Hmmm, not entirely sure about this at all, but I figure y'all are overdue an update.
Speaking of which, my exams are in five weeks and I've just been told I have to learn the entire cell biology syllabus in that short time. I spent the afternoon wearing my Megaman helmet (with the light on) trying to learn photosynthesis. My brain is full of green and horror.
Anyways, on with the plot!
Review me, so I can recover from thoughts of plants.
Chapter 11 – Digging Deep
The Enchanted Forest, Then…
"Faster, Frost, faster."
Regina leaned down over her pony's neck and pretended she couldn't hear her mother calling her.
There would be hell to pay for it later, for disobeying, for flipping her leg over her pony's neck so she could ride astride rather than side-saddle, for galloping for –the ribbon from her hair disappeared off into the ferns and she laughed- for being unladylike.
Regina didn't care.
With the road beneath her and the trees blurring past, she didn't care. It was her birthday, she knew better than to think this would grant her a reprieve from her mother, but she also knew that she needed to do it, just for her. Her birthday gift to herself.
Frostfire, her little dapple grey, ticked his ears back towards her and gave a joyful little whinny. He kicked his heels up and tore into the road even faster. He hated the dressage routines almost as much as Regina did and he was glad to be running full pelt, feeling the wind in his mane again.
Regina leaned over his neck, gripping his mane and letting him have his head, and laughed. Her hair and skirts streamed out behind her in a banner, his hooves pounded the road like a drumroll and her laughter made the little gelding perk his ears and run faster still. Trying hard to impress her.
He was, strictly speaking, too small for her. She had grown a great deal since she had gotten him two years ago. Now that she was a lady of fifteen –on her way to her uncle's in the capitol for her season of being shown off to the suitors of the kingdom- she should really have a horse of as impeccable breeding as she was, but she couldn't bear to be parted from her little Frostfire.
Not when he needed to gallop as much as she did.
They tore around the bend in the trail, dirt from the road flying up in great clods behind them, spattering her dress and riding coat (another thing she would pay dearly for but, since she was being punished anyway…).
She didn't even see him before he flew screaming out from behind some bracken.
Frost whinnied and jinked violently to the side. His change in course so sudden that even an experienced rider like Regina could not have hoped to have stayed astride him. She went one way, Frost went another and Regina landed hard on her side on the road, the air coughed from her lungs with the brutal impact.
She lay there, coughing hard, and blearily took in the scene.
A boy, she thought it was a boy, about her age, was trying to steal her horse.
No.
Regina, still coughing, hauled herself to her feet. Her skirts were now completely ruined, her hair in disarray, she had to look an absolute fright, but she didn't care. No one was taking Frost from her.
She stepped forward, lifted the leather wrapped cane that was her riding crop, and swung it with all the strength she possessed at the back of the snarling boy's head.
She jolted when he twisted like a cat and enclosed the whip in his teeth with such a strength as to stop her swing cold.
He snarled, he snarled low and violent like a wolf rather than any sound a man could make, and his teeth tightened around the whip. Those sharp white teeth –different from the teeth or a normal boy- bit down into the leather and the hickory cane beneath until the wood began to creak.
Regina's eyes went wide when his met hers.
Green.
She'd never seen eyes that colour of green, like frosted leaves in winter, streaked with lightning silver. The pupils were contracted into black pinpoints so all she could see was the colour and her shocked reflection looking back at her.
Her lips parted in surprise and then he suddenly twisted again, clawing and swinging at Frost even as her brave little pony lunged and reared. He stomped with his hooves and bit with his teeth, trying to protect her.
The boy snarled and lunged, clawlike nails –dark and sharp on his fingers- zinged through the air with tearing swipes at Frost's neck and face, trying to get past flashing hooves to rip his throat out.
"No!" Regina realised then that the boy didn't want to steal Frost, he wanted to eat him.
She didn't realise what she was doing until the rock was heavy in her hand and then suddenly flying through the air.
The boy grunted, bowled over by the rock hitting him in the back of the neck and Regina wasted no time.
"Run, Frost!" She threw her arms up towards her pony and he shied back from her. "Run! Go now!"
The pony whinnied, not sure what she wanted, not wanting to abandon her, and Regina slapped the crop down over his rump. She had never used it on him before and he knew then that she was serious.
With a scream of terror, the pony bolted away, back down the road the way they had come. Leaving Regina alone with the feral boy.
Regina turned back, her chest heaving painfully in the hateful corseted dress that her mother had made her wear, and stared down at him. Her crop held like a sword, ready to fend him off if she had to.
Her mother had warned her of bandits, her father too for that matter, but she had never thought she would meet one and she had certainly never thought that they would look like this.
The boy, and he was just a boy no older than her, lay on the ground and clutched the back of his neck. He groaned and rolled over, growling and rumbling to himself in a language that she didn't recognise. It sounded something like a snarling wolf but there were human sounds mixed in there too.
His teeth were too sharp, his eyes too bright, his hair was wild, hanging down past his shoulders and matted into twisted ropes. He got his arms and legs under him and weaved to his feet.
Regina noticed only then that he was taller than her. Quite a bit taller. His skin was tanned, like the skin of peasants that worked under the hot summer sun, hair dusted his chest, arms and legs and…oh.
He was completely naked.
Regina felt heat crawl up her neck and into her face when she realised that she was alone and without chaperone in the presence a very manly boy.
Mother would have conniptions.
Still, he wasn't…ugly. Regina studied him. He was slim but not the skin and bone she would expect of some wild child that had been raised in the wild, surviving off carrion and any small beast that he could catch. She had heard tales of such creatures, raised wild in the forest by the animals. They were always found frozen and starved in the winter. Lost children that hadn't been strong enough to survive the first few winters in the forest.
Not this boy.
He was almost a man, his shoulders broad and his hips narrow. Every inch of him seemed to be one lean muscle piled against another in long serrated lines. He moved with a fluid grace that was inhuman, those muscles shifting like molten metal under his skin.
Regina swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.
He turned to look at her, rubbing at the back of his neck still and scowling at her. His eyes suddenly flew wide. He staggered back, hands raised, and said something in that language that she didn't recognise.
"Wait!" Regina stepped towards him, suddenly not wanting him to leave. She tossed aside the riding crop when he stared at it and held up her hands. "I mean you no harm, I'm sorry for hitting you, but I couldn't let you eat my pony."
He prowled back and away from her, his luminous silver green eyes wary, but he didn't run.
"My name is Regina." She laid a hand over her chest. "Regina."
The boy just looked at her like she was mad.
She snuck another step closer and put both hands to her chest.
"Regina."
The boy tilted his head, obviously not understanding her in the slightest and she sighed. He was covered in cuts and bruises, trembling with fear or hunger and she had nothing to give him.
"Will you come with me to see my father?" Regina held out her hand to him. "We can give you food, tend to your wounds."
The boy looked down at her hand for long still moments and stiffened when she stepped closer but he still didn't run.
"Please?" She held her hand out to him still and he stepped forward suddenly. Right into her hand and closer to her than any other man had ever been. Regina spun her hand against his body, her palm resting flush against his chest, feeling the boom of his heart beneath his skin, and sucked in a breath when his face suddenly buried into her neck.
