He exhaled white with every breath he took, doing his very best to keep up, for he didn't want to be dragged all the way there. He had screamed and struggled and it had been all for noting. He had been so close, already hearing the song that would take him away, and in a heartbeat- gone. It wasn't fair.
He was trembling, but not just for the low temperature. It was an internal cold, a terrifying, relentless hoarfrost spreading in his blood. For a second, he wondered if Riliane was trying to freeze him, but dismissed the thought. If she wanted him dead she could do that easily.
He met the girl's gaze head-on, trying to look unfazed. He didn't succeed, she scared him down to his very soul. His lips and arm were throbbing, leaking red. He didn't dare speak, afraid that it would bring the pain he feared into reality.
"First you refuse to go to the ball. Then you refuse the food I offer you and embarrass me in front of the prince. Now- you try to leave me?!"
He had already tried to dig his heels into the ground, but he couldn't seem to make her stop. Allen stumbled as she pushed him, fell to the ground as they reached his room.
"You don't want to eat the food I offer you? Fine. You won't eat anything."
Allen started shivering violently. Ice-cold. It was so bitterly cold in here. Someone had opened the windows.
It struck him then. The floor was bare as well, and the walls. The furs, the tapestries, all gone. The nice bed, the blankets, all the furniture, everything…gone. The room was as barren as a cell.
Riliane grimaced. "You'll have a room fit for your gratitude."
He watched with startled eyes at his turn of luck.
It was always cold throughout the night. There was never a moment where Allen wasn't freezing.
The first night Riliane left him in that room, locked the door behind her and forbid him from closing the window, he lay in a corner, curled up like a dead spider. His entire body spasmed with chills, and his chattering was so great he was sure his teeth would crack and break into pieces. Every time it seemed his body would settle, a cruel gust of wind tore through the windows and set him quivering again.
When the morning sun came, he noticed his fingernails had taken on a bluish tint in the night, his skin paling considerably.
The sun brought some relief—not much, but some. Which left Allen to remember just how hungry he was. He hadn't eaten anything since the night before last. It seemed so long ago now. When he had been warm and happy. He hoped Clarith was safe.
He just wanted to go home.
One time, he awoke to Riliane cupping the side of his face. Her hand was so warm, it was strange, with how he had become used to her being cold. Allen could not stop himself from nuzzling into it, seeking out just a little bit more of that warmth.
Riliane quickly drew her hand away, looking almost regretful. "I could warm you up."
The implication was clear.
He didn't beg, for forgiveness or otherwise. He still had pride left.
The maid had been right about servant labor, about earning his keep.
Now, Allen wasn't unused to physical labor -he had helped around at home- but he was unused to do it in such extreme circumstances.
Allen washed windows, stripped beds, cooked, collected laundry, scrubbed dishes…any sort of household work Riliane could think for him to do. If he finished in time, he got scraps of food. If he did the job well, he was rewarded. A ratty blanket, a pillow, Kayo once stopped by to give him his cloak, the occasional day off. So he learned to do the job well.
He became an expert in mopping, in tucking sheets, in cooking. His knuckles bled and calluses formed on his palms. His knees had constant marks on them from kneeling on uneven ice surfaces. He sometimes saw Chartette in the hallways, and she would smirk knowingly at him.
Sometimes, when it was too much, when he tired of working with little to no reward, of the sneers and poorly-disguised laughs of the servant folk, of the promise of warmth dangling in front of him, he seeked companionship.
Sometimes, when he was as cold inside as he felt in his skin, he went to see the Tailor. They would sit in companionable silence, simply watching her work at marvelous speed. He would liken her to a spider, with how quick and efficient she was- how beautiful the clothes she made and sewed.
It wasn't long till he started helping her with little he could.
Sometimes, when the day was too dull, or there wasn't much work to do, she would tell him stories to pass the time.
"I do everything I can for Riliane. I only slighted her once, only tried to escape once. Yet this keeps happening…and I can't understand why. Why does she do this?" he asked her one day.
"Have you ever heard the tale of The Scorpion and the Frog?" she asked him one day.
"I can't say I have." He whispered.
The truth, like cobwebs, hung in that cold place, waiting to be discovered. He could tell this wasn't a story of her past, one of those stories of emotional tangibility, within the eternity of one word, knitted into invisible cobwebs.
He trusted her, for Kayo was a storyteller. Her tales contained truth.
And even though the truth was, by nature subjective… A spider had many eyes, and this one was a master of crafting the unknowable into something that could ensure they last another day.
And so, he listened as Kayo spun her tale. "A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."
