Paramour, I'm frightening
All my love is feral and
I'll be roaming through your house
Don't let me catch you sleeping
Fallout - Crywolf
CH. 8
Heavy Sleeper
The revelation was as humiliating as it was troubling.
Rapunzel woke that morning noticeably distracted. Her tutor had left to her self-studies, still available to answer questions, but Rapunzel couldn't even remember to pretend to be reading. She sat fixated on the same page, her mind spinning in circles as she considered her predicament.
Pitch was right of course. No one would believe her. Rapunzel was no longer living proof of magic. If she still had her hair, perhaps the people could be persuaded to believe in further magics.
Rapunzel got the impression witches were regarded as fringe citizens—a part of the communities they resided near, but only just so. People went to them for medicinal (and less reputable) purposes, but they were still not exactly welcome fixtures. Furthermore, she understood they were a dying breed with unfortunate reputations. Obviously, she herself hadn't exactly had the best of experiences, but they couldn't all be so awful. Perhaps it was a regional prejudice.
Rapunzel considered that maybe there wasn't anything she could do. It wasn't as though she could just stop sleeping, or stop anyone else from sleeping. And the only way she'd ever avoided nightmares was—.
She stilled, the book binding flexing in her grip.
She jumped to her feet.
"Professor, I need to see the apothecary."
Rapunzel could remember the book like it was yesterday.
Ingrained into her memory from endless days of being alone, with only a few books to entertain her.
She'd always regret her own youthful carelessness with her very favorite book. A book on known flora, and their purposes. It was largely pointless, of course. Rapunzel would never be permitted to set food in a garden, and the witch had refused to bring up earth for her to begin a garden. The gray-eyed witch had bemoaned the idea of Rapunzel making a mess of the tower, of the bugs that they'd attract. This had been before Pascal, and at the time, Rapunzel was too shy to admit that the bugs were part of the attraction of a garden. At least they'd be something new, something interesting. The appeal had died when the witch had begun to explain the venomous, poisonous, itchy things that crawled and scuttled just out of sight. Eight eyes and a thousand legs. Pinching pain that could lead to your death before you could so much as cry out for help. Fear. Always fear.
The book had all but disintegrated by the time she'd reached her preteens. Too many years of being handled too roughly by a silly child. The pages were torn, stained, and falling apart at the binding. Rapunzel had one day woken to find the witch had tossed it, complaining that it was ugly and dirty. Rapunzel remembered crying for days, whimpering even in her sleep, for weeks. Just the memory of it had given her a headache.
She wasn't sure the witch had actually read the book beforehand, or if she just thought the pictures would entertain her enough to keep her occupied. But the words were ingrained in her mind. Plants good for gardens, and good for apothecaries. Plants good for eating, and good for warding away certain creatures. Plants that could do all sorts of things.
Specifically, one thing.
"A sedative?" The man frowned, pushing at the center rim of his glasses. Moments later, they slid down again. It seemed he was in an endless war against them. Rapunzel found herself briefly fascinated by the clearly habitual mannerisms. "Whatever for, Your Highness?"
"Ah, well, you see," Rapunzel took a deep breath before adopting her most pitiful expression. "I've been having nightmares again."
"Mm," the man hummed. His hand moved to the back of his glasses, lifting them up and down like a visor in rapid succession. The clicking noise was delightful. Rapunzel resisted the urge to reach for the spectacles herself. "Sedatives are a bit of an escalation in treatment, princess. Surely the court physician is offering alternative remedies, yes?"
"We're running out of options," she insisted. "And um, I'm very tired. Extremely tired."
He peered at her. His angular face was strange, with white hairs sticking out from his ears like hay. Rapunzel wondered if it'd be rude to ask him if they itched, or if he ever had the desire to trim them. "You look remarkably well for someone as exhausted as you proclaim."
Perhaps simpering and pitiful was the wrong way to go about this. Her eyes narrowed, mouth twisting ever so slightly as she fiddled with the skirts of her dress. "Well, I suppose I can explain to my father that my request for some sort of reprieve was denied by the apothecary."
