A/N: Some might call the ending a cliffhanger, an unfairly dangling finish—but I rather like leaving things up to readers' imaginations every once in a while. This is merely a vignette, a what-if, and I'll leave it up to you to explore any further what-ifs within your own mind.
She was there, again, in that vast cavernous blackness. The fire was roaring, and the table glittered.
Her body felt sluggish, and her face felt heavy, opaque. She traced her eye and mouth with one finger and it came away streaked with black. Paint upon her eyes and her lips, like a common whore.
But whores in the city marketplace near her father's castle wore bright, garish colors on their faces, trying to look as though they were full of lusty life. Black smacked of death, of darkness. She shuddered with the symbolism, and tasted the greasy stickiness of the lip-paint with an unthinking, nervous flick of her tongue.
The mirror was behind her—she felt its cold, glass presence like sharp steel—but she would not turn to look in it. If she did, he might come again, the nameless horror that she had no words for.
There was a vague memory—he had been very, very red, she remembered, clothed in black, and impossibly large. Beyond that she did not recall any more, nor did she have any wish to.
Then there was a rumbling murmur, as silken honey sliding on sandpaper…she had heard it before, heard that dreadful caress. Lady, he had called her, an almost mockingly polite, grand title. My lady. The strains now seemed wordless—whispers that she could not hear, could not quite make out.
The paint on her eyes itched crazily. Her fingers twitched, but she stood motionless. Perhaps he would mistake her for one of the statues. Simply another ornament in this vile splendor…
She heard a step behind her on the smooth, dark floor, and a cracking sound, like thunder. There was a sort of aching, stretching feeling in the air, and she wished to run. But there was no escape—the doors were shut, and her legs were stubbornly still.
Another step resounded through the gaping hall, and she saw now the long, ponderous shadow on the floor. It was strange, how her body could not move a muscle, even though every nerve strained and the blood pounded in her ears, steadily throbbing. His outline in silhouette was evident even with the flickering distortion cast by the fire's dancing light. She had forgotten he had horns.
That sick, coppery fear came back, that she would be impaled, and a convulsive shiver ran through her body as she sank into a heap upon the floor. She could not turn around, would not, and he was coming ever closer. She could feel his body heat now, like the flaming furnace of Hell.
His hand she saw clearly now in shadow, easily three or four times the length and breadth of her own, nails long and sharp. The remembrance was gradually coming back now, how he had unfurled that huge hand like a gracious host, how the fingernails had seemed more like decorations than weapons. He was elegant, for all his terrifying power.
Still he came on, slowly, all the while gaining on her quivering form, and still she could not move. She screamed out, finally, as his huge hands found her at last, and drew her up like a limp rag doll from the floor.
"Lit-tle princess," he chuckled throatily, and she drew breaths in sharp, hoarse gasps, held firmly but wriggling like a worm caught on the hook. "Let me go," she begged, "let go," and unexpectedly he let her fall to the hard, polished floor, where she lay curled in a trembling ball. This was becoming more and more dreadfully un-dreamlike. There was a bitter, sliding realness to it now, just at the edge of her consciousness, although she knew she had gone to sleep in the big feather-bed in her father's castle, dressed in a quite modest white night-gown, pure and somewhat childish, all frills and lace and covering her from neck to ankle, leaving nothing for sight to prey upon. This tight black thing dipped down so scandalously far as to nearly show her navel. Her breasts felt poised to slide free from its confines at any moment, half-revealed as they were.
"You're dead," she said dully. "I remember now, even though I was…"
"I am alive," he cut in smoothly, "as long as there are minds to remember me, as long as there are dreams." He said "dreams" long and slow, with a kind of smoldering reverence, and his voice wrapped around her body like the long reach of his arm. Then she realized it was his arm around her, and her scream was choked this time, muffled in her dry, aching throat.
"Lady," he sighed, and she shrank, quivered as her head tipped back against his chest, red-hot and unfathomably broad. Is this it, is it going to happen now? she thought, and mostly she felt ill at the thought of it, but she felt something else too, something she didn't want to think about, something that had no words because she would give it none.
"You will see me again, in dreams," he said. "You are treacherous, but you intoxicate me. I would be loathe to ignore your presence if I were to return to the world again."
"You never will," she said, struggling to keep her voice level, her body calm, "and you won't visit my dreams again, either." It was difficult to speak boldly or bravely when his long nails were grazing her waist. He would only have to press a little, and one of them might pierce her through, sliding between her ribs and letting out her life's-blood.
"You won't be back," she said again, feeling herself quiver.
"How so, lady? You cannot keep me out. I will be back again…and again…and again. I will come to you like an incubus, and you will never be rid of me, as long as you sleep, and dream dreams."
"Go away!" she screamed, and somehow fell away from the grasp of his long arm, scrabbling backwards on the slippery floor. "Go away!"
He reached out his hand, trying to placate her, it seemed, and his face was still in shadow. She could see the outline of his great horns in the darkness, the stark, carved shape of his angular face. His chin jutted out a little from the shadows, as red and as impossibly proportioned as the rest of him.
"Leave me," she said. "Leave me in peace. Find someone else to torment."
"You were the catalyst of my destruction," he snapped, but there was a kind of languorous amusement in his voice. "You ruined all my plans when you freed the unicorn. Why should I not torment you as often as I can exert my strength?"
"It will do you no good," she whispered. "No good at all."
"Say what you will," he said with a little growl, throwing up his hand dismissively as he turned toward the mirror. "You cannot keep me out. One of these nights," and here he turned again, although she still could not clearly see his face, "you will yield. And the power of our union will be such that I may well be brought back to form again in the world, to be your mate in every sense, and you my dark queen. We will rule the night, and I will not be tricked again by wily gnomes and faeries, or foundling forest boys."
She could not speak, and he disappeared with a great crack through the mirror. As he did so, the walls around her dissolved into those of her chamber, and she heard her father calling her name through the door. One thought, and one thought only, penetrated her mind over and over, a constant, burning litany.
One of these nights, you will yield.
You will yield.