#underwater tomb | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

themusingsofacurlyhairednerd · 3 months

Text

Datura Pt 4

Summary: A little (ok it's not very little this is 4k words) Rhysand x Reader training under the mountain

Content Warnings: Some suggestive content, nothing explicit, Rhysand is a tease and so am I, will get to the actual smut eventually ;)

Pt 1, 2, 3

--------------------------------------------------------

There’s water dripping somewhere, the splash against the copper tub echoing across the room in a steady enough rhythm it drags you from sleep. You’ve never been a morning person, especially after the last couple days, it takes everything in you to prop your head up on your hand, open an eye and try to figure out where the noise is coming from. With your luck there’s a leak, even enough to flood. You fully expect to find your slightly furnished prison to be underwater, your bed floating up towards the ceiling. It’s definitely a more reasonable answer than the truth. A flood in this ancient tomb makes sense, who knows how long these pipes had been here? But the violet eyed male sitting on the edge of the tub when you’d never heard the door open? You have no explanation for that.

“The dead sleep lighter than you,” Rhys says by way of greeting.

You drag your gaze to the door. It’s still shut, as if he’d walked right through it.

You pull the pillow over your head, it’s too early for all this nonsense. “Go away, Rhysand.” Maybe you shouldn’t be so flippant with him after the power he’d displayed last night, but you’re too exhausted to care.

“Rhysand?” He says like you’d cursed at him. “I thought we were friends?”

Friends? He doesn’t give you away to his evil Mistress one time and suddenly you’re friends? He’s as delusional as he is powerful and you can’t stop yourself from sliding an arm out from under the sheets to give him the finger.

“You wound me.”

You close your eyes and let sleep try and claim you again, the blissful darkness quiet for the first time in days, no Calanmai visions to haunt you. For a few hours you’d been able to forget where you were, why you were here, why the male hovering at the edge of your bed is here. Perhaps if you go back to sleep it’ll all be a terrible dream.

“You stink,” he says as he yanks the sheets off you and tosses them across the room.

You’re more bare than you’d like to be, still wearing that mud stained shift, too tired the night before to even attempt to get clean, you’d just crawled into bed and cried yourself to sleep. Conscious of your lack of dress, and suddenly very aware of the male’s gaze on your nearly exposed ass, you grab the edge of the pillow and swing at him with all the strength you can muster.

It’s apparently not a lot because Rhys catches it before the blow can lend and wrenches it from your grip. “We have a lot of work to do.”

“Eat shit,” you snarl.

“Not a morning person I take it?”

“You’re the most infuriating male I’ve ever met in my life,” you hiss as you crawl off the mattress.

Rhys grins, eyes glinting playfully. He likes this, you realize.

“I promise you’ll never find another male quite like me, Darling,” he retorts.

You look away from him, at the steam curling off the water in the tub, filled almost to the brim. A bath would be nice… but there’s no door, and Rhys is hovering like a puppy just given a new owner. There is no trace of the male you saw last night, the monster that laid beneath his skin.

“I don’t… have any other clothes,” you mumble, forgetting what you were talking about before.

He holds out a hand and a set of perfectly folded clothes appears in his outstretched palm. “I’m not a monster, I wouldn’t have you walk around naked. At least not out there,” he says with a wink.

“It’s too early for this,” you grumble as you take the clothes from his hand. There’s a pair of pants, socks and a sweater, both black, and surprisingly soft. You carry them into the bathroom on instinct, only remembering at the last moment that there is no door to give your privacy and he’s now sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Will you leave now?”

“I’m in charge of training, remember? There’s no escaping me.”

“Is this training happening in the tub?”

His eyes gleam, “I can think of a few exercises.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose. This version of him is better, better than watching him rip people apart with nothing but his mind, but he’s getting on your last nerve. You can’t remember the last time you’d eaten. He’s going to push you too far and the morning is only just getting started.

“Rhysand-”

“Fine, I’ll turn around,” he does so as dramatically as possible, but his back is finally to you.

There’s little else to do but strip and climb in. The water is blissfully warm, easing your stiff muscles, swallowing the chill that feels like it’s carved it’s way into your bones. You groan as you settle against the side, eyes drifting shut for a few moments so you can savor it for as long as possible.

