There is a castle on a cliff, high above the small coastal town that cowers in its shadow, and it is unlike anything that Killian has seen before. Fierce and foreboding, tall towers suspended above the waves, it is a fitting home for a dark creature.

Or at least that is what every soul he found on his quest claimed.

"In the large castle by the Northern Sea," say the fishermen of the Wayward River, "where the wind is so harsh it sounds like the souls of the damned. We know this because the fish now swim south, into our large nets."

"In the palace perched high above the water," say the farmers in their golden fields, "with walls that gleam in the morning sun. We know this because our kin have fled the town below, fearing for their lives."

"In the fortress above the rocks," say the tradesmen, "above the town where ships from Southern Isles arrive every Tuesday" (he does not ask how they know this; after all, living in the Dark One's shadow must be bad for trade).

The people of the town swear that she is here, that she has been at the castle for several weeks. She has not bothered the town, but the sounds they hear (the barmaid whose heaving bosoms he is becoming quite acquainted with shudders at the thought) could wake the dead/kill a man/really, the list of ways that the sounds could harm the town goes on and on (quite imaginative, the townspeople).

He takes the maid to bed, and he tells himself it because he could be dead in the morning, that he must lose himself in her warmth, but it is not satisfying (she is not Milah). Afterwards, she sleeps soundly in the sheets of his rented bed while he stands at the window, staring out at the castle. The streets below are deserted - presumably due to fear of the Dark One - and so he opens the window slowly, hoping to hear the wretched sounds that they fear so much.

All he hears is the wind.

It is only later, as he tries to fall back asleep, that he wonders if he heard screams as well.

He practices what he will say on the way to the castle.

He considers starting off with something along the lines of a formal greeting, moving into inquiring about her health and praising her skill at slaying the Crocodile (though he wonders if she will have a scaly appearance too, like her predecessor). He will slowly, gently, ease his way into discussing her parents' desire to have her safe and her potential imprisonment, which he does not expect to go well (he will not mention her father's hinted suggestion to have her done away with unless he truly must).

Like everything else thus far, it does not go as planned.

The way to the castle is steep, and he falters occasionally, digging his hook into the rocky soil time and time again to steady himself. It is only after he has progressed halfway up the hill, and the castle no closer to him than before, that he realizes what's happening.

He stops, sits on the side of the path, and waits for her.

He waits for what he guesses must be hours - the shadows grow shorter, and he sheds his coat in the heat of the midday sun - until finally she arrives, appearing before him out of thin air.

She is nothing like Hook thought she would be.

She is no wisp of a thing, nor is she as strong as an ox, but her green eyes are cold and her mouth narrow as she studies him. He studies her in return, and he can see the resemblance of her mother in the eyes and shape of her mouth, her father in the nose and the way she carries herself. There is a faint scaly sheen to her skin, less so than the Crocodile - instead, she seems to glow from within, her golden hair blazing in the sun, making him squint to look at her. She wears black leather, like him, but unlike him she is clearly not affected by the heat of the day.

She is the most terrifying and beautiful creature he's ever seen.

"Nice trick," he remarks.

"Not a trick," she tells him defensively, and he rises.

"Apologies, oh Dark One," he says with a flourish of his hand as he bows. "Captain Killian Jones, but most people know me by my more colorful moniker – "

"Hook." He glances up with a smile that is carefully crafted to throw women off guard (not that it will work with her, he fears, but he will try anything once).

"So you've heard of me," he asks, and she smirks in return (it is a cruel smirk, one that he's seen before on the Evil Queen's face).

"Please…" she says, as she gestures to his left hand.

"Fair enough," he responds, reaching down to grab his jacket. All of his carefully crafted words fly out of his head as he quickly rethinks his strategy, considers where to go next. He smiles.

"Well, I can see that you're busy and I hardly wish to take up the time of someone as exalted as you, but I'm afraid that I have some ill news. Your life is in danger."

The Dark One sneers. "Who would possibly challenge me?" she asks.

Hook takes a deep breath before the plunge.

"Your parents."

Just as easily as she arrived by his side, so too does the Dark One bring him with her into her castle. He blinks, and they are there, in a large room full of wide windows and doors that open onto terraces which overlook the sea (he inhales deeply, enjoying the scent of salt air that he so missed during his time on land).

The Dark One leaves him to his ruminations, striding across the room soundlessly. She stops before a large table, where a carafe sits with goblets. She pours herself a glass (crystal) of some sort of red liquid. As she pours, she speaks (he notices that she does not offer him one).

"I don't know that I can trust you."

"I would hardly expect you to, so soon in our relationship," he comments, spotting an armchair with silver brocade near the doorway. He sits down, crosses his legs, and waits for her to respond.

She doesn't. Instead, she takes a sip of her drink, slowly, and he supposes that she's trying to create an air of mystery and tension (he so hates to disappoint her, but he exhales slowly, waiting).

They play this game for some time until he finally huffs, more annoyed than wary. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, digs the tip of his hook into the wooden arm of the chair.

"Your parents want you dead." Hook watches for any response – he expects none, to be honest – so when her hand clenches around the crystal goblet, he knows that he has hit a nerve.

"I don't have any parents," she replies, regaining her composure before turning towards him.

"Actually, you do – Snow White and Prince Charming, in case you forgot," he points out, fingertip tapping against the chair's arm. He is deliberately not looking at her, waiting to see what she will do, and what she does is move. Within the blink of an eye, he is being pulled up by her hand in his chest, fist clenched around his still-beating heart.

