Chapter 97

"That was perfect!"

Avalina said happily as the Horned King withdrew his fingers from the white ivory keyboard.

"You've improved so much!"

It had been a fortnight since the Horned King had first touched the instrument, and he was pleased that he seemed to be progressing steadily. There had been many slip-ups, which Avalina explained was perfectly normal, but the Horned King possessed a patience like no one else when it came to achieving his goals, and it had paid off. Today for the first time, he had been able to complete the small piece set before him without so much as a single smudged note.

The lich looked over at Avalina's joyful face and gave a small nod, feeling the muscle at the edge of his mouth twitch faintly.

It had been doing that a lot lately.

"I believe it is your turn now," he rumbled as he gracefully rose from the bench and stepped aside.

Avalina grinned and sat down.

"Pretty soon you won't need me to play anymore for you," she teased him, laughing softly.

"You'll be playing for me!"

The Horned King gave a small sound that sounded vaguely garbled, and Avalina gave him a puzzled look.

"What?"

The lich gave a mildly irritated twitch of his head.

"It is nothing."

Giving her a small gesture with his hand, he bade her to begin.

When the clock struck the end of the hour and Avalina's final notes had softly echoed into silence, she felt a deep peace, the likes of which was mostly new to her whilst in the castle, but welcome nonetheless, and she took a relaxed breath before turning around on the bench.

The Horned King nodded faintly at her from his chair at the window, causing her to smile.

"You are improving as well," he told her, and she blushed, humbled.

"I'm really not that good," she admitted.

"I never learned to play the more difficult pieces. But. . .thank you."

"You will, someday," the Horned King answered her.

Avalina felt herself blush harder.

"It's my dream."

"Then do not allow it to die. Only you have that ability."

After a moment, Avalina asked softly, "Do you have a dream?"

The Horned King shook his head after a moment.

"No."

"I can't believe that," Avalina said.

"Everyone has a dream. If perhaps not a dream, then a goal of some sort. Something they want to do or make of themselves. You must have one."

There was a long silence, not uncomfortable, but certainly heavy.

"I had one, once," the lich finally dredged out, and Avalina could only guess at which one he meant.

"But it is not one you would wish to hear of."

"Oh."

Sensing her unspoken question, he answered.

"It involved much death."

A pause.

"Maybe you could make another one? A good one?"

The Horned King sighed softly.

"No, child."

"Why not?"

Patiently, the Horned King took a breath, and Avalina realized he wasn't getting irritated at her like he did sometimes when she asked too many questions.

"I cannot this time. It is just so."

Although he showed no annoyance at her, Avalina realized he was done with the discussion and she promptly fell silent, although her mind continued to wander until it lit upon something she wasn't sure she dared to ask him.

"You have a question?" The lich asked her.

Avalina struggled with herself on whether to accept the offer or not. He was in a rather docile mood today and she had no wish to spoil it, but if he was in a bad mood later she wouldn't get to ask at all.

She was enjoying talking with him and did not wish to end a potentially long conversation with her nosiness, and she had a feeling he wouldn't like her question anyway. But he did seem to be in a receptive type of mood. . .

"I. . ." Avalina started to say it, but cut herself off, causing the lich to raise a brow ridge.

"Yes?"

She could still back out of it if she wanted to.

". . .I. . .um. . ."

A part of her wanted to back out. But another part wanted to know so badly. . .

"Have you. . .always had. . .horns?"

She'd burned her last bridge.

She watched the Horned King anxiously, feeling the air for his anger, but felt none.

After a very long silence, in which she thought he might not answer at all, his voice dredged into the room.

"I imagine so. I cannot recollect otherwise."

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Did. . .something happen to you once?"

She couldn't bring herself to possibly clarify the question, but the Horned King understood.

"Have I always looked like this?" He finished for her, and she flushed in shame.

"Do not be sorry for asking. It is only natural for you to wonder."

After a moment, he continued.

"The heart is the messenger from the soul to the body, and keeps the two bound together as one. When the body fails, the heart ceases to be, and the soul is released from the body and sent elsewhere. You can see this is your elderly, however there is another scenario. After killing someone, the heart, the origin of all morality and emotion, begins to corrode. Slowly, but it is noticeable. The more one kills, the more difficult the damage is to reverse. Do you understand?"

Avalina nodded and he continued.

"After one has killed so much that the heart is gone and no longer holds the life in them, they begin to decay on the outside as well, as the heart binds the body and soul together, and without the heart, the soul cannot function properly. You see this with anyone who has killed before. They are alive, but they are not, and their outward appearance begins to reflect what they have become on the inside, and what they leave in their wake."

Rising gracefully, he continued.

"I look like this because I am the embodiment of all that I have done. My heart turned to dust centuries ago, taking all life with it, and left me merely in a state of existence, my soul unable to work properly without it, thus my appearance. For I am a monster now, and I can never again regain what I have lost. Nothing can change that."

The silence that followed was even heavier, and Avalina felt deeply troubled at what she had heard.

Feeling a deep, dull ache in the air, so deep she could almost feel her chest hurt, she looked up.

The Horned King stood by the window, looking out into the distance. His hands hung at his sides, rather than the usual form of being clasped behind his back. His mind appeared to be elsewhere.

She rose to leave him in peace, but her feet wouldn't move to the door. She stared at the entrance, then back to the lich, who seemed to not even remember she was there.

She could feel that dull throb inside her. She could feel his loneliness, his longing, his despair, so easily. It was so heavy. . .for the fleetest of moments, she thought she may have felt regret too. And she wished with all her heart she could make him feel something else now, something to pull him from this black, bottomless void.

