Chapter 114

Things did not improve between the Horned King and Avalina. They only got worse. What had taken months to establish between them was steadily withering and dying away as swiftly as the biting cold descended on the country of Prydain.

As the days wore on, one miserable span of clockwise time after the other, Avalina's fear took root again and steadily began to overwhelm her.

He had never looked at her that way before. Not the way he had that day. She had been subject to his wrath and his disgust of her many times, but he had never looked at her with hate.

She had never seen that emotion before in its truest form until he had bestowed her with it. And it terrified her more than his fury.

He hated her.

She had tried so hard not to think like that, but she had seen it in his eyes, and eyes couldn't lie. Not even the deathly eyes of the Horned King. They could be masked, shadowed, unreadable, or almost kind, as she had seen them sometimes, (until frequently) but they never lied.

He hated her.

It wasn't like the Horned King to hate someone. At least, not in her limited experience. If he felt nothing for the countries he conquered then surely hate could not be part of the equation, because how could he hate something that was so thoroughly below him? To hate something you had to think of it either as an equal or a rival, something worth your time. But hating something you cared nothing for was impossible, so what did that make her?

She had never had anyone hate her before. Grow angry with her, yes. Many times. But hate? Never had she been received into someone's presence with such an emotion.

It could hardly even be called an emotion, this thing called Hate. It was more like a demon that took hold of you and consumed you from the inside out, leaving no room in your heart for anything else, until it eventually destroyed you. Your mind was not your own, given over to this demonic presence that mangled and devoured all it touched with as little effort as water freezing.

Hate was impossible to control. The host was not the master. Rather, it was the opposite. There was nothing one could not do while under the influence of this malicious, wicked feeling. There was also nothing one could do of themselves unless Hate allowed them to do so.

And the Horned King hated her. She could see it in his eyes, in every move he made. Even his aura choked her with it, to the point she could no longer breathe in his presence anymore, destroying her resilience that had slowly built up to it.

She thought she had been terrified of him before, horrified of him before, but it was nothing compared to this. Nothing. It didn't even come close.

His hatred terrified her beyond all rational reason. She couldn't think at all while in his presence anymore, nothing except fear, fear, fear. . .

There had been no music for weeks. After the first two or three days, Avalina had become so frightened she couldn't even go to the music room, not even when the Invisibles tried to reassure her the lich was not inside. He had never called on her to play either.

She had happened upon him once in the library since the incident, totally by mistake, and she had been crying in terror as she fled the room, not daring to linger.

Mitternacht was the only reason Avalina left her room at all anymore. He was the sole reason she dared to open her bedroom door and creep through the castle, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, every single day. He was the one reason she got up in the mornings.

Mitternacht had become more protective of her. More possessive. More aggressive toward the goblin, who cracked the stable door open now and then to ask Avalina to come look at something. Mitternacht, although he remained as he always had with her, was all over her in the mornings. Literally. Sniffing over her for minutes at a time before he deemed her fit to begin taking care of him, and refusing with everything he had to let her leave his sight unless she forced him to.

Avalina took him out riding most days, when it wasn't too horribly cold, to let him get the kinks out of his muscles and have a good, swift gallop to release his energy in a decent workout.

Mitternacht was the only reason she went riding. The idea that the Horned King could see her out here, and possibly be watching her, terrified her so badly she could scarcely hang onto the saddle.

Mitternacht picked up on this, and began showing uncertainty whenever he stepped out of the stable, keeping every sense alert for danger as he walked about, his head up and nostrils flared.

Avalina tried to be brave for his sake. Fates knew how she tried. It took every ounce of courage for her to walk him outside.

The gallops were better. Slightly. Only when they galloped could Avalina completely forget the horror that filled her every moment. All she had to do was close her eyes and hold him, and he would sweep her away as readily and easily as any wind-tossed dream.

For when she sat astride him, racing the wind, he gave her enough strength and courage to limp through another clock cycle.

But when they were forced to stop, that heavy cloud would twist itself through her and around her again. Suffocating her as badly as the Horned King's hateful aura, although this one robbed her of far more than her breath.