"The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?""
Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
Sometimes, Allen just couldn't see what point Kayo was trying to make. "You're telling me, she hurts me because that's how she is? That's ridiculous!" he scoffed, watching the pink-haired woman out of the corner of his eye. "You are a fae too." He said with conviction, as if that simple fact would undermine the meaning of the story.
Because that simply wasn't true. But, he thought back about the stories he had heard about Kayo's scissors. But, he thought about the fact that one day, she had asked him to call her 'mother'.
Sometimes, she slipped, and called him 'Ren'.
Sometimes, he wanted to ask why, but he never had the courage.
It seemed that no matter how hard he worked—how many buckets of water he carried back and forth, how many logs he chopped for firewood, how many stairs he went up and down during the day—his body never got used to it. His muscles always hurt. His joints always ached. He was always cold, and stiff, and numb in his feet. He was always hungry.
That infuriated him.
He begged one day. And some others. It depended on a number of things—the difficulty and amount of work he would be assigned, how tired he was as the sun went down, how badly he needed to feel human.
Throw your clothes on the floor; you won't need them any more.
Come to bed, lie down here beside me.
Et en disant ces mots, ce méchant Loup se jetta sur le garçon & le mangea.
Time bled together in this place, days and nights and time mixing together irrevocably. Allen had no notion of the outside world, or how long he'd been here.
Riliane had forgiven him surprisingly quickly. Given what he knew about the fae, he had expected her to hold that grudge for years.
Of course, that was after he said 'yes'.
The tasks gradually changed. Instead of so much manual labor, he gradually rose to tasks that consisted mainly of catering to whatever whim the Princess had. Be it brioche or horseback riding or anything else.
Now he was the one smirking at Chartette in the hallways, in some sort of petty revenge.
It was easy to get bored when he was all day doing so mechanical tasks. Do them long enough, and they become second nature. He had to take his mind off of the cold, so he took to daydream. Sometime later, he took to humming quietly. When he realized he wasn't bothering anyone, he would sing under his breath. "Don't let the wolf into your bed, she'll take your soul then eat your head…"
Scratch him first, maybe. Leave him in the cold, perhaps. Promising to warm him up if he said so, even though it had been too soon since the last time. In Allen's opinion, anyway.
Allen was determined to keep her waiting, though if he was honest with himself, it hadn't been that bad, those last few times. He startled a bit and shook his head, determined to keep those thoughts away.
He continued making the bed. "No don't let the wolf creep in your door, she'll take you in sleep to her chamber of horror…"
Something he had observed: She was a spoiled brat. Something he had observed, too: She hadn't lied when she said she was lonely.
She hurt him, but sometimes she was kind and that would always leave him without knowing how to feel. He couldn't hate her. He had tried, desperately, but he couldn't. A better word would be that he resented her. Besides, he could carry a normal conversation with her, if she was in a good mood. Faeries were tricky and confusing.
Maybe he was going crazy.
"Are you, dreaming? No use pleading. Are you dreaming? She'll soon be feeding…" he sang under his breath as he straightened the covers.
"If you give me your head, you will please me so!" a voice crowed, making him whirl around so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. "Much more from a silver platter, I shall eat you!"
There was a twinkle in her eyes that Allen recognized as –he hoped- amusement.
He went back to work as the Princess walked in the room. "Though not the head, that would be disgusting… Not to mention impractical for you."
His breath misted as he finished with the last bed. He could almost feel her breath on the back of his neck. "Then what would you want me to give you? My Lady," he quickly added.
"I want your heart."
"Honestly, I don't get why must we host so many balls. Shouldn't they get boring after a while? Shouldn't someone else host the balls?" Ney griped, atop a tall stoll while cleaning the upper part of the wall.
"I wouldn't know, Favorite here is the one who has gone to one, hasn't he?"
Allen looked up from scrubbing the floor, remembering her first words to him and hating her for it. "Have you ever seen a ball while at its peak? It's nice, in a superficial sort of way, unless you look deeper, you know… But Riliane doesn't take you to many balls, does she?"
Chartette's smirk fell away. "You certainly seem to think you're pretty clever." She bared her teeth in a nasty scowl. "Riliane hates clever, yet you keep doing it."
He looked at her with a surprised expression. "Oh, so that's why he keeps you around."
Up above, Ney let out a startled snort.
"At least he keeps me around… I have to give you credit, though," Chartette hissed, nailing him in the shoulder when she threw a spoon at him, "for lasting much longer than I expected."
Allen rubbed his arm. "That hurt."
