I lost some files for the Holiday series so...

I'm in the process of rewriting, so have a bit of intermission in the meantime of things because I had a chapter I had written a week or so ago.

Captivity: the state or period of being held, imprisoned, enslaved, or confined

Dustin's breath caught in his throat and the Queen retied his cloak when it started to fall from his shoulders. She had been wearing a cascading black gown that slipped purposefully low down her chest and her glassy blue eyes fastened on his when she smiled at him.

Her fingers prodded at his hair and his skin like he was her doll and she took his hands gently to pull him over to her bed. A few feathers shed from his wings and her fingers slid against his palms and nausea rose in the back of his throat because everything was too dirty. And her nails had been filed to points, dipped in red dye so they looked like droplets of blood against his paleness. Her red hair fell down her shoulders and people likened her to a rose but he knew that red really meant poison and his skin was poisoned and he could imagine it growing dead and black and furling back like he was some decaying corpse.

But every time he looked in the mirror, he was still pristine and gleaming and he wanted to look away very fast, like a frightened cat and the Queen would not let him look away. Instead, she stared with him, raising a hand to stroke his cheek and whisper things into his ear that made him recoil.

Sometimes, she'd make him lay on her bed and she'd speak to him in slow, seductive words, her lips brushing his ear, his cheek, the edge of his lips and he wanted to dig his nails into his face and tear off his skin because perhaps if he was ugly, she would not want him. His wings would spread across the Queen's bed and she whispered, "My angel," into the breeze like he was a little, perfect toy that she could not bear to part with.

Once, he tried to pull away.

And he had never seen something so beautiful, so ugly.

Her face had contorted in rage at his unwillingness to abide by her rules and she sent him away for a long, long, not long enough time where he befriended a unicorn and everything was simply...good.

But she grew lonely and invited him, ordered him back where he had to lay on her sheets with her head on his chest and her hair across his shirt and his skin where it poisoned his purity. Dustin had been forced to tell her stories and tales of the kingdom and praise her with a mimic of pride in her voice. Closing his eyes, he wanted to shield out the diseased feeling that crept through his veins because he had been spoiled and if he did not simply disintegrate into the wind, he feared he would not be able to live at all.

"Angel-...My angel. You're an angel. You look like an angel." She whispered those awful things sometimes.

"No." Those words always rested on his lips.

"My angel, angel, angel, angel."

Softly, he let the word "no" hiss into the breeze when no one was whispering, his voice as light as a feather. His hands grew bloody when he washed them too much, his nails raking at his skin to remove the impurities and the red reminded him of the Queen. She was everywhere and he couldn't rip her from his body and his thoughts and he gasped at his inability to control anything.

Perhaps it was always meant to be like that.

He was used to being a prisoner in his own home.

Being blindfolded had reminded Steff of home.

She could understand exactly what she wanted to do, her lips straining to speak with the constant threat hanging around her thoughts. People drew closer to her only to scratch her with their claws outstretched as they forced her to do things she hated.

And no matter how much she yearned to fight back, her hands had always been prisoners.

Steff would always tug and pry but it would only end up with her getting hurt in the end.

"You're never getting out." The voices would ring in her ears and they all sounded like her brother. Her world had always been black with the wool pulled over her eyes and she yearned for the day when she would finally be let out. Her lungs had already known fresh air and she yearned to breathe more than smoke.

Sitting against a tree, Nyx let Aspen rest between his knees, slouched back so his wings were pressed against his chest. Slowly, Nyx drew his fingers through the black hair, twisting it around his finger before letting it fall back to cover his ears. He let his head loll to the side where he stared at a few others, one other faerie curled up on his side on the hill with their hand clutching a knife. Another was sitting up straight, her hair curled over her bare shoulders as she kept guard, facing where the Towns were in the distance. A few others chattered quietly, their weapons never straying too far from their hands. Life was like that and it wouldn't change.

"Brr-…It's cold," Aspen muttered, pulling his cloak around him, a hint of childish annoyance crossing over his expression, "Can't we go to the Towns tonight? It's always warmer-"

"I'm surprised you would suggest something like that," Nyx reprimanded, tightening his fingers in his hair as a bit of a warning before moving to pet him again affectionately, "You ought to not question my decisions for the night. Or any of the others, for that matter. I'm keeping everyone safe."

"Because they're bad?"

"Exactly."

Aspen thought for a long, hard moment, his green eyes squinted in thought.

"Am I bad?" he asked, tilting his head back to look up at him, "Sometimes, I am. Sometimes, the people here say I am very bad and I would like to be good."

"Would you like to be good? Really good?" Nyx smiled, his eyes glinting slightly in thought. "I know how you can be good and it is very simple. All you have to do is follow my orders and everything will be wonderful and no one will get hurt. Besides, you are a child. Children cannot be bad."

"When will I not be a child?" Aspen drew his knees to his chest, licking his lips. "I don't want to be a child anymore. I want to be older and maybe…eighteen. That's a good age, I think. Or even sixteen. I'd be okay with that too."

With a bit of an amused laugh, Nyx started to prod the edge of his wings, drawing his finger down the edge. Without a pair of his own, his interest in them had always been piqued and he often found himself drawn to them. Slowly, his hand traveled from the tip of his wings down to his back where he pressed between his wings with his palm to straighten him so he wasn't so slouched.