The crashing noises as he stumbled over himself were reassuring.
"K-King Frederic needn't be involved," the man bumbled. "Apologies, princess, apologies. Of course I can accommodate you, please don't misunderstand!"
Rapunzel's answering smile was serene and compassionate.
The day, as it always did, had dwindled into nightfall.
Pitch, naturally, welcomed the darkness. For this night, he had plans. Plans that involved the torment of a very stupid, reckless, insolent woman who'd dared to raise a hand to his person.
She'd slapped him. Him. Pitch couldn't recall the last time a human had invoked his personal, individualized wrath. Whatever the time that elapsed, it felt much too long. The anger simmering beneath his skin was refreshing. Almost addictive.
All the better, the sky was unusually cloudy this night. Spring was fought off for another day. Manny's perpetually disapproving gaze had been evaded. Good. He could wreak havoc on the girl's mind without any reprove from the idiot in the sky.
He waited until well into the night. A part of him had been tempted to however and lurk as she went through her nightly routine, but it seemed more entertaining to be a presence in her nightmares instead of her waking hours. He had a reputation to live up to, after all. Pitch hovered on the roof of one of the many towers, hovering, waiting for the opportune moment when not even the guards stirred any longer. Only then did he alight from his perch, sinking into the shadows, dipping between shadows until he slunk into the young woman's bedroom.
She slept. Soon, Pitch would know of what it was she dreamt this night.
As he approached, the mantel caught his eye.
Oh. She was attempting to reach him. Again.
Perhaps he should give the girl a whistle. The shrill scream of metal would be a pleasant replacement for her voice.
His hands drifted over what must have been offerings of some sort. Or perhaps wards. They could've been either. Humans had a strange belief that plants intrinsically held different supernatural properties that need only be fulfilled with the minimal ceremony of placing it in some predetermined location in their homes. It was nonsense, of course. Clearly, someone had watched a witch imbue plants with properties and spread the rumor that it wasn't the witches doing, but just plants. Wheat over the door to ward off spirits. Sage burnt in a home to dispel evil energies. Ridiculous. The objects were but tools, as useless as any in an untrained, talentless hand.
He thumbed the flora. Pitch was no botanist, but he'd been around a fair bit. He recognized at least two of them. One in particular interested him. If he wasn't mistaken, the delicate pink-white flowers were valerian. A yellow one may have been hypericum. They were strange additions to her bedroom. Not at all the roses or daisies he would've expected. None were particularly pretty, or sweet smelling. Curious. If Pitch recalled correctly, these plants induced sedation if ingested. A fitting offering for a nightmare king, he supposed. Personally, he would've preferred ivy. Humans had a strange abhorrence to it. It amused him how they found reason to fear even within flora.
He dismissed the flowers with a careless flick of his fingers, sending the one in his hand spiraling to the floor. No matter. Ward or sacrifice, Pitch was no deity. He wasn't moved or motivated by offerings. The girl had one singular value to him.
Pitch reached forward, fingers drifting towards her face. She was strangely still this evening. Normally by now, she'd be in small fits. Perhaps the stress of the night had exhausted her. The pads of his fingers ghosted a hair's width above her skin, dragging from her temple towards her chin.
.
.
.
.
.
And . . . nothing.
Nothing at all.
Not a single drop of sand.
Pitch's brows furrowed. For a moment, he wondered if he'd done it wrong. Perhaps he hadn't been paying attention?
He dismissed the notion. He was far from an amateur. Hand trailing from temple to chin with more firmness, he tried again.
.
.
.
.
This had to be a joke.
Was he wrong? Had the girl been a Champion all along? Had she somehow notified her protector against his influence? Surely not. There were no creatures stronger than he that he wouldn't sense a league away. She smelled of nothing, except perhaps her ridiculous flowers.
.
.
.
.
"No," he said audibly, eyes sliding back towards the plants.
