River Black
House Eventide was a sprawling manor surrounded by a wrought iron fence dripping with crimson roses. Four stories and made of marble, it was the most beautiful building she’d ever seen in person. It did look like a prince would live there. Something about it was sad too, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Most of the windows were dark, heavy curtains drawn. The gardens in the courtyard were a little overgrown. It looked to be a grand place forgotten. She supposed that’s what made it sad.
Tamsin helped her from the carriage and took her into the manor, sneaking her in almost. He said that though he hadn’t seen his brother in a long time, he wasn’t keen on visitors and had a fiery temper. Plus, he’d broken the treaty, and he was sure his older brother would be angry with him. He promised her he would deal with it and told her not to worry.
River was too confused and dazzled to worry. Opulence and wealth surrounded her. Plush carpets on marble floors, heavy velvet drapes. But again, she was struck with just how empty it seemed. And dark. No torches or candles. Tamsin didn’t speak, he just led her by the hand down dark and twisting corridors.
She didn’t know how many turns they took and she realized she was just as lost as she’d had been in the woods. If she needed to run, she had no idea how to make it back to the entrance of the manor. The further they went, the older the building seemed to be. The dustier and less used too.
As if sensing her ill ease, Tamsin stopped as they headed down a winding, stone staircase, candleabra in hand. Once more, River marveled at how handsome he was, how beautiful. He wore it casually, as if he weren’t aware of how attractive he was. “It’s for your safety,” he told her. “This manor is vast and enchanted. You’ll be hard to find. It helps me...protect you.” His voice sounded rough at the last of what he said.
No one had ever wanted to protect her before, save her parents. Her ex never stood up for her when they’d been in high school together. He just hadn’t seemed to care and in her darker moments of self doubt, River was pretty sure he agreed with her detractors.
“In the morning,” Tamsin went on, taking her hand and helping her down the dark staircase, “I’ll explain all this a little better. Show you around. We’re only in danger at night. The Witch Queen never comes out during the day and neither do her sons.”
“Her sons?” she questioned.
Tamsin nodded. “The Dain, Dub, and Dother.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “There are -more- of those things?”
He nodded with a sigh. “They’re all different, but equally monstrous.”
River shook her head as if it would clear it or she’d wake up. She couldn’t help but feel she was lost in a dream. Maybe, when she’d gotten lost in the woods, she’d fallen and hit her head and this was all some vibrant hallucination. A little, sinking voice inside her head said that wasn’t true and this was all too real. She couldn’t think about that, though. Not right now. Instead, River tried to focus on the moment.
At the bottom of the staircase was a hallway, long and desolate. He led her to the first door on the right and took a large, iron key ring from his cloak unlocking the door. “This room hasn’t been used in...oh...hundreds of years,” he told her, opening it. The door groaned, rusty hinges whining in protest.
“What...am I supposed to...do? In there,” she asked gesturing to the dark room. She could see in the candles’ meager light that there were large pieces of furniture draped in white cloths.
Tamsin sighed, brow knotting. “Sleep? Rest? I’ll bring you something to eat in the morning. I promise.”
River hesitated. She didn’t want to be alone in a strange place. In the dark. The manor was the sort of place that seemed haunted. And things that shouldn’t have been real, like the Fae and Witches...definitely were. There were monsters here. She looked up at Tamsin, feeling desperate and afraid.
He stood close. So close she could feel the warmth radiating off his body in the chill hallway. He looked down at her, expression hard to read, a cross between worry and hunger. Desire. She saw it glittering in his eyes which were now silver. The sea green had utterly been consumed. Raising his hand, Tamsin slowly dragged his knuckles down her cheek.
“I won’t let any harm come to you,” he told her, flicking his tongue over his bottom lip. “I couldn’t bear it. When I saw you...” he trailed off, closing his eyes and dropping his hand. “When I saw you, lost, afraid, so beautiful. I couldn’t let the Dain kill you.”
He leaned in and for a moment, River felt caught in a spell. She leaned in too. Her breath caught in her throat and she was certain he’d kiss her. But he didn’t. Instead, he pressed the candleabra in her hand.
“Goodnight, River,” he said, his voice rough again. He turned away from her and left her standing in the hall.
