Mask of Shadows chapter 1: the meeting
orignal villain x heroine story
TWs: grief, fantasy violence, sleep drugging, genre-typical leering and dubcon-ey implications (tame for now)
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The soldiers deposit you inelegantly on the throne room floor. Just hours ago you walked here arm-in-arm with Lysander, heads high, crowns glittering. Now the carpet is blackened with bootprints, the room dark and reeking of ash, the screams of your people ringing in the distance.
“Your grace,” a cool, masculine voice announceds. “Welcome. I apologize for the crudeness of the circumstances, but I’m afraid I couldn’t wait for an audience.”
On the throne — your father-by-law’s throne, one day to be your husband’s — lounges a tall, lithe figure, cloaked in darkness. You can’t make out his face.
It doesn’t matter. You pull yourself up from the floor with as much authority as you can muster. “Call off your army at once. Whatever your demands, we can come to an agreement without this— this atrocity.”
He laughs, high and clear and ringing off the stone walls. Tears fill your eyes. You glimpsed the devastation yourself, as they dragged you across the courtyard: the smoke rising from the city, the wailing children and bloody cobblestones.
“Please,” you say, quietly.
The laughter stops.
“Do you know who I am, princess?” The figure asks, cold and imperious.
You do know. Or at least, there’s only one person he could be. “The Lord of Shadows.”
He rises from the throne, and it’s clear, now, how the shadows move around him unnaturally, almost like smoke, obscuring the details of his figure in the dark room. The rumors of his power are true, then. He’s haunted every report from the front for years, the subject of a gruesome children’s rhymes and hushed old soldiers’ tales alike. He summoned an army of demons out of the pits and bound them to his will, or so the stories say.
It’s no wonder the city garrison was no match for them. Men against monsters.
“Please,” you say again, trying to stay steady, “Where is my husband? And the king? They’re the ones you seek an audience with, not me.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. They’re dead, you see.”
Your breath freezes in your chest. “Dead.”
“My men slayed the king in his sleep,” he croons, descending the dias towards you. “A pity, really, that he missed all the excitement. Your prince performed quite admirably, rallying his guardsmen, leading the efforts to keep us from breaching the palace walls.”
“No,” You murmur, horror threatening to overwhelm you.
“But he was no match for my shadows.” The man lifts a hand and the shadows swirl around it, almost affectionate.
“No,” you repeat, your vision blurring, your pulse rushing in your ears. Your knees buckle and you fall again, crumpling to the carpet.
Dead. Lysander couldn’t be dead, he was so lovely, so strong and bright and full of life, already a king in the eyes of his people. You picture his gleaming gold hair, his brilliant smile, and a sob threatens to break you in half. “You’re lying!”
“Why would I?” He retorts coldly. “If he wasn’t dead, he soon would be. The city has fallen and the kingdom with it.”
“Why are you doing this?” You cry, caught between hate and sorrow. “What you do you want?”
The shadows obscure his face, masklike, as he comes to stand before you. “I want what all men want. A kingdom. Wrongs righted. A pretty little wife. I’ve worked very hard, for many years, to take what’s mine.”
You barely hear his last sentence, your mind halting at the list. Surely he couldn’t mean—
“What do you want,” You say slowly, trembling. “With me.”
The grief is too crushing to feel anything else, but you are aware, suddenly, acutely, that you’re alone with him and his armored men. There is no one who could help you, no matter how loudly you screamed.
“You’re a smart girl. I know you were listening,” he says. There’s a smirk in his voice. “Now, tell me —” He kneels, lowering himself to where you’ve collapsed on the carpet. “Which of the things I want have I not yet acquired?”
A pretty little wife. Loathing so hot it burns courses through you.
“My people are dying, my city is burning, and my king is dead.” you glare at him through tears. “You’ll have to spell it out for me, my lord.”
“How right you are,” he says, slick and pitying. “Thoughtless of me to not consider what a difficult time you’re going through. Let me be quite clear, then.” He leans further in, and takes your chin in his hand, wrenching your face up towards his where you both kneel. His fingers are pale and slim, deceptively strong. “I want you to marry me.”
“Never,” you spit, more on instinct than anything, wrenching yourself from his grip. It’s too much. You can feel yourself verging on hysteria, dizzy with shock. The palace taken, the king dead, Lysander gone. You so vividly recall the last thing he said to you: I’ll be to bed soon, Cressida darling. I just want to make a round with the patrols. There’s been unrest at the north gate.
Perhaps if you’d begged him to stay with you, he’s still be alive.
“You—” It’s a struggle to speak at all around the emotions choking you. “You wage war on my kingdom, you kill my husband, and you expect me to marry you?”
Though you can’t make out any of his features through the writhing mask of shadows, you can somehow see his grin.
“You monster,” you hiss, hands fisting in your nightgown.