Her breath caught when he inhaled deeply, his nose snuffling against her skin and –with a shock of sensation- his tongue swept up the side of her neck, over the thundering pulse there from the hollow of her throat to the lobe of her ear. He nipped her softly there with his teeth.
Regina stood as still and taut as if she had just been struck by lightning, her eyes so wide she thought one of them might just fall out. Her entire body felt like it was blushing. No other man would dare…
"Haurool."
Regina blinked and looked up into his eyes. His hand, with those clawed fingernails of his, closed over hers on his chest and he didn't look away from her.
"Haurool."
"Haurool?"
He grunted and then lifted his other hand, pressing it to her chest, his fingers completely spanning her breast they were so large. She stiffened again but he didn't appear to realise what he was doing was inappropriate.
"Rrrrrrzhina."
"Regina."
"Rrzhina." He repeated and she supposed that was as close as she was getting.
"Haurool." She repeated what she took to be his name and his eyes met hers again. He really had no concept of personal space, he loomed over her, a full head taller than she was, and his long and filthy hair fell down over her, brushing her cheek with one of the ropey tendrils.
He smelled of the forest but only more so. The scent of pine around him much sharper than in the woods around them. Heat beat from him in waves, his heart thudded as strong as a horse's under her palm and those eyes of his. Green eyes as deep and endless as the Enchanted Forest that spanned the entire continent.
Eyes she might drown in if she wasn't careful.
"Regina!"
Regina twisted at the call of her name, looking back down the road, surprised to see her father tear around the corner at full gallop astride his great destrier Widower. The huge black stallion's flanks steaming in the cool air of the morning.
"Thank heavens you're alright!" Her father reined Widower to a slithering halt and threw himself down from the beast's back, engulfing her in a crushing hug. "I was so worried when Frost came back without you."
"I'm fine." Regina smiled up at her father, aware of the clattering of her mother's approaching carriage. "He just got spooked when…"
Regina trailed off when she turned to introduce her father to Haurool and found the wild boy had disappeared. He was nowhere to be seen, not a trace of him in the surrounding trees. Only that sharp scent of alien pine let her know that he had been there at all.
"When what, child?"
"When…when a doe bolted out of the woods. She must have been spooked at our approach. She frightened Frost and was too surprised to stay astride when he bolted."
"Still, no broken bones or bruises, eh?" Her father grinned down at her and rubbed at her shoulders. A grin that faltered when the carriage rolled to a halt beside them.
Regina felt cold seep into her gut when the carriage door opened and her mother deigned to step down into the road.
Was she to be punished there? In the middle of the road? Where the servants might see?
It would be uncharacteristic, but Regina had long since learned not to think anything was beneath her mother's depravity.
"Regina, your dress." Cora stepped down from the carriage, her hands fisted in her skirts to keep them from trailing in the mud. "It's ruined."
"I'm sorry, mother." Regina genuinely was. Her little adventure had gotten dangerously out of control and all her father did was squeeze her shoulder in a move meant to reassure her. "I didn't mean to fall."
"But you did mean to gallop astride your little beast even when I told you not to."
"I…" Regina desperately sought for an excuse. "He's a lively animal, I thought letting him run for a little bit would calm him for the rest of the journey."
"You couldn't control him? A beast of burden? I raised you better than that."
"I didn't want him to be unhappy." Regina held her chin high, quailing away from her mother would grant her nothing, least of all leniency. "He's my friend."
"Regina, those of the ruling class do not have friends. We have allies or we have people that are beholden to us, but never friends." Cora told her coldly.
"But I am not the ruling class." Regina wasn't. Her father was and –had she been a son- she would have inherited his titles from him when she came of age, but she would never hold lands nor make policy for the people that lived on them.
The best she could hope for was to marry a man that would let her ride her horses whenever she wished.
Cora turned back to her daughter, her eyes flashing, and Regina realised her mistake as soon as the magic sparked deep in her mother's eyes. She braced herself for the pain but what Cora did next was far worse.
She turned her gaze on Frost, who stood impatiently in the hands of one of the grooms, wanting to get back to Regina but knowing he'd have to wait until the hateful woman was back in the carriage.
"Mother, no!" Regina hurled herself forward, trying to put herself between her mother and her pony, but her father's hands clapped down on her arms and held her back.
Regina screamed when magic suddenly engulfed her pony's head and wrenched it fully around to face the wrong way. Frost's panicked scream was cut off before he could fully voice it and he crumpled stone dead at the side of the road. When the cloud of magic cleared, Regina could see –through her tears- that his eyes had rolled back in his head in panic and they now appeared to be staring directly into hers.
Regina hung in her father's grasp, her mouth open in a wordless scream, staring down at the corpse of her only friend. Tears rained freely from her eyes and pattered onto the road and her ruined dress. Staining the silk further.
"Cora…" Regina's father started, his tone partially pleading and partially in rebuke and he cut himself off with a single cutting look from his wife.
"You are too soft on her, Henry. Better she learns now than being betrayed at the hands of someone she mistakenly called friend." Cora's words were chips of ice into Regina's heart, even though she couldn't tear her gaze away from Frost's cooling body at the roadside.
Her mother, without a second glance, let herself be helped up into the carriage by one of the footmen.
"Come along, Regina. If you cannot ride, you must be driven with me."
Regina couldn't look away from Frost's staring eyes. He seemed to be pleading with her. Why had she betrayed him? Why had she let her mother kill him?
Regina sobbed a broken sound.
"She shall ride with me."
Regina choked off another sob before it could form when her father tugged her towards Widower's side.
"Henry, it is hardly fitting…" Cora began stridently but Henry –for once- would not hear of it.
"It is hardly fitting for the Lady of the Southern Mills to arrive in a carriage covered in the filth of her daughter's dress. She shall ride ahead with me and we shall both be cleaned and readied in time to greet your arrival." Henry pushed Regina up to sit sideways in the saddle and vaulted up behind her. He clasped an arm about her waist and held her upright against his chest.
It would be a torturous ride for her, sitting on the pommel of the saddle, not in control of the steed she rode on, but better the physical pain than the mental trauma of being left in Cora's merciless clutches for the rest of the journey.
Without another word or a chance for Cora to complain again, he sank his heels into Widower and sent the beast into a swift canter ahead of Cora's carriage. Only a single guard accompanied them. He –and the rest of the liveried staff- had remained silent throughout the entire ordeal. They knew better than to interfere.
That was what Eponine had done and nobody wanted to share Eponine's fate.
Nobody.
Regina, for her part, turned her face into her father's shoulder, gripped his jacket until her knuckles cracked, and wept. She sobbed and cried and screamed because she knew this would be the only chance she would ever have to grieve for her friend.
Her father sat deep in the saddle, his face stoic in response to his daughter's anguish, and pushed them harder towards his uncle's city.
He wished for an uncounted time that his uncle the King had not encouraged him to marry the witch that could weave gold.
For all she seemed to spin now was pain.