If it weren't for the fact that the Invisibles refused to serve her food in the stable (For some very odd reason) she would stay in there and never go into the castle again. She stayed with Mitternacht up to two or three days at a time, sleeping in his stall with him at night. But hunger and the need for a bath would eventually force her from the stable, to go sneaking back inside the castle, trembling with weakness and fear, making a beeline for her chambers.

The Horned King did not send for her once. She barely saw him at all, and the times she did were by accident. At least on her part. She always felt relief at the end of the day when he never sent for her, but it frightened her as well, wondering what sort of dark thoughts were possessing him in his solitude. But Avalina could not bring herself to take a single step out of the way between her chambers and the main door. And she despised her cowardice. But she could not face him.

Food became nauseating for Avalina. After starving herself for days out of terror of going back inside, her sensitive stomach would bring up nearly everything she tried to put in it, more often than not. Her nerves were mangled to bits and stretched to breaking point, and she almost never slept. Mitternacht's presence was the only thing that allowed her to have a few fitful hours each night. But it was enough. . .barely, but enough. . .to keep her struggling on from day to day.

Even when she did sleep, she got no rest, and woke every morning feeling more exhausted than the night before. The nightmares did not help either, and she had begged the Invisibles to make them go away, and she had felt their deep sorrow and pity as the parchment tearfully explained that they could not help the natural ones.

And such wretched natural ones they were too. They were almost, if not as bad, as the others.

One of them centered around the wolf attack. Only, the Horned King never came because he hated her so much, and she died when the wolf pounced. Or he would arrive, only to stand and watch as she was torn to pieces. And those were some of the milder ones.

Avalina had cried more during these weeks than she had in the entirety of her time here. She was nearly constantly in tears these days, and it wasn't all because of her terror of the lich, although that covered a very great deal of it.

She had begun to think of the Horned King as her friend, someone she could talk with and listen to. . .someone who would actually listen to her in return, and be interested in what she had to say, and valued her company, someone she could trust. . .She had never had such a friend before. She had thought she was his friend too, but now he would have nothing to do with her, which made his coldness toward her all the more biting. It cut deeper than any blade.

'I should have known he never thought of me as a friend,' Avalina cried bitterly to herself, 'I'm his prisoner and he's never called me anything but that. I was an idiot to even think for a second he cared about me at all.'

Avalina could not believe she had allowed herself to be fooled by her own emotions, and she realized now just how thoroughly stupid she had been from the beginning.

He was the Horned King. Murderer of hundreds of thousands of people, possibly billions. Enslaver of whoever and whatever remained. Destroyer of all he placed his hand to. Monster. There was no one word to thoroughly describe just how cruel and evil he was. The mere mention of his name alone could instantly silence an entire crowd.

He was cold. He was evil. He was. . .heartless. Hopeless.

'Not true,' Avalina's heart tearfully tried to argue against her mind, 'That's not true. I heard his heartbeat. I felt it. He can't be heartless. He can't be hopeless. Everything we've done together, I know this can't be right. I know he must care about me a little. Somehow. The evidence is right there.'

'You can't change a creature like that,' her rational side pointed out. 'He's been around for centuries, what makes you think a little insignificant peasant girl like yourself could possibly change that monster? When something's been that evil for that long, it's impossible to change them. It can't be done.'

'Not true,' she wept to herself, 'Something's changed in him. I saw it. Everything he has done the past few months can't be an illusion of my mind, it just can't. He has been almost kind to me.'

'You're his prisoner, idiot,' her rational side snipped.

'He never has cared for you.'

Avalina tried to fight against her negativity, but it had been weeks, and the lich showed no sign of calming down after the incident with Taran. So slowly, her arguments against her doubts became fainter and fainter.

'It's no wonder he doesn't wish to speak to me anymore. What sort of friend am I, if I can't even summon the courage to say hello?'

She was disgusted with herself for not even being able to stay in the same room with him anymore. He never forced her to linger, and it seemed that he was avoiding her too. And she could not summon the courage to go searching for him. To speak to him and tell him. . .tell him. . .

Avalina missed him. She missed the time they spent together, the things they did. But she missed *him* more. She had thought she knew what loss felt like when she had been ripped from everything she knew and loved, but this. . .this was a different kind of hurt. Instead of the heavy, dull ache inside her that she got whenever she thought of her family, it was cleaner, sharper, and felt like a knife to her chest.

