As She Hit the Open Road -- Part Two
Word Count: 23,600 (Overall)
Overall Pairings: OFC/OMCs, Dean/OFC (HET)
Rating: NC-17 (Language, sex, angst, violence, noncon)
Beta(s): misskatieleigh provided just the right amount of tough love required to keep me on track whenever I started pulling out the flowery stick for no good reason. zelost_mind provided me with lovely insights regarding the villain of the piece, how to make more sense out of the pivotal scene and many kind reassurances when I freaked out about my OCs. vaznetti reminded me of the most fundamental requirement for a hero's quest and provided additional help with plotting. Special thanks to embroiderama, without whom this would not have been possible; she picked up the pieces when the harder bits drained me completely. This story rocks because of them. The bad parts? Those are all me.
Feedback: Absolutely. Concrit is always welcome.
Disclaimer: The Winchester boys aren't mine, but I'd make Dean wear boots all the time if they were.
Spoilers/Warnings: There are no spoilers for the show but the story is dark. It includes scenes of violence, gore, and non-consensual sex with undertones of incest. Based on what I used as the big bad, it's AU - although few things would make me happier than for one to show up in canon. No dates are specified in the fic but I'm 99% certain the events take place after the series run is over.
A/N: This was written for the spn_xx challenge, based on the following prompts:
- Sleeping Beauty waking herself up, Cinderella trading her slippers for something more comfortable, Snow White taking up metalwork.
- "And though she be but little, she is fierce."
Summary: Before the accident, Lia's biggest problem was finishing her Sociology of Consumption term paper after she helped Jeannie with her laundry but an oncoming truck knocked Lia straight out of her body and into a twilight nightmare - and now some thing from one of her mother's bedtime stories wants her heart.
Story Links:
Part One / Part Two / Part Three
Lia always knew that her family was different.
They had rites of passage and weird rituals built into every holiday - even the ones that no one else celebrated - and none of them were normal. Like Halloween. Mom would give extra cookies to whomever carved the scariest jack-o-lantern and she’d never let a pumpkin with a smile grace the front step.
On Christmas Eve, it was Dad’s turn.
They all gathered in the living room, spilling off the couch and lounging around each other on the floor and big puffy pillows. Mom would bring in the bowls of popcorn and Dad would follow her, sneaking handfuls out of the bowls. Most families would pull out thread and needles and start making popcorn garlands for their Christmas tree but Dad just pulled out The Evil Dead with the world’s biggest grin on his face. He wouldn’t start the movie until everyone had a bowl of popcorn within arm’s reach.
The first person to squeak or cover their face or act scared at all ended up getting pelted with popcorn, great big handfuls of it covered in salt and butter that left stains on t-shirts and jeans. It was always Mom. And Dad always used it as an excuse to take her upstairs and change her clothes before they started Evil Dead II. That made Uncle Sam roll his eyes and pull out Halo 5 until Mom and Dad came back into the living room with cookies and milk and pizza and even more buttered popcorn with lots of salt.
She asked Dad once, right before they started watching Army of Darkness, if he ever saw anything that made him scared. His eyes had flickered at Uncle Sam, both of their jaws clenching like they were remembering the same exact thing, but Dad didn’t say a word - just reached down and tried pulling her up onto his lap even though she was too old for it. Lia squeaked and the boys all pelted her with popcorn and she sat there glaring at Dad until he handed her a piece of pizza. She was taller than Mom.
But not by much.
And she never got any taller.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
She missed them both with a pang she did not expect.
It took time for Gwyneth to stop waiting for them. Wynfor wasn’t going to return from a day’s hunt and Griffin wouldn’t sing his bawdy songs that made sense now that she was more woman than girl. Her days returned to normal, from two moons to three, but Gwyneth still took time to listen for the birds like they had taught her.
She always kept her ears sharp for the sounds of men who would hurt her.
As the seasons turned, the Kindly Ones continued to protect her because the only men to approach her since the brothers had returned to their journey did so on the same night they always returned to her. It was the third reunion since their evil stepmother had cursed them.