Once the entire procession of horses, carriages, aristocracy and staff had moved on, once the forest sounds returned and the road was empty save for the sad body of a pony killed before his time, Howl crept out onto the road once more.
He watched the retreating bulk of the carriage disappear over the rise of the road and could not truly say that he understood what had gone on. The female, Rrzhina, had seemed friendly enough but her mother had been…cold. He did not like the mother.
Howl moved to the corpse of the pony and frowned when he saw how it had been killed. One of them had held it and then the mother had…he did not even know what she had done but he knew it was wrong.
Was this what he was to be? To kill as a man, to use tools and treachery rather than tooth and claw. To slaughter without need –for they could not have killed it for hunger, they had left it at the side of the trail.
Howl picked up the head of the pony and turned it so that it faced the right way. He felt his eyes burn at the injustice for the beast's death.
Yes, it was prey, he'd have killed it himself had he got the pounce right, but this was wrong what had been done to it.
If the wolf pelt was right, if he now had to act as a man, to hunt as a man, to kill as a man, this would be how he had to do it. He'd do it from afar, without ever touching the prey, and he would murder them without having to work for it.
To hunt was to do battle, against the prey's legs, their strength, their stamina, their cunning. A wolf had to win, had to be a warrior of the hunt without peer. A wolf had to be the best and all a man had to do was…this.
Kill it and leave it by the side of the trail. For it to be picked upon by the carrion eaters and the lesser creatures. To be broken back down into the earth without ever living on in the heart or mind of another creature, a hunter like a wolf.
Howl reached out and closed the pony's eyes. He could not bear those soft brown eyes –going glassy and clouded in death- to look upon him any longer. They seemed to look into him and know what he had to become. To know that this was what he must be now.
A murderer.
Howl sniffed and felt the wet from his eyes trail down his face again. He did not want to be a man. He did not want it with every fibre of his being but he knew –in his blood and his bones he knew- that the Woodcutter was on his way and no one else knew. There were no other wolves that were not wolves. There was no other to fight back against the Woodcutter.
So he would have to be that hating thing that was man. He would have to be the skin stealer, the murderer, the carrion eater, the waster, the thief. He would have to give up being a wolf and he would have to wait. He would wear the skin of man, he would walk their footsteps and he would howl their words but he would never –never- be one, he promised himself.
He would hide, a wolf that looked like a man, he would hide in plain sight and –when the Woodcutter came for him- he would weigh every single moment of torment he was to suffer on the monster's head.
The Woodcutter would rue the day that he had intruded upon Howl's life.
Howl sniffed in a breath and scrubbed at his face with his paws, swiping the rain away. He looked down at the pony and decided then that he would give the beast's death some meaning.
Night and himself would benefit from its death, even if no one else would. They would eat of its flesh and take of its strength and it would live on –in a small piece- through them. They would not let it have died for nothing.
So, gripping one of the legs with his paw, he set his teeth to the joint and began to tear.
One of his last acts as a wolf.
Soon he would find someone to teach him how to be a man. Soon he would learn about knives and bows and arrows and axes. Soon he would learn about wearing clothes and hunting for prey that he did not need to trade for this thing they called gold that seemed to rule men's lives.
Soon he would wear their clothes, speak their language, act in their ways, but he would NEVER be one.
Never.
Inside, he would always be a wolf. Inside, he would feel what he was doing was wrong right down to his very core. Inside, he would scream for the injustices he was forced to commit in the name of being a wolf that was not a wolf.
On the outside, he would weep for every animal that he killed this way.
For it was not wolf and so neither was he.
Storybrooke, Now…
"I didn't know you knew that name."
Regina blinked, torn from her memories of the past, and turned to look at Graham. She looked at him, her mind blank for a long moment and then she nodded.
"You knew that I'm omni-lingual. I speak wolf as easily as I speak horse or cat or duck or rabbit…that is how it's pronounced, isn't it?"
"Haurrrrool." Graham rolled the R's around his mouth. His vocal cords were more suited to the guttural language of wolves than her softer voice but she managed it incredibly well. What an impressive talent to have.
"So," Graham's hands flexed against the wheel when something occurred to him, "when I said…in bed…"
"I understood every word."
"Oh." Graham flexed his hands on the wheel again and pressed his lips together.
She had liked it, he remembered. Loved it when he had pinned her down and bitten at her neck and snarled in wulven at her. He'd cursed her up and down whilst fucking her as hard as he could. He had bruised her with his bites and told her over and over how he loved to hate her. How he would kill her if given the chance.
He had let his mouth run because she had told him she liked the sound of his voice shaping the language and his life was easier if she was pleased with him. He had not –for one moment- thought that she could speak Wulven. Not like the wolves of the Blackwood did.
"Well, no, that is not true." Regina hugged her arms about herself and stared out the truck window at the passing scenery. Forever wary of more signs of the Woodcutter. "There was one word that I could never decipher. You started to call me by it just before the curse."
Graham remained silent. He knew well the word she referred to, but he feigned ignorance anyway.
"Luvzhang."
Graham's jaw clenched and he kept his eyes on the road for a long moment. His mouth twisted, pondering as to whether or not to tell her.
"Graham, what does it mean?"
"It doesn't have a direct translation. The closest thing would probably be…" Graham heaved out a sigh and flicked his indicators, turning off the main road and heading for the cemetery. "Love-bite."
"Love…?" Regina thumped back in her seat, caught by surprise and frowned out the windshield. "You…well, I have to say that's a nicer name than I expected from you."
Graham shrugged a shoulder and pulled the truck to a halt outside the gates of the graveyard. He peered out of the windows on all sides and it was a testament to how serious Regina was now taking the whole Woodcutter situation that she waited for his nod.
He could feel she was afraid. Angry too, but it was the fear that kept her smart so he didn't want to do anything to alleviate it just yet.
"Alright." Graham hopped down out of the truck and rounded it before she could drop down herself.
He took her by the waist, her hands resting on his shoulders, and brought her down to the ground. Shielded between his body and the door. He gave the parking lot another scan, wary of the shadows of the trees and spoke to her again.
"You said you couldn't see him in the light?"
"Just his footprints, his reflection." Regina nodded, hugging herself. "I could…feel him. His shadow had weight."
"What can you feel now?"
Regina's eyes took on a sightless quality for a moment, focussing on her other senses, stretching them as far as she could.
She shook her head.
"Nothing. If he's here, I can't feel it."
"Alright." Graham tugged her out of the shadow of the truck door and clapped it closed. He tucked her under his arm again, his neck on a swivel, and hurried her towards the tomb that immortalised her father's remains.
He herded her up the steps and stood impatiently whilst she fumbled the key into the lock. He'd had it repaired, all of it, whilst she had been in hospital. Marco had outdone himself with the door.
Graham noticed her noticing, running her fingertips briefly over the newly carved wood. A deep cherry wood inlaid with ebony. The Storybrooke apple tree flaring over both doors, brass detailing picking out the individual fruits.
It had cost Graham dearly, but some things were sacred, even between Regina and himself.
