"...It makes me cry, I want to talk about something I am not sure I can talk about, I want to talk about the inside from the inside, I do not want to leave it
I am so happy in the silky damp dark of the labyrinth and there is no thread."
- Hélène Cixous
…
Labyrinth
Simone sat quietly in her quarters, perched upon the large expanse of bed that was much too immense for her small frame. Her pale fingers knitted a tiny turquoise piece as her knee bounced anxiously, replaying the deliverance of the Duchess's letter over and over in her mind; a labyrinth in which she found herself irrevocably devoured by. There had been such pain in his eyes, so much darkness…and she had been horrified. He had towered over her, a powerful beast closing in on its succulent prey, claws extended, waiting for the perfect moment to strike at her throat. He had never spoken to her in such a manner; it had always been kind words with him, and a jest or two. He had once joked about how shortly her hair was cropped; he had compared her to a soldier in the regiment. But never this. Never this animalistic burn that raged from his black holed pupils; never this insolent snarling that transformed him before her very eyes; a man into a monstrosity.
She heard footsteps then, and her heart began to race. She knew who was coming for her; who charged down the hall, raging with swirls of dark fabric; cloaked in night as thick as Hell. The Duchess came for her, and she knew…for the footsteps were light and accented, yet fast paced enough to fill her heart with complete and utter dread. Her shaking hands set the small piece of unfinished crochet beside her; and there she sat, pallid fingers folded…waiting for her desperate fate to be revealed by the opening of her bedroom door.
The door was kicked open, squeaking madly as if to protest the power behind the thrust. A swirl of darkness crossed the room swiftly and Anias revealed herself before Simone, ripping the black veil from her face with a sharp snap of fabric. It was a tearing of beauty before Simone's very eyes, as she had been the one to carefully knit the lace together into the perfect veil for her flawless Aphrodite…
"You," Anias snarled, lurching forward and grabbing Simon by the arms. She squeezed the girl's arms with a grip so tight, it seemed as though a snake had curled around them, choking the blood flow from her very flesh. "You delivered the letter…you promised me he would open it! And you claimed to me that he did…yet why do I feel as though you lie to me through those beady little eyes of yours?"
"My Lady, please, you're…you're hurting me!" Simone desperately tried to wriggle from her grasp, but it was of no use. The Duchess shook her manically, her fingernails digging into the soft skin of her arms.
"Tell me the truth, you little bitch! He didn't read it, did he? He ripped it up in front of your very eyes, hmm? Just as I said? And you…you manipulated me into even thinking that such a letter was an idea of grandeur…you've sabotaged everything! Everything!"
Simone began to cry. She was terrified of the Duchess's rage, for perhaps it was even worse than Erik's…for Erik had not laid hands on her, had not shaken her with the grip of a venomous viper. He had merely stood over her and bid her to leave…as if the pain within him was too great to bear.
"My Lady, he was cruel to me! He…he threatened me! He was cold and heartless and…and did not care for any banter. He bid me to leave as soon as he saw my face," she sobbed, falling limp within the wretched grasp of the Duchess. "I gave him the letter, he took it…but he threw it over his shoulder and I…I am not sure if he read it but when he saw my face…he…he knew!"
"He knew what? He knew what, that this was all some poorly thought out plan? I should have never listened to the likes of you! You're an imbecile, an idiotic street rat that I gathered from the fucking gutters! And that's where you belong!" Anias screamed into the girls face, inches away from her shattered features. Simone continued to sob, biting her lips to inflict pain upon herself; for perhaps it had all been her fault. The labyrinth had shown itself, and she had walked brightly up to its entrance…yet once she dared step down its shuddering hallway, the walls began to move and change…and nothing was what it seemed, anymore. There was no entrance, no egress. Everything was molten night, and she was lost in the darkness, her wails disappearing in the unearthly wind of walls that writhed and contorted.