He hadn't registered their strangeness because he hadn't been paying attention. The flowers weren't simply unusual in their selection. It was a deliberate array. They weren't half dead. They'd been crushed for application.
He whirled about the room, searching until he located it. An innocuous bowl. One that smelled fragrant and cloying.
The girl was sedated. Heavily. For a brief moment, Pitch wondered if it'd been involuntary. It wasn't as though he'd followed her actions throughout the day. Perhaps she'd been foolish enough to confide her troubles with the invisible man skulking through her tower to the wrong person. It'd be an irritating development, but he'd always have the Queen as a back-up. Surely the fear of her daughter's sudden madness would be furtive fuel to an old flame.
But something wasn't quite right about that explanation. The primary suspicion lie in the fact that the girl was both unsupervised and unrestrained. Condescending and strange as they were, they had a tendency to label women as hysterical and weak, requiring constant guidance and supervision. Were she sedated, he doubted she'd even be in the same room, let alone unsupervised. Furthermore, the flowers seemed almost . . . deliberately arranged. He hadn't imagined it earlier; they were displayed. If not for him, he knew not who. A display for him meant it'd been her own actions, not the careless leftovers of some doctor or other. She'd done this.
His snarl would have startled her awake if she wasn't sedated.
A stronger Pitch Black would have torn the castle down with the rage that festered within him. Here he'd been, gloating about his triumphs. He'd thought his victory assured. There was nothing she could do. Their last conversation should have been the end of it. She'd continue to live with the reality that her sanity was based off of his whims, and he would continue to feed on the feedback loop of fear and unease inside of her. They'd both benefit. It was supposed to have been a cut and dry deal.
And then she'd gone and sedated herself.
Pitch wanted to tear the room apart. He wanted to shred the curtains to ribbons. He wanted to shatter everything that could be shattered, and then do it again and again until it was dust. He wanted to upheave every piece of furniture until the room itself was worse than destroyed. He wanted to see her face when she woke up to find it as such, to suck down the fear and terror that would arise from her half drugged skull. He would've.
A month ago, he could've.
He sunk to the floor, his face resting in his hands, nostrils flaring with each breath. The air burst through his fingers, a shell of the explosive rage festering inside him. He couldn't do it. He couldn't waste the energy of causing ruin to her room just to feel better for a brief moment. The shock in the morning would not replenish him sufficiently enough to justify it. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't.
His fingers dragged down his face.
So. This was war then. She meant to starve him, force him to seek solace elsewhere.
He begrudgingly had to admit it was clever. Pitch himself hadn't been aware that sedation could have this sort of effect on him. It made sense, of course—without dreams, there were no nightmares. Sedatives paralyzed the mind in certain people and in certain dosages. Theoretically, it made perfect sense. How she'd managed to strike him this blow in less than 24 hours, he didn't know, but he was looking forward to his own rebuttal.
As soon as he figured out what that would be.
He couldn't rob her of nightmares she wasn't having, which meant she wouldn't need his "help" anymore. His presence would be less than pointless to both of them. He could see the path now—he'd grow weary and bored. She'd continue on as usual, dreamless and unbothered by a presence that no longer threatened her. They'd both move on.
Pitch absolutely refused to allow it.
For one thing, it was too large of a blow for his pride to suffer. More specifically, he didn't trust this situation anymore now than he had yesterday. He'd stumbled into someone else's game, and they'd so neatly traipsed over him that it was as though he wasn't a player in the first place.
Pitch was fairly certain it really wasn't Manny. Manny liked charisma, beauty, and life, but he seemed to forget that some humans were all these things and intelligent, too. His Guardians got by on bravery and sheer dumb, reckless power. If any of them had an ounce of intelligence between them, Pitch would be much more worried during their encounters. Instead, he flung some mean truths and had them too distracted and self-righteous to formulate a plan more expansive than to try and whack him with something. Painful, but pointless. They never really won anything.