Hardly aware of what she was doing, she slowly took a step in his direction. And another, soft as a mouse.

The Horned King did not move.

Avalina swallowed hard as she neared him, his aura slowly drifting against her, her next breath drawing it into her lungs, and she fought down a cough as her chest constricted, resisting the poison the air seemed to be laced with.

As she drew closer, she realized again just how much taller he was than herself, and intimidated for a moment, she looked down at his left hand, the closest one to her.

It was long, slender and skeletal, deceptive at hiding the power she knew they held. She had seen them in action, possessing strength and brutality no mortal could ever have, and duly capable of such graceful, beautiful movements that were mesmerizing.

His hands hung limply at his sides now, the claws tipping his fingers like a predator's might, the skin a deathly green, but unlike before, Avalina was not repulsed by them. Rather, she felt somehow as if she was seeing them for the first time.

They were different, but that did not mean they were ugly.

Her heart ached for him as she looked back up at the back of his hood, his horns branching out from the top.

He still terrified her. He could strike fear in her heart so easily, and the realization she was within arm's length of him did not help this fear. She knew who he was, what he was, and all he had done, but he seemed. . .different, somehow.

And she wished she could comfort him.

A soft breath to steady her pounding heart, and scarcely before she realized what she had done, she had slipped her own small hand into the Horned King's.

She had never thought he would be warm. She had expected him to feel cold, and was surprised to discover he was neither. No heat or cold emanated from him.

She felt him come back to himself with a jolt, and flushing furiously, she stared at the floor as she felt his gaze on the top of her head.

But something kept her hand there.

The moments went by for what seemed an eternity, and Avalina didn't think her face could get any redder, but just when she was about to slowly slip away and hide til the embarrassment wore off, she felt his fingers slowly. . .oh, so slowly. . .come up to tighten softly around her own.

Her heart jumped at the sensation and raced in her chest as she fought the urge to look up, still feeling his gaze.

After nearly a minute, she sensed him look away from her and back out the window, however he did not order her to leave.

Working up courage, she slowly raised her eyes to look out the window too.

After several minutes of watching the landscape, she tentatively looked up at him.

"I think you're wrong, you know," she told him softly.

He turned to look down at her, and she couldn't stop the cold chill that crept up her spine when he stared directly into her eyes, freezing her to the spot.

An arched brow ridge was her invitation to go on.

It came out as a whisper, but it was good enough.

"I see hope in you."

A torrent of emotions worked across the Horned King's face, and she would have laughed if she hadn't been so nervous.

After what felt like hours, the lich finally gave her a tiny nod, before they both turned back to the window, watching a beam of sunlight pierce through the thick, moody clouds.

"Pretty soon you won't need me to play anymore for you," she had said.

'I will always need you.'

The Horned King had almost spoken it aloud before he realized he had even thought the sentence.

He had cut himself off in time, only letting the first syllable escape in something that sounded like a growl and a cough, and spent the next several minutes wondering where that thought had come from. It couldn't have been his.

Avalina's own playing had improved much. She would be great one day, if she did not give up.

For the first time in his existence, he almost regretted desiring world domination. That had been his goal in his past life, his only goal. All his drive, all his thoughts, all his plans, had been focused on that single object. That had been his only want. For everyone to know and fear him as his Cauldron-Born destroyed all in their path.

How it had looked so completely desirable at one time now seemed strange to him. He would not turn the opportunity down, should it arise again, (Although he knew it would not) but he could not see how he could have been so previously focused on that one thing he had blotted out all else.

If it were within his power now, he could make a new goal for himself, instead of aimlessly drifting through this castle day after day, with no destination in mind.

He could, if it were not for his limited time.

He was surprised she had found the courage to ask him about his appearance, although in truth he had known that question would come eventually. Everyone who saw him wondered, but no one ever knew, nor had they dared to ask.

Til now. Why he had told her he couldn't begin to fathom. Did he wish for at least one soul to know how he came to be, so that when he disappeared for good, someone would know the truth?

He couldn't even answer himself. He could not remember never having horns, or looking the way he did now. An image had came to him today, when Avalina had been playing, a silhouette of a human sitting at a massive harp, but he had seen no more.

He was not entirely certain when he had shut himself away, only that he had been snapped out of it by the feeling of something warm slipping around his fingers.

She had startled him. Tremendously. He had thought she had gone, but there she was, standing right beside him. . .

He had stared down at her in startled shock for a long time, noticing she did not move away, and he glanced at his hand touching hers as her aura flooded his senses.

It was a strong hand, skilled with bringing death and destruction to all it touched. A hand that had been used to bring nothing but evil to all who opposed it.

The same hand that had made music not two hours before.

It was a hand that could build as well as destroy, and he knew he had been and still was a destroyer. He had been nothing but death to all that neared him, and that made him truly a monster beyond compare.

Coming back from his thoughts, he realized Avalina was still there, and after a long moment, he hesitantly returned the gesture she had given him.

He had felt her fear spring up again as he stared down at her, but he did not look away. He had to know what she claimed he was wrong about.

"I see hope in you."

That had been the last thing he ever expected to hear. From her, from anyone, in a thousand years.

It was the last thing he deserved to hear.

But she had spoken it, and he had heard.

The shield around his defenses then had shattered, and he could not contain the explosion of warmth that traveled all through his body at her words. Nor could he truly understand it himself. All he knew was that it felt like a tremendous stone had been lifted from him.

Feeling her here beside him, her *wanting* to be here, and Avalina not gasping for breath, was more than enough to drive the tugging horrors of the Cauldron far from his mind.

Forget the Invisibles, *I'm* about to die from cuteness overload XD Please leave a review!