#
Aelnith Eventide
As he always did of late, Aelnith entered his manor through the crypts. He didn’t want any of the staff or his brother to know of his comings and goings. In fact, he slept in the crypts during the day.
The sun was now his enemy. If the light of the sun touched him, it would turn him to ash, destroying him. In the first few months of his curse, he considered letting the sun take him away. He was a monster, after all. He deserved to die.
But his father didn’t raise him to give in so easily. He had all of eternity now to find a way to break his curse and to defeat the Witch Queen Carmun. He had to restore House Eventide to its former glory.
His younger brother Tamsin was certainly making that difficult, he thought as he traversed the dark, dank crypts, weaving in and out of the tombs of his ancestors. With ease, he pushed up a trap door that lead to a storage room in the basement. Before his curse, it would have taken incredible effort to lift the heavy, iron trap door, but now, he possessed the strength of ten men. It was effortless.
The very moment he pulled himself up into the storage room, Aelnith could sense her. -Smell- her. The human woman River. He swore he could hear the faint drum of her heartbeat, somewhere in the manor.
As Sons of the Twilight Wood, Aelnith and his brother Tamsin were touched by many gifts. Their court had once been full of life and beauty. Elves and Fae. Elaborate feasts and balls every full moon. Now, they were all but destroyed. Cursed to be terrible monsters, night creatures that preyed on living beings.
Tamsin became a vicious dire wolf, in direct opposition to his gentle nature. Uncontrollable and intent on killing anything in his path. Aelnith, once a gregarious and charming bachelor, set to become King of Eventide, became a wraith, a vampire, forced into seclusion. Forced to feed on the blood of the living to sustain him. He’d tried to resist his hunger, but if he went to long, it made him a mindless revenant, no better and no less ruthless than Tamsin.
His natural gifts were only enhanced and perverted by his curse. He could feel River. Smell her. Almost taste her on his tongue. It made it easy to find her where Tamsin had thought to cleverly hide her away in the East wing of the manor.
Aelnith stood outside her door, forehead pressed to the rough wood. He waited until he heard the soft sound of her even breathing. He waited until she fell asleep.
River BlackRiver held the candelabra in her hand, holding it aloft, looking around the huge room. It was so big, it dwarfed her living room back at her parents’ house. Everything was draped in white cloth and for a moment, she felt lost in that room too. It had no windwos and seemed to be below ground, in a basement level, though she wasn’t entirely sure. It had been a disorientating walk in the dark mansion. River hoped it was nicer during the day. Less confusing. In truth, she hoped that when she woke up, she’d be inside her tent, safe and sound and all this would be a strange dream.Finally, she found the bed. It too, like the room, was a huge, down stuffed four-poster monstrosity. It looked like the bed a queen would sleep in. It smelled regrettably musty, but it was soft and dry and better than any other option she had.She set the candles on a shrouded dresser and tugged off her dirty, wet socks. Her jeans were torn and
River BlackThe man just collapsed. She’d been asleep only to wake to someone standing over her, threatening her. Scaring her. His surname was Eventide, just like Tamsin’s. It was likely his older brother he’d kept mentioning.She didn’t really see the family resemblence. Where Tamsin was lithe and athletic, this man was taller, broader, more muscular. Despite his masculine frame, his face held the same delicate beauty that Tamsin’s did. He had an aquiline nose, high cheekbones and eyes fringed with dark, sooty lashes. His hair was a bloody auburn, like polished mahogany.He’d cut a powerful figure but now, crumpled to the floor, seemingly lifeless, he looked ill at best. River feared he was dead. She tugged on her filthy jeans and knelt beside him, brushing his long, silky hair from his throat to feel for a pulse.There wasn’t one.With great effort because of his muscular bulk, River grun
Tamsin EventideHe’d left her far away from him for a reason. He felt the change coming. It was the wrong time and he didn’t understand it but he wanted her far enough away from him in case it happened anyway.Tamsin stripped out of clothes hurriedly, not wanting to ruin them if he were to change. He stood, bare, in the bathing room of his personal chambers in the manor. It was a dark night, no moonlight and dawn was still a few hours away. He looked at himself in the polished silver mirror. His taut, muscular body was slick with sweat. Tamsin trembled, his eyes fully silver.He closed them. He had to control himself. He’d been around beautiful women before and hadn’t lost control of himself like this. It fully set in what he’d done. Damned his House to war. Over what? A pretty face?But even as he thought this, he knew it was something more. Something beyond words and time. He had felt so lost, trying to pus