He might have had no patience for Henry senior, but Regina had loved him. Graham supposed he should respect the old coward's memory or something.
Graham slipped inside after Regina once she opened the door and stalled in the doorway, blinking several times, forcing his eyes to adjust. He closed the door behind himself and felt her breath catch when she found herself in a dark impenetrable to her inferior night vision.
Graham's eyes might be piss poor in the dark compared to a wolf's but crappy wolf night vision is still a hell of a lot better than even the best human night vision. Growing up in the Blackwood as a wolf had more than its fair share of advantages and Graham was glad of every one of them now.
He would need them all.
"Graham?"
"Right here, pet." Graham looked down into her face, turning towards the sound of his voice, her eyes wide and black.
Her hand swung out and clapped against his chest and –for the first time- he didn't flinch at the contact.
A harsh breath rushed out of her and her fingers curled in the material of his shirt.
"Did you have to shut the door? I can't see anything."
"I can see enough for both of us. Where's the door?"
"Under the coffin." Despite not being able to see, she took three steps unerringly close to the marble casket and rested her hands on the side of it. "Help me."
Graham was behind her in an instant, his arms bracketing hers and braced against the coffin before she could exert the slightest pressure on it. The last thing he needed was her laid low by popping a stitch. He'd much rather she stayed on the track to recovery. He needed an ally now just as much as she needed him.
The coffin slid aside with a grating sound of stone over stone, though it moved surprisingly easily and Graham winced when a soft blue light shone up from the staircase revealed beneath.
"Interesting." Was the only comment he was prepared to make.
"Wait until you see the rest of it." Regina muttered and he darted in front of her when she prepared to descend. He hopped over the ledge of the passageway, dropping down several steps below her and looking up at her with an exasperated expression.
"And what if he were to come in the door behind us?" Regina planted her hands on her hips and his scowl just became more mulish.
"He'd never fit through the door."
"The tunnels would be more spacious, you think?"
"Just…" He cut himself off on a low growl. "Just let me, eh?"
Regina's jaw rocked to the side and she nodded. Fine, he could do his alpha male thing and lead the way. It wouldn't last long anyway. He had no idea where he was going.
Graham grunted in response to her acquiescence, and spun on his heel. He waited until her hand rested between his shoulder blades in an old habit of theirs, and prowled down the stairs into the silence of the catacombs beneath. Like that, as they had done many a time in the Enchanted Forest, he would always be able to tell where she was without having to turn and look.
"Where first?" His voice was low and his senses stretched taut.
He didn't think the Woodcutter would come down into the tunnels –too many bad memories of being trapped underground hopefully- but he didn't know this place. Who knew what else was just waiting to come creeping out of the crawlspaces of the curse now that the cracks were beginning to show.
He heard Regina moving behind him, reaching into his jacket that he had given her to wear again, and started a little when something cool and familiar pressed into his palm.
He accepted the knife, squeezing her fingers in silent thanks and flipping the blade in his hand, ready to swing and claw with the least provocation.
"The library first. Down this corridor for thirty yards, then the first left, continue on for another twenty yards and then it's on the right."
Graham stilled, blinking.
"How big is this place?"
"Big enough."
"Pet, now would not be the time for oblique answers." Graham half turned his head to give her his profile and she huffed out a breath through her nose.
She'd been so caught up in the whole Woodcutter nonsense that she'd clean forgotten to get her back up about the whole 'pet' nonsense. He'd been calling her it all day and –well- it seemed a little pointless now to go back and retroactively have a hissy fit over it. She gave a low growl and left it at that.
"The tunnels span the town. At least. Near thirty years and I still haven't managed to map them completely. Suffice to say that most of my castle is duplicated here and a few other places besides."
"Most of…" Graham blinked and then shook his head sharply. "Of course it is."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Regina fell into step with him again when he continued his prowl. Faster now that he knew where he was going.
"You said yourself, the curse imprinted on your mind. The town up above is the face you present to the world. You've ever been more complex than the myriad of masks you have at your disposal. It really shouldn't surprise me that there is so much more to Storybrooke than I originally thought."
"Oh." Regina sounded like she quite badly wanted to take offence to some of that but wasn't quite sure how.
She tensed when Graham did. He froze, turning his face to one of the dark tunnels branching away from them. He sniffed, head tilting back to drink in the scent.
"What is it?"
"Blood." He inhaled again. "Your blood."
"Oh. That. Ignore it. We have more important things to worry about- -Graham!"
He was already prowling down the corridor after the blood trail. She cursed, knowing what he was going to find and grinding her teeth at the prospect. She caught up with him just as he pushed open the mirror at the end of the corridor and walked into the destruction that she had wrought on the replica of her bedroom from her castle.
Regina stalled in the doorway and let out a slow breath, watching his back as he turned slowly, taking everything in.
It looked much worse in the lucid light of calm, Regina thought. Everything was broken. Methodically shattered, smashed and slashed. From the bed linens to the wallpaper from the mirrors to the furniture. Nothing had been saved from her rage. Her blood, dried brown, was splattered everywhere.
Regina's jaw clenched and she met Graham's gaze with a defensive one of her own when he turned to look at her.
"Over me?"
"Don't flatter yourself." Regina wound her arms across her chest and hugged herself. "Miss Swan had done more than a little to tip me over that night too."
Graham didn't say anything. What could he say? He looked down at the destruction again and huffed out a slow breath.
"You…you've never let me see it before."
Regina's gaze darted to his and she found him watching her intently.
"In the Enchanted Forest, I heard you rage. Felt the floors shake and the walls tremble, but you never let even me see. Repaired it all with magic before anyone could bear witness. I never saw so much as a chipped teacup."
"Teacups aren't really my thing." Regina shrugged a shoulder and froze, her face turned away from him, when he prowled closer.
Debris crunched and crumpled beneath his boots. His fingers tipped her chin up and turned her face to his. He stepped closer and closer until he was practically flush against her and she gulped when his gaze dropped to her mouth. His thumb rubbed back and forth across her chin, his eyes considering her for long moments.
"What?" Her voice was a dry croak.
"You did it anyway."
"What?" She frowned up at him.
"I know you, I know how your rage works. Even at your maddest, there's a quiet part of you. Calculating, wondering how best to use all that strength that boils under your skin. As apoplectic as you'd have been, there would have been a part of you that knew exactly what you were about when you came in here that night. You knew what you'd do when you got here and you came in and you destroyed everything you held dear from our home because you thought you'd lost me."
Regina yanked her chin from his hold and stared at her shattered reflection in the spider web of cracked shards left in one of the mirror frames. Her eyes looked too bright and she blinked hurriedly.
"Well," she cleared her throat harshly when she heard the quiver in her voice, "it could be argued that I never truly had you."
"Pet, you are the only woman that could have me." Graham's hand slid around her throat and spanned it completely, turning her to look at him again. "I'd have eaten anyone lesser."
A shiver raced through her and they both knew it had nothing to do with fear or the cold.
"What are we doing?" The question was out of her before she could bite it back.
"Standing together."
"You know what I meant." She clenched her jaw but didn't tug herself from his grasp again.