The point being that while the girl may have been a vibrant youth, she was clearly more intelligent than Manny's usual sort. She wasn't his. But she was somebody's. Somebody who was chortling to themselves about her cleverness and her wit. Someone who Pitch would like to strangle slowly, deeply, and preferably immediately.
No no. There had to be a solution to this. Pitch would not be beat in one blow. Games were his specialty.
And he did so enjoy a bit of fun here and there.
Rapunzel woke feeling near-delirious. Her head swam, and her mouth tasted like herbs and cotton, as though she'd sucked in the fibers of her pillowcase all night. The apothecary had explained she may feel a bit groggy, but this was more than she'd been expecting. Yuck.
It felt like there was a film over her eyes, as though her eyes were made of foggy glass. No amount of harsh blinking seemed to be able to completely rid her of the sensation. She needed water desperately. Her hand reached out blindly, nearly knocking over the cup in her sluggish, clumsy movements. She truly felt awful.
Perhaps it was the strange halo her eyes cast about the room, but the sun seemed much higher than it should've been.
"Your hens have come and gone, if that's who you're looking for."
Her head swam at how quickly she turned to face the dark figure once again lurking in the corner of her room. Again. She was quickly growing sick of his presence. Still, she hadn't actually expected him to be here. Rapunzel had known he'd be angry by morning, but she'd expected him to lurk and skulk about until he could come up with something to threaten her with. She'd half expected him to find some way to start poisoning her sedative solution, or otherwise prevent her from drinking it in the first place. She was genuinely surprised to see he'd decided to be more straightforward than what little she knew of his nature suggested.
He seemed darker than usual, the sun haloing around him, more shadow than man. Rapunzel was unsure if that was a testament to his mood, or if she was still simply too delirious and dehydrated to see clearly.
His head tilted with interest as she continued to squeeze her eyes shut over and over again, "It appears your concoction has backfired."
She did her best to seem haughty with the beginnings of a migraine forming between her eyebrows. She pinched the bridge of her nose firmly, her tone nasally, "If you're here sulking, I'd say it worked perfectly."
His lips twitched, amused. That was unexpected. Was she still sleeping? "You're intoxicated. How amusing."
"I'm not," she insisted. Rapunzel was fairly sure of it . . . mostly sure of it. "Someone's a sore loser."
"I haven't lost," Pitch said blithely. "You've simply played a very heavy hand very early in the game. I admit, I'm curious; had the sedative failed, what would your next move have been?"
"Yesterday, it would've been exorcism," she said. Sun above, had it really only been so little time spent in this madness? "But today, I'm not so sure. I have books to read."
"Ooh, more books," he mocked. "How studious of you. What shall it be today, Your Highness? Shall we try more children's books? Or perhaps you can seek out ghost stories."
Rapunzel dipped her hand in the cool watered, smearing some of it across her forehead. The water was refreshing. She was strangely clammy. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Pitch rolled his eyes, bringing himself to a stand. "You've sufficiently dissipated my patience for the morning."
"I'm heartbroken, truly."
Pitch's answering smile was all teeth. Rapunzel could've sworn his eyes were glowing. They shouldn't have been able to catch light when his back was to the windows. "Oh, I'm aware."
She paled, feeling a sharp hollowness cut through her haze enough to make her feel intensely cold.
"Mm," he hummed. "A bit too on the nose?"
It was just the audacity and cruelness of him that continued to catch her off guard. It was too reminiscent of another person who haunted her—a woman, with black curly hair and cutting eyes, and a smile just as condescending as his. He was so, so like her. That had to be it. That had to be why he continued to leave her gawking and speechless whenever he spoke. Nobody spoke to her as he did—as they both did. Cruelty and meanness just for the sake of it. This is what he looked like angry, she realized. Flippant. Dismissive.
"I don't need a book to know what you are," she said.
"Oh? We have a new guess, do we?"
"You're a lonely, bitter, angry man whose only company is his own miserable self," she snarled, her hands fisting in her sheets. "All you know is misery, fear, and your own choking solitude."
