Chapter 1
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 29
08 Jan 1900
There is no wake-up knock. Mariam is all alone in this haunted castle.
Well, really now, that level of drama may safely stay in her dreams. She is not alone, just severely lacking in maids. Good that long habit still woke her up at an appropriate time. That, and her healthy appetite. She rather wants breakfast, and it appears there is little chance of any servants appearing to help her get ready, or to bring her food, or escort her to the dining room.
What a strange household she signed herself into. If Lord Godalming, the famous scoundrel, is still in the house, she might have to hide behind that contract. Not that he seemed interested in having her around yesterday evening. Which, really, she shouldn’t have been so miffed by. Finding a window far enough up to use her binoculars did inform her that apparently the household was doing some very questionable training exercises.
Still, she felt excluded.
She is the heir’s fiancée and she will not have it! Even if that means she has to brush her own hair and put her clothes on herself. At least not the same ones as yesterday. Indubitably a favour from the ghosts that service the castle. Very well, now to find her way back to the dining hall.
That is not too hard a task, but again: It is empty. No servants, and what is she supposed to do? Make her own food? She wouldn’t know how to even start the stove! She’s a noble. Heaven forbid her hands get calloused from anything so menial. Or that’s what her mother would say. Right now, Mariam would be tempted to find out how a pantry works. She has a figure to keep up and a very unladylike stomach rumble to subdue!
It’s late already, getting ready on her own takes much longer than usual, so she is hungry. Maybe she should get up from the empty dining table?
Mother in Heaven!
She squeaks and jumps back in her seat as the table is set by the ghosts all of a sudden. At least nobody heard that, she hopes. Clearing her throat and trying for composure again, she tests the breakfast. It will do.
~
Arthur wakes later than usual, and, for the second day in a row, not in his own room. This time, it’s only Quincy’s red hair he sees when he sits up. Katharina gives him a meow that he interprets as ‘about time’ from where she’s curled up by his feet, and stalks over to get herself a proper morning cuddle. She must’ve made her way into the room last night while he was asleep, with the help of the castle, no doubt.
Quincy wakes up shortly, too, but it still takes the better part of an hour before they head down to breakfast. Quincy does take a bit longer than Arthur to get ready, what with the make-up and all. Of course, Arthur could have gone ahead, and Katharina certainly wouldn’t have minded, but he decided he’d rather wait a little for his breakfast than go alone, and apparently, so did his cat, today.
They’re talking again about his spell-casting yesterday as they head down the hall to the kitchen, because apparently, Quincy still can think of more questions, and didn’t even have that many comments about keeping Katharina’s fur off of his clothes. So Arthur is a little startled when Katharina lashes her tail so sharply it smacks against his arm, and he follows her line of sight to see movement through a half-open door. The dining room, it turns out. Where Mariam is having breakfast.
Right. He had sort of forgotten that she stayed over, which feels… very rude, actually.
~
Oh dear, she’s an early-rising noble. Nothing for it. With a wink at Arthur and a chuckle for the clearly territorial sound his cat made, Quincy steps towards the dining hall. “Hide in the kitchen if you want to, I’ll be the gracious host for my darling’s fiancée whom we totally ditched yesterday evening. No pressure.”
Waltzing through the doors, Quincy trills a: “Good morning, my favourite bitch! Want some company?’ and gets a huff back. Affronted yes, offended, no. Not after the totally scandalous chat they had yesterday before Godalming dragged him off to far less enjoyable things. It’s amazing how fast you can become friends when you spot a fellow molly in the wild. Speed running. That’s what that is and Quincy is okay with it.
He’s in a good mood, even with John having snagged Darcy all night long for himself. That’s okay. Occasionally.
~
Arthur isn’t sure why Quincy gets to be so rude, but clearly there’s some sort of understanding about it between him and Miss Powlett that they worked out yesterday. He knows he was there for the conversation when it happened, but as usual, he just doesn’t get the social nuance. But even so, hiding out in the kitchen would feel rude, too, and he likes Miss Powlett so far. So he follows Quincy inside to say his own good mornings, without insults, and introduce his cat.
Katharina hops down from his arms to do a circle around Miss Powlett and her chair, sniffing, then apparently finds her not worthy of more notice and saunters to the bowl of food the house pops up discretely by a sideboard while Arthur takes a seat at the dining table, too.
It’s a much larger table than the one in the kitchen, and he suspects there’s rules to where to sit, but he doesn’t know them, so opts for ‘next to Quincy’.
