Ianora
Ianora pulled out of Castor's grip and gracefully stepped aside. She could play the same games as him, and just as well, but that didn't mean she had to tolerate his filthy paws on her. When her eyes settled on him, she swallowed, reminded again by his grotesque features that he was not the man he was decades ago.
Castor's eyes had once been a dark, stormy gray, but now those clouds were mixed with sparks of red, much like the roses adorning the castle walls. His face was no longer angled and chiseled but curved, with pointed ears. His crown was a golden weave of rose vines, the thorns accentuated with sharp red that...were those roses bleeding?
"A tour, then," Ianora said dryly, averting her gaze from him. Despite how the curse had twisted his features, there was a resemblance to the man she'd known all those years ago—a man who, until recently, had been called one of the most handsome in all the realm. "You've done quite a bit with the place, it seems. Leave it to a man as cold and dark as you to ruin a perfectly good castle."
"I assure you, most of the renovations were entirely unintentional," Castor said as he guided her through the entranceway and into the rose thorn-infested castle. His long, black hair was tamed in a braid, and his red silk robe swayed as he moved ahead, giving Ianora glimpses of the tanned and sculpted muscles of his arms.
The doors opened to reveal a massive room with mosaics and frescos of great intricacy on the walls. To the left, a wide spiral staircase reached from the entrance all the way to the top floor and beyond. This place had once taken Ianora's breath away, but now, everything was covered with wild black thorns and pulsating red roses. The walls, the very air around her, held thick, dark energy as if it were saturated in the blood of those who had been killed inside the castle.
Between the coiled vines were torches that glowed with an ever-burning magical fire, giving the room a regal golden glow, despite the obvious shadow over this place.
Castor held his hands behind his back, avoiding the staircase altogether to lead Ianora into the broad hallway.
"Once the curse upon the realm took root in my home," Castor went on, "it manifested in the strangest of ways. Long-forgotten ghosts now roam the halls. The roses I had been cultivating for your inevitable arrival began to grow like mad, likely because of the enchantments placed upon them beforehand."
Ianora stared at the patch of roses nearest to her as they walked by, four enormous heads of blood-red petals. Liquid dripped from between the petals, staining the floor with a brown and red puddle.
The rose heads followed her as she went by. "What are you looking at?"
Ianora shrieked. "W-what, did that flower just talk?"
"Yah-huh, where else would this incredible voice come from, ya numbskull?" the flower skull. "Stop staring and mind your own business! And don't you dare think about plucking me!"
Ianora backed away quickly, her foot sinking in a pool of coagulated blood from all the flowers. She shrieked again.
"Oh, quit your cryin', girl!" a different flower said. "Aren't you vampires supposed to like blood? What's the big deal? Shouldn't you behappyabout all the free food? Ungrateful sods!"
She placed a terrified hand on her chest and scrambled out and away from the second patch of flowers. "I'm terribly sorry. I'm just a guest here. I had no idea—"
She backed toward the center of the stone hallway, where in her hurry, she bumped into Castor. His arms wrapped around her waist from behind, and she froze. The flowers were of very little concern to her now that Castor had a hold on her.
"Just a guest here, are you?" His breath tickled her ear, and he pulled her flat against him so her butt was pressed to his groin. She could feel the hardness there, ready like a weapon. She stilled, yet she couldn't make herself pull away. "I wonder just what you're planning, hmm, love? I suppose there's no point in telling you it's no use. There is nothing you can do to counteract the spell."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Ianora jerked her elbow to try and get it out of Castor's grip, but he held strong.
"Whatever you need to tell yourself. I'm going to have a lot of fun bringing you to heel." His fingers splayed across her stomach, and his other hand came up to brush a lock of hair out of her face.
She snarled and pushed him away; this time, he let her. He wore a smug smirk that she'd like to claw off his face. "Why are you doing this, Castor? What did I ever do to you to deserve treatment like this?"
He scoffed. "Are you serious, darling? Wherever do I begin? Youleftme!"
"And since when is that an excuse to hunt a woman down to the edge of the earth, threaten, no, attempt to assassinate her family, and force her into a wedding? Huh?"
"You did this to yourself," Castor growled. "I loved you. I offered you theworldon a silver platter, and all you had to do was say yes. I would have treated you well. I would have given you anything you could have ever wanted. All you had to do was say YES! But no. You left, Ianora. You broke my fucking heart, and I never heard from you again. What didIdo to deservethat?"
Ianora's heart beat faster than it ever had in her life. Staring at Castor's face, for the first time, she didn't see a man twisted by cruelty and rage but one who was haunted by the pain of lost love. Pain thatshehad caused him.
Her lips trembled, and she averted her eyes, staring instead at the pooled blood on the floor. This was exactly the pain she had wanted to avoid.
Because she knew she could never give him an explanation that would suit him. Not without breaking her own heart again, too.
"I don't owe you anything, Castor. I never did, and I never will," Ianora said. "You thought buying me pretty things was enough to win my love? Well, you were sorely mistaken then, and you're sorely mistaken now."
"All I wanted was your love, and I thought I had it. Where did I go wrong?" His voice was softer, now, a mediated kind of anger that could explode at any second.
"You can't force love. It has to grow naturally." She glanced at the roses peering at them from the walls. "Just like blood roses have to. You can't force them to do what you want with magic. That's not love, Castor. That's an obsession. You were never going to win me back like that."
"I never should have had to win you back in the first place. You were mine.Mine!"