You’re not sure how long Rhysand’s civility will hold out, so you don’t wait too long before you grab the cheap soap and start scrubbing the grime from your skin. Truth be told, you’d need a good couple of baths to be completely clean, but you make the most with what you have before scrambling out and into your new clothes. They fit like they were made for you, everything the perfect length and size, and they’re warm. After spending so long in your shift, the chill of the mountain is beginning to feel permanent. This takes the edge off, just a little.

Rhys’s turns as you leave the bathroom like he’s been listening to your footsteps, two pastries in hand this time, one half eaten. “Hungry?”

“Where do you keep pulling this stuff out of?” You ask.

He eats the other half in one bite as he holds the other one out. “I’ve got deep pockets.”

You’re too hungry to care.

“Or pocket realms, I should say,” he amends as you take a bite. It’s not warm, if anything it’s a little stale, but there’s something sweet, maybe honey in the center, and it’s filling, easing the ache that’s been steadily growing in your stomach for awhile now.

“Thanks,” you say around a mouthful of the pastry.

He stands and brushes a piece of it off the corner of your mouth with his thumb, like he just can’t help himself. He’s always finding an excuse to touch you. “Can’t have you starving to death before we’re done with you, now can we?”

You frown at that. “Right, that. And here I was thinking you cared about my well being.”

“I can multitask,” he says.

You scarf down the rest of the pastry, manners be damned, “Let’s get this over with then.”

With a wave of the hand, the door opens to him. “Right this way, M’lady.”

“Nope, you’re definitely not calling me that,” you counter, biting down the obvious surprise that he’s letting you out of the room. After last night, you’d expected to be locked in your room until Amarantha deemed you ready--whatever that was supposed to mean--the chance to get out and explore with fresh eyes is a promising start to the day, Rhys’s company be damned. He’s been pleasant thus far, but you’re wary of how long it’ll hold out, you can’t waste any opportunity to explore by worrying about what he’ll do on his next whim.

The halls are scarred from your claws on them last night. You trace their path forward, before they veer left, opposite the way Rhys is leading. You make a mental note of the paths: Left will eventually lead to the throne room, right will be something for training?

Rhys is less chatty in the halls, hands deep in his pocket as he strolls ahead. It looks like he’s trying to be leisurely, but his shoulders are stiff, muscles tight, even if his pace is slow.

The path goes right for a long while, then rounds into a downward spiral. The torches are few and far between here and there’s something beneath the rock scratching and hissing. At one point you’re sure you hear screaming.

“Where are we going?” You ask as you wrap your arms around yourself. This place is creepy, a giant dungeon filled with monsters.

“Some place where you can’t accidentally bring the mountain down on our heads,” Rhys says.

“You’re very confident I have powers you can use,” you reply.

Rhys continues on, but says over his shoulder, “Why are you so sure you don’t?”

“Because…” Because what little has manifested has always been an uncontrolled mess that had a tendency to disappear just as quickly as it would come. Because your uncle had always made it sound like these things weren’t a big deal, they were something everybody had and grew into overtime. Because two days ago you were a simple girl with a simple life and you had liked that, and now suddenly that wasn’t true, you weren’t simple at all and never would be again.

Rhys slows until you’re walking side by side with him. “You shouldn’t have to be scared of what you are,” he says softly, like he thinks the walls might hear him.

Maybe that was part of the problem: What even are you?

The path levels out and straightens back into another hall, the ground more rocky here. A soft breeze whistles through a crack in the wall, but there is still no light to be seen.

Rhys stops at a door covered in ancient markings and pushes it open. The old stone creeks like it hasn’t been opened in centuries, a bit of dirt from the ceiling falling on your heads as you enter. The space is pitch black, the air stale.

“Is this the part where you turn into some giant monster and swallow me whole?” You ask in the darkness. It’s so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face, let alone him.

He chuckles from somewhere ahead of you as he lights one torch, then another. “If you’re a slow learner maybe.”

He uses the first torch to light two others, anchoring one in each corner of the large room. Like the throne room, the roof is held up by carved pillars, each one shaped like a warrior in battle. There’s a rack of old weapons against one wall, the wooden shelf holding it full of holes and sagging dangerously. A stack of training cushions has been stacked in the other, all coated heavily with dust. Some sort of old training room.