~
“It appears your cat has deduced that I’m a dog person. Good morning, Mr Lancaster. Am I to teach table manners, or are we to remain in the tone Tiny set?” Oh yes, he is so much more offended by being called ‘Tiny’ than she by being a bitch. Mariam is well-pleased with their little game of one-upmanship.
And with the information she’s getting here: The lady and the heir are not arriving together with the others. Yes, her fiance likely is not going to be too eager to get into her wedding bed. Perfect. Now, more interesting is the question why the scholar arrives with the artist. Coincidence, or is there more fun to be had with her little puzzle of who here sleeps with whom?
~
‘Tiny’? Arthur gives Quincy a look- Quincy, who’s almost a head taller than him and who he has to look up at when he talks to him. (Not that he doesn’t have to do that with everyone except Darcy.) And who huffs at Mariam, but not like he’s really mad, so… this seems to be a sort of ‘insulting nickname game’ they’re playing.
So he returns the good morning, and then sighs and asks what he did wrong.
~
While Quincy knows his table manners, he still is curious to hear more, so he does listen to his favourite bitch as she schools both of them on the noble side of things. Which is just as bedazzling an array of etiquette rules as Quincy already knows. Perfect. New things to play with and find ways to bend just far enough that Cycy gets to laugh at the scandal he’s causing. He much rather she gets to laugh than has to dread every social event. Not that he can’t predict that the heir-consort might not become well known for being seen more than the actual baroness.
He likes it. Let Bitch have her fun with the nobles, and Cycy with being the forest goddess she much prefers being.
The evidently so well-fucked goddess that she forgot her normal sleep clamp! Oh la la! Quincy wants to know how John managed that when he sees him walk, yawning and stretching, into the kitchen with his grunt that means ‘Morning’. So obviously, Quincy asks. As censored as he can manage because he promised Arthur and at this point, it’s a game of self-bondage to not slip up on that promise.
“How would I know? You stole her for the night, M…”
Good safe on making the ‘Molly’ into just a ‘hm’ sound when John spots Mariam, but what does he mean?
“For the five minutes she was down with Arthur and me before she ran to get you, and was all giggly about you having something special for her, and then vanishing again?” Oh oh, Quincy does not like the confused look John’s giving him, so he asks against the rising tension in his middle as his normally pretty good danger sense starts to ring: “Darling, please tell me she’s sleeping in our bed. I haven’t seen her since yesterday evening.”
“But… she came upstairs to apologize that she’d spend the night with you?”
No, Quincy does not like that answer. That’s not an answer, that’s a battle cry for them having overlooked something terrible.
~
Whether the blood is actually visibly draining from his face, Arthur doesn’t know, but it certainly feels like a cold, wet lump is curdling in his stomach all at once.
Radu! is his first thought. They overlooked something, Radu got to her again, she ran off again!
But… she was rather a lot more obvious about that last time.
Of course, last time didn’t work out, so maybe she learned from it.
Or maybe he’s jumping to conclusions, and he needs to get his head on straight, needs his crisis mindset. So he takes a deep breath.
“The last time we saw Darcy was yesterday evening, maybe twenty minutes after we came inside, and she said she was going to be with you. Are you saying you also haven’t seen her since yesterday evening?”
Calm. Yes, he can be calm, and rational.
~
Fuck! No, keep his temper down. If Gregory harmed even one hair on his girl, John will have plenty of time to explode then. First, they need to track Darcy down. So he recalls the order of events yesterday:
“I went ahead inside.”
With a glance at Mariam, who yeah, is giving them all a look for the obvious exclusion but he can’t care right now, he leaves it at the vague statement as to what he came inside from.
“It was probably ten or so minutes before Darcy came upstairs and told me not to wait on her. She’d be with you and make up for it tomorrow with me.”
The way Molly’s wrinkling his nose, worse, has his fingers twitch, tells him he won’t like the answer, and no, he doesn’t.
“Arthur had his watch out for the work he was doing. Why would it take her half an hour to run back down to us just to tell us that she’s spending the night with you?”
~
A very good question. “If she told all of us she’d be with the other, that’s on purpose. Why would she do that? …Also, how? Darcy is awful at lying,” it occurs to Arthur.
~
Something is eating at Quincy, it’s as if that furry thing inside of him is doing circles… Oh Divine! Furry!
He wasn’t paying attention yesterday. He was listening to Arthur. Focused on the words that accompanied the vibrations and sweet sway of the little piece of metal that, since yesterday, looks like a bracelet link in Quincy’s mental landscape. Arthur’s little piece of metal against the fabric that is reality to Quincy’s sense of mental touch.
There wasn’t a piece of fur on the fabric!