He laughs again, low and harsh. “Coming from your lovely mouth, I’m afraid the insult doesn’t have much bite, my dear.”
“I’d rather die than marry you.”
That, finally, raises his ire. His shadows flicker dangerously. “I’m afraid that’s not an option, my dear.”
A commotion sounds from the door far behind you: a sword colliding with shields, a grunted curse that makes your heart clench dangerously. You know that voice. Alayne.
One of the lord’s shadow guards staggers towards you, haggard from battle. “My Lord, a woman— was in the palace— broke through our ranks—”
The Lord of Shadows rises with the grace of a cat and holds up a hand to silence him. The scuffle at the door grows louder.
“Cressida!” Alayne yells, just before you can make her out— pale, bloodstreaked face, dark hair that matches yours, sword in her hand. A soldier brings the pommel of his sword down on her back hard, and you shriek, unable to stop yourself. She goes limp, falling to the floor. Her sword clatters on the stone.
“Alayne!” You cry helplessly.
With the tiniest nod of the Lord’s head, guards move to pluck her unconscious body from the ground. Tears escape your eyes freely, now, and you can’t stop them, even as his attention turns back to you.
“Your sister.” He’s detached once again as he considers you, still on the floor, helpless.
“Yes,” You manage. Your strength fails you in the face of your terror— Alayne, still alive. You had barely dared hope. How hard she must have fought to find you only to fall now.
He makes another motion, and the two guards who tore you from your bed and brought you here step forward.
“You’ve had a trying day,” he says, too patiently, “And I have much to attend to. Spend some time resting, and we’ll speak again after.” Addressing the guards now, he adds, “Take her to the tower.”
“No,” You object, not thinking clearly. “No, my sister—”
“Will be quite safe in my care, I assure you, so long as you don’t do anything foolish.”
The guards close in on you, one reaching for your arms, and you try to shove them away. “Let me go—Alayne!—”
You manage to hurt one, clawing at his unarmored joints, and he grunts. “Bitch.” He aims a kick at your side, his armored foot sending a sear of pain through your ribs, and you cry out.
Suddenly, the man emits a strangled sound. You look up, and shadows wreathe him like vines, circling his neck. The lord of shadows has a hand extended, controlling them.
“I thought I was clear,” he snarls, and the shadows tighten. There’s a cold depth to his voice that isn’t human. “That she was not to be harmed.” The man chokes, clawing at his neck, but it’s a useless effort. His hands pass through the shadows.
You scramble backwards on your hands as the man drops to his knees, the other guard backing away. The one who kicked you lets out a final sputter and goes limp, his armor clanking where he falls.
For a moment, silence envelops the cavernous room. The Lord lets out a breath, tension slowly leaving his form. The shadows on the guard dissipate, though the ones near their Lord remain, restless.
“My apologies, princess,” he says at last, seemingly composing himself. He looks to a man in leather armor near the throne. “Find a healer for her. Have them sent up.”
Your head swims. You realize that there’s a sticky heat blooming at your side where you were kicked— blood seeping through your nightgown.
The pain setting in, your terror and shock drowning you, you feel only numbness as he crosses to you and bends down. His shadows brush against you, cold and vaporous. They almost seem to make a sound, like a distant whisper.
He pulls you upright, gentle but firm, and you can do nothing but comply. For a moment you’re afraid you’ll fall again, but he circumvents the worry by hooking his arm beneath your knees and sweeping you into an effortless carry. As if you truly were his bride.
“Have that one put in a holding cell. See that she wakes.” He’s talking about—
“Alayne,” you croak, and he hushes you gently. His closeness is wrong, strange, nauseating, and he bears your weight entirely too easy for someone so thin, his strength unnatural.
He carries you through the dark palace. Screams and shouts echo in the distance. “Stop this,” you beg. “You’ve won. Stop them.”
“I have. It’s over, I promise you. Merely the dying embers of a flame. You slept through the worst of it. I had your maid slip you something.”
“You—” You want to scream. You want to sob. You want to tear at his eyes and run a sword through his heart. You can’t breathe. The tower, he said to take you to. That’s not where your rooms are. How did he have you drugged? How does he know his way around the palace?
You can’t think any further before you realize you’re shaking uncontrollably, your ribs on fire. You must let out a whimper, because he responds: “Just a bit further, darling.”
“How dare you call me that,” you get out through chattering teeth.
The shadows must open the door for him, because there’s no interruption in his pace at the top of the stairs. He places you on a large, unfamiliar bed.
“I don’t understand,” You mutter, feeling delirium tug at you. “Any of this.”
“You will. In time.” Something cool touches your cheek. A shadow. As if it were caressing you. “Cressida.”
Something about the way he says your name is familiar. The sobs you’ve held back threaten to break free. “Who are you?”
The shadows still cloak his face and cling to his frame. He reaches out and touches a finger to your temple. “In time.”
You can taste the cold of his shadows, and everything goes black.