Pitch's eyes widened visibly, mouth opening wordlessly.
Well.
Words continued to form in his head. Vicious, mean words, but none that quite expressed his own shock that she dared speak to him in this way. King of Nightmares, reduced to a shade of his former self. So reduced a young woman could be half-drugged and still be so impudent. She was so, so confident that she would get away with it.
His teeth gleamed in something much too threatening to be a smile. "You're getting warmer."
And he disappeared.
So started the most hellish week of Rapunzel's life.
A long, maddening—extra emphasis on maddening—week.
The day immediately after their midnight rendezvous, Rapunzel jolted awake repeatedly, eyes snapping open as though she'd never fallen asleep in the first place. Her lids were heavy, exhaustion creeping at the corners of her mind, dulling her senses. And for a moment, as her vision swam with sun spots, she was convinced the whole exchange had just been a dream.
Afterwards, it'd been like he was playing a game with her.
She'd been in the midst of a long (boring) formal meal with her parents and a friend of the royal family. The fork had been halfway towards her mouth when it'd clattered to her plate in shock at the site of a pair of silvery eyes grinning wickedly at her from the dark shadows cast by the heavy drapes. She'd gasped audibly, attracting the attention of everyone in the room.
And then she blinked.
And he'd been gone.
Another time, she'd been in the reptile house with Pascal, chatting amicably with Mr. Nelmer regarding Hercules's peculiar diet, and the strange friendship that had formed between him and an old house cat that had passed on. The next, in an ear-splitting explosion of sound and chaos, the animals had erupted in a fit of squawking, snarling, hissing, and all manner of outrage and terror. Rapunzel had Maxwell's reigns in hand, dragging him down from his rearing position, when she'd seen him.
A glitter of a smile.
Bright, burning eyes.
And then, like always, he was gone the moment she blinked.
Every time she was distracted, forgetting his cursed existence for a handful of busy minutes, a strange, crawling sensation would prick at her skin, and she knew he was there. She could feel his eyes on her. Rapunzel would spin around wildly, or peer around the room without moving a muscle. The efforts were always futile. He was never around but for fleeting, almost unreal moments. If she hadn't met him, hadn't spoken to him, she'd wonder if she was imagining the whole thing. The repeated sedative intake was making her increasing delirious. She struggled to feel present in her daily life, only really feeling awake after midday. It was her own self-inflicted torment. Her maids were beginning to express concern about how necessary the sedative was, but Rapunzel stubbornly refused to relent. They had no idea. No one had any idea the danger she was in. It was beginning to fray the edges of her mind.
Her only confidantes were Maxwell and Pascal. She'd taken to spending her evenings quietly admitting her fears and troubles. Naturally, they were both extremely sympathetic to the position she'd found herself in. As much as they sympathized with the strain on her physical health, at least they didn't try and talk her out of it. She could do this. She had to. If she had to spend the rest of her life in half-baked delirium to save her people, she would.
Rapunzel was also fairly confident this wouldn't be forever. She had a feeling Pitch would give up long before she did. Eventually, he'd realize she couldn't be swayed on her position, and he would have to seek refuge elsewhere. Eventually, this would be over. Eventually. She just had to stick it out. As she assured her four-legged friends, she'd spent 18 years locked in a tower with relative ease. What was a few spent in glassy-eyed incoherency?
When she really considered it, she obviously resented that somehow, life had found another way to prevent her from living a life with true freedom. Was it to be her destiny to continue to run into malevolent forces who fixated on her for one reason or another? When Pitch left, what would be next?
Somehow, she'd manage to push her migraines aside long enough to continue her research. Pitch's hint, whether intentional or not, had been lucrative, in a roundabout way.