"Aye, and I was answering you." Graham's thumb stroked the corner of her jaw until it began to unclench. "We're in the place the eye doesn't see, pet. I don't know what else to tell you other than –if we fall- we fall together."
"You hate me." She hugged herself even tighter and he let her look away from him. His hand slipped down her neck to skate over her shoulder, past her elbow to lace his fingers through hers.
"Wrong." Graham stepped even closer to her and her breath caught. "There are no words for what I feel for you. I'd show you if I could. I think you're the only person who could withstand feeling it, who feels with the same depth I do, but all I have are words."
"Really? Just words?" Her voice was low and soft and he let himself take in the scene.
He could feel everything she felt. Feel it pouring along the connection between them.
She stood there, vulnerable and broken. Held together with stitches and will. Her safe haven, brought with her between worlds, shattered around her by her own hand. She'd broken everything. Her former life a wreckage around her alongside her decision to give him his heart back. She was scared, she was battered and she was alone.
No.
Not alone.
"I won't force you."
"I have never said no to you."
Graham stilled when he realised that was true.
Of course, she'd told him 'no' several times. It wasn't like the word had never passed her lips within his presence, but she had never denied him.
When he'd been at his darkest, his wildest, when he'd needed to tear into something, he'd torn into her. When he'd needed to be tied down before he lain waste to entire villages or even himself, she'd bound him. When he'd needed someone to blame for being the mess of a creature he was, when he had rebelled at the thought of being so dark, so twisted, just by his own nature, she'd let him hide behind hers.
His fingers threaded through her hair and he hauled her mouth up under his in a single motion.
Her hands fisted in his shirt and he froze when she pulled against his hold in her hair just before his lips closed over hers. Her whisper was harsh in the gloom of the ruined room.
"Is this a trick?"
"If it is, I'm playing it on me too."
That seemed to erode the last of her resolve and she gave way to the pressure of his hand in her hair. Her lips crushed up against his and she melted against him with a soft and needy moan from deep in her throat.
It felt like forever since they had touched.
They had lain together just last night but that had been tense as soon as they had wakened. As soon as they had realised who they were abed with.
That was before though, before they had the excuse of a common enemy to draw together against. Before his worst fears had been realised and she'd been backed into a corner. Before they'd realised how deep their feelings truly ran.
He deepened the kiss, crushing her mouth against his, thrusting his tongue into her. Her fingers pulled at his shirt until the stitching creaked and his arms wound around her. The cold of the knife, in his hand still, rasped over the leather of his Sheriff's jacket when he tugged her even closer still, stopping only when she winced and sank her teeth into his lip with her start of pain.
"Sorry." Graham pulled away from her, breathing hard, easing his hold around her chest immediately.
Regina sucked in a deep breath, putting her hand to her wound and breathing as hard as she was able without pulling a stitch.
"I'm alright." She lifted a hand and pushed her hair back out of where it had tumbled over her eyes. She looked mussed, her lipstick kissed away, heat scoring high over her cheeks and pain warring with desire in her eyes. "What are we doing?"
"Talking."
She shot him a dark look and he smirked.
"Not all conversations are held with words, pet." Graham stepped closer to her once more, absorbing the way her breath caught at the proximity. He spoke against her mouth, not quite kissing her. "What did I just tell you?"
Her eyes met his, searching, looking deep and he let her. She didn't often truly look people in the eye, not unless she wanted to rattle them down to their bones, but she did with him. Always with him.
"You…we stand together."
"Aye." He nipped her chin with his teeth and looped an arm around her waist, herding her to the door and back out into the corridor beyond. "I will not abandon you."
She huffed something like a laugh and he rounded on her suddenly.
"You think I'm lying?"
"People leave me. It's what they do."
"You mean you drive lesser people away." He told her sharply. "I am your equal. Remember it well."
She arched an eyebrow at him and pursed her lips.
"If that's the case, why am I walking behind you?"
"Because I've got the knife and you're still wounded."
"Not that badly."
"Pet, had you not flinched back there, I'd have taken you on the ruin of your bed and made you beg for it."
Regina blinked at that. She was still getting used to him being off his leash. Being able to talk with her as an equal. Say and do what he pleased.
It was both puzzling and alarming to her that he would please himself to stand at her side and defend her against any threat. She still couldn't figure out the why of it and it terrified her almost as much as the Woodcutter did.
"Be that as it may," she cleared her throat, "none of that will help us against the Woodcutter. Are we going to the library or not?"
"Aye." Graham took her hand in his. "Stay behind me."
Regina wanted to roll her eyes but the expression seemed wasted when he wasn't looking at her. He kept his fingers laced with hers, keeping her behind him as he prowled into the library. He scanned the dim interior and snorted out a breath.
"I don't imagine you did much reading in here over the years."
The room was dark, his voice echoing in the space that was larger than his eyes could see in the dim. It felt large though. As cavernous as the library back in her castle had been. The library in the Dark Castle may have been extensive, but Regina had collected more than a few tomes from the sorcerers she had slain over the years. She'd never been the type not to keep trophies nor to let something useful go to waste.
"Oh, ye of little faith." Regina murmured and tugged her hand from his, walking carefully into the dark that her eyes couldn't penetrate at all. She made it through dint of memory and wrapped her fingers around the edges of a mirror canted at an odd angle on a wrought iron stand. With a grating sound and a clunk, the entire stand rotated, the mirror angling upward. There was a deep and rumbling sound of old gears turning in the walls and under the stone floor. Mirrors dotted throughout the room, perched on the walls and ceilings, rotated too.
Light spilled in from a tiny hole in the ceiling, it looked to be nothing more than a rabbit burrow aboveground, but the light was more than enough to bounce and refract across the mirrors in the huge room and light every corner of it.
Graham blinked at the sudden change in light and his eyebrows rose.
Books.
Books filled every available space. Piled on the floor, packed tightly in the shelves, every nook and cranny seemed to have a book of a suiting size to fill it.
"I don't remember it being this messy." Graham murmured.
"No, I had many books within the castle, not just in the main library. The Curse spliced all of them into the same place. Which is both fortunate and not." Regina walked deeper into the room and looked up at the leaning shelves looming around her.
"In what way?" Graham followed after her and finally stowed his knife. He felt better now that he knew there was only one way in behind them.
"Well, if I ever had the book containing what we need, it will be here."
"But…"
"Everything's been rearranged. I have no idea where it will be."
"There has to be thousands of books here." Graham's neck craned, taking in the space that seemed far too large to be contained belowground.
"Tens of thousands." Regina corrected mildly and scanned the room. She straightened suddenly and stalked across the library, winding her way between towers of books so tall that they obscured her entirely sometimes.
Graham growled below his breath and hurried after her. He didn't know what else was down there with him. Regina had kept more than one monster in the bowels of her castle back in the Enchanted Forest. If she had brought Maleficent –somewhere- then it stood to reason that she may have brought other things.