Gwyneth had already finished sewing the third shirt and had started separating nettles for the fourth when the first of her brothers arrived, flying unerringly to the log where she sat and remembered other brothers. The swan had actually startled her, with its honking cry - trying to knock the nettles out of her lap harshly with a peck of its beak before it gave a piteous yell and Twm knelt before her.
Gwyneth held him while the others arrived, stroking his hair and face with her roughened fingers - not even feeling the moisture on his cheeks until he looked up at her and begged her to stop. Each one of them did, holding her hands and asking her why, staring into her eyes and threatening to burn the nettles down so that she would have to stop.
Only the tears in her own eyes, the scar she’d affixed into her lip with another quick bite, stayed their hands. But for one night, they convinced her to stop working the nettles, to set down her shuttle and stop her spinning wheel; they told her more stories about the things that they had seen, about how it felt to fly, what it meant to be trapped as swans and the despair of knowing they would forever be cursed.
Sion gently plucked nettles out of her palms with a pair of tweezers Wynfor had left behind, anointing her palms with the last of the salve. Dinner was of their own making, a deer they had hunted and started to smoke so that Gwyneth would have meat when they were gone. She stayed up with them until, one by one, they flew back up into the sky.
Gwyneth sighed as Deiniol changed, the last of them all.
Not a day passed where she didn’t miss her brothers, breathing along with their memories every second she was awake. Gwyneth marked her life in the days it took to complete each segment of her task and she always knew who would return first on that one night each year that they were a family again.
And not a day passed where she didn’t miss her protectors. She realized that they were still keeping watch over her; recognizing the signs of their visits even when they did not make their presence known.
Wynfor would leave jars of salve near her cave when she least expected to find them and his smoked jerky became as familiar a presence as his gentle eyes as the years turned to cycles marked by an equinox. Gwyneth always missed her man who never asked her questions when there was a cooked meal left on a low-crackling fire or when she woke up to an empty cave after Griffin unexpectedly staggered into her nettle field with his lopsided smile.
But most of all, Gwyneth wished that she could say Griffin’s name whenever he shuddered inside of her.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He never used her name.
It was always ‘little one’ or ‘my sweet Hermia’ or some other diminutive that Rion pulled out of his ass, soft vowels that he caressed with a click of his tongue against the back of his perfect teeth. It didn’t help that he always brought her to the beige room to interrogate her, with its dry spiders and rotten fruit underneath the shine. He walked in whenever a dizzy spell toppled her to the carpet, head throbbing because of the light streaming through the windows, and Rion laughed at her while she tried to stand.
Lia had no illusions.
She was a toy, a tiny doll with her mother’s tangled hair and her father’s freckles, and Rion was worse than a toddler when it came to playtime. She had seen what happened to those on the receiving end of his whims, the creatures that shuffled in the dim light of his oven-lined toy box. He was like the kid in that old Pixar movie that ripped off arms and stuck them in places where legs should go, giggling when his toys screamed because they couldn’t walk.
There were nights where Lia would wake up from the slow shudder creeping up her spine and find a pair of crimson eyes staring right into her own - so close she could smell the flowers decaying in the dust of his lungs, one finger leaving welts on her cheek where the nail slowly brushed flushing skin and left puffy traces of its passage in the morning. He would whisper to her, piercing past walls with a sibilant hiss filled with ‘my petite gift’ and ‘little swan’ and a host of promises about all of the things he would wish for once he cracked her open and drank deep from her heart.
When he left, she would roll on the floor until her shoulder bumped into the warmth that was Alexander Thomas Newbery. ‘My name is Lia Winchester,’ she would whisper into the crook of his arm. ‘I have six older brothers, more cousins than I can shake a stick at and parents who still kiss each other like teenagers.’ And if Alex was awake, she’d start talking about how much Dad loved his car or how everyone fought to be on Mom’s team during touch football and how each brother took turns protecting her because that’s what older brothers did.
Alex listened to every story she would tell.
But there were repercussions to breaking the rules, especially the ones Lia did not understand; so many afternoons spent tumbling to the rough carpet in the beige room while Rion tempted her with wishes of her own. He promised to keep one wish to save her when his ritual was complete, when his son was restored to his proper place from the depths into which her father had cast him, but he grew impatient - smothering her with white spiders pinching her nose and pushing her down into the carpet.
