A/N: Hey guys over fifty reviews that's awesome! Thanks for all the support! Unfortunately a not so happy chapter… bear with me.

I sat at the long table across from Gabriel and next to Rapunzel in the main dining room, watching Gabriel gently prod some food on his plate with his silverware. It had been a great evening until Flynn had noticed that I was on the run and getting the idea that I was a thief of some sort. Even the lighting in the room seemed menacing under the filter of fear that shrouded my mind.

The table was a long, dark, sturdy wooden one that was at least thirty feet in length, which covered not even half of the dining hall. Purple curtains were drawn to the side letting moonlight fill part of the room casting double shadows on anything it touched and this was strangely comforting. It gave me something to think about in the awkward silence that seemed to bounce off the walls and lay like some kind of cloying fog over the room.

By the time we had all finished eating— or in my case pushing the food around trying to make it just disappear— the moon outside was peaking over the horizon. Standing I went over to the window, when the moonlight fell on me I saw my reflection in the glass, from the black hair to the now silver glowing eyes. It was a full moon out there and my eyes always tended to glow when exposed to it. The next thing I knew Rapunzel was standing next to me, staring at our reflections.

"Cursed?"

"Yes." I whispered to keep my voice from shaking.

Eugene smiled almost apologetically at Gabriel and I, while Gabriel walked over to my right side, wrapping an arm around me. Looking up into his face it was plain he was thinking of the fastest way out of the castle that would keep us both safe. Smiling on the inside at how he was just now contemplating escape and at how it seemed like we were both one of a kind— a matching pair. Leaning my head on his shoulder I sighed and watched the moon rise.

"What brings you here?" Rapunzel asked as curiosity and endearment filtered through in her soft voice.

The sound of her sweet and kind voice melted the black curtain of fear in my mind— I could feel the whole room change from strange and alien to friendly— my brain slowed down and I could practically hear Gabriel's match pace to mine.

Lifting my head from Gabriel's shoulder I gave Rapunzel an amiable and meaningful look, "Only to meet you and to enjoy a festival with my family. When you offered me your hand in the square after we bumped into one another, my heart squeezed with fear. You were my only way out of this curse— but now it… now you can't possibly." I turned away from the moon, "Only a Flower of the Sun could have cured me, for the sun always chases away the darkness of night, the moon fleeing before it. You, Rapunzel, once were such a Flower but now you can't possibly save me from the fate I will inevitable endure."

Gabriel, being strangely supportive at the moment, held my hand and gave it a light squeeze, whispering in my ear, "I won't let them get you— I promise."

Rapunzel seemingly unaware of this, walked over to the table and brushed her hand lightly over it, "There is nothing I can do to help."

"We understand your Highness." Gabriel murmured in gratitude.

Eugene

Rapunzel rolled her eyes lightly, and then turned serious again, "What is your curse?"

By the time I finished filling in some of the blanks about my being a Flower of the Moon and that I had the ability to grant any wish, an old grandfather clock that I had seen on the way up here struck midnight, chiming twelve little gongs. Gabriel started to sing my song, my waist length ebony hair suddenly glowing silver so brightly that it filled the whole room with its ethereal light.

"Flower of the moon

Shower me with light

Award me one wish

Please give me back my life

Ease the pains of time

Grant the blind their sight

Make one find true love

Please give me back my life

Give back my life."

Without him even telling me I knew that I would grant this or any other wish he would ever make as long as we both lived.

Gabriel held my hand twirling me as suddenly I was wearing the most beautiful pale blue dress I had ever seen, we were back down dancing with the others as though we had never even left. I leaned my head onto Gabriel's chest and cried just letting him hold me for a moment.

"She can't help me Gabriel— I did all that work for nothing. All the pain I went through to get here and she can't even help me."

Gabriel patted my back in sympathy, "Its okay we'll figure out some way to keep you safe."

After a while Gabriel and I moved away from the square, the dancing and frivolity that resided there. It rubbed wrong on my nerves— I had just learned that the one person who had given my whole miserable life a small teardrop of light— there was nothing.