Things like wyverns, owlbears, gnolls, trolls, phookas, sea serpents…her collection had been extensive. Most of them captured by himself in order to stop them from eating her subjects, but she had always been loathe to kill them. Whether that was because she preferred animals to people or because she was simply hoarding the threat of unleashing them upon her subjects again should they misbehave, she had never seen fit to explain to him.
"What's this?" Graham arrived behind her in time to see her opening a huge glass fronted cabinet.
"Trophies." Regina murmured and studied the objects hanging within.
Wands, charms, medallions, staffs, swords, daggers even some shields hung there. Objects of power that she had taken from those who would stand against her. Sorcerers were not team players in general though Regina had always given them the choice when she had come across them. Swear fealty to her or die.
The ten metre long cabinet filled to the brim with such grave markers was a testament as to how many had chosen fealty.
"You've never needed a wand before." Graham murmured.
"I've never been so cut off from my magic before." Regina stretched up on her toes and winced when her wound pulled. She still couldn't lift her arms easily over her head.
"The bracelet?"
"Yes."
Graham reached up over her head and removed the bracelet from where it had hung on its hook. She took it from him with a murmured thanks, studying it this way and that.
It was a bracelet heavy with charms. Each one was intricately crafted with stunning detail and every single one of them was a shield. Some of them bore family crests that he did not recognise, some of them seemed ancient and battle scarred, but the entire thing thrummed with a power even he could feel. She hummed in her throat and slipped it over her wrist.
It was made for a much larger person than she, a wizard he believed, but it shrank a little to fit her delicate wrist.
"There, that medallion." She nodded to another trinket out of her reach and Graham brought that down for her as well.
It was fairly simple, a silver chain with a tiny model of a pegasus rearing rampant. Regina slipped the chain over her head and then dropped the charm beneath the collar of her sweater.
Then she bent, growling a little with the pain that bloomed in her chest because of it, and picked up a finely carved black wooden box. She handed it to Graham when she struggled with her cast to open it. He held it for her and wordlessly opened it. He watched with interest.
He had never seen her use any of this sort of thing. She had been more than powerful enough to do without. Her control fine enough to not need the focussing tools. Her magic had frothed to her control with the slightest command. The most she had needed was the sweep of her hand or a word spat in a language he did not understand. Even then, those had often seemed to be more for dramatic effect than any true need of their help.
"Arming for bear?" He tilted his head at her and she glanced up at him from studying the contents of the box. She gave a wry smile.
"More like T-Rex." Regina lifted the first ring contained in the box and studied it.
It was a simple band of silver and what looked to be brass threaded around it. She turned it this way and that and weighed it in her palm. She gave a short nod and a little shrug to herself and slid it onto her finger.
Again, it was too big for her but shrank to fit her slim fingers. She pushed a ring onto each one of her fingers, flexing them carefully to test the fit and then did the same with the other hand, having to work them beneath the lining of the cast on that hand. Still, she'd rather have them on than not.
She took the box from him, setting it back into the cabinet and closing the doors, then seemed to hesitate.
"You need something else?"
"Yes." She moved past him along the cabinet and slid open another one of the doors. Reaching inside, she pulled out what appeared to be a leather box. It had several different designs printed onto the leather and she held it gingerly between her thumbs and forefingers. She looked up at him and he realised that she looked nervous.
"What is it?"
"This is for your protection. Will you…let me?"
Graham looked down at the box and resisted the urge to sniff it like some kind of dog. He twisted his mouth and met her eyes once more.
"How does it work? Do I carry it around?"
"No, it's decidedly less bulky than that." She bit her lip and looked down at the box. "I know how it works in theory but I've never used it."
"Not exactly inspiring confidence here."
"It WILL protect you. We're allies now, it benefits me to benefit you and –I get the feeling- that guns and knives aren't going to be up to snuff with the Woodcutter."
"Probably not." Graham looked down at the box again and realised what she was really asking him. Did he trust her?
Well, that was a loaded question.
He trusted her to benefit herself, certainly. He trusted her to do what was best for Henry and he trusted her to go her own way. Whether or not that own way was in the same direction as his…but she loved him.
It was strange to realise that was true but –the more time he spent with her with things honest between them- the more he believed it.
"Alright." He decided after a long moment of lip chewing on her part. "How do I work it?"
"Roll back your shirt sleeves, you need skin on skin contact."
Graham grunted at that but did as she bid him. He rolled back his sleeves all the way to his elbows and then held his arms out, palms up.
She switched her hold so she held the box in one hand and grasped his fingers with her casted hand. She smiled for him and he began to get a sense of foreboding.
"This might sting."
Then she flipped the box and clapped the lid of it down onto the soft skin of his inner forearm.
Graham screamed and his knees buckled when the searing agony lanced him from where the box touched him. He hunched in on himself with the pain, sinking to the floor, unable to even stand. His eyes were wide and shocked and he couldn't even wrench away from her hold.
"I'm sorry." Regina pulled the box away and gripped his other hand.
"No…" Graham tugged on his fingers, sinking to his knees and tried to pull away from her but the pain had rendered him helpless. It hurt more than anything she had ever done to him in the past.
"I'm so sorry," her fingers tightened on his, tears pooling in her eyes, "but I can't leave you defenceless."
Graham screamed again when she flipped the box and pressed the underside of the box down onto the skin of his other arm.
His back arched and he bellowed so loud that he thought he'd tear his own throat out with it. He toppled backwards, unable to see anything other than bleeding images of black and red. It was unbelievable how much it hurt.
Graham came back to himself lying on the floor with his head cradled on her lap. She was curled over him, her hands stroking his hair, watching him with wet and worried eyes.
"What…" His voice was a hoarse croak and he tried again. "What did you do to me?"
"I'm sorry. It was the only way."
"Regina, what did you do?" Graham made no move to sit up.
The aftershocks of the agony were receding, he probably could have, but he rather liked where he was. She was soft and warm and stroking his face. Combing her fingers through his hair. Her other hand rested over the heartbeat pounding in his chest. He might only have half a heart but –unless she had pulled it out to have a look- she wouldn't be able to tell. He certainly couldn't. It certainly seemed overwhelmed with as much ferocity of feeling whenever he looked at her as it had since he'd gotten it back.
"I…the box belonged to a necromancer. Someone even crazier than I am. He was one of the few that I killed because he was a danger to myself and others and not just…because I was of a mind to." Regina studied the buttons on his shirt for a long moment. "He made the boxes like this –furniture- out of the skin of people he took an interest in. He liked tattoos in particular. He was a sadist and a monster and he killed thousands. Terrorised them. Tortured them to death. Killing that many people can gain you an entourage of ghosts just waiting for you to cross into their realm. So he forged weapons that could cleave even spirits. I thought it fitting that he…donate them to my armoury."
"And you just passed them on to me?" Graham frowned at her.
He could feel that she ached for having to hurt him. She hated having to do it but she did genuinely believe it was necessary. Maybe if he hadn't been able to feel what she felt, he'd have been blowing his stack right then, but he could feel it and he could tell that she was genuinely hurting for him.
"The Woodcutter isn't a physical beast, not yet at least. I'm not going to sit on my laurels and wait for that to happen. This way, if he comes to you in your dreams, you won't be defenceless." She rubbed her hand over the steady kick of his heart behind his ribs. He sensed no malice from her –in fact- he got the very strong sense that it comforted her.
