Hi guys! I've returned with the most revealing chapter thus far. Either this will answer your questions or raise more, who knows!
Notice: this chapter divulges into some risky content but not to an extent the rating has to go up
Thank you to the comments! They make my day to read :D
Lovino stayed until late, and he would have stayed longer, but Antonio began to get agitated as soon as the sun began to set.
"You should go back," he told an unmoved Lovino. "It's almost night and castle rules are rules."
"I don't want to go in tonight," Lovino said. "I'll sleep outside."
"Aw, come on quierdo , I'll walk with you."
Lovino did not reply but he followed his guide as he began to walk the path. Curving alongside their journey was the same stream he had so adamantly sketched days earlier.
"I love how you draw," Antonio said, looking back. He held out a hand.
"How do you know I can draw?" It was not the first time Antonio had off-handedly mentioned something that he should not have known. Lovino ignored the hand outstretched and instead tried to jump the stream himself.
He almost made it too, but landed on a slick rock and, with a gasp, tumbled backwards. Antonio reached out a desperate hand and caught him before he slipped into the creek.
Antonio's skin was cold, Lovino realized with a pounding heart. He could feel a strong arm curled around his back and holding him steady. His face was too close to his own, green eyes burning in the fading light.
"I saw you the other day" Antonio breathed out. "I led you back to the castle"
The light that led him home.
So it was Antonio who held the torch that saved him the other day. Lovino's mouth stayed in a stubborn line. He wouldn't say thank you.
"You can let me go now" Lovino said instead, his own feet finding footing.
Antonio smiled sheepishly. He released his captive, but noticeably did not let go of his hand.
They continued along together in that manner.
The door to the castle was propped open as they approached. Someone knew he had been out here, and it was almost touching that they had thought to leave the door unlocked. Maybe Darkmoor wasn't as bad as he assumed.
But just before they reached the castle doors however, Antonio stopped.
Lovino looked up at him, confused, but immediately quieted as Antonio leaned in, his voice soft and serious.
"Romano, you need to be careful. The castle isn't safe for you, especially at night."
Lovino stared at him in surprise. "But you said-"
Antonio cut him off, moving in as if he was initiating an embrace. "Don't drink anything you don't trust. If you're scared, come to the garden." He moved away. "Goodnight querido ."
Antonio let go of his hand.
Lovino stared wide eyed at the man he had met that morning. Antonio's face was almost unrecognizable in the dim light, the shadows on his skin menacing. But his eyes, they were kind and passionate. "Goodnight," Lovino choked out, too full of questions to ask any.
[=]
The castle itself was as desolate as he had left it. Lovino moved through the back door and into a parlor with wicker furniture and plants decorating the walls. The hour of twilight was always the quietest, and he was almost surprised to see a girl moving from the kitchen with a tray of food.
"Oh, sir, you are not in your room!" The girl said, jumping when she saw him. "Master Feliciano has requested that someone send you food as you have not been to dinner in several days."
"Er, thank you" Lovino said. He quickly surveyed the meal. He grabbed a piece of bread off the plate. "You don't have to go all the way upstairs. I'm really not hungry."
"Don't you want the drink?" The girl asked, her head cocked. "Bread sticks in your throat."
Lovino looked at her, trying to survey for malicious intent. She seemed unreadable. "I'll be ok"
She shrugged, and began to walk away.
"Excuse me!" Lovino called. "Do you know where my brother went?"
The girl smiled. "He's probably with the Lord in his private study. They've been awfully close as of recent."
Gross , Lovino thought as he climbed the stairs. He tried to munch his frustrations out of the bread in his mouth. You leave your brother alone for one second and suddenly he's known as the castle slut .
He walked down the stone hall. This wing was on the opposite side of the castle from his room, he recognized as much. But it was the same side as Feliciano's. Why were they placed so far apart? It made it almost inconvenient to see his brother in the behemoth of the castle. He passed many extra bedrooms on the way over. Idly, Lovino wondered if anyone else was staying in Darkmoor with them. Surely there was enough rooms to have them next to each other.
As he neared the study however, his musing stopped. Someone was shouting.
" He should not be here! "
Lovino slowed to a stop outside the study door. Someone had left the mahogany door open a crack, and he could hear at least four voices talking over themselves inside.
" Gilbert bitte ," A voice said, and Lovino struggled to recall his German lessons from school. " He would not come unless his brother was accepted too. We've waited too long."
"It won't matter, we'll make sure he won't harm anyone again. I'll watch him personally ."
That was a female voice and Lovino moved closer. She spoke with an accent to a point Lovino almost couldn't decipher what she was saying.
Whatever they meant, it didn't make much sense. Lovino almost lost interest and moved away. That was, until the only voice he knew and recognized spoke up above the bickering. It was the Lord.
"We have until the celebration. On his birthday, things will change. This is our one chance to get Feliciano back to us, and as long as the celebration holds, we won't lose him again. It's our job to keep him unaware until that point, until he drinks at the stroke of midnight.
Lovino's eyes widened in horror. They were going to hurt Feliciano!
He fell back from the door. Despite his best efforts, his shoes squeaked against the floor in the process. He held his breath with a sharp inhale. Before he could think however, heavy footsteps approached the door.
Lovino didn't wait to be discovered. He ran, back down the hall, forgetting the reason he had come at all.