“Does your heart belong to me, my wren?” Rion demanded, five welts on her throat from his long-fingered hand.
“No.” Lia spat out the word. Hummingbird wings sped up every time he asked the question, slowing down long enough for the clipped ‘no’ that was always her reply. This was their new game, played out in so many different ways that she didn’t remember the first time he asked her the question, but a Winchester would never give in to some asshole that ripped people apart for pleasure.
Crimson eyes flashed and Rion scowled, pushing himself into a stand by pressing down on her throat, and he chuckled when she gagged. “Are you quite certain?” He sat on the back of his heels, head cocked as he watched her. They could have been talking about books or poems, the way his fingers brushed loosely against his thighs.
“Yes.”
There were rules that even he could not bend - wishes were things that needed to be hard won; they had no power without the heart’s desire. Lia winced, waiting for the burst of temper that didn’t come. Rion gave a dazzling smile and leaned down, placing both hands on either side of her head. His white hands tangled in her hair, lips brushing against hers with a dusty slide that tasted like week-old bananas, and he plucked out something when his tongue popped between her lips.
“You are a clever child,” Rion said with another deep laugh, rusty breath sucking back inside of him as he pulled away, “But no girlish rhyme can protect you forever.” He shook his head slowly, lights glinting off his hair and casting a red glow on her white gown. “Do your parents really kiss like teenagers?”
“My…parents?”
She closed her eyes, seeing only shadow figures with auras. A whole collection of fading faces scattering across the table like all the broken pieces of a puzzle. Tears welled in her eyes but she would not let them fall, holding on to the cackling laugh that rebounded through her skull and a pair of green eyes that narrowed - a man’s fingers going white around the steering wheel of a big black car and a woman’s laugh inside the largest oak tree in the back yard.
“It’s a babbling rhyme,” Rion returned. “I thank you for the amusement.” He snapped his fingers and two guards, faces hidden behind white masks that matched the color of Rion’s skin, each grabbed a shoulder. Her bare heels rubbed against the carpet as they lifted her up and dragged her out of the room.
They tossed her into the toy box and she blacked out when her head cracked against stone.
The cool water sinking past her lips hurt to swallow and she blinked, hands resting on denim-covered knees. Matthew’s face was right in front of hers, a clucking noise in the back of his throat when the water came back up. “Lia can’t even drink,” he said, his child’s eyes filling with tears of his own.
“The bastard actually hurt her this time.” Alex’s voice was a rumble against her back and she recognized his arm around her. He was gently touching her neck with a cooled piece of cloth, dipped in a bowl of water. Matthew closed his eyes and curled around her leg but she trembled in spite of herself. “I’m so sorry, Lia,” Alex whispered into the back of her neck.
“Lia?” she asked. Her hands tightened around his knees. The word hurt to say, pins pushing into her chest, but she had no idea what it meant. There was a hole where a world should be, a scattering of shadows where there should have been ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and memories of a place beyond a crematorium’s oven-covered walls and the prettiest glimmer of all that ripped everything away as it toyed with them. “Is that my…” She shook her head sharply. “Do you…know my parents, Alex?”
“Oh, God…” Alex’s arm let go and she toppled forward, stomach contracting but all that came out was a sulfur stench that made her muscles tense even harder than before. “Lia.” He settled her back against his chest and holding her firmly in place with his arm. “Listen to me,” he added. “Just close your eyes and listen to me.”
Alex told her a story about a girl who sat on the stairs with her six older brothers, watching her mother read a magazine until a big black car roared into the driveway and her father stumbled into the foyer with her Uncle Sam. He told her stories until he was hoarse, about watching movies at Christmas and how her parents met over some fairy tale about a shapeshifting dog. The faces were still fuzzy but it was enough rope to hold onto, the rumble at her back reminding her of ‘home’ like nothing else did, and he gave her a talisman that Rion could never steal no matter how hard he tried.
She repeated the words every night before she went to sleep, over and over; her very own lullaby, sounded out in time to Matthew’s breathing. Alex whispered the words right along with her, ignoring her clenched fists and hot tears because she always stumbled over the name; slowly repeating it for her until it came out of her mouth in chopped syllables.
