Written off the back of a request from the lovely Rachel. Inspiration taken loosely from Hans Christien Andersen's fairytale, The Shadow. Links to Cruel to be Kind, and of course to Chimera.

Certain Dark Things

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved;
In secret, between the shadow and the soul

In the disused ballroom, the strains of ghostly music played.

She laboured to hear it – soft, tantalising, and fading away on the low note of a violin. Then there was nothing but the winter wind whistling through the broken panes of glass, ruffling her hair with cold fingers.

The room was huge and hollow and empty of anything but rubble and a decaying painting on one wall in a tarnished frame. The rich decorations were worn away by time and weather, the gilding long scored from the wallpaper, which itself was peeling away in long curled strips. Glass crunched under her boots: it glittered in her wake as Chatoya Irkil walked through the ballroom.

Magic gleamed around her, small green flecks that darted from her fingers to flit about the room. The shadows rolled back like turf, revealing only decrepitude.

She stood in the midst of it all, searching, waiting, a fistful of fire in her hand and her face grim.

Nothing.

And then a drift of laughter, cruel as his kiss, washed over her and was gone before she could follow it. Beneath it, she heard something she recognised, something that raked over her nerves and made fire flare about her like an eerie corona.

One word, in a voice that echoed through her like her own heartbeat.

"Never."

"Blue?" Chatoya gasped, before she could stop herself, his name reverberating from the rafters.

But there was no answer. Only shadows and the winter wind singing through the empty space around her.

oOo

"Anything?"

The question was nonchalant, as if the speaker didn't much care about the answer. But the very fact that Therese Orage had accompanied Chatoya to the old manor house told another story.

"I thought I heard music." Gravel crunched under her feet as she strode down the curving drive to the car. "And – and him."

Therese was perched on the hood, huddled inside a thick wool coat. She was turning a cream envelope between gloved fingers, the silver ink flashing under the sunlight. For a moment, her hands stilled. "Bane? You're certain?"

"It sounded like him, but..."

Therese sighed. "But we're dealing with the Fey, and nothing is as it seems. Damn. I'd hoped it was a prank."

"It's hardly Blue's style," Chatoya remarked. "I don't think he's ever liked playing damsel in distress."

"Probably because he'd look dreadful in a dress," Therese muttered with her usual graveyard humour, and Chatoya stifled a smile. "No, you're right. He would never use the Fey as pawns. More than anyone, he knows the folly of such tricks."

The air seemed a little colder at the reminder than Blue had lived in the twilight lands for a while: he'd gone willingly to the faeries to learn their ways, which were ancient and cruel and unforgiving. Chatoya had met their queen once. The experience had scarred her in ways she could not quantify, except that some nights she woke, and thought the shadows in her room too deep, that sometimes she would glance at her reflection and glimpse a flicker in the background of the mirror.

"Then it's real," she said, her heart heavy as lead. "The Fey have taken him."

Therese's dark eyes were troubled. "Can you sense him at all?"

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"Then we'd better assume he's in their kingdom." She smacked the hood with a fist: it dented as if it were cardboard. "The covenant between us and them is carved on his back, and the idiot lets them drag him off!"

"I think he fought," Chatoya said softly. "His office...I didn't tell you before, because I needed to be sure..."

The memory of it flashed into her head: the desk overturned, with claw marks spiralling around the legs. Glass shards scattered upon the dark carpet like a thousand constellations. She'd had to step over the ruins of his laptop, the fluttering scraps of files – and when she'd seen the red smears upon the broken window, her blood had run cold.

"It was a mess. Completely destroyed. The invitation was about the only undamaged thing in the room. It was in the safe-"

"You know the combination for his safe?" Therese said, startled.

She felt a faint flush. "He doesn't know that."

The vampire was silent. Then her dark mouth curled into a smile. "Better concoct a good story then. He won't be pleased. So someone has finally had the audacity to kidnap Bane. Question is, do we have the audacity to go and get him back?"

"Do we have a choice?" Chatoya asked, soft. "He's the only thing keeping the Fey from this world."

A sudden flash of Therese's eyes. "Not the only thing. Just the most important one. Well, then. We have an invitation."

"No," Chatoya pointed out. "Blue does."

Therese whirled the envelope in her hands again, then she drew out the invitation inside. No mistaking the brown ink that it had been written in, flaking faintly from the paper. "Mmm...the wording, I think, is a little careless."