River BlackTamsin didn’t give her a chance to respond to his proclamation, he just took her by the hand, leading her up several flights of stairs and down winding hallways. River felt dizzy. Everything happened so fast. She didn’t know what he meant by mate. Did he mean...wife? She wasn’t ready to be married and besides, she didn’t even -know- him. Sure, he was handsome and charming and a prince, but it didn’t seem like she was being given a choice.Maybe things worked differently here, she thought, though that was no consolation at all. She did notice how perfectly her small hand fit in his much larger one and the way he looked at her with his beautiful, sea green eyes did make her heart skip a beat or two, but no, she would have her say and her choice.River stubbornly stopped walking, forcing him to accidentally pull on her arm. Frowning, Tamsin turned around.“Something wrong?” he asked. &ldq
Tamsin EventideHe hadn’t expected any resistance at all. No woman had ever refused an invitation to his bed. He was a prince, perhaps one day a king. Whispers of his prowess of a lover spread beyond his forest. So, when River had balked at the very idea of being his mate, it had angered him. The beast inside him wouldn’t be denied. He didn’t know how to explain it to her. It wasn’t that his Beast and himself were different entities, but they were of different minds.She excited the man and soothed the Beast. He had no way to express this. And if his experiment proved correct, it would turn his curse into a boon. The way the Witch Queen’s curses worked were simple but insidious. She couldn’t doom him with no way out. There had to be a counterbalance. As above so below. Black and white, Yin and Yang. All things equal. Carmun could make him transform into a monstrous wolf every full moon where he had no control over hi
Aelnith EventideJust that little drop of River’s blood on his tongue, her sweet body on top of him, pressed against him, told him much and empowered him more than he thought possible. Even with dawn pinking the horizon, the burning sun rising into the sky, he found he could move, he was awake.He was very weak, true, but he wondered how much he could move during the day if he’d had just a little more of her blood, or more, if he made her his queen. As with his brother, Tamsin, his curse had another side to its coin too. With a queen by his side, inflicted with the same curse as he, bound to him for all of forever, the sun would no longer immobilize him. It could still burn his flesh, true, but he could move indoors or underground. He also wouldn’t need to feed but once a month on the night of the full moon. As it stood now, he had to feed every night, or he would descend into madness, becoming a mindless ghoul that fed on whomever he
River BlackAs the servant said all the flames in the House went out, the kitchen went dark, the lanterns and candles snuffed out as though a hard, cold wind had blown through. It sent chills racing down her arms, prickling her skin, making every hair stand on end. She felt watched. It made her want to run and hide.The kitchen had no windows and it was pitch dark inside. Time moved strangely here and it had already been getting dark again when they’d gone into the kitchen. River felt panicked, stifled. Smothered. It felt like she couldn’t breathe. In the small room that lead to the kitchen, she remembered a window. She’d go there. Even the scant moonlight through the window would help quell her panic and racing heart.Tamsin and his servants chattered, wondering what had happened, why all the flame in the manor had disappeared. They said it was bad sorcery. A trick. Maybe worse. River had no idea, but she didn’t want to
Tamsin EventideFinally, the flint sparked and the tinder lit. He held the lantern aloft, but didn’t see anything amiss. At first.River was gone.He searched the kitchens, the rooms that lead to the kitchens. He scoured the entire manor in a rage, looking for her. He doubted she ran, but he supposed it was possible.No, he could feel the lingering magic in the air. Tamsin knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that the fires wouldn’t light.It struck him suddenly, the answer. Cinder. The Witch Queen’s consort. He was master of flame and hearth, a nasty little bastard from the Winter Court, betrayer of his own kind, former consort of Queen Mab. Slick and charming, clever and without scruples, Cinder was the one who brought human tithes to the Dain. If he had River, she was in very real danger.The more he frantically searched the manor, the less control he had over himself. If Cinder had spirited her away,