Anias released her hands from Simone's arms, falling to her knees in front of the bed. She tore at her hair, raking fingernails down her own arms, leaving pink scrapes in their wake. She wailed then, a siren drowning in a darkened sea…and she threw herself onto the carpet; lost in her own self-pity, her hatred…and her horrified moans of despair.
"Simone…I…please….forgive me," she whispered tearfully from where she lay pitifully on the carpeted floor. The oil lamps flickered over her smooth features; a broken statue…yet one that was beyond an architects repair.
Simone sat on the bed, clutching the claw marks that now lay upon her arms; track marks of darkness, of drawn blood, of sadness…She wiped her face with a stray kerchief that lay upon the bed, in the mess of her knitting materials. "My Lady…sweet Duchess…I…I am so sorry. Perhaps you are right. I am nothing, I am worthless to you…I promised I could get him to read it, but…he…he threatened me with Magnus. I was so afraid."
The Duchess lay on her back, a wreckage of dark magic in a collapsed and haphazard heap. Tears rolled down her cheeks silently now, and she stared up at the grandeur of the ceiling…staring into somewhere that Simone could not see.
"Anias…? My Lady, are you…all right?" Simone asked softly, sniffling up the rest of the snot that had run down her upper lip. She slid off of the bed and knelt on the floor next to Anias, whose eyes seemed vacant and cold.
"I…I wish I were dead," she whispered, another tear falling down the side of her face. "I've ruined everything. And I cannot fix it. He will never love me again. It…it is not your doing, Simone…I…I merely spoke out of hatred. Hatred for myself. I deserve this pain. I deserve every ounce of it. It is perhaps a mere droplet of the pain he has felt. That I have inflicted."
Simone stroke a stray tendril of hair from the Duchess's wet face. "It will be all right, you'll see….everything will work out…"
Anias sat up suddenly, clawing at her own face. "It won't Simone, it cannot! He…he loves another now. I could see it in his eyes. And who am I to steal him from that? Isn't that what I could not give? Who would I be to try and take that away?"
Simone reached down and grabbed Anias's hand. "My sweet Duchess," she murmured. "You should let things be, perhaps. Let him go. He loved you so deeply…and that is not something someone can just forget about by loving another."
Anias shook her head feverishly. "You don't understand," she replied softly. "He will never love me. He cannot. I have given him more sin than I have given him love. I have…made him do things. Things he should never have done."
Simone's blue eyes widened. "My Lady…what…what things?"
The Duchess shook her head again, her eyes clouded as if in a daze, lost in the pines of a desolate and hollow forest. "I must go to my father. I must return to Paris. I cannot be here any longer."
"But…but…Anias, the…the estate! You cannot just leave…"
Anias slowly rose from the floor; the inky fabric falling around her form elegantly as she stood. "I will do as I please, Simone. I shall board the first train to Paris, tonight. I cannot be here, anymore...the statues…they…they watch me. They watch with his eyes! And they punish me! I cannot be here. I will not bear this shame any longer. It would be better to burn down the entirety of my estate…to crush those insolent statues, than for me to remain here."
Simone's mouth slowly fell shut as she watched the woman made of shadows cross the room. The Duchess paused in the doorway, as if perhaps, she had found the exodus of the labyrinth…but then she turned, with such sadness in her eyes it could have pulled the heart from a new born calf. And blood could be seen spilt across the carpet…Ariadne's thread leaving a trail through the darkness. And the blood was made of sadness, and ripped open pain…of bare heartstrings that cried as a wolf might howl to the crumbling moon.
…
In the dead of the night, a man slept tangled with a blonde woman in a four-poster bed. He was thick with muscle, and his thighs intertwined with her delicate calves as she murmured in her sleep. Her eyes fluttered, woken from the sleep of their love making by quiet footsteps outside of the window. She sat up suddenly, her breasts exposed to the coolness of the dark room. She shook the man softly, and his eyes shot open – blazing like cool emeralds in the void of the bedroom.