My name is Lia Winchester. I have six older brothers, more cousins than I can shake a stick at and parents who still kiss each other like teenagers.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He sang to her, old songs about shaking all night long or girls who were something good.
“You need to expand your repertoire,” she said. “How do you expect to pick up chicks with Herman’s Hermits?” Alex laughed and picked her up by the hips, dragging her up onto his thighs. “You jerk,” she yelped. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to sit on your bony lap?” But her hands tangled up in his as Alex put his arms around her waist and she laid her head on his chest. “I was serious about the songs, though.”
“You just need to remember more of them,” Alex retorted.
“Me?”
“Apparently, your father’s really into AC/DC and Zeppelin and Kansas - something you called the greatest hits of mullet rock - but your mom likes stuff from the sixties.” He rested his chin on top of her head. “We never got around to your brothers before…” His voice trailed off, leaving an ache in her throat.
She closed her eyes. He was the storyteller and she was the story - a muse who only remembered glimmers of herself in the split seconds she walked between awake and asleep. It was enough to give Alex hope and his smile was worth it, how he beamed when she repeated her name without stumbling. It seemed like such a small thing, two little syllables that made him happy.
Such a small thing, until it was taken away completely.
“I’m not sure I can listen to the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue again, Alex,” she retorted softly. Zeppelin made her fingers itch with the desire to pound asphalt and drive as far as they could, to feel the wind whipping through her hair as her hand fluttered out the open window in time to the music. “But that might just be the sound effects you’re using for the guitar solos,” she added with a grin.
He chuckled. “There’s an old family favorite but I don’t even think you’d want to hear it.” Alex tightened his arms. “It’s a folk song.”
She tilted her head up, bringing a hand up to his cheek. He’d spent so many hours trying to save her family that he rarely talked about his own and her throat ached all over again. “Will you sing it for me?”
He nodding, sucking in a breath. The way Alex’s voice rumbled through her, husky in his chest while he sang about traveling forty days and forty nights through red blood to the knee, resonated in her bones. It shouldn’t have made her feel safe, a song that marked the roads to Heaven and Hell and to an Elfland that was only fair in folk songs, but it did. She felt like she was six, wrapped in the smell of pizza and leather and a woman’s laugh rang out warmly into the hot summery daze.
A pair of clunky boots thumped into view, followed by a swift kick that took a chunk out of the wall. Neither of them jumped but Alex stopped singing and they both looked up. It was one of Rion’s guards.
“Big Man wants her,” it said, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her bare feet.
At least it let her walk, jerking her forward when she glanced backwards at Alex. Usually she was dragged to the hidden door, toes trailing behind her in the wake of her hospital gown.
Rion was standing by the window, staring out at the skyline with his hair resting on the glass. She expected a bloody smear against the windows when he twitched, his eyes going wide into his smile as she trembled beside the guard. A dusty blast of dead flowers hit her square in the chest along with his crimson-tinged gaze but there was no way in hell she was going to fall down in front of him ever again.
“You are taking liberties with the boy,” he said. Rion might have been asking her about the weather or the state of the roads and his jacket looked like he was plucked out of Pride and Prejudice. “Are you not aware that you are otherwise engaged?”
She said nothing, steeling her features when he frowned and the glamours he usually wrapped around himself fell just enough for her to see his sharp-edged cheekbones glimmering with crimson - and the jagged-edged tips of his spidery white fingers. “Have you nothing to say?” Rion added, his long fingers pulling his sleeves out from underneath the cuffs of his jacket.
“Engaged?”
“Does not your heart belong to me?”
“No.”
“One day, it will,” he whispered. The rabbit in her chest began running at the way his voice dipped, his eyes gone dark as he crossed the room.
Rion lifted her from the carpet but the touch of his mouth against hers was gentle. The room was filled with spices and he gave one gentle tug against her lower lip with his perfect teeth, prodding her lips open enough for his tongue to slip tenderly inside. He tasted like dreams and she melted against him, all want and longing as he lightly brushed his tongue against hers, until a storyteller’s brown eyes and greasy blonde hair danced on the back of her eyelids and broke the spell.
Alex.