“I take it Amarantha doesn’t do much training,” you say as you step up to one of the carvings. Time and dust have worn down the face’s features, leaving one visible eye beneath what might have once been a helmet. The fae male had once been depicted with wings, but only one remains in tact, the other a pile of rubble collecting at it’s base.

“She doesn’t get many challengers,” Rhys says so low it’s almost a growl.

You turn to face him just in time to see the shadow that flashes across his face. He’s pretty good at hiding his emotions, but every once in awhile the mask slips enough for you to see something beneath. It’s anyone’s guess if it’s real or another one of his tricks to get you to let your guard down, but still, you find yourself asking, “Why not?”

“They’ll loose.”

“Why?” You shouldn’t be so open about your disdain in front of one of her subjects, but even after the little display last night, you’re not so totally afraid of her that you won’t ask questions.

He cocks his head like he’s thinking. “You don’t know do you?”

You walk to another pillar, a woman this time, half her body shaped like a giant snake. “That seems to be everybody’s favorite question to ask me.”

Rhys scratches at his chest, “She has the power of all Seven High Lords.”

Shit.

No one had ever given her a name, they’d always said she was a Blight on the Land and left it at that, as if they feared saying her name would summon her. There had been rumors about her, of course, whispered in taverns in the middle of the night, about a female who had ensnared the High Lords, a female who had snatched them all off their thrones. You hadn’t thought it was true. Tamlin was still in Spring.

“How?” It’s a nice story, but who could manage a feat like that? She was an intimidating force of course, but she hadn’t personally done that much. Everything had been done for her, she’d just been there overseeing.

“As I said,” he sits down in the middle of the floor and motions you to do the same. “She is what your father made her.”

You shiver and desperately need to steer the subject away from all things Hybern. You’ll cross that bridge in three months when he arrives. For now, getting out is the objective-- even if that means partnering with a monster to do it. “So why are you here?”

“Siphoning away our power isn’t a one time thing, since they’re regenerative, so she bound us to her so that she could tap into it continually.”

The information takes a moment to process.

“You’re a High Lord?”

He holds out a hand and lets a few tiny stars glitter from his palm, the glittering balls of light forming constellations and shapes before flying away. “Was,” he says sadly.

Not just any High Lord, there’s only one that can summon stars--something you realize now should have made it obvious from the get-go--Rhys was High Lord of the Night Court. And if memory served, the most powerful High Lord in Prythian’s history. Everybody feared him. And he was here, sitting in the dirt with you far beneath a bunch of rock.

Cauldron boil you, you’d told the High Lord of the Freaking Night Court you were going to rip out his throat!

You can’t look at him. What are you supposed to do with the knowledge that you’d kissed the High Lord of the Night Court? You wish the ground would open and swallow you, but Rhys just stares at his hands, like he’s thinking about all that he has lost.

“How long have you been here?” If this was true, if Amarantha had really managed to steal from and ensnare all the High Lords than Rhys was just as trapped here as you.

“Going on fifty years,” he says.

The room spins. “You’ve been trapped here for fifty years?”

“But who’s counting?” The grin he offers doesn’t reach his eyes.

Before you can ask more question, he rubs his hands together and says, “Now let’s work on those shields.”

Your mouth opens to get back to the previous topic, the next question on your lips, but he misreads it and says, “Yours are nonexistent, any half trained daemati could walk right in and turn your mind into mush.”

The image of that male last night, blood trickling from his eyes makes all questions die in your throat. You can’t suppress the shiver. Is that what he’d done? Gone in and turned his mind into soup?

“You have to picture your mind like a hallway,” he explains, “each thought is a doorway into your memories, and each door needs to be locked and guarded.”

You scratch absently at your head.

“Close your eyes,” he instructs. “Now picture a hallway.”

The first hallway your mind can conjure is the winding path you’d taken to get here, the dark, ancient stone cold and unyielding.

“Try again,” he says like he sees it. Maybe he can.

You give yourself a little shake and try again.

“Relax, you’re too stiff.”

“You’re too stiff,” you retort.

Rhys snorts, “You have to let go of the tension in your shoulders. Take a deep breath. You need to let go of the focus you have on the room and look inside yourself.”