Death and chaos in the sort of numbers he boasted about wouldn't be talked about in a children's book, or at least not in any way but metaphorical. It might have been a good place to get a hint, but judging by his utter gleeful disdain towards this pursuit, it was unlikely. No, Rapunzel instead found herself clumsily interrogating her tutor through the quiet moments of her afternoons. Professor Didri was clever, but seemed oblivious. Through a hazy, muddied mind, Rapunzel still managed to glean bits of useful information without prompting too many concerned questions. It wasn't like she could burst in and demand to know all the events in which thousands of people had died. Her rotating array of tutors seemed more interested with her consistently arranging for her to wear shoes all day, less so with educating her on global trauma.
The worst of it was that she knew Pitch was watching her. She'd feel her skin prickle with goosebumps, his presence a physical weight on any room he entered. She only caught glimpses of a shadow, to the point where after the fourth day of it, she'd stopped looking altogether. If he wanted to lurk, and to watch, then he was welcome to do so. Rapunzel would not be intimidated. She would not be kept from her task, no matter how sluggish her limbs were becoming, and how hazy her thoughts.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Rapunzel was fairly confident he'd be disappointed with her if she did give up.
It wasn't that she sought some sort of sick approval from him. Rapunzel had nothing to prove to him. She resented his presence, his influence on her life, and his existence. Another thing she had to worry about. Another thing she had to fight.
.
.
.
"I won't stop! For every minute of the rest of my life I will fight . . . !"
.
.
.
.
Would she ever get to stop fighting? It seemed her fate that she need always be ready to lay down her life for something—someone—or some cause that had need for a body to stand in front of it. Some worldly design that had a 19 year old woman hiding in a library, pouring over books and dictations with tunneled focus for any sign of the thing that called itself Pitch Black.
Said creature was up to his own antics.
Pitch Black had to admit, the woman was good. He admitted to himself that she'd laid a very fine, resolute trap. Sedatives. Medicine.
Pitch had to admit to himself as well that he'd anticipated something much more . . . Manny. Something with brute force, a lot of guts, and very little thought behind it. The Guardian's never would've thought of anything like this. Instead, they'd have laid booby traps, made boasting threats, and poured all sorts of pointless effort into plans that had no foundation. The princess had bypassed all of it. Perhaps it was the slap that had misled him. The Guardians did so love their violence.
Although, one slap could hardly equal many lifetimes of battles and spats. Her slap had been less of a declaration of war, and more of a statement. She wasn't afraid to stand up for herself, even if she was terrified of him and all his accompanying ambiguity. That much boldness had misled him. The sedatives had changed things. He'd reevaluated. At the moment, she led him firmly by the nose. She'd taken what was supposed to be his victory march and turned it into her own procession.
Unfortunately, playing one's hand meant showing a great deal of their cards.
Just because she wasn't asleep didn't mean that he didn't know her greatest fears. As the girl poured herself over an unending amount of research—her shoulders stiff with the conscious refusal to look for his presence—Pitch still sensed her fear. She feared never finding the answers she was looking for. She feared she'd forever be plagued by forces that sought to inhibit the freedom she'd always desired. She feared him, even if she'd never admit it, because as much as she'd won the battle, she knew she hadn't won the war. He hadn't left yet.
Pitch had only needed a few days to decide his next move. He'd fumed and pouted, menacing her to satisfy his growing rage when he'd realized he was going about this all wrong. The sedatives were a dead end. He could no more prevent her from taking them than he could swallow them himself. She was trudging through her intoxicated delirium with single-minded determination that warranted a grudging acknowledgement. With the sedatives, that meant her dreams were a dead-end.
But that did not prevent him from other dreams. Pitch was weak, but if he didn't possess the inspired ingenuity that he did, he would've faded long ago.
There were two people in the world now that the princess cared about. Two people whose dreams he could still find his way inside. He had moved cautiously, slowly, unwilling to reveal his plan before it had come to fruition.
The princess's recovery had brought the King and Queen of Corona a great deal of relief. Pitch still recalled the sickening putty of Queen's optimistic dreams. As Rapunzel recovered, so too did the hopes of the reigning monarchy.