"Ryker, someone is coming. I heard footsteps outside the window."
The man brushed a hand through his hair; it fell in tight long curls down his back, blacker than the shadows that crawled through the moonlit window. The sides of his head were shaved; a refined three inches that held a couple of nicks and cuts from the hand of his barber.
He rose stealthily, fully naked against the gleam of the moon. The woman lay in the bed, admiring his form as he stood up, and the particularly intriguing circular brand that shined underneath his thickened left pectoral.
Ryker moved deftly through the darkness, grabbing a thick dagger from his bedside table. He advanced out of the room and down the narrow hallway, as silent as a ghost sliding its way across a graveyard, undetected and formless. There was a sudden sharp knock at the front door, and a thin voice could be heard through the heavy mahogany surface.
"Herr Ryker von Kantzow? It is Emil, I have something for you. It is urgent, I beg of you."
The door flew open halfway, and Ryker seized the man by the arm and dragged him through the crack of the door. It shut with a deafening sound, ringing in the man's ears.
"Emil, what could you possibly need of me at this hour in the night? I have told you I take my deliveries during the day. And I am truly struggling to understand what part of that confuses you so?" Ryker growled, his hand still clenched on Emil's thin arm.
Emil shivered in the tall shadow that fell over him; he could feel it even though the hallway was dense with never-ending night.
"A letter. From…from Blutswolf."
The wiry man held up an envelope, held together with a plain wax seal, signed in scrawled black calligraphy; the name that used to silence tongues…the name that Ryker knew all too well.
"My brother," he murmured, taking the envelope carefully from Emil.
"How can you see in this blasted hallway? I can't even see your eyes," Emil remarked as he felt the letter slip from his fingers.
"My dear friend, you have never been kept in darkness for long, have you?" Ryker replied, smirking into the shadows as he watched Emil's eyes widen.
"Well, I…well, no, Herr Kantzow."
"It is time you take your leave, my friend. And thank you for the letter. Now, I have someone I must attend to. Gute Nacht, Emil."
Emil nodded to the shadows and turned around, feeling his way for the handle of the door. His thin hands finally reached it, and he pulled it open and disappeared into the night, which seemed no different from the corridor of Ryker von Kantzow's house.
Ryker turned swiftly down the hallway and entered back into the bedroom. The woman had lit an oil lamp next to the bed, and she waited for him anxiously, sitting up with blankets pulled around her.
"Tell me, my dear…do you wish to hide your bountiful breasts from me?" Ryker asked teasingly as he sat on the edge of the bed. He turned the letter in his hands as his eyes grazed the woman and her nakedness, for she had dropped the blankets at the smooth purr of his voice.
"Who was that? And why did they feel the need to come knocking so late into the night? It frightened me, Ryker."
He turned back toward the letter in his hands, smoothing the creased edges of the envelope with calloused fingertips. "It was Emil. He had a letter for me."
"Oh?" she crawled across the bed toward him, dragging her naked breasts across his bare back. "From whom?"
He smiled, turning to kiss her softly on her shoulder.
"From my brother."
"I didn't know you had a brother," she giggled to him, biting his neck tenderly.
"Hmm," he responded, his eyes tracing over the letter. "He is of my blood…but not as you might think."
The woman perched over his shoulder as Ryker ripped open the letter with a finger, unfolding the parchment gently. His eyes flickered over the contents of the letter, straying upon the last paragraph that seemed hastily scrawled.
Our brands are the same, as are we, for what we have witnessed together so many years ago. I am hoping you will answer my call, for I would not write to you if I could rewrite the past myself.
Only you can do that.
He smiled to himself. "Still a fool, Erik," he murmured, folding the letter up and sliding it back into its envelope.
"Still a fool in love."
…
Author's Note: Sorry for the late update, my darlings! Any feedback, emotions, and comments are much appreciated!