[=]
Inside the study, Elizaveta shut the mahogany door with a click. They were being too careless to have left the door open as it was. She nodded at Ludwig to continue
"Gilbert, make sure what Feliciano eats and drinks has been tested for poison." Ludwig said, reviewing the plan. "You're his protection."
Gilbert grinned, but his face was serious. "Roger that."
"Roderich, please keep up preparations for this masquerade ball. It has to be exactly as it was three hundred years ago, to the last detail." He nodded to the pale man beside Elizaveta, fixing his glasses.
"Of course." Roderich said. "I planned the first one, and the second one will be easily just as grand."
"Finally, Elizaveta." She looked up at Ludwig, raising an eyebrow. "Watch Lovino"
Elizaveta nodded. But her mind was far away from the conversation at hand. Her eyes were studying her husband. Roderich had always had such beautiful pale skin, and anytime during the daylight she would remind herself how gorgeous he was. Now, however, was not one of those times. The moonlight trickling through the window revealed him as a ghastly and horrifying creature. His skin was translucent, and decaying. She could see a fracture on his skull and the lax color of his once vibrant hair.
Ludwig stood tall and opposing in the front of the study. Moonlight illuminated all of the room and she noticed how his face was bony and devoid of skin, gaunt and undead it was. He still held himself as if he was a general, but he looked like one who had been dead for a very long time.
Gilbert was the most ghastly of all. He did very little to hide his new image, his neck still with the bloody scar of a shuffle long past. His skin peeled and decayed, his hair greasy and matted. He walked with a limp as if someone had snapped a long brittled bone.
She herself was nothing much to look at either, and she picked at the wedding ring on her finger. It rattled, only touching bone. Just like anyone who had lived in the castle, she was among the undead. A cross between a zombie who had stumbled out of the grave and a vampire who had lived too long.
She sighed, grateful her true form only was revealed in the moonlight.
"Elizaveta" Ludwig was saying, and she looked up sharply. "Are you still with us?"
She nodded, and Ludwig continued. "I don't know if Lovino is… who we think he is. But still, make sure he doesn't get into trouble. Feliciano told me that it is important to him that he and his brother celebrate their birthday together. We need to give him the benefit of the doubt."
Elizaveta nodded numbly. The plan worried her.
"If what Arthur told me is right, if the night of Veneziano's death is enacted exactly right, his spirit will appear and mend with his new body. And then, the curse will be broken."
"And what if it doesn't?" Roderich asked cooly. "He won't wake up. He will drink the tonic, he'll go comatose, and he'll die too."
Ludwig produced a small vial from his shirt pocket. "This is a antidote. If nothing happens, we give this to Feliciano, and he goes our separate ways."
Roderich narrowed his eyes. "But the curse won't be broken. We will still be monsters at night, confined to this blasted castle. All because you were love sick enough to make a deal with a witch doctor of all people!"
"Shut up" Gilbert snapped in his brother's defense. "West made a mistake, but it's all our faults it happened at all. If we were doing what we should have been that night, then it wouldn't have happened in the first place."
Ludwig surveyed the room. "We all know our jobs. It will work. I'll make things right." He turned away, and Elizaveta caught how his eyes drifted to the painting hanging on the wall.
She had always liked that picture of Veneziano and Romano. It was from when they first moved in, right before Elizaveta met both of them. She had adored them at first sight. It was hard to look at now.
Ludwig spoke once more. "Everyone's dismissed. You're free to roam until daylight."
[=]
When Ludwig returned to his bedroom, he was surprised to see the door creaked open, letting candle light spill out into the hall.
He proceeded carefully, reaching for a vase that sat decoratively on a nearby table. No one was allowed in his private quarters, a rule he had not told his guests but assumed was implied. Clearly he had been wrong, because in his bed lay Feliciano, curled up on his side and humming quietly.
Ludwig remained deadly silent, extremely grateful it was dark.
"Ludwig?" Feliciano called out to the quiet room. "I'm sorry I'm in your room. It's just, I'm having these really awful dreams lately and I need to talk to someone"
"You shouldn't be here," Ludwig said. His voice did not betray the pound of his heart at the sight of the body tangled up in his sheets, lithe legs smooth and wanting. He closed his eyes. It was reminding him of a different time.
"I know" Feliciano pushed himself onto the crux of his elbows. "It's just…"
"Just what?"
"You're the one in my dreams."
Ludwig reached up to feel his face. Smooth skin greeted him, a touch of stubble grating on his fingertips. He had been away too long from the moonlight for its deadly effect to reach him. As long as the lights were off, then he could believe it was a memory.
"Blow out the candle."
Feliciano looked at him in the light. His amber eyes were those of a doe, but they were not ignorant. He leaned over and blew out the candle on the bedside table.
The room plunged into darkness and Ludwig felt an energy course in his veins that he hadn't felt in centuries. He made his way to the bed, closing the door as he left the arch.
Feliciano curled against him the second he sat down. "I need to know why I keep thinking about you" Feliciano said, his voice a breath in his ears. "I can't remember why, when I wake up I only remember you and me and no one else."
His heart hurt, clutching painfully with every beat. "Vene-"
"Shh" Feliciano's slender finger touched his lips. "I only want to know your name tonight."
Hesitation burned away like the smoke from the blown out candle. Ludwig found Feliciano's lips in the dark and let them touch for the first time since he had lost him.
When they fell backwards on the sheets, white skin pushing into a willing body, no words were spoken but that of ecstasy and an angel singing his Lord's name.