She read it out, her voice cool and emotionless. "Her eternal and enduring majesty Titania of the twilight lands requires the presence of Bane Malefici at the Last Dance, a most elegant masquerade held in the glorious past of Purview House during the month of the blue moon. Entrance through the Great Hall of 1808, invitation only."

Therese paused. "We have the invitation. Nothing to say it has to be Bane who uses it..."

Her voice trailed off: and Chatoya saw her focus had slid over her shoulder, and the calculation in her face had become exasperation.

"Or indeed, anyone at all," she finished acidly. "Welcome back, Bane. Did you enjoy yourself?"

Chatoya whipped around. And there he was, sauntering across the drive as if he hadn't a care in the world with a black domino mask dangling from one hand and a champagne glass in the other that was filled with some glittering orange drink.

"Enjoyment is such an imprecise term," he remarked. "But I suppose it'll do. A good time was had by all." He drained the drink, and with one swift movement, hurled it back at the house. It exploded on the wall, and glass glittered like rain in the air. "Well. Almost all."

She reached for him along the soulmate link – and hit a wall as smooth and impassable as marble. "Your office-"

Those icy eyes swept her from top to toe with one scathing look. "My witch, surely you weren't foolish enough to mistake a little rough and tumble for actual peril."

"Rough and tumble?" she echoed, anger slowly building inside her. "If that's your idea of rough and tumble-"

His smile gleamed with a dangerous edge: his voice had a sudden, devastating intimacy that quite took away her words. "You know full well it is."

Therese made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a choke. "Enough, Bane. You survived the twilight lands, then."

"Of course." His eyebrows arched. "Did you ever doubt it?"

And though she couldn't put a finger on it, something about those words stayed with Chatoya through the drive back. Because although fury rendered her mute, although she spent the next hour struggling not to kick him in the confines of the car, the answer rattled about her mind, defying his arrogance and his surety and his survival.

Did you ever doubt it?

Yes.

oOo

Days passed, and her niggling doubts grew into full-blown suspicion. Blue was acting out of character.

She had become used to him, she realised, as one becomes used to the long darkness of winter. And while no one else seemed to notice that he was not quite himself, she did.

Although she'd never really thought of it before, there were certain hallmarks of his behaviour that were moments of intimacy, of possession, of familiarity. A brush of fingers on her wrist, the sudden weight of his eyes, dark with passion or promise; the certain secret gleam of a smile she'd seen under other circumstances.

Now she saw none of them. In fact, the opposite: he went out of his way to avoid touching her, which at first enraged her. It was hardly a new cruelty, but it was effective. But when Lisa remarked on his absence with an air that was relived and yet puzzled, Chatoya put aside her anger and began to watch him more closely.

Every time she reached along the soulmate link, she hit that strange impassable wall. That left her with no clues other than what her senses could tell her.

Despite his aversion to her, Blue was no crueller than usual – his words lacked their usual bite, as if he was unsure of just what would hurt her. Chatoya was in many ways relieved: but another part of her knew that was very, very odd.

Nor was she alone.

oOo

"Chatoya?" Vaje Chusson looked startled when he opened the door to the ruin he and Aspen called home. "Is this official?"

"Aspen asked me over," she said.

He blinked. "Huh. Not sure he remembers that, but come in."

She picked her way over the heaps of DIY equipment the boys had piled up in the hallway. The walls were covered in samples of paint, and the place smelled of sawdust and glue with an underlying aroma of damp.

"Hey, Martin!" Vaje shouted. "Houseguest!"

"What?" came a muffled voice. "Why are you inviting people over, Vaje, the place is a wreck!"

She followed Aspen's voice to its source and found him on the floor in a spacious if shambolic living room with a heap of electrical components scattered around him and a lawnmower with broken blades.

"You invited me," she said.

The vampire looked up, mismatched eyes wide. She'd inherited Pursang from him, but she tried not to hold that against him and he tried not to regret it too much. From his sudden sunny grin, he was succeeding. "Chatoya! I did, didn't I? I forgot." He jumped to his feet then hesitated. "Um, can I hug you?"

"I can just about bear it," she said wryly, and he gave her a quick, clumsy hug, looking delighted. "What's this about, Aspen?"

"Good question," Vaje said, settling onto the battered sofa. "Between trying to mow the carpet – no, I'm really not kidding-"

"I thought it was a vacuum cleaner," Aspen said meekly, and she noticed the large patches missing from the carpet, and the beige fluff everywhere.