It was her fault that Taran lived. The Horned King blamed her completely for it. She had stopped him from doing it. And he *hated* her for it.

'He's not your friend,' Doubt snorted, 'Friends don't hate each other.'

Avalina had no argument against this.

'If he did care about me, which I know he did,' Avalina thought miserably, 'He surely doesn't now. But I couldn't let him kill Taran, I just couldn't. Why can't he see that? Why can't he understand?'

'Because he's heartless,' Doubt answered.

'He's not!' Avalina fought.

'He's not, he's not! He can't be! I *felt* his heartbeat! I could feel his happiness at having it back. That look in his eyes when he showed me. . .'

Avalina's heart lifted the tiniest fraction for the first time in weeks, before it promptly sank again when she realized how far away that memory felt.

'And I've lost him.'

The Horned King entered the stable one morning when Avalina was brushing Mitternacht in his stall, and it had been disastrous. Avalina had gasped in terror, dropping the brush, and that had been more than enough to set the horse off.

Mitternacht's equine brain had instantly made the connection when the lich entered the building, his ears lacing back flat against his head. This was the reason his rider was constantly so terrified. This was why her eyes leaked water every day, why she hadn't been herself for weeks. This was why her scent was so tainted with fear and mangled with hurt. And *This* was the reason he had to protect her. And he wasn't letting the object of all his rider's suffering get any closer to her and cause her even more pain.

Mitternacht reared and screamed, the sound so much worse than a human's, and striking the door, lunging about inside the stall and leaning as far out over the top of the door as he could, snapping his teeth and roaring in fury.

The Horned King had stood there, watching, first the horse, then glancing back at Avalina, who had pressed herself against the back wall, staring at him in terror.

Their eyes met, and Avalina shook at the hate his gaze held. His fury. But there was something under that as well, and for the tiniest fraction of a second, Avalina could see what it was, and the tears came unbidden.

Pain. Longing. Despair. Loneliness.

He suffered too.

And then Mitternacht had launched himself between them, breaking their eye contact as he shielded her from the Horned King's view. He had sensed his rider's pain compound when the other laid its eyes on her, and he had swiftly broken the connection.

He had feared this creature once. Perhaps the animal still feared the lich, but at this moment Mitternacht did not know it. He only knew fury, and the only thing in his equine mind of any importance was protecting his rider, his most prized possession and deepest friend, from this thing.

The Horned King had not stayed, leaving almost immediately afterward, but Avalina had wept for a long time, feeling as if she were dying with so much pain inside her.

Mitternacht had continued to scream and thrash about for over an hour after the lich's departure, staying agitated and angry the rest of the day, and Avalina noticed when the horse turned back from guarding the door to look at her briefly, his eyes were shimmering a deep, faint red, something she had only seen a couple of times before in all the years she had known him.

Horses were an animal all their own. They were not like cats or dogs or cattle. They were bound by no natural rules, no particular way to act or not to act, (Which gave them such a variety of personalities) save one. Don't eat meat. Mueric had told her once that a predatory gene lay deep in a horse's mental makeup, that showed itself so rarely many forgot it ever existed at all, or dismissed it as myth. You would have to work very, very hard to make a horse so completely furious that the animal would forget that one rule he was bound by, forget he was a herbivore, and turn on you in that fashion, where his eyes would take on the glow of a meat eater.

Make a horse that angry, and he would kill you if he ever got close enough.

And Avalina had cried all day again and well into the night until she fell asleep, not just for her own shattered relationship with the Horned King, but for the destroyed friendship between the horse and the lich as well. Nothing could possibly fix this.

The weather took a turn for the worse, a massive blizzard covering the country of Prydain in snow that was easily four feet deep and freezing Mitternacht's large water bucket right down to the bottom, the ice swelling so badly the bucket shattered in pieces and had to be replaced. It was a wonder Avalina did not freeze to death, staying in the stable constantly.