Darcy always feels like a piece of fur ablaze to him! She couldn’t hide that if she tried. She has no mental defenses to speak of, they found that out yesterday with the training for at least the fifth time.
If there was no piece of fur against his mind, then there was no Cycy, and all the implications make him start to tremble.
“Darcy didn’t lie. It wasn’t her. Just somebody making us think it was her.”
No, he doesn’t need to listen to John’s curses or even the way Mariam drops her pen abruptly. He’s just as terrified by the possibilities.
~
“We’re inside the wards.” Arthur’s mind is racing. “Illusions, inside the wards? …Fae?” Radu could probably make them think they spoke to Darcy, but he’d set the wards off. Surely he would, Vlad did, that scary other fae did.
~
“Llew!”
It’s a shout on John and a hiss on Quincy, but Quincy wishes he felt smug about them both having the same thought, not scared. He did it before! Llew stole Darcy before and the ritual was his idea, too, and what the hell is his long game?!
While Quincy is still clawing the table, his darling, always better at springing into action, is racing off to somewhere and whatever thought he had, Quincy prays that it will work. Jumping up himself, he runs after. He’s no fighter, not at all, but he was the only one who could stop Darcy, maybe he can force Llew to obey, too?
~
Arthur throws Miss Powlett an apologetic glance, and then dashes after the others, catches up a few yards down the corridor and slows to match their speed.
To his surprise, Quincy throws him a look, and then grabs for his hand, weaves his fingers between Arthur’s while they keep jogging after John.
Towards the stairs down to the cellar, Arthur realizes- the nexus. Yes, that’s a good idea, if Llew is involved, of course the nexus is the first place to check!
~
If John puzzled this together right, he has two reasons to use Llew for target practice: One that makes him want to straight up murder him, and one that makes him uncomfortable in addition to angry. If that wasn’t Darcy, that means the fucker not only lied, he got himself a kiss.
The fucker’s worse than Gregory, and that’s a fucking feat!
There’s a kind of anger deep in John’s stomach that would scare him if he let himself think about it for a second. He said he’d kill for his dhampirs. But that felt different. Even shooting the hunter felt different. This kind of anger makes him wonder if he’ll look in the mirror and see his father. He doesn’t want to understand the man. He hates him. But right now, yes, he understands the sense of entitlement to violence. Llew deserves to be punished.
Arriving down at the nexus, though, of course there’s nobody there.
He yanks on the nexus door. It doesn’t budge.
He starts hammering first with one, then with both fists on the wood. No response.
He starts yelling for Llew and Eluned. Nothing.
Fuckers!
With a growl that he thinks would have made his girl proud, he takes two steps back and slams his shoulder into the wood. Once, twice, again.
Something moves.
In his shoulder. It fucking hurts but all that does is make him switch shoulder.
That door has to give. It has to!
~
Arthur bites his lip, dread building the more John’s actions get no answer. Don’t the fae usually appear when they call?
Especially with the racket John is making. He winces when John hits the door, because he doesn’t expect it to budge and John is throwing himself at it with a recklessness that looks like it should hurt.
He takes a step closer when he hears a sort of crunch, reaches out a hand on impulse as if he can heal him from here- which he can’t, he has to let go of Quincy’s hand for that and he kind of forgot he was holding it.
But John doesn’t even stop, merely switches to the other shoulder, and that does it, Arthur squeezes Quincy’s fingers once in thanks before letting go and heading over to heal John- he doesn’t know enough about medicine to tell whether he broke something or dislocated something, but the fresher it is, the better he can heal it, he figures.
~
As Arthur pulls his fingers loose, Quincy feels his world tumble free with them. If John can’t do anything… his darling, Cycy’s manly man, then what is he supposed to do?
No!
Hell no!
He won’t just give up like that!
There’s that furry thing in him again, but… it gets shoved aside and Quincy feels the coolness of the cellar with a sudden intensity right at his fingertips. Images of his grandfather freezing the house spirit out, breaking it, making it do his bidding, dance in front of his eyes and he feels a shriek oncoming. Not any like he usually has, no, like a Banshee in one of those stories.
He takes a step towards the door. He saw his grandfather yank another door free with a mere gesture. His hands come up and he feels hoarse even before his voice climbs all the way up, before he sees the yellow reflection of his eyes in every piece of metal down here. He’s still shrieking. He can feel things rattling and hovering all around him.
He tries to feel the door. He tries to yank with that ice-cold power he feels rushing up and through every object around him.
But its just as in vain as John’s attempt.
The door doesn’t budge.
It doesn’t move.