"-and putting bubble bath into the washing machine, we're not exactly a show home." The shapeshifter sighed. "Don't go in the kitchen, that's all I can say. I've spent six hours trying to clean foam off the ceiling."

"Yeah, it's a mess," Aspen said. "But at least no one will overhear us here."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

He hesitated. "Um. Have you seen Blue lately?"

Both of them watched her. They were two of the six people in the Furies who knew that Blue was her soulmate: perhaps the only two who understood just how fraught and frightening and fantastic such a bond was.

"No," she admitted. "I get the feeling he's avoiding me."

"He's acting kind of..." Aspen's thin face scrunched up in concentration. "...weird."

"Seconded," Vaje said curtly.

It was confirmation of what she herself had thought. "In what way?"

Aspen rocked one hand back and forth. "It's hard to say. Something's off. We went out to play pool, yeah, and I won."

"Is that weird?" she said blankly.

"Not exactly. I've beat him before." Aspen shot her a nervous glance. "There was the time I put Valium in his drink. And the time I gave him a dead leg right as he went for the 8 ball...and that time he'd been awake for three days straight..."

"I get your point," she said.

"Yeah. And we were talking, but it wasn't like it usually is." Aspen gave her a helpless look. "Um. It was...I dunno..."

She looked at him expectantly, not sure what he was getting at.

He exhaled. "I didn't feel like he was thinking about ruining my life just for the hell of it."

"That's unlike him," she acknowledged, "but he could have been having a good day."

"Maybe," Vaje chipped in. "But I wound up in a meeting with him yesterday. He asked how I was."

"He does do that," she said.

The shapeshifter raked a hand through his dark hair. "Yeah. But he actually listened to the answer."

Chatoya blinked. "Okay. That is weird. Something's going on."

"Yep." Vaje shrugged. "And if he's avoiding you..."

"...then there's something he doesn't want me to know," she finished softly. "And I'd better find out what."

oOo

"This is...unusual," Therese Orage remarked in a husky voice that had only the slightest edge of doubt. "Are you certain?"

Her gaze was focused on the man inside the cell. He was unconscious on the floor, his cobalt blue hair glaring against the black tiles of the floor. Three hours had passed since Chatoya dumped him in there, and he hadn't so much as twitched.

After all, he was a vampire, and a crowbar to the head, while nobody's definition of fun, shouldn't have knocked him out for three hours.

"Positive," Chatoya said. "If it's Blue, he's either had some serious head trauma-"

"It looks like he has," she said dryly, gesturing to the blood congealed on his right temple.

"That was me."

Her eyebrows raised, and she gave Chatoya a very thoughtful look. She'd shaved off her hair long ago, and that only made her eyes seem larger, the most striking feature in a striking face. "You knocked him out? On your own?"

"Exactly," she said. "Whatever that thing is, it isn't Bane Malefici."

She gave a slow nod. Her gaze rested on the doppelganger, her expression unreadable. "You're sure."

"Certain." She let out her breath, trying not to show how jarred she was. "He hadn't touched me since he got back from that masquerade. Now I know why. No soulmate link."

That got Therese's attention. The chains that ran from her nose to her ears clinked as her head snapped up. "Then what is it – and more importantly, where on earth is Bane?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "I can hazard a guess, though. I think it's a changeling."

Her eyes flicked back to the man in the cell. "Yes. It could be. It is a remarkable imitation."

"But it is only an imitation," she said quietly. "Sticks and stones and faerie bones."

"And a name," Therese added. She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself. "One can't bring a changeling to life without a name. So. We were fooled."

"The Fey still have him," Chatoya said. And they could not afford to lose him. She could not.

"Then we had better find out where and why," Therese said. A faint smile curled over her mouth. "I think you should leave it with me."

Their eyes met. Chatoya did not look away from the emptiness there, and she did not fear it. Instead, she hardly hesitated before she said calmly, "Iron burns them."

Therese's eyebrows arched as if startled. Then she laughed, the sound gentle and warm. "I know."

oOo

The following morning took them back to Purview House, squat upon its estate like a vast toad. Ivy laced the crumbling walls with a strangler's grip, hiding some of its fading glory. High above, the fading sliver of the moon warned them how little time remained.

"It seems that we underestimated his value to them," Therese remarked. A gun was slung over one hip, iron enough to bring death to the twilight lands. "Titania played a clever game when she renegotiated the accord."

"I should have known," Chatoya said grimly. "She even told me – she called Blue the murderer of her firstborn son."