"What about you? Did you brand yourself with a ghost weapon?"
"I don't need one. I may not have my magic out here but –in my head- I'm nigh unto a god. He caught me by surprise, dredging up a memory to distract me from the dreamscape. He won't get the same chance again." Regina frowned at the very prospect, or maybe the memory.
"Alright." He wasn't sure he bought that, he didn't want to underestimate the Woodcutter, but he let it go for now. "Help me up."
Regina helped him sit up and Graham huffed out a breath. He felt a little light headed, and he was hungry, but otherwise unharmed.
Looking down, he inspected the damage to his arms and his eyebrows shot up when he examined his new tattoos.
"These are going to be hard to explain." He murmured.
On his left arm, his sword arm, swirling clouds of white and gold billowed across his skin, inked in stunning detail. Blood beaded here and there, lurid against the pale colours. It had been an actual tattoo, not just painted onto his skin. The colours seemed very bright though, brighter than he had expected, though that could have something to do with the sword the clouds surrounded. It seemed simple enough, looked to be a two handed broadsword, but it was a deep and impenetrable black. Like it was made out shadow. No, darker than that, a complete absence of light. He firmly believed that no normal tattoo could produce an ink that dark.
Examining his other arm, Graham found another tattoo filled with more improbably bright colours.
This one depicted…a gun.
Graham frowned.
Why would a necromancer of the Enchanted Forest know what a gun even was, never mind have one etched into his skin?
The tattoo's design echoed the sword on his other arm. This time the clouds were swirling blues, greens and turquoises. The blacker than black of the gun silhouette showing it was a short barrelled rifle. The stock was intricate with negative spaces of his skin showing detail of carving in the wood there and apparently rings of silver circling the barrel.
"That's odd." Regina was leaning over his shoulder, raised up on her knees so he could lean back against her front if he felt he was going to topple over. "The design on the box was a crossbow."
Graham had no response to that but he could feel her brain was on fire with the conundrum.
"Maybe because we have guns here, a repeating crossbow would be the Enchanted Forest's equivalent of a shotgun."
"Wonderful. What am I supposed to say when someone asks where I got them?" Graham held out his arms and twisted to look back at her.
"Look confused and say you've had them for years." Regina didn't seem over concerned with it.
"You really think that will work?"
"I know it will work." Regina reached around him to gently take his wrist in her hand. She sucked in a breath at what she felt. The shield bracelet around her wrist shimmering briefly. "Good."
"What is?"
"They've bonded to you. There was a chance they wouldn't. They'll answer to your call."
"And how –exactly- am I supposed to call them?" Graham made as if to rise and waited for her to get out of the way before he laboured carefully to his feet. He felt lightheaded still, hungry and thirsty, but not terrible. "Is this what I would have felt had I had the tattoos inked on normally?"
"Yes, the pain would have been stretched over several hours as well. Given your body a chance to produce endorphins to combat it. I'm…sorry."
"Next time, ask me. I'm accustomed to pain."
"I didn't want you to say no." Her voice was small. She remembered who had taught him that tolerance.
Graham looked down at her and sighed. That was going to take some work. She was still accustomed to him being the pet. She'd ever been the stronger between the two of them and she just wasn't getting that the tables had been turned. She didn't have her magic anymore –at least not in the same way- and she didn't have his leash…also not in the same way.
"Let's just find this book you're after." Graham was starving. He wanted out of this cave and back to the fresh air. He wanted food and he wanted her behind the wards that would keep the Woodcutter out.
"If it's anywhere, it should be over here." Regina nodded in a darker section of the library and Graham resisted the urge to growl.
Of course it was going to be in the creepy shadowed space.
Which, it turned out, was false.
As they approached, Regina found a mirror that had become disconnected from the same mechanism that rotated the others to keep the sun's light spilling into the chamber. It was a moment's fiddling on her part to have the mirror at the correct angle to complete the circuit and spill light into that corner of the room.
Graham almost felt cheated.
Regina immediately set to work and Graham tried to help but he had never been a great reader and he certainly couldn't speak any language that he came across. He knew Wulven because he had been raised to speak it. He knew human because he had set his entire mind to learning it.
Regina knew every language under the sun and a few more besides because she seemed to just absorb them on contact. A skill that had stood her in good stead at the negotiation table more than once back in the Enchanted Forest. It is easy to eavesdrop on your opposition when they believe you have no concept of what they're saying unless the translator is communicating for them.
He remembered that she had only ever revealed the skill once.
A Telmarine prince of lesser station had apparently expressed an interest in stealing Graham away from the queen. He had gone on in vivid detail to describe to his nobleman exactly what he was going to use Graham for –apparently Graham would never have been able to walk properly again afterward- and Regina's patience had snapped.
She had set fire to him.
From the crotch up.
Graham had been forced to bribe this information from the interpreter afterwards –a young girl of a nervous disposition that Regina had taken from the Telmarine prince as payment for the insult levelled against her pet. Regina had gone on to mention that any retribution the prince might think to enact with his uncle's navy fleet would see the same fate befall any and all men under his command.
Needless to say, the emasculated prince hadn't had many flock to his banner for that crusade.
"A little help?"
Graham blinked, drawn back to the real world and hurried to help Regina pull down a heavy tome from the shelf above her head. It was large, about A3 size and so thick he could barely span it with his fingers. He thumped it down onto the nearby table and stood back so she could open it and flip through the thick velum pages.
Graham was glad there was no dust. The library was old, parts of it contained truly ancient books, but there was no dust or filth. It was messy, all the books having been crammed in there by the magic of the curse, but not dirty.
Looking down over her shoulder, Graham frowned at the pictures he could see illuminated in the ancient pages.
"Cheery stuff." A lot of the pictures were dominated by Arterial Spray Red and many of the characters appeared to be twisted in the throes of mortal agony, even if the illustrations were stylised like stained glass windows. "A torturers manual?"
"Similar." Regina flipped through more pages. "A children's fairy tale book."
Graham stiffened and she chuckled.
"Oh, the Brothers Grimm had nothing on the cautionary tales from our world. Mutilation and damnation were common themes. This book is to Brothers Grimm as Brothers Grimm is to Disney." Regina studied some of the spidery writing in the margin of one particularly charming illustration of a young woman having both feet severed by a single sweep of a carving knife. A spectral horror of smoke and fire filling the page behind her expression of wide eyed agony.
"People read these stories to their children?"
"A little terror is a healthy part of childhood. It means they won't go with that strange man that offers them candy or think they can run across a busy intersection without being turned into a fine red mist by a passing eighteen wheeler. The Enchanted Forest was not known by that name when this book was written."
"What was it called?"
"The Blackwood." Regina continued to flip through the pages and missed the way he stiffened behind her.
"The…Blackwood…?"
"Yes, millennia ago. The Blackwood covered the entire continent that is now blanketed by the Enchanted Forest, for the most part. With the advent of agriculture, deforestation, the magic that made the Blackwood so…black receded to the wilderness of the North West of the country. It was –and I suppose still is- a source of ancient and wild magic that has never been tamed by the hands of men."
