a brow. "I can't say I've ever met one before. You may be assured, Beast, that my lack of diplomacy has nothing to do with your appearance or anatomy, and everything to do with the fact that I am your prisoner and you threatened to rape me. Of such things are monsters made, not any flaw of your visage."

His lip curls, and a tremor of rage goes through his body. "Would any degree of diplomacy win me my freedom? For if not, then it would only serve to flatter your vanity, and I have no desire whatsoever to please you, Beast."

Damen's grip tightened. His temper had gotten the best of him that night, and his despair, and he'd given into those darker thoughts as he'd tried to frighten Laurent into breaking. He regretted it, deeply and fully now, but there was no taking back what had been said and done. Only a choice going forward.

It was a reminder to him that whatever anger he felt now, he could not let it overwhelm him. Could not lose the scraps of humanity he had left.

He stared at his wine. "You judged me long before I spoke. I would be a monster to you if I were the kindest, gentlest soul you'd ever met. You deceive yourself if you think otherwise."

The amber-brown eyes focused onto Laurent over the rim of the cup. "You know it would not. Your freedom was exchanged by your own free will. And it will be a very long lifetime alone in this castle, if you are determined to hate me every day of it."

Laurent rolled his eyes. "Yes, I did judge you before you spoke to me. I judged you from the moment you told my father that he could either sacrifice a son or die. When you told him that a rose was worth his life."

Rising to his feet, Laurent approached regally along the length of the table. "My freedom was exchanged for my father's. For a rose. For the threats you made."

He stopped in front of the Beast, reaching out with gentle, elegant fingers and stroking them lightly through the fur at the side of the beast's face. "I don't fear you, monster, for what you look like. The kindest man in the world could wear a rug and a pair of horns and still be kind."

Laurent bent, coaxing his fingers under the Beast's chin to lift it as he lowered his head, bringing his lips to within an inch of the monster's maw.

"I despise you because you are a monster within," he whispered, hissing the words.

Damen only hardened as Laurent spoke. What else could he have done? The King of Vere took a piece of his heart and his very humanity. The bargain for one of his sons was his one remaining chance of breaking the spell. Yes, the rose was worth a life. But Laurent could not see it that way.

He watched the Prince's advance almost warily. He didn't know why Laurent was coming closer; it seemed the opposite of what he should do, if he feared and hated the Beast so much.

The wariness turned to a paralyzed shock with Laurent's hands touching his face. All breath left his lungs. Damen felt his head turned up, Laurent closer than he had ever been before, even that first night. And then the words like a physical blow. Damen's jaw quivered. Laurent practically dared him to lunge, to hurt him, to fight back. He wanted a Beast he could hate. He wanted to believe that was all Damen was inside.

"You have no idea what your father did," he said tightly, not moving an inch. It took all the self-possession he had, holding so still when all his instincts urged him to pounce. "You know nothing of my heart." Anger shimmered in the surface of the darkened eyes that stared back at Laurent, yet Damen restrained himself from lashing out in word or deed at the man's cruelty. He fought tooth and claw within for that humanity, the kindness Laurent believed him incapable of.

"I know your words and I know your deeds," Laurent answered him, letting go and stepping back. "I see the rage in you. That's what makes me despise you. You deceive yourself if you think otherwise," he spat, reflecting the Beast's words back at him.

His glare was icy, daring the Beast to prove him right, to lose his temper and attack.

He'd come here to die. His family and his kingdom were safe. He had nothing left to lose. Nothing to fear, aside from the threat of violation that he could not and would not forget.

The rage within, Damen could do little about. There were years upon years of loathing (self and otherwise), rejection, and isolation to fuel it, the encroaching fingers of despair to fan its flames. And Laurent threw every bit of kindling he could find onto the fire.

Released, he studied the etching on the flagon again, pointedly not meeting Laurent's eyes. They goaded him to do what terrible things they both knew he was capable of. The gold of the cup winked at him, the reaching satyr gleaming impishly.

Damen curled his other hand until he felt the pinpricks where his claws had dug in as he'd watched Laurent bring life to a section of his roses. There was more than cruelty in this man, just as there was more in his own heart. "You see what you wish to see. You refuse to consider any other possibility besides what you have already decided to believe. There is truth beyond, if you only opened your eyes."

He would not give Laurent the satisfaction of seeing him break and personify that monster in deed. Even if there was rage in him, it did not have to control him. He could still master it, while his heart remained human, while his roses still lived.

Laurent returned to his chair, slumping into it and reaching for a piece of meat pastry to nibble upon. "What?" he asked, cold and sharp with his own misery. "Look beyond the temper, the rape threats, the death threats, and see... what? A creature that likes poetry? What a pitiful monster you are. You think that a little bit of literature will be enough to outweigh the rest, and that if only I could ignore the very real threats and see only the poetry, I'd see the 'truth'. To what advantage? So that a cruel, petty creature like you would be pleased with me?"