And with the shriek teetering out into a sob, he hears everything around him clatter back down to the floor.
He wants to fall to his knees, but no, no! The furry thing crashes back to the front, and with it, he dashes against the door himself!
“Bloody open! Open!”
He lashes at the handle after no amount of yanking does anything. He lashes with all the strength he can put into his claws.
It breaks. One of his claws breaks and the sharp pain finally makes him stop, although the keen is not for the pain. No, it’s his heart that’s whimpering as he sinks against the door. “I love her. I can’t lose her.”
~
Arthur’s ears are still ringing from Quincy’s shriek, and his nose is full of a smell- a harsh, fresh smell, like the coldest mornings he’s smelled this winter, since moving to the castle. Like ice crystals on grass and wind that bites your nose and fingertips.
And it’s a smell that is familiar. No, not from those frosty mornings. He’s sure he’s smelled it before, in a different setting.
Or not that different- a door, and an angry fae, in the castle. Baobhan, when he attacked, when he ripped open the door in the library, that’s when he’s smelled this magic before.
But this time it’s Quincy, and his eyes are yellow and all the odds and ends in the cellar were hovering in the air.
Arthur’s never seen him like that before. It’s really impressive, and a little scary, and makes him glad Quincy’s on their side. Which, not that he wasn’t before, but Quincy himself is usually the one insisting that his strengths are social, not… confrontational.
Right now, though, Arthur wouldn’t want to fight him.
Unfortunately, the door didn’t care.
On the other hand, at least Arthur finished healing John before Quincy went all fae on them.
John grunts a thanks at him, and that his shoulder is good enough, then he gets to his feet and yanks Quincy back up by an arm, hugs him, tells him they are in this together, and then pushes him at Arthur before he dashes off with another grunt of: “Getting my guns.”
Arthur slides in next to Quincy, reaches out to heal him- he doesn’t expect it to do much about the claw itself, but he can heal broken skin and bruised bone and take the pain away. “We’ll get her back!” he assures him. He doesn’t know how, and he knows he doesn’t know how, but… he feels a wild determination flare inside of him. “Whatever it takes! We’ll find out what happened, and we’ll get her back!”
Pulling Arthur tightly into his arms Quincy starts crying. “Yes, please, please. She’d chew through the door if she had to if it was one of us. Please, I want my wife back.”
Arthur leaves any questions about this whole Darcy-as-Quincy’s wife for later. “She would,” he agrees, looks at the door. “…I doubt I’ve the power, but let me try. …We should step back, though, I don’t know what’ll happen.”
“Yeah, do.” That’s John, returned with a bunch of guns.
Arthur shuffles himself and Quincy further back and a little to the side. He gathers all his power, and then throws the hardest, hottest plasma bolt he can manage at the wood. Which makes the wood shine iridescent for a moment, before vanishing as if nothing ever happened.
Arthur huffs, unsurprised but annoyed, looks at John. “Okay, your turn- do you want me to put up a wall for cover from anything bouncing off?”
~
“Might just be stroking my ego but go for it.” Setting down most of the guns, he sights one in, goes down on a knee to steady his aim, not that it’s a hard shot, but still, any little bit to improve his chance of actually doing something here.
He still waits until he suspects Arthur is done with putting up the wall, not that he can really clearly see it, but Arthur seems to be crouching more specifically behind something and pulled Quincy with him.
The tiny room makes the crack of the gun deafening; John’s ears are ringing even while he dives behind the cover, not that he really needed to, but with fae fuckery you never know when things go spectacularly wrong. Not even a ricochet, well, unless he counts the spent casing bouncing once off of the floor the moment John works the lever to reload. The bullet is lodged in the wooden door with nothing further happening.
Arthur peers around the wall, scowls at the door. “Is it supposed to do that?” he calls. “Are you going to try again?”
Hands over his ears, Quincy gives John a pleading look to try again, so John picks up his shotgun instead. If he goes deaf then so fucking be it!
“At least it didn’t bounce off.”
Stepping closer to the door, he aims at the hinges, maybe he can get those off.
Wait, what kind of shot does he have loaded? Not that he actually has a clue what would work best on a door hinge, but probably a slug. After a quick check, he clicks the breech closed again, yeah, good, got lucky on what he had loaded in his quick-response gun.
Deciding it’s worth the danger, he steps all the way to the door and fires point blank, only to grunt a second later, turning to Arthur with a look of annoyance above all else. This shot did ricochet, harmlessly to the side, but that makes it have even less effect than the one before.
There’s a dent in the metal but it’s already knitting itself back together.
~