For a moment, I hadn't realized that Gabriel had stopped, but when I did he casually leaned up against my wagon. We were so far away from all of the festivities of Corona, so far away from Raffaello or my Father, which I couldn't help but wonder if this is when Gabriel would come clean and his soldier friends would sneak behind me and cart me off to FaLeon.

After what felt like a long time Gabriel spoke in a hushed tone, "You scared me."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

Gabriel pushed away from the wagon slowly and calculating, "Back at the Market, when you called me—,"

I held up my hand then walked away a few feet until I was a more reasonable distance from the man who was stealing my heart. About seventy nine percent of me really didn't want to know what Gabriel had to say about my loving him. Still the other thirty one percent of curiosity was boiling and pricking at me, trying to get me to just wave him on and say whatever he needed to say.

Steeling my nerves and my voice anyways, I whispered back to him, "Even though I said it I knew you wouldn't ever feel that way. I am an incurable monster, a beautiful face that masks the ugly worn interior of someone who will always be broken— until the final end."

"Elyse, you're not making sense."

Looking at him from under my eyelashes I held Gabriel's gaze while he appeared spellbound; I had known he would be. For some reason every full moon I had a certain allure to those around me even if they knew about my curse and what it did.

Hot tears rolled down my face then fell from my chin before splashing onto the white-blue of my dress I replied, "I will never get a cold, never suffer from a scratch or bruise, and I will never suffer from the normal ailments of growing old— if I ever grow old and more than likely I will die like my Mother— running like a fox running from the hounds."

Gabriel strode over to me and wrapped his arms around me, "Or you could die with the man who loves you."

The suddenly urge to scream at Gabriel and push him away came on hard and fast but I reined it in— hadn't I said merely hours before that he was my più fidato e amato? Hadn't he rejected me telling me that it was, for all intents and purposes, a stupid infatuation?

"Don't say it," I growled irately while taking a step away from him, "unless you really mean it."

He took one measured step towards me slowly as he spoke in a low and soothing tone, "Elyse, I have always fallen head over heels for you— in the meadow by the glen when we had to chop down that tree to cross the ravine, when I went first and almost fell— it wasn't my fellow soldiers who saved me then and it isn't them saving me now. I'm still falling, end over end, and you can catch me and save me from what I've become— you're the only one who can."

Tears tracked down my face and I flung my arms around Gabriel's neck, "You annoy me."

"I know." He murmured in my ear.

Soon after deciding not to go to the wagons for fear of the world finding us in that little meadow where we could hide from the world temporarily, Gabriel and I had started a fire and were leaning against a boulder, sitting next one another with our fingers intertwined. I could feel the hopeless despair that had engulfed me earlier lift off of my shoulders. It was as if there had been a pair of heavy chains laid there for weeks on end and now Gabriel had taken them off and set me free.

Nearly a hour of that peaceful silence later and a man with a scar stumbled drunkenly into our meadow. Gabriel sighed in annoyance and stood to send him back the way he came.

I stood to help if I possibly could.

The cold feeling of steel suddenly appeared at my throat and I screamed. Captain clamped one of his metal encased arms around mine pinning them uselessly to my side. Four soldiers were holding Gabriel down to the ground while he yelled and desperately thrashed, nearly landing one of the soldiers in the fire.

The man with the scar sauntered over to Gabriel with a cold smile, and lifted his spear high up over his head. Gabriel laid still and looked me in the eyes desperation and fear clouding his usually thoughtful eyes.

Then the soldier plunged his spear down into Gabriel.

I'll never forget the sound of our agonized screams mingling and ripping through the night air.

Sorry it took so long guys it was kind of a slow chapter for me to write.

The Animanga Girl: Well not exactly "safe".

hedgi: Thank you for loving my story.

GhibliGirl91: Yeah pretty much.

ArishaSmile: Here I hope this makes your day better. Oh, and it's free to interpretation, I thought it would grow like normal hair afterwards.