How philosophical; you’d roll your eyes if you weren’t squeezing them shut.

“Right now, you don’t exist here in this room, you’re body is the only tether you have. Let your thoughts drift and form the hallway.”

This is probably a skill you need--maybe a skill you should have possessed a long time ago, as unsure of all of this as you are, you owe it to yourself to at try and master your powers. You know if you don’t that he is perfectly capable of reaching into your mind and taking over them for you. If Amarantha would kill a male just to scare you, it’s not beneath her to use her puppet lordling to reach right into your skull and wield your powers anyway she sees fit. You have to try to master them. This might be your only chance.

You let yourself drift, letting go of all the questions and concerns that tug at you, letting your mind relax. With a few calming breaths you start to think about the farmhouse and the little hallway that leads from the stairs to your bedroom, the walls lined with your bookshelves and the collections of things your uncle had found in his travels.

“Good,” as he speaks he slowly begins to appear in your mind’s eye. This mental version of him reaches out a hand and picks a book up off the bookshelf: Enemy Kiss. Of course the first book he’d pluck out of your memories was one of your smutty romance novels.

With a squeak, you reach out and snatch it out of his hand. “Ok no touching the books.”

His grin is wicked as he turns into nothing but shadow and drifts right past you to another shelf. “Seduced by the High Lord,” he reads, fingers grazing the collections. “My Werewolf Harem.”

Your embarrassment makes the walls rattle, when you toss out a hand to grab the book from him the shelves go flying, sending books in all directions.

“Quite the collection you’ve got here,” he teases. “What’s in here, I wonder?” The shelves had been separated by doors, more doors than had been in your actual house, and when he opens it, it’s not a room at all, but a memory, playing out before you like it’s somehow detached from the body you use to move through the hallway. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that physically your body is sitting on the floor, but mentally, you have a body that moves and walks and touches, while your own memory plays out like it’s attached to a third body. When Rhys steps through the door, he steps right into a memory from last year’s Calanmai.

It might have been any other night, were it not for the drums pounding outside the windows, his own voice an echo on a phantom wind. You watch, somehow separate, yet connected to the body laying on the bed in front of you. Moonlight streams down on you as you lay in bed, sweat clinging to your skin, the sheets kicked off. The drums rattle the windows, begging, pleading you to come out and play. Memory you gives a frustrated growl as you roll onto your stomach, pulling a pillow over your head.

A normal memory, much to your relief. You know there are other ones in here that are…

The room spins, a blur of colors and sounds.

“What’s happening?”

Rhys is in shadow form again, a blur of darkness among the flash of color as the memory morphs and settles. Again in your bedroom. Again with the drums and Rhys’s call inside your head. But this time… this time you’ve got your shift bunched up around your hips, legs spread, your hand between your legs.

With a shriek, you spin towards the door and slam it shut.

Rhys finally takes a corporeal form again, now leaning against the door frame, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “I’d praise your quick learning abilities, but I think we could have had more fun if you hadn’t slammed the door so quickly.”

Your cheeks heat, “No more touching the doors, Rhysand.”

Despite the fact that his physical body is across the room from yours, when he moves so that he’s standing ahead of you, your back now flush against the door to keep him out, you can still feel the heat of him. He braces one hand above your head, the other coming down to stroke across your cheek. “See, but you brought that memory up, not me, Darling. I walked into last year out of sheer curiosity, but you started thinking about another night, and brought it right to me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” you grumble. “It just happened.”

“It’s cute that you’re so scandalized by it,” he says as he leans in, lips brushing against your ear.

When you shiver, a door across from you flies open.

“I’ve seen a lot worse in people’s minds,” he continues. “You’d be surprised how often people are thinking about sex.”

He’s the last person you want to be talking about sex with, or at least, you’d like to tell yourself that, but over his shoulder you can see into the room you’d opened, and it’s very clear that memory is of how his hands had felt on you that night. How close you’d been to begging for him to touch you.

You concentrate your energy into slamming that door shut before he can turn and see it--if he hasn’t already-- imagining a lock on it, sliding it into place, no matter how bad it makes your brain pound in your skull.

He glances over his shoulder than, grinning. “Good girl.”