At least, they would've, if Pitch wasn't interfering.
It was a neat trick, if he did say so himself. Take a daydream and . . . twist it. It was the preliminary idea behind turning Sandy's Dreamsand into Nightmare sand. Take someone's greatest aspirations and terrify them with the power of it. Every human, at the heart of it, was afraid of one thing; failure. Ruination.
In the King and Queen's case specifically, the couple were primarily preoccupied with planning the future of their sole heir. Rapunzel was beautiful, young, and recovering. She was charismatic, a natural born leader with a studiousness that rivaled scholars. She had promising potential.
It was a dangerous thought.
What if that's all she had, Pitch whispered in their ears a night. What if she collapsed under the weight of the crown? They couldn't be here for her forever. The death of a mother figure had nearly destroyed her. What would her real mother's death do to her? Her father's? They couldn't be there for her forever. What would she do when they were gone? What would happen to her? Would she ever be ready? What if they pushed her too hard? What if, what if, what if . . .?
Pitch planted it all. In times when the girl thought he was haunting her, he was there for her parents. She was oblivious to their growing anxiety, the fear festering beneath the surface whenever they thought of her future.
Failure.
Ruination.
Pitch was patient. He didn't push. He sought scraps in the dungeons and in anomalous bad dreams of anyone who caught his eye, and redirected the leftover energy towards honing his two little projects. He didn't push when the first grains of black sand fell from their skin. He didn't reveal himself when they began their days cranky and temperamental from poor sleep. He waited.
It took a week for her to notice the disrepair of her parents. Another few days before she began to suspect him. Pitch was a professional after all, an old hand. He didn't need to burst into a room and congratulate himself with fanfare for a plan well done. He didn't need a monologue about his own cleverness. No, Pitch knew his time would come, and he knew he'd recognize it when it arrived.
The moment appeared to him one evening, when Rapunzel had inquired about her mother's health. The Queen had been unusually sullen, lids heavy.
She'd spared the energy to pat her daughter on the hand, and place a kiss on her temple, "It's nothing dear. Your father and I are just having a bit of a bad sleep spell, that's all."
Rapunzel's brows had furrowed with concern, a question on her lips, no doubt something sweet and sympathetic, when she'd seen him.
He stood by a column, hands neatly folded behind his back. Just standing. He was so still, she'd have missed him if it wasn't for the sixth sense inside of her that sought him out instinctively whenever she felt his presence.
Her eyes had locked with his, and he'd seen them widen. Her lips had parted, a dawning understanding in her eyes as her mind raced to a conclusion. Her mother pinched the bridge of her nose, blinking blearily a few times as she complained good-naturedly about her father's snoring, or a draft that must've been keeping her up.
Unable to help himself, Pitch bowed ever so slightly as he receded into the shadows. A grand performance. The dance continued.
Your move.
Rapunzel had felt very, very cold.
She'd quietly excused herself to her room after Pitch's grand reveal, feeling hollow and shocked. She'd crawled into a bed lumpy with books that she'd pushed aside feeling empty.
Of course.
Of course he'd gone after her parents.
It was so elegant. He hadn't threatened, he hadn't sneered or shouted. He didn't even need to say a word. He'd time it so perfectly that it made Rapunzel feel clumsy. She'd escalated. He'd responded.
The next piece in the game had moved.
And Rapunzel was determined to move the next one.
A/N:
Sorry for being late, world and personal events delayed the posting of this chapter.
To briefly explain, I live with chronic pain that is physically exhausting to experience on a monthly, cyclical basis. I'm in random agony about 3 - 4 days every month, and it knocks me on my ass for at least a couple days, even if I was only in pain for about 2 hours out of that day. But I'm still here! Still posting! Just a bit of a mess. I'm also still screwing around with doing chapters for this small novel. The cliché of song titles? Funny quips? One/two word summaries of the overarching theme of the chapter? No idea yet, but I'll figure it out.
Stay safe, stay home, stay hopeful everyone.