Rising again to his feet, Laurent drained his cup and tossed it carelessly aside, the very image of a callous, cruel young prince.

"Go ahead and hate me." Better that than lusting after him.

He turned to leave.

Damen felt sick. Laurent was relentless, and fighting back would only prove what he claimed was true, and yet he mocked Damen's very attempts to show he was not a monster. What course was left for him? There was nothing, only despair and destruction. It was just a matter of running out the years now.

There was a strange glassiness to his eyes as he watched Laurent. This was not his salvation. "A cruel, petty creature," Damen repeated slowly. "You seem to have intimate experience with those."

His gaze bore into Laurent's back. "Is this the truth of you, then? Someone worthy of hate?"

"Yes," Laurent answered, with a self-loathing little laugh.

Clenching his fist, Laurent walked away, returning to his room.

His heart ached with loneliness and despair. At best, he could hope to be hated and left alone by his jailer. At worst, the monster would make good on his threats, or find a way to seek some new entertainment from him.

Exhausted, he stripped down and curled into his bed, lying there sleeplessly for hours.

Damen slept little that night. It took a vast quantity of wine to get drunk enough to even feel dazed, much less sleepy, and the invisible wind tsked at him as he drained yet another cup. It was deep into the night before he found any sodden rest, and he woke fitfully far too early.

Yet he had an agreement to keep. Woodenly, he dressed amd crept down to the library, feeling like death warmed over from the rough night, Laurent's words impossible to block out. He'd contemplated simply sending the Prince a message and freeing him from the morning's engagement.

Damen, however, had decided that the only thing he could really fall back on was the preservation of his honor, regardless of how ruthlessly Laurent mocked him for it. And so he was there in the library in the early hours, having already eaten, an untouched tray of pastries and silver coffee service on the little table before the chair where he sat silently. Everything he'd known of Laurent thus far suggested the Prince would honor his word as well and come.

Laurent was surprised to find the beast waiting for him in the library.

He stopped for a moment at the edge of the alcove, regarding the beast with a calm, impassive stare, and then he walked away.

He returned within a minute with a book, setting it down on the edge of the table and taking his seat across from the Beast, no longer paying him any attention as he poured himself coffee, adding cream and sugar, and selected one of the pastries to nibble upon.

Damen's eyes flickered, watching his movements, but he followed suit in coolness, with only a "Good morning" breaking the silence between them as Laurent came close. He said nothing more, he did not even stare, simply aware in all his senses of Laurent's nearness. Their chairs were not miles apart. But if Laurent would play as ifnothing had happened, then Damen could do no less.

He turned to his own book, no poetry today but rather a book of Veretian maps, its provinces and cities described in detail. If Damen had ever been to Vere himself, it must have been as a very young boy, for he remembered nothing about the country himself. He read today with no expectations of ingratiating himself to Laurent by this study; he did not believe anything would. But Damen was nearly as interested in foreign lands and cultures as he was in languages, and learning this might, perhaps, give him a very small insight into the places his prisoner had known all his life.

Laurent studied the Beast as he ate, intrigued by the reading material. After he finished his pastry, he picked up his book. It wasn't the one he'd been reading before, as he didn't want to begin that one from the top. He'd picked a different one, which he'd read some years ago and wanted to re-read.

Opening to the first page, Laurent began to read out loud. His tone was pleasantly modulated, shaping the words evenly but not bothering to bring any particular performance to the recitation.

Looking up at the sound of Laurent's voice, Damen let his attention focus on the unceremonious reading. There was nothing about the Veretian words that gave him trouble; he had studied the language for years upon years, having taken the condescending attitude of the Veretian envoys as a boy with the approach of a challenge to be beaten soundly. An Akielon who spoke their language almost as well as they did - perhaps more, for he knew much obscure and outdated vocabulary that might be encountered in the older books - was indeed a slap in the face to such pride.

At first Damen listened almost out of duty, an obligation between them fulfilled. Laurent made a pleasant narrator, and he was easy to listen to, but there was not much joy in that alone for Damen, after last night. And yet, as the introduction flew by and Damen began to feel invested in the main characters, he found that there was more enjoyment to be had out of the story than he had thought. Laurent's straight tone only served to highlight an amusing scene, and the corners of Damen's mouth turned in what might have been a smile or a grimace, it was hard to tell on the beastly face.

Laurent read for over an hour, pausing occasionally to drink his coffee or to nibble at one of the pastries. When his voice grew tired, he finally marked the page and set the book aside, rising to his feet. He'd discharged his duty, at least for the time being. He would return tomorrow morning to continue reading. Until then, he wanted a walk and freedom.