You’re not sure if he can feel the confusion while he’s in your head like this--and you pray to every god you can name that he can’t because than he’d also know that, despite all your attempts to deny it, being called a good girl makes your stomach do flips--or if it shows on this version of you’s face because he adds, “It takes some people years to be able to shut their memories out, let alone lock them away.”

He knocks a knuckle against the wood of the door you’re still barring him from. “It’ll need reinforcing, but you’re making good progress.”

Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s you, but the hallway fades away and you open your eyes, blinking as the lights suddenly feel too bright, dim as they are. There’s a dull throbbing in your head that has you reaching out to rub your temples.

“Is it always going to hurt?” You grumble.

“No, with enough practice you should be able to check and lock your shields without having to be in a meditative state to do it. Which is something you’ll need to master within a couple weeks.”

Hadn’t he just said it took people years? “Why?”

His eyes are dark again, dangerous. “Hybern is sending your cousins to evaluate you and Amarantha’s hold on the Courts.”

You’re sure that’s supposed to mean something to you, but it doesn’t.

“The twins are daemati, like me, but…” he flicks some dirt off his knee, the cobalt and ruby gems on his rings gleaming in the firelight. “I don’t enjoy going into people’s minds like this. It’s an intrusion, not just of your privacy, but of your consciousness. It… it makes me feel like I’m violating people.”

There’s something in his voice that makes you think he might be showing you what kind of male he is underneath all the layers of flirting and show boating, like there’s something haunted and damaged beneath.

“I do it because I have to,” he holds your gaze like he needs a lifeline, like he might beg you to understand why he’d done what he had yesterday. “But the twins aren’t like me and if you give them an inch, you will find yourself a slave to their every whim.”

You shiver.

“You’re shields have to be up at all times, Y/N, your survival depends on it.”

You find yourself nodding. This is a dangerous game you’re now involved in, monsters lurking on every side. As much as you want to pretend that you can go back to a simple life when you finally get out of here, you know, deep down that to get out, life may never be as simple as it had been again. To be free, you’re going to have to dig deep and figure out exactly what you are.

“Show me more,” you say, meeting his gaze. You’re not sure what lies beneath your skin, if Hybern wants it, it very well be a monster as bad as any of the ones that lurk beneath this mountain. But if it means getting out of here, if it is the key to your freedom, you’ll do it. And in the end, you’d rather be the one to awaken it, before anyone else dared try.

--------------------------------------------------------

Tag List: @mariahoedt, @llovelydove, @twsssmlmaa, @sleepylunarwolf, @judig92, @willowpains, @annaaaaaa88, @myheartfollower @uniquecolorwizard

Let me know if any of my links or tags aren't working, my computer is buggin out for some reason, and as always, if you would like to be added to the tag list, let me know :)

#rhysand x reader #rhysand x reader smut #rhysand acotar #rhysand acotar fic #rhysand x reader fic #utm!rhys #utm!rhysand #utm!rhysand x reader #my writing #my fic #acotar fic #slow burn

140 notes · View notes

autisticlancemcclain · 10 months

Text

prev chapter

-- -- --

There is, honest to God, a coathanger butler and a duster French maid.

“Well, that confirms it,” Lance says, clapping his hands together. “I fell off my horse on the way here and I’ve gone insane.”

“I think you’re just smart, kiddo,” Shiro says, amused. “Perceptive.” He has yet to stop his tour, hopping along rather quickly as Lance follows.

Lance opens his mouth to deny that particular claim – Lance is many things and smart is sure as shit not one of them – but there’s a bellowing shout that interrupts him before he can.

“Ta-kashi!”

Shiro-the-candelabra startles, then goes pale, which is a hilarious thing to witness in a face of wax.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he curses. He makes an effort to hop behind a random sidetable placed against one of the farther walls of the massive corridor, but he’s not nearly fast enough. Rapid, angry clanking sounds precede the appearance of an ornately carved grandfather clock, the face – literally and figuratively, man this castle is fucking weird – twisted in a heavy scowl.

“Takashi,” the clock hisses again. “What part of ‘united front' is hard for you to understand?”