"They are not my parents," she tells him, voice high and trembling, "cowardly, weak-willed, unfit to rule – " she starts to say, but she tapers off, digs her nails in further, and he wants to scream, to yell, but he just grits his teeth. He cannot react. If he reacts with her, here, now, she will win, and he will die, and now faced with death's cleansing embrace…no. Not now. Not yet.

Instead, he watches her shake in anger and in something else - something that is not quite fear, but still surprising, and he remembers the Evil Queen's words, wonders if this is what madness looks like up close.

He cannot bear to look at it any longer.

"Well, from a certain point of view," he grunts out, watching (surprised) as she lets go, takes a step back, then another, until she retreats across the room towards the door that faces the sea. Her skin, so pale and luminous, shines in the sun, and he squints his eyes and looks away.

"They sent you to kill me." When he returns his gaze, she is still facing the water but he can tell from the rigid line of her shoulders that she is affected by his words, that what he has told her makes her feel something (but what it is, exactly, is a truth he can't discern. Yet).

"Well, I believe their words were more to bring you to them, 'alive or otherwise'," Hook admits, "but I find that I'm hardly committed to their position, now that I've met the illustrious Dark One." He tries to choose his words carefully, to buy another minute, another hour, for when faced with certain death, he finds he no longer desires it.

It was a foolish plan, coming here.

"Why you? Are you a mercenary?" She turns so that she can look at him, and even though he can see her try to keep her features calm, there is a touch of devastation around her eyes that he finds confusing, and so he shakes his head, allows his lips to curve upwards in a smile.

"Pirate." He grins cheekily, and she seems to take this as an insult.

"That doesn't explain why they chose you," she spits out, and it takes all of Hook's self-control to not reply with something that would cost him his tongue.

"Let's just say that I had a bit of a disagreement with some of the methods of the previous Dark One."

"Meaning – "

"Meaning he killed the woman I loved, and I found a way to avenge her death."

Her mouth quivers just barely and Hook remembers that she may be the Dark One but she is still young and may not really know the depth of her powers, not like her predecessor. But this show of weakness does not last long, and her eyes are cold once more.

"You're not leaving here."

"I hardly expected to."

That is when she smiles, the sick and twisted one that she learned from her captor. That is when his blood runs cold.

"Good."

He is given a room in a high tower (it is obvious that if he jumps, he will drown in the sea or his body will be broken apart on the rocks below, but he has no intention of jumping). She tells him, as she leaves, that she isn't sure what to do with him yet.

"If you're telling the truth," the Dark One says, "then you may be of use to me. And if you're lying…"

"Then the sharks will eat well tonight," Hook remarks.

She studies him - really studies, him, looking him up and down before reaching for the door handle. "Goodnight, Hook. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

She doesn't.

He sits in the window, watching the sea, until she returns, wearing red, her golden curls falling around her shoulders and maybe, just maybe, if he squints, she may not look like a monster (in the darkness of the castle she still glows in the candlelight, more diamond than gold, and it is awesome and terrifying at once). She does not sit, merely paces the outer corners of the room, keeping her distance. It reminds him of a beast in the wild stalking its prey - an apt comparison as her nails click against the stone, and her heels click against the floor.

"After today, I will give you free reign of the castle while I determine if I can trust what you said about Snow White and Prince Charming's intentions," she says, sneering as she stumbles over her parents' names. She does not look at him. "You may come and go in the rooms as you please, but you may not go in the highest tower nor the lowest dungeon, and you may not leave the walls of the castle grounds."

"So you intend to keep me?" he asks, thinking about the view from the tower, about the salt air and the sun and the stars. It would be a safe life, and not a bad life, but he is too old to be trapped in a tower. As much as he thought he wanted death - welcomed it, in fact - with each passing day since he started this foolish exercise, he realizes that he has not yet truly lived. There are things he still wishes to do - places to explore, women to bed, food to eat, treasures to plunder. This cannot be the end of his story.

But, perhaps, it is meant to be the beginning.

The Dark One smiles then, sending a shiver down his spine (there is something gruesome in that smile, something so like Pan in its childlike aggression that he looks away). "I certainly can't let you go, can I? You were clever enough to find me - what if you brought others to my home? And you claim to have found a way to impose vengeance on my predecessor – what if you thought you would try to slay me?"

Hook shakes his head. "I have no desire to kill you. I only came here out of curiosity."

The Dark One raises an eyebrow. "And you simply agreed to aid those idiots with the full knowledge that you may not complete your quest?"

Hook smiles and shrugs, "Pirate."

She furrows her brow in a way that is almost childish. "I have never met a pirate before - is this the behavior of your kind?"

Her line of questioning takes Hook back, and he shrugs again. "It is for me," is the only thing he can think of to say in response.

She nods, clearly letting his words sink in. "I see." She tilts her head to the side, studies him for a moment, and it is in those seconds that Hook sees a different side of her - someone young, someone taken from her family and raised by a stranger, someone who may not fully grasp the implications of the power she has absorbed. But it is gone in a flash once she catches him looking, and she is out of the chair and by the door before he can blink.

"Remember," she warns, "not the highest tower nor the lowest dungeon."

"And not to leave the castle walls. I understand." Hook nods, and she gives him one more lingering look, the fading light casting shadows across her features.

"And if you disobey me," she reminds me him as she closes the door, "I'll kill you in the morning."

This is the point in the story where a storyteller will pause, and remind the reader with a look, or a slow page turn, that it is customary for a hero to be tested.

But, if you remember what was said at the beginning, this is a story without a hero.