He said not a word to the Beast. It was better, he found, if they didn't try to converse.

Damen did not try to stop him, but he followed Laurent's departure with a solemnity that did not carry much hope with it. If Laurent refused to even speak with him, they would be stuck in this impasse forever.

Which is why he sent a note to be delivered with Laurent's lunch, whether he chose to take it outside or in his rooms: The west gardens make a gracious setting for a game of chess and a view of the sunset. It was an invitation, not a demand, although he didn't know if Laurent would see it that way or not.

Either way, Damen slowly paced the gardens late that afternoon, a bistro set arranged beneath a pergola and spread out with a large golden chess set. The west gardens were filled with plants designed to attract butterflies, and several varieties flitted around, their wings catching the slanted rays of the sun.

Laurent got the note out on his ride, and was surprised and curious again as to how the Beast's magic always knew where he was and what he was doing.

He showed up comfortably before sunset, warily admiring the beautiful array in the gardens.

Whatever his hesitations about his host, Laurent didn't wish to refuse any invitations unless it was necessary. His tongue might be acidic, but Laurent has been trained with courtly manners, and defaults to them when possible.

"Good evening, Beast," he said, taking his seat at the table and reaching for the crystal goblet of honeyed white wine that was awaiting him, finding it perfumed by fresh fruits and a hint of flowers.

He was surprised to find that the Beast played chess, but not as surprised as he might have been a few days before. The Beast wished to make a gentleman of himself. Learning chess was, therefore, necessary. It was probable he'd never had a human opponent.

"Good evening. I am honored to be greeted." Damen's voice was dry but pleasant as he leisurely moved to take the other seat. In truth, he was flattered that Laurent had joined him. The Prince could just have easily chosen not to join him, and there would have been no repercussions. Of course, whether Laurent believed that was another matter entirely. And talking to him was a very promising sign.

Laurent by late afternoon glow was more stunning even than by candlelight. If he was hoping to hide from the Beast's gaze, this was certainly the opposite effect. Carefully, Damen made his observation almost off-handed. "You have some color in your cheeks. Was your time outdoors enjoyable?"

Leaning back in his chair, he waved a hand at the board to indicate Laurent's turn first. It had been a long time since he'd played with another human. There was a magic he'd found that would play against him, and it posed plenty of challenge, but this? This was brand new territory, playing with Laurent. If he could only keep his temper, perhaps this wouldn't be an unmitigated disaster.

Laurent's eyes lingered upon the beast with as much wary calculation as ever. Being able to assess the beast's intent and threat was a matter of survival to him. Even if he constantly prodded at the beast's temper, that was as much a calculation as anything else. He needed to know how far the beast would go in a rage, and he'd rather find that out up front than after some weeks or months here.

He made his move, a perfectly standard opening play, and then picked up a morsel of food, considering it with lazy calculation. "How is it," he asked, "that you always seem to know where I am within your realm? How did you know that I'd touched your roses?"

Damen, for his part, was quite placid in his chair as he countered without hesitation. The sunset might not be quite so kind to his beastly form, but there were fewer shadows here, and more butterflies that hovered nearby for distractions of beauty, and there was a sweet fragrance lingering in the air that could only be the fresh new scent of blossoms recently opened.

He considered Laurent speculatively. How much to tell him? How much could Laurent handle. "Magic, of course," Damen said, the tips of his fangs showing as he half-grinned, well knowing that answer would be less than satisfactory. "I like to know where your curiosity takes you. It took me years to fully explore these realms. But... those roses, I have a special interest in watching. As you might guess, they have a greater portion of magic in them than nearly anywhere else here."

It was all he could say, under the terms of the curse, but Laurent was smart, he would know they were important, given that his father's life was forfeit for just one of them.

Watching was the word that stuck out in Laurent's mind. The Beast might be getting reports from his magic, might be stalking Laurent on his adventures. Watching. He'd said it in regards to the roses, but it was still the wrong word to use for Laurent's suspicions.

Laurent played with a veneer of idle impatience, taking very little time to think about his moves. He had a game in mind that he'd played before. He knew the outcome, he knew the route. It was just a matter of leading the Beast into it and giving him little time to think about what was happening.

Laurent yielded the center of the board, letting the Beast wash through more and more of his pieces, until the advantage seemed overwhelming and Laurent seemed a foolish, reckless player who didn't take the time to think.

Until the trap sprung, because he'd drawn all of Damen's pieces to the wrong side of the board, and Laurent's pawn had a clear path to reach the end, become Queen, and claim the King. It was three moves to checkmate, but it was already inevitable.

"So you were watching me," he says, leaning back in his chair and waiting for the Beast to see it, to analyze the board enough to know that there is no way out.

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