Therese scowled. "Which would not have been such an issue had he not also been Titania's only son. Only Bane would have the utter arrogance to stroll into the twilight lands and deprive the queen of her heir. Only he would be brazen enough to commit an act of war and then have the very treaty preventing it carved onto his back. I can't think what he hoped to gain!"

Chatoya sighed. "Same as usual, I imagine. Power."

"Then he should have thought about what he had to lose," Therese said sharply. "Everything."

oOo

Inside the ballroom, the silence was complete. She looked around, searching for an entrance. "This is the Great Hall."

"Not so great now," Therese said, stalking along the walls with a keen eye. "Any idea what this entrance will look like?"

"None." Chatoya scoured the floor in hope of a clue. The wooden panels were rotten in places, but the holes led only to dirt. The ceiling offered no more clues: thin grey light slunk through the broken roof, illuminating only rafters and cobwebs.

"Hmm. Could be behind this," the lamia said thoughtfully and Chatoya glanced over to see her gazing at the grimy picture she'd noticed on her last visit. "It's easily big enough to hide a portal."

"Maybe." She joined Therese. The frame gleamed dully, a pattern of intricate loops and whorls broken only by the round dimples of screws. "It looks like it's nailed on." Chatoya felt the frame tentatively – then her fingers hit a smooth part of the frame. She glanced down, and saw a plaque.

"Not a problem," Therese said breezily. "Stand back."

"Wait." She scrubbed at the metal. Gradually words revealed themselves. The Great Hall of 1808. "Look!"

Therese whistled. "The painting's the entrance. Clever."

With a twist of her fingers, white light blazed brightly in the ballroom, and for the first time, the painting was revealed in its full glory.

It was the ballroom as it had been in bygone days: a glittering, glamorous whirl of people. The tables were heaped with a cornucopia of food, shiny fruit and gleaming rare meat and towering sugar confections. Wine was dark red, blood red, a stain against the pale hands that held it – and everywhere she looked, she saw masks, animals, gods, demons, none concealing the gleam of inhuman eyes.

On the dancefloor, couples were frozen in mid-step, but here and there details peeking out from their rainbow finery proclaimed their nature. A hoof protruding from a lady's vast skirts. A claw bare inches from a girl's pale throat. Gauzy wings that were not mere costume.

Presiding over it all, majestic upon a throne that seemed made of antlers, the Fey queen in her icy splendour.

And there-

Chatoya gasped.

He was at her right hand, as if he were her heir and not her prisoner, but there the honours ended. His hands were shackled above his head with wooden manacles: a wooden collar enclosed his neck, and was attached by a rope of his wrists so that his head was back, throat bared. His chest was bare, covered in horrific wounds that left him blackened with blood, unable defend himself. Beside him was a brazier with cherry-red implements upon it: and what looked like pieces of bamboo.

"The fool," Therese said softly, and Chatoya knew she had seen it too. "At least he is still alive."

She swallowed down a lump in her throat. It unnerved her to see Blue helpless. "We'd better make sure he stays that way then."

"How do we get in?"

She looked at the invitation in her hand. There was magic in it, though she didn't know quite what.

"Hold onto me," she said, and as Therese obeyed, she touched the invitation to the painting. It gleamed gold: and the writing swirled into a wash of black that spread across the card, and then out onto the canvas until it was a shifting mass of shadow.

The pair of them gazed the portal. It was the final day of the blue moon: the last chance they had to enter the twilight lands on their terms, as guests. That was small protection, but better than nothing.

"If we had discovered the changeling a day later..." muttered Therese.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Chatoya couldn't stop her sour smile. "He has to be the first evil twin to be revealed because he wasn't quite evil enough."

Therese laughed, a smoky twist of sound that the still air seemed to swallow. "Indeed. Perhaps there's hope for us. I doubt the Fey have any idea of Bane's capacity to irritate."

"They don't call us Furies for nothing."

They looked at one another: two women who ruled a world of sunlight and midnight as surely as the fey queen in eternal twilight. Green eyes met black: and though they had stood on opposing sides a dozen times and would do so a dozen more, there was a moment of understanding as strong as iron. Like him or loathe him, and it was a little of both, Blue Malefici belonged to them.

Therese straightened. She flexed her fingers as if readying herself for a fight. "Very true. Well, Chatoya, shall we live up to our legend?"

Chatoya gave her a fierce smile. "I thought we already were."

With no further hesitation, they stepped through: into the Last Dance, into a masquerade of shadows and illusions, into eternal winter and eternal twilight for a promise as transitory as one man's life.

oOo

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