Brendan wakes from his sleep in the same instant way that he has a tendency towards. This means that Alcina doesn't have the time she needs to pull away and pretend she hadn't been hovering over Brendan. That she was peering down at his features with curiously fascinated abandon. Brendan opens his eyes to Alcina's face, floating just inches above his. Alcina's doe eyes are round and glittering in the morning sunlight streaming through the curtains, seeming almost comically wide from the present angle below her nose.Heat floods Alcina's cheeks as she freezes, flustered, mouth parting and no explanation forthcoming save for incomprehensible stutters.Brendan's lips quirk upwards, transforming the blank cold face into something undeniably warm. Creasing her features with lines that pull a weak smile from Alcina's lips, despite the blush still marring her cheeks."May I help you?" Brendan rumbles, perfectly polite even in th

Alcina spends the following week in what can only be described as a haze.Of rosy cheeks, that giddy euphoria that's unique to the blooming affections for someone new, and Brendan, indulging in all of Alcina's tentative growing bolder by the day explorations of the boundaries. Under Brendan's growing affections, Alcina comes to life. Like a blooming starflower, basking in the glow of the attention she'd never received before, effervescent and vivacious and ruddy-cheeked.In turn, Brendan finds this kind of Alcina utterly fascinating, enchanting like no other thing he's ever known. It makes Brendan want to give, and give, and take.At Alcina's request, Brendan takes her to the night bazaar again. This time, Alcina and Brendan intertwined and were drawn more to each other than the sights and wares of the market. Though Brendan still insists on wearing the hooded cloak - much to Alcina's dismay.But Alcina finds it isn't all bad, as the dark fabric allows Brendan to press her in again

Alcina can’t sleep.Try as she might, her mind races along with her pulse, her eyes blinking bright and wide up at the ceiling, long after Brendan has fallen to slumber beside her. For a while, she tries, clenching her eyes shut and trying to time her breathing along to Brendan’s.But something- something in her blood pounds.It feels like an itch, all along her skin, as though she were too large, suddenly, for her skin.As though something isn’t right.No.As though something is right.For the first time in her entire life, Alcina feels something settles.Something settled - and at the same time, like something has awakened, demanding payment in her blood, deep inside of her. From the center of her chest, something yearns to come undone. It feels like there’s a spark of electricity sizzling just underneath the surface.It makes her feel wound up.It nearly makes Alcina feel like she’s going to vibrate out of her skin.Finally, at two in the morning, she gives up.And she gives in. Sh

It takes an hour for that jittery, anxious sensation to subside; for Alcina to stop feeling like she's going to crawl out of her very skin.Brendan sits with her the entire time, the two of them hunched over like two commas on the floor, side by side, Brendan's hand a grounding touch on Alcina's neck.This foreign, out-of-body sensation that's taken over makes Alcina's blood pound to an alien rhythm, making her yearn for something she doesn't understand.Each time Alcina feels the panic swell again, she focuses instead on the cadence of Brendan's breathing, the firm weight of his thumb against her own pulse. Nearly an hour later, Alcina finally, finally feels herself coming down from the strange high.And as she relaxes, as she feels the tension bleed from her spine and her knuckles loosen from the white-gripped grasp they have around her own robe, the dragons, too, relax, uncoiling loosely from her arms. Until, eventually, they move from where they're curled tightly in her lap to t

As it turns out, Brendan was right.The two of them watch as the little dragons feed - a bit viciously and mildly reminiscent frighteningly- on the raw slabs of red meat Brendan had discreetly acquired from the kitchens.There isn’t really a way to explain why both Alcina and he would suddenly require raw, uncooked steaks to be sent to their rooms, so Brendan had had no choice but to slip in through the shadows like a common thief.Brendan watches, halfway torn between disturbed and intrigued, as the little dragons consume nearly their own weight in raw steaks.When Brendan glances upwards, Alcina still has that eerie, transfixed light in her eyes, the one that comes and goes as she seems to snap in and out of awareness of it, herself.As if she’s pulled in, by some otherworldly force of attraction, to the two creatures.Brendan glances now at the still-open chest, where he finds the shattered remnants of what he’d thought to be two gems - but had, apparently, been dragon eggs.Or wha