Chapter 2

Alcina is sent to the Western Plains, the territory of House Warner, by herself.

With a royal retinue, of course, and no less than ten carriages in which her attendants, belongings, and dowry are to be carried.

Dowry - given that no one in this arrangement, neither the Clair's nor the Warner's, is unaware of the fact that House Clair needs the alliance more than House Warner. 

Her parents will not be traveling with her, of course. She came alone to this unfamiliar place filled with foreign people. Her heart shakes with fear but she has no other option.

Neither Alfred nor Nordin could come, given that they are too tied up in matters at home, which they will be forced to oversee for another two weeks.

Once settled, they plan to travel to the Western Plains immediately to join Alcina, but until then, Alcina is to navigate the beast’s lair alone.

When Alcina boards the carriage, hands trembling, how silly, she’s a day’s ride away from the shadowed beast, and yet, cannot help but react viscerally with fear already. When Nordin pushes into the carriage with her. 

“Nordin?”

“Alcina,” Nordin says, breathing heavily. From his disheveled hair and clothes, it’s clear to see he’s run here. Alfred, in a similar state, boards the carriage right after.

“Alcina, we’re going to try to get you out of this.”

Alcina smiles. It’s small and kind and terribly hopeless.

But she doesn't say anything as she looks at her brother's trying to capture every detail of their handsome face so that she won't feel very lost in the unfamiliar place. 

Even though she doesn't say her brothers know her thoughts “We will,” Nordin insists, with the blazing intensity of a bereaved mother on the cusp of losing her child. His hands are curled protectively around both of Alcina’s still-trembling ones.

Alfred presses a hand against Alcina’s neck and leans his forehead against her's. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop this before you had to set off,” he apologizes. “But we’re going to do everything we can.”

Alcina’s eyes burn. tears start to gather at the corner of her eyes.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s for our people,” she says, parroting back the same words her mother had delivered to her when the shocking news was disclosed to her.

Nordin snarls. “Our people do not need you sacrificed to some monster -” Alfred sends him a sharp look, and Nordin looks away, biting his lip. 

Alcina’s heart hammers at the monster. The monster, her husband-to-be. 

Nordin kisses her cheek, brushing away the stray tear that had fallen from her eye.

Alcina hadn’t even noticed her tears had begun to fall, too focused on the fact that Alfred looks as pained as though he’s just sent his own child to an execution. 

Somehow, her brothers’ devastation is more heartbreaking than her own.

“Stay safe,” Nordin whispers, brushing her hair gently. “We’re coming for you, Alcina. Just keep yourself safe until then.”

Alcina knows that they will not be able to rescue her, not this time. But Still, she nods her head, smiling bravely.

Nordin, with his own eyes red, nods once. He pauses, before tugging Alcina into a fierce, tight hug, soon joined by Alfred’s heavy arms surrounding them both. Alcina bites her lip so as to avoid a sob.

Her brothers disembark the carriage, and as they do so, Nordin’s face, of open loss, transforms instantly into the cool, elegant facade he always wears.

Alfred turns around, and through the open carriage window, Alcina gets to hold her brother’s hand one last time.

And then, the carriage departs, and soon all Alcina can see of her home is the distant treelines that line the long path up to the castle doors.

* * * * * * * * * *

The carriage arrives sooner than Alcina was prepared for it to.

It comes to a stop as violent as the lurch in her heart, and Alcina’s heart pounds so loudly she fears that others can hear it, as irrational as it is.

She can’t bring herself to dare glance outside, afraid that she might see her husband-to-be among the greeting party.

She is tired no actually exhausted, after nearly a fortnight of sleepless nights, with bags under her eyes and her hair unkempt from nervous tugging, her silken clothes wrinkled from clenching her hands around them too tightly. 

She dimly wonders if she appears unpresentable enough if Lord Brendan will deem her unfit and send her back.

Rejected, even as a discarded spare. Alcina cannot tell if she relishes the idea, or dreads it.

One of her attendants opens the carriage door.

For a moment, it is all Alcina can do to sit there, back ramrod straight, hands curled into the fabric of her trousers, white-knuckled, breathing. Her blood rushes in her ears.

Irrationally, she feels a lot like stepping out of this carriage is the step that will lead her straight into the darkness; as if she isn’t already fully within it, as if this carriage could somehow shield her from the horrifying reality of her situation. 

It’s for our people, Alcina. It is your duty. She tells herself as she recalls her mother's words. It is your only duty; the only that you are capable of had gone unsaid by her mother. Even though it hurt her heart to think of that, it is correct, She is only capable of doing this for her people.

Alcina exits the carriage.

There is a small crowd of people gathered at the front doors, a respectful receiving court of attendants and key advisers.

Alcina steps out onto the gravel, chin up and proud as a daughter of House Clair - though her eyes are fixed firmly on their feet rather than their faces.

She is more afraid than she has ever been of anything, of glimpsing her husband’s face.

“Young madam Alcina of House Clair,” a voice speaks. “We, of House Warner, welcome you with great joy.”

Alcina looks up.

The speaker, bedecked in magnificent velvet robes, shimmering with golden threads, jewels hanging from his every finger is, no doubt, Alpha Warner.

Alcina musters up a gracious smile, murmuring her own scant greetings with a barely-managed proper bow.

“And may I present to you, my son, Brendan.” Alcina's blood turns to ice in her veins.

They say that Lord Brendan is the most reviled and feared presence to have ever been born and that even to meet his gaze is the equivalent of succumbing to a fate worse than death.

Lord Brendan, the Shadowed Beast. 

She looks up.

Somehow, inevitably, She sees her husband-to-be immediately, from amid the throng of people surrounding him.

It isn’t hard.

He stands out, like a towering, dark fortress, dressed entirely in black garbs and presence looming over all the others.

Alcina’s eyes land first on his shoes, the shiny black leather polished to a menacing edge; his trousers, the solemn straight edge of his cape, the ebony feathers capping his broad shoulders like the tips of a fearsome gargoyle’s wings. 

And then, at long, dreaded last, Alcina sees the face of her intended for the first time--

--and gasps. 

It’s involuntary and subtle enough to be taken as a sharp intake of breath than the stupefied gasp that it is. But she could not help it.

She had been told that her husband-to-be is the most feared and reviled man in all the land. 

That he is the ruler of all things dark, of those fears and wraiths and nightmares of which humanity’s dread is made of. That he, like his power, is the most terrifying monster to have ever walked the world.

That he must be as terrible as such things, for how else could he walk among the shadows?

And so, Alcina had expected a monster.

She had expected a face as gruesome as the terrors he controls. something to signify the darkness which lurks within, something to indicate the black soul that it belongs to.

Instead, she finds a face that is striking in an entirely different way.

Sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, tousled black locks that conceal one eye. But the part in his hair reveals his right eye, and it is this sight, the eye that they said would be like looking into death itself, those same eyes that had prompted Alcina’s gasp most of all.

His eyes are unfathomably dark, indeed - like an endless, black pit, glittering not with mirth or joy but power.

His features, hacked into marble, devoid entirely of any imperfections or even creases - as if he has lived his entire life, without once expressing a single expression on that impassive face. As if he has lived his entire life, without having once experienced a human emotion.

And yet, somehow, Alcina cannot find it in herself to call this man a monster.

A monstrous man, perhaps 'to be seen yet', but a man nonetheless. And far from horrifying in appearance, as she’d expected.

He is, dare Alcina to say it, is hauntingly handsome. He is not what Alcina had expected at all.