"One does not become an adult with age." Drawing his hand away, he always noted that Aspen looked generally displeased when someone invaded his wingspace, for lack of a better term; he found entertainment in his disapproval. "They do adult things and take on adult responsibilities."

"Oh? Can I do that?"

"You'll do what I say. And then you'll be good and you can be an adult."

"Am I not good enough right now to become an adult?" Aspen rambled, refusing to be denied such a title. "Am I not nice enough to be an adult? Am I too dumb? Or ugly?"

"Now, now," Nyx said harshly to silence his questions, "When you insult yourself, it insults me because I have raised you for the last two years. Don't forget that."

"But I-"

Quickly, Nyx caught his arm to pull him so they were facing each other, their faces very close and still. His expression hardly changed while Aspen's crumpled a little bit, a look of caution in the back of his eyes. He tightened his hand slowly on his arm, smiling to show off his teeth with a smile. Drawing back, Aspen flinched, remembering the times that he had been silenced with a fight and a quick bite to the wrist or his hand. The only one that had scarred, though, was one on his shoulder that was an accident of Nyx's sudden rage and Aspen was convinced he'd have the teeth marks for the rest of his life. He hoped they did not make him ugly.

"I am the leader here and when I say something, you'll follow it. Do you understand?" His eyes had grown dark, the slits of his pupils growing impossibly narrow and his breath skated across Aspen's cheek. Then, suddenly, he was leaning forward to kiss him and force his mouth open and it was so wrong and Aspen recoiled at the sudden intrusion, his arms tensing as he jerked back and Nyx just stared at him in contempt. It dissipated after a moment and loosened his grip on his arm.

"I didn't like that," Aspen whispered like it was a secret, shifting uncomfortably, "Why'd you do that?"

"Because I can do whatever I like," Nyx said and grinned, running his tongue across his teeth, "And you shouldn't complain."

"I thought..." Unusually nervous, black hair fell over his bright green eyes, contrasting against his fair skin in the moonlight. "I thought you cared about all of us. Me and her and the others and that you would listen and not do bad things and...not do that."

"Do you want to know what love is?" Murmuring lightly into his ear, Nyx moved to hold him protectively against his chest. He had always enjoyed treating him like a child, afraid when he would grow up and rebel. He was afraid everyone there would somehow just grow up and rebel. "It's when you care about people that you trust them to never leave even when you do bad things. And even if they hurt you, they're doing it for you because it just shows how much they care. Just think that anything you don't like is a bit of me caring for you and everyone else. That every time you bleed, it's because I allowed you to. That every time you cry, I am the one that's allowing you to show that weakness. Every time someone forces you to do something you don't like, it's because they want you to become better."

"That's what love is?" Aspen listened carefully, not wanting to miss a word. "And caring?"

"Yes," Nyx said and started to pet his hair again, "That's exactly what it is."

"Do you care for all of us?"

"Of course." His fingers weaved in and out of his hair. "Each and every one of you."

Percy had always been captivated by science.

It was something limitless and without measure that was constantly morphing into a new creature that he was fighting desperately to tame. Elements combined to form new species of wonder and they reacted with each other on timed responses that grew familiar and wonderful. What amazed him was that something so simple that could be broken down to a few key ingredients could be so complex when they were all combined together.

Everything was science and he grew to love the idea that he was a product of science as well. That he could be boiled down to oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus and a dash of chance that he was beyond the limits of whatever equation that mundanes knew.

Life was calculated.

And he found it inspiring before he found it terrifying, for everything was easy to understand but himself because everything had an end in science where the equation stopped with an equal sign but he never ended. His equation never seemed to have a scientific boundary and he just didn't die.

His years just weighed effortlessly on his shoulders in the form of wisdom but he, himself, defied all rules of science that all mundanes abided by. If he was not bound by science, what was he?

It was easy to find x when given y but when he was given the impossible, he still could not find himself. It scared him that he was perhaps caught in a formula he would never escape, his life encapsulated between a chemical and magic, refusing to let him go to where the answers lurked. If he was forever imprisoned his his magical immortality, could he really ever be the person of science and logic he imagined?

Even as he asked these questions, he had already handcuffed himself to the burners and beakers, refusing to give up a life of complexity for a life of mundane logic.

"Elijah," Abel started, his voice low as he spoke through the vent that led directly to his brother's room, "I don't want to marry her."

"Hmm?" Elijah's tone was muffled, reverberating off the metal sides of the vent as it traveled down and through the grates and between the rooms. "Why?"

"I'd like to marry someone that I love." Sighing, Abel drew the brush across the paper he was holding, watching the ink spill out in Korean letters across the parchment. "I just feel...stuck. I can't tell father I don't want to. He worked so hard to arrange this. I don't love her, though. I don't even want to be her friend."

"You're fifteen." Elijah's words were nearly indecipherable through the warping of sound in the vent. "What would you know about love?"

"I guess you're right...but I could say the same about you and you're eighteen...I just don't want to be stuck with her for the rest of my life. I'm sure you understand. I'm nervous," Abel admitted, setting his brush down, "I want to make my own decisions."

"I know you'll figure something out."

"Yeah...I know." Abel licked his lips and looked down at what he had written.

자유

Freedom.