Caught completely red-handed, Shiro straightens himself up and attempts to look dignified. “You were busy with Keith! What was I supposed to do, let this one wander around? I was –”

“You were supposed to wait for me, Takashi! Last time –”

It would probably be prudent for Lance to continue listening, as any information he learns is for the better. But as soon as Shiro says Keith’s name, Lance’s ears check out, the world in front of him goes blurry, and he starts to feel like he’s deep underwater.

It hits him, all at once and intensely, that this is really happening. He is, sometime in the frighteningly near future, going to meet his future husband. His future husband who is known across the country to be one of the most vile men in temper ever to exist, who is impossible to love. His future husband who has money, money that Lance can send back to his family that can never manage to get food on the table for every mouth on every day of the week. The future husband who Lance cannot leave, unlike the people before him, because if he does then the family farm will sell and everyone will be homeless and it will lie on his shoulders.

If he fails, his family will never look at him again, the shame will be so strong. The kids – they’ll be uprooted if they have to sell the farm and move away. He can’t do that to them. And yes, his family’s betrayal still aches like a gaping wound in his chest (they didn’t want to keep him Mamà didn’t want to keep him only three wanted to keep him and he doesn’t know who they sent him away the town sent him away his family sent him away everyone he’s ever known decided they were better off without him), but he doesn’t – he can’t let their saving grace slip between his fingers. If he fails then his greatest fears are confirmed – he is the failure that he’s always known he is.

But If he succeeds, he will be locked for life in an enchanted castle that feels as if it doubles as a tomb.

Suddenly Lance is sick to his stomach.

“–ance? Lance? You okay, kiddo?”

Lance shakes himself from his thoughts, eyes focusing on the concerned faces in front of him. He clears his throat, straightening his shoulders and plastering a smile on his face.

He will not fail. He will not. It is the lesser of two evils, to succeed, so he must.

“Yeah, sorry. Just remembered something, is all. I meant to look for something to feed my horse when I came in here, there’s no hay in the stable, but I forgot with all the –” he glances at the clock and candelabra, wondering how to phrase the clusterfuck that is now my life tripped me up, my bad delicately – “the… hubbub.”

Hubbub.

Alrighty. That’s the word he’s going with. That’s fine. He’s totally cool with suddenly becoming a bitter senior citizen loudly complaining about the youths. All is well.

Despite his strangeness, the two people (??) in front of him visibly soften.

“Sorry, dear,” the clock says. He clanks forward and extends one of his arms – shiny, carved gold decals of the sides of a grandfather clock – to shake. Lance does. “My name is Adam. I imagine you must be exhausted. Would you like to see your room?

That sounds excellent. Lance sags at the suggestion, shoulders slumping forward and sigh escaping his lungs without his position. His own room in the castle…what will that look like? He’s always shared a bed with someone, back home. And sometimes he is kicked and sometimes people snore and sometimes people squiggle around and hog blankets and talk in their sleep. Sometimes people even pick their toes, completely unconscious, and refuse to believe him when he complains about it in the morning. Such is the life of a large family in a small house.

Lance will have a bed to his own, now. A room, even! It’s almost unfeasible. He’s expecting something huge; giant windows making up a whole wall at least to let the sun it, impossibly high ceilings, a bed as big as his house once was, with a canopy over the sides of it. As plush as goose down and soft as Kaltenecker’s – his favourite of their family’s cows – fur. Cream walls, maybe, prime for him to paint.

Paint! He’s sure he’ll have paint here. The richest of colours, even, and paintbrushes he doesn’t have to make from kinky horse hair. And he’s sure he’ll have time, here, outside of whatever chores he’s expected to do, to ride Blue around the grounds. Maybe, for once in his life, he can enjoy his day outside of fleeting moments with the animals, or Veronica, or the twins. Maybe there will be more time outside of fleeting minutes when he watches the sun rise. Maybe he will have freedom here, to explore what he likes, and in luxury, no less.

Wait.

His brow furrows. Freedom…he won’t be free. He may be surrounded by more opulence than he ever expected to see in three lifetimes, but freedom is still a luxury he can’t afford.

“What about Ke –” he stumbles over the name – “the Prince?”

Shiro and Adam exchange the least subtle look Lance has ever seen on a human, let alone a grandfather clock and a candelabra. It would be funny if it weren’t so troubling.

“What about him?” Shiro says carefully.

Lance blinks at him. “Is his royal highness too busy to meet the guy he’s literally about to marry, or…?”