"You like it," she stated, and he knew she wasn't referring to what happened right now.
He looked at her oddly. "I don't."
There was an honest-to-Levia rose bush growing in a corner, blossoming. He didn't know how it survived there, but he guessed it was Riliane's doing. He wondered why had she done that. When he saw it, he couldn't help but smile. Roses were... His favorite flowers back home...
At least his room didn't seem quite so bare. A splash of color in all that ice.
When Kayo had come to give him his cloak, her laugh had almost startled him out of a well-deserved sleep. She said, "Oh Mary, contrary, how does your garden grow?"
He smiled back, weakly shaking his head. He had no idea. "Hey," he started as he outstretched his hand to grab the cloak, "Have there been more... Like me? I mean, am I the first?"
The tailor hesitated. Glanced at the walls of the room. Allen nearly startled. Of course, ice, reflections, mirrors. How could he be so blind?
"If I recall correctly, you'll be the seventh maid in a row."
Allen didn't expect that she would take his cloak. When he finally got it back, there was a pattern of roses all over it.
Eventually, he was presented with new clothes. By that time, he had his bed again, and some blankets, his cloak.
An ochre outfit. An ochre outfit that looked remarkably like the one he'd been given when he first arrived here. His heart ached in some kind of mistaken nostalgia.
"You're going to the ball tonight," Riliane announced, and he knew better than to argue. "There's a special guest I want you to meet."
His thoughts flashed to Germaine, making his stomach twist all the way to the ballroom. He wondered if he could get away with wearing his cloak over it (Kayo had weaved all sorts of patterns into it, he felt like he was doing her a disservice if people couldn't see it).
But both to his relief and horror, the guest wasn't her. It wasn't a new human Riliane had gotten to take his place. From what he heard, the Seelie Queen had gotten that one.
Not a woman, a girl who couldn't be out of her teens yet. Slightly older than him, he betted. On the prettier side of plain. A kind, dimpled smile. Her brown eyes sought him out. No recognition ignited behind them.
And Allen didn't recognize her, either.
"Yukina," Riliane said, similar in tone to the first time Allen had seen her. "I want you to meet someone. Allen here is from your village."
The girl smiled. There was a bleariness to her eyes. She had been eating fairy food. "Really? You're from Lucifenia?"
"I was," Allen said, attempting to smile.
Riliane pushed the two of them together. "Dance." It wasn't a suggestion. Going again with the Seelie Prince to argue, Allen supposed. The man didn't seem to like him much. He wondered why.
For her part, the girl's face lit up as Allen took her hand and guided her to the dance floor. Allen saw his old self mirrored in her excitement; she had not yet come to distrust the faeries. He thought briefly of Michaela. He should have listened to her. Except it might have been too late even then. It was probably too late for this girl.
He thought about Clarith as well. She was safe, wasn't she? He didn't know her fate.
"I'm Yukina," she said, as if Riliane hadn't introduced them just seconds earlier. "Yukina Freezis. And you are…?"
"Allen Avadonia."
The first hint of recognition lit up her face. Allen wondered how. He had changed a bit, his skin, the length of his hair. "Oh. Then you're related to the Red Swordswoman?"
"Who is that?"
"Germaine Avadonia."
Elation and pride for his sister bubbled up inside him. Was she already a swordswoman? He had thought his father would never give in! This was amazing! "She's my sister," he said with a warm smile.
She furrowed her brows, eyes staying to take in everything. "I wasn't aware she had a brother."
"Are you sure you're from Lucifenia?" Allen teased. Then realized how odd it felt to tease someone good-naturedly again. "Surely you must know my father then. Leonhart Avadonia?"
"Oh, you're Leonhart's son?" Her brows turned upwards at that. "Oh, he doesn't live there anymore. There was a Revolution, you see."
"What?" The words hit him hollowly as if she'd said something very important that he couldn't quite understand. "When?"
"Some years ago. When I was a little girl."
He felt something like a cold hand creeping up his back. Years ago? That couldn't be. He hadn't been gone for years. He couldn't have been gone for years.
"Oh, I know who you are." Yukina beamed suddenly. "You're the one who disappeared all those years ago, of course. I grew up hearing stories about you. That's how I knew there was another world, and that if you had escaped here, then I could too."
Escaped? No, he hadn't escaped, that hadn't been his choice! He had to warn her, he had to…
"Yukina." The cold hand grasped at the back of his neck, freezing his insides, almost freezing his heart. They twirled around on the dance floor, oblivious to everyone else. "How old are you?"
She smiled. "Fifteen."