She made a point to visit Creeper and Addie at least once a day. The goblin had warmed to her a little more during this time, and their friendship, which had been a bit strained before, had strengthened. Avalina felt truly welcome in the gwythaint's stable, and it was a deep relief to feel wanted. It was the only thing out of this entire wretched situation that could even be considered remotely good.

Early one morning, weeks after this whole miserable thing had started, Avalina was huddled in the straw in an exhausted stupor, not quite awake nor quite asleep, not wanting to get up and face the day, her mind drifting painfully about.

She had felt his heartbeat. She had heard it, saw the change in him because of it, and now it was all for naught. Or was it? She had to admit, if he had not received his heart before meeting Taran, there was no doubt in her mind that she, Eilonwy and Taran would all be dead right now.

But now he was acting as if he no longer possessed it. Tears slipped out of Avalina's closed eyes at the horrible thought of his heart going silent once more, shutting down and lying dormant again, as it had for so many years.

Then it struck her like a bolt of lightning, so violently she snapped her eyes open as her heart instantly started racing incalculably.

His heart. His *heart.*

The heart was the place from which all emotions stemmed, whether they be good or evil. Any feeling a person felt, no matter how mild, stemmed from the heart. Without a working heart, it was as the Horned King had told her. It would be only a twisted, muted sensation compared to the real thing. There would be no true strength in the feeling, because the heart was dead. Except for hate. It did not require a heart to stem from, for it was a demon all on its own.

But now, the Horned King had a heart. And as such, he had greater capacity for emotion and feeling than he had possessed in centuries. He could *feel* now. Truly feel, and it was the equivalent of a tremendous wall crashing down between his heart and his mind. He would be overwhelmed with it all. He couldn't possibly take it all in at once, how could Avalina have left him stranded in the dark like that?

When she had left him alone, too terrified of him to try and approach him, the demon of Hate had slipped in and poisoned his heart, determined to overtake the lich entirely. For even demons know the power of a true lifeforce, and could manifest themselves more strongly inside a creature that was truly alive than one who is hardly so.

This revelation was so great Avalina jerked herself into a sitting position and tried to leap up, but she had not eaten in a couple days and she crashed promptly back to the straw, her entire body protesting against the movement.

That was why he was so inapproachable. That was why all his rage and hatred burned so hot. All of those wretched feelings that had been building inside him ever since Taran had killed him the first time had finally surfaced with the arrival of his heart, and laying eyes on the pig-keeper. Except, now all of his emotions had been multiplied tenfold, as they now had a true, life-giving place to stem from.

Mitternacht came over, nuzzling her in concern, and she used his mane to pull herself to her feet, leaning on him for balance as a dizzy spell washed over her.

"That's it, Mitternacht," she gasped in realization.

"That's why. That's why for everything. Oh, how I could I have been so *stupid?* It's my fault he's in this shape. I never should have left him alone. I should have tried harder to stay near him. Mitternacht, I'm such a failure as a friend. I've let him down. He needed me and I couldn't make myself go to him."

Staggering out of his stall, she walked as quickly to the feedroom as she dared, trying to keep the tears at bay.

"I'll brush you when I come back," she told him as she poured the food in his trough, "I've got to end this right now."

Mitternacht snorted and anxiously watched her as she stepped outside the stall, leaving his food untouched.

"It's alright, Mitternacht," she told him, holding his face.

"I'll be back. But I have to do something before this goes any further."

The horse breathed in her excitement, her urge to get something done, and blew happily. He had smelled nothing but fear and suffering coming off her for a long time.

This was a good change.

"I'll take you for a ride when I come back, alright? It should be warm enough now."

The horse whinnied after her as she disappeared behind the stable door.

So sorry for the wait, guys. My internet connection fizzed out yesterday and was a total jerk. I hit it with the wheelbarrow and it came back on XD.

To DarkraixCresselia: I'll be honest, the Black Cauldron is one of those movies you will either love, or dislike extremely XD Although in my personal opinion I've never felt more conflicted about a movie in my life. I have a love-hate relationship with it XD

Oh yeah, lich is pronounced "Litch." ;) And just for the record, the Twins were not inspired by Fred and George in any way XD. I wasn't even thinking of them when I created the Invisibles. I promise Lol.

Hope y'all enjoy the chapter and leave reviews!