Castor's advance had backed Ianora against a wall, and she bumped against the stone, trying her hardest to stay tall and confident. Weakness would do her no good here.
But how could she tell Castor all the things that needed to be said? Ianora had been a different person back then, crueler to the man she'd loved. No matter how good her reasons were for disappearing, she knew now that she should have explained herself. Tried to make it work.
She had, after all, done everything to protect them both.
What was the use in saying that, though, when he had gone so far beyond reason? Nothing she had done justified the extent to which he'd hurt her since.
How much he planned to hurt her still.
Castor took her silence for having nothing to say, rather than simply too much that she couldn't express it. "I decided long ago that I would burn down the world if that's what it took to get you. And now here you are, a week away from being mine forever."
"I'll tell you as many times as needed to get it through your thick skull: you might own my body, but if you keep going like this, you'll never own my heart and soul.Never."
Just saying it, so forced and untrue, threatened to make the world crack around Ianora. But for all their sakes, she held true. She couldn't falter in her conviction.
Castor inched closer to her, muscles rippling in perfect predatory precision. He smelled like a bitter breeze, the kind that brought harm and pain, like a tornado stirred up and ready to destroy everything in a single moment. "Then I'll turn you into my whore, and I'll have to be satisfied with that, won't I?"
Ianora slapped him. A red welt immediately began appearing on his cheek.
"The curse didn't only bring out the strange and unusual in your castle, Castor. It also brought out the truth. Now the ugliness inside of you is just plain as day for everyone to see on the surface. I saw it in you back then, and that's why I left. Are you happy? Are you happy with what you've done?"
The rage in Castor's eyes multiplied, and before Ianora could react, Castor's hand lashed out and wrapped around her throat. She slammed against the wall, head cracking against the stone. She saw stars, and she gasped at the wave of nausea that crashed through her skull like an ocean's current.
Panic seized her inside and out, and her hands flew up to grab Castor's wrists as he choked her.
At the same time, his mouth pressed to hers, and Castor forced his way in, shoving his tongue deep into her mouth as she writhed and fought against him. His grip on her throat only tightened with her resistance, squashing the fight inside of her as he stole her reserves of air.
Ianora choked. Magic raced like wildfire across her skin, burning up Castor's arms and forcing his hands off her. Even as the flames lit his coat afire, he continued to kiss her through the pain, his lips moving in a desperate fervor that Ianora couldn't match.
It was all overwhelming. All that hate, and love mixed into a kiss.
The fire burst around Castor's shoulders, finally weakening him enough that Ianora managed to get one of her hands free. She grabbed Castor's hair, yanking hard as she brought her knee into his groin.
He let out a pained grunt and released her, doubling over and clutching himself. Ianora staggered away from him, hand at her throat, glad for the ability to breathe again. Even though vampires didn't technically need air the same way that humans did, going without for too long could put her to sleep. However, it wouldn't kill her.
Castor patted out the flames with an angry growl but didn't advance on her again. She then realized that the flames had been a result of the curse. The moment she was in any real danger, it must have triggered the fire to attack him back.
And yet he'd still tried to kiss her through the agony.
Ianora didn't know where to begin feeling about that.
She didn't know where to begin to feel about the kiss, which she should have hated with every fiber of her being. Yet somehow, the honey and sugar taste of his mouth reminded her of sweeter days, her and Castor kissing by the pond behind his palace.
Indecision warred in Ianora's mind. On the one hand, she didn't want to give Castor the satisfaction of seeing her fear. On the other, if she stayed too calm, he might catch on to the confusion raging inside of her.
She was supposed to hate Castor. And in a way, she did.
But being here, being with him, despite the change to his heart and person, she was reminded more every second of what ithadbeen like. What it could have been like.
Ianora met his eyes and saw only cold calculation.
"You're going to pay for everything you've done Ianora. It's only a matter of time," he said calmly. He untied his cape and let the burned fabric waft to the floor. "Soon, you will come to terms with it."
"I'm going to make your life a living hell for this. Whatever you think I did to you, there is no excuse."
The anger fizzled out his eyes then, gone, like a blown-out candle. "My life has already been a living hell, don't you see? Thirty-four years, eight months, and twelve days of torture without you. Nothing you can do will make it any worse than the relief I find from having you here with me again."
"What are you talking about?" Ianora asked.
"If your plan is to irritate me so much that I call off the wedding, you are the one who will be disappointed, my dear."
He adjusted his sleeves, which were dangling by only a few connected pieces of fabric. The skin underneath was charred and covered in angry red skin from the flames, some of it cracked and bleeding. Yet the pain seemed like nothing to him.
"Now, since you don't seem too interested in continuing the tour ..." He snapped his fingers. "Guards, take her to her rooms. She will be staying there and not allowed to leave until the night of the wedding. Understood?"
The guards who had been trailing them from the throne room took Ianora by the arms. She struggled against them, but they didn't budge. "W-wait a second! You're going to lock me away?"
"I see no point in continuing this quarrel, do you? I had hoped for some time to get to know each other again, but neither of us seem capable of putting aside our differences to make that happen. And so, it will have to wait until we have a clean slate."
The guards dragged her away, back toward the staircase. Her heels scraped against the ground, so much so that she lost one of her shoes in her attempt to break free.
"Oh, and when you're done with that, be sure to burn the belongings she brought with her," Castor said from the end of the hall, a wicked smile on his face. "We can't leave her with any mementos to remind her of her former home. This is her home now, and she best learn that very quickly."