“We just figured you would prefer to settle yourself, first.” Adam says it quickly, practiced, obvious; confirming Lance’s suspicions.

There is something afoot.

“I’m pretty settled, actually. All good in the hood. Checked off most of the list, tick tick tick. I just need to meet Prince Temper-tantrum.”

Both royal attendants laugh nervously.

“Ah, we’ll get there,” Shiro assures. He hops forward, pointing his candle to the hallway, indicating that Lance should follow him. “We have time, no? It’s late. Dinner will be ready soon. No need.”

He and Adam are very persistent, all but shoving Lance out of the front entrance and to a massive staircase. One of them must have sent the word of Lance’s arrival, because one of the branched-off hallways of the staircase – a wing? Is that what it’s called? Why must rich people label stupid things – is illuminated, clearing the path Lance is meant to take to his new room. The other is as dark as the rest of the castle, cold and isolating, reeking of angst and cowardice and a smidge of superiority, too, because reputation or not, what kind of jackass doesn’t at least introduce themselves to their future husband?

Suddenly, it all kind of boils over. Lance roots himself in the middle of some grand marble hallway and, ignoring Shiro and Adam’s frantic pleading, cups his hands around his mouth and shouts: “Hey, Prince of Darkness! Is it too beneath you to say hello to your future husband, you beastly man?”

His voice echoes throughout the castle, shout bouncing off the carved stone walls and getting louder, somehow. Lance stands, glaring at the dark hallway, fists clenched at his sides, fury still lighting up his veins. But then a minute passes, and another, without so much as a peep of movement, and rage starts to trickle out of his body in favour of something like regret.

He has one job, here. He is to make nice and play the silent husband so he can get funds back to his family, and no one goes hungry. He is supposed to avoid Prince Keith at any and all possible moments, keeping his head down and living his life as separately and as well as he can given the circumstances. And Adam and Shiro were perfectly happy to let him do so, too, guiding him to his room before he even had to breathe in Prince Keith’s direction.

Him and his big fucking mouth. Clearly, there is more than one person in this castle with a temper.

He turns to the candle and the clock. “Sorry,” he mutters, averting his eyes. Hopefully they don’t call this whole thing off. He doesn’t think they will – from what Shiro implied, they seem kind of desperate – but still. He shouldn’t push his luck.

When Shiro and Adam don’t respond, he looks up, expecting to find them disappointed, but instead finding them not looking at him at all. He frowns, taking in the way their faces have dropped, the way they’ve both gone pale. As pale as bloodless things can be, anyway. He follows their line of sight, shifting his body to face the farthest end of the dark corridor, and squints, trying to make out what they’re so white about. It takes him a moment to pick it out, but eventually he sees it, almost glowing in the darkness – a pair of large, yellow eyes. And…

Teeth?

Lance blinks. He rubs his eyes. He looks again.

Where the mouth would be, under the eyes, are massive, fang-like teeth, glowing white in the dark shadows. They are not human. They are not even animal. Lance is not sure what they resemble, aside from monstrous. A chill runs down his spine.

Slowly, silently, the way a wolf might stalk towards prey it knows it has trapped, the shrouded face comes closer, slinking in the shadows. Lance follows it, head tilting higher and higher as he begins to realise how tall this face sits on a still-invisible body; how large this…thing, animal or man, truly is. Closer and closer it steps, until Lance can hear its breaths, until Lance can feel the heat from its body from where it stands, in the last stretch of the shadows.

Lance swallows.

“Who are you?” he asks. His voice is surprisingly steady, although his hands tremble.

Finally, the figure steps out into the light. Dark purple fur is all Lance can see; covering the figure in thick, uneven swaths; large brow drawn tight over his slitted yellow eyes, mouth twisted in a snarl, fangs pushing out from his lips, clawed hands clenched in fists, talons clinking on the floor as he steps closer. Ornate clothing covers his body, heavy red cloak draped over his shoulders, materials Lance can recognise as sturdy and well-dyed and rich.

The figure bends low, close to Lance’s face. “I am as you say, dear future husband.”

“You’re a – an actual –” Lance stammers.

Prince Keith growls, low in his throat.

“A beast.”

———

next chapter

241 notes · View notes