"Or women."
"I could have if I'd wanted to." Regina spoke mildly and it was only the flicker of amusement from her heart that he caught that let him know she was joking.
He smiled despite himself and then applied himself to what she was telling him.
"So…the Enchanted Forest and the Blackwood were once one and the same?"
"In a very simplistic way of looking at things…yes."
"So, similarly simplistically, the magic that was in the Blackwood still exists in the Enchanted Forest?"
"Well, that is quite the point. The magic that we manipulated in the Enchanted Forest was nothing save the pale shadow of the tempestuous forces that roiled through the Blackwood. The difference between the two is as pronounced as that between a wolf and a dog. Mankind has tamed and harnessed one but we are still terrified of the other. We –sorcerers- as a people are simply not advanced enough to meddle in the forces that lived in the Blackwood. So we routed them and sent them running. Cut down the ancient enchanted trees to spill more light in the Blackwood and banished the elementals that lived in the dark to the places that we could not live."
Something flipped over in Graham and snarled at the very thought but he battened it down. He reminded himself that Regina hadn't done that, her ancestors had…his ancestors too. He reminded himself repeatedly that she was his ally.
"So it was the first sorcerers that created the Woodcutter, that unleashed him upon the Blackwood?"
Regina blinked and her fingers twitched once on the pages of the book she still held.
"That's…fantastic!" Her eyes widened. "Yes! That makes sense!"
She whirled on the spot, eyes tracking over the shelves and then spun, hurrying away from him.
Graham chased after her as she ran down the stacks, dodging around towers of leaning books and pyramids of scrolls.
"Regina!" Graham tried to catch her but she knew where she was going and she was smaller and more agile than he. "Regina, you're going to pull a stitch!"
"I'm fine." Regina's harsh breathing belied that but she hurled herself up the ladder canted against a particularly overstuffed row of shelves and began murmuring the titles of the books to herself as she hurriedly read them sideways.
"You want to share what's going on?" Graham paced back and forth beneath the ladder, warily waiting for her to topple from it, prepared to catch her when she did.
"I was being an idiot." Regina kicked out and wheeled the ladder along a few feet. "I wasn't going back far enough. Yes, the Woodcutter was a fairy tale –even in our land- but all fables have a root in reality. There is a grain of truth in all of the best lies. He had to have been based on something."
"Something like?"
"An ancient spell, created to make the lands safe for human habitation, to tame the magic for the use of the first sorcerers." Regina grunted when she found the book she wanted and hauled ineffectually at it.
"You're going to hurt yourself."
"I'm fine." Regina panted, took both hands off the ladder, set them to the spine of the book and hauled.
"You're not, you're going to- -Regina!" Graham lunged when she lifted a foot to plant it against the shelves and kicked off, finally succeeding in yanking the book free and catapulting herself off the ladder.
Graham huffed out a harassed breath when he caught them both and grimaced at the searing pain that burned his arms when he was forced to catch her on his fresh tattoos.
"See? I'm fine." Regina hopped down out of his hold and hurriedly opened the book, flipping through the pages. They were so old they crackled, the text so dense and finely illuminated that it looked like static rampantly mating with a geometry textbook. "Oh…Druidiform…super."
"You can read that?" Graham looked over her shoulder, there weren't even any pictures for him to hazard a guess at.
"Well…'read' is inaccurate. It's more like…absorb." Regina caught her tongue between her teeth and began trailing her fingers over the blotted symbols that were supposedly letters. She frowned. "Hmm…this is the right book, it's about the cutting of enchanted trees."
"Is that different from regular trees?"
"Oh yes," Regina laughed, "as different as rock candy is from a stick of dynamite."
Graham huffed out a long breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. He was too hungry for this.
"So, we're on the right track, if that was what the Woodcutter was for."
"Yes, but druids had a fairly fluid idea of time. The chapters jump around a little. You see, it goes from cauterising the flow of magic from the geysers of the enchanted trees to…uh, pig husbandry."
Graham subjected her to a particularly heavy look.
"It's not my fault that the druids –on the whole- were stoned off their faces for the majority of their time on this plane of existence." Regina arched a brow at him and kept flipping through the pages, stopping with a jolt when Graham suddenly clapped his hand over a page and forced the book to fall open there.
"This one has pictures."
"Yes, I can see that." Regina heaved out a breath of annoyance her hand coming to rest on the margins of that particular page and she stiffened as if electrified when the information contained therein blazed white hot through her mind.
"Regina? What is it?"
"It…" Regina tried desperately to get herself under control despite the ringing in her ears.
What were the odds?
Really, what were the odds of the book containing the information on the Woodcutter being the same book that she needed to research the ramifications of dying for Graham? She stared down at the illustration.
A heart, crystalized, enchanted, spanned the divide of the spine between two pages right in the centre of the book. Another heart, its colours slightly different, shadowed the first heart. It looked almost like it was just one heart and a half actually.
Regina's fingers trailed over the symbols and pictograms spiralling outwards from the two hearts and huffed out a slow breath.
This…this was bad.
"What's it about?" Graham was looking down at her intently.
Something in his voice warned her not to lie. Rather, warned her that he would know and call her on it.
Regina looked up at him. What was she supposed to say? The truth?
Hell no.
"The two hearts, what does it mean? You've gone pale."
"I…my chest hurts." Regina lit on the first thing that was true and might be a plausible excuse. He scowled at her immediately.
"I told you not to run. You'd better not have pulled anything out." Graham took the book from her. Regina's fingers slid from the pages and it snapped closed, cutting off the empathic reading. "Is this place going to fall apart if we take this away with us?"
"What? No. It's a library, not the Temple of Doom." Regina shrugged. "At least, not this part."
Graham subjected her to a long and heavy look and huffed out a slow breath.
"Right. Good to know." He took her hand and tugged her towards the doors.
The sooner they left, the sooner he could eat.
They had almost made it out of the catacombs before Graham remembered what he had wanted to know. He turned to look down at her, hitching the book higher under his arm for a better grip.
"What was that page about? It was the only one with pictures on it."
Regina looked up at him and blinked slowly. He could feel her trying to lie, trying to think of something, anything else to tell him but, when she did speak, it was the truth.
She mustered a lopsided smile and shrugged a shoulder.
"Nothing important." Her eyes dropped to the book and she stared at it as if it was toxic.
"If it's nothing important, why won't you tell me?"
"I'm not refusing to tell you, I just don't think you'll be all that interested."
"And yet I'm asking questions about it." Graham raised his eyebrows at her and she huffed out a sigh.
He felt a flash of irritation from her and a streak of stark lemon yellow panic that cut through her a mile wide. She was afraid, similarly to the feelings he had felt from her when she'd been forced to hurt him. Her heart was pounding against the half of his that lay in her chest and he could feel she was getting wound tighter and tighter the longer the conversation went on.
Feelings that were completely at odds with the nonchalant shrug she showed him.
"Marriage. It was about marriage."