Hands clamped around her shoulders as she pulled back, the taste of Rion seeping deep inside. She moaned as he sucked harder, pulling her tongue further into his mouth and teasing her with his teeth. Hands clenched at her sides and he groaned himself. “You are delicious, my sweet,” he breathed. “I need more.”
A tiny ‘no’ danced on the tip of her tongue but his jaw snapped, teeth cutting clear through the muscle as blood exploded against what was left of her taste buds. Someone was punching her in the eyes, fireworks making a dizzying display as the shock traveled down her jaw along with blood spilling down her throat.
And there was chewing, his mouth pressed close to her ear as she gagged and swallowed down a rusty tang.
He slammed his tongue back inside her mouth, staining his lips red, and bitter spit burned against the stump that remained. She was still choking on the blood and the burning track of his tongue as it smoldered against what was left of hers and her scream was consumed by his mouth, all dripping acid and lost promises.
“The next thing I eat will be your heart,” he growled, pushing her backwards onto the floor.
She choked on the bloody saliva flushing into her throat, the tarnished aftertaste intermingling with the fiery remnant of her tongue. Rion’s smile was delicate, wiping the edge of his mouth with a white handkerchief, and he knelt down - gently brushing the hair back from her face as she rolled to her side, stomach contracting; everything poured back out, burning its passage up her throat.
When they threw her back into her grainy green-lit prison, Alex was there to catch her. She couldn’t protest when he picked her up in his arms, lolling like a rag doll on his lap after he sat down. Matthew brought a steaming cup full of something warm and spicy, something that cooled the burns in her mouth to a dull throb and she could think again; the missing part of her tongue was trying to form words all on its own. And the panic in the pit of her stomach grew worse, faces dimming as she struggled to see them.
Alex dipped a rag into his bowl of water and started wiping the blood tinting her lips, thin streams trailing down her chin from the pain of holding her mouth closed when it happened. One thumb brushed a tear from her cheek, a gesture so familiar and so alien that she felt hollow inside; desperate to remember why such a simple thing as compassion could hurt to recall.
“Your name is Lia Winchester,” Alex whispered into her hair, voice thick and bubbly. “You have six older brothers, more cousins than you can shake a stick at and parents who still kiss each other like teenagers.”
When she closed her eyes, there was a jumbled collection of smiles and freckles - of green eyes and sandy colored hair with tangles of curls - but she didn’t know how long she could hold on.
Letting go seemed like the easiest thing in the world.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gwyneth completed the sixth shirt with enough time to prepare for the journey home. When she spied herself in the stream, bending down to wash her hair, Gwyneth saw a wildling thing - more spirit than human - staring back up at her between the ripples from the wind. Only her eyes were the same, peering out from her nut-brown face and her tangle of nut-brown curls.
Even her clothes marked her as more creature than woman, culled together from the skins of animals that she received as gifts - some from the Kindly Ones and others at the hands of Griffin and Wynfor. It was more armor than clothing, with the fur intact to keep her warm in winter weather, but it would not protect her from the men wandering the woods. Men who glimpsed her for but a moment and looked away because she was a forest thing. A spirit to be avoided at all costs.
But they became more daring as the moons cycled.
On the day Gwyneth would begin her journey home, she was betrayed by footsteps walking through her nettle field - followed by a low whistle that sounded like a wren; Griffin’s call.
There were three of them standing, staring into the mouth of her cave, when Gwyneth emerged with her basket full of shirts and a welcoming smile on her face. They took that smile as a promise and ripped the basket from her hands, pushing her down on top of her nettle shirts and lifting her skirt. The first grunted and stopped pressing his hand down onto her mouth when he realized she wasn’t going to scream but that didn’t keep his hand from her throat when she fought him off with teeth and fingers.
A pair of hazel eyes appeared over the third one’s shoulder along with the point of a sword through his gut, watching with a throb as she bucked underneath her attacker; wrists pinned back into the nettle shirts. Gwyneth rolled into a stand, staring up at Griffin. His hand came forward, a thumb brushing a tear from underneath her eyes, and one word fell between them as she pulled her skirt back down.
‘Why?’ Griffin demanded.
Gwyneth looked away, down at the shirts. It was the only answer she could give. Why did she not cry out when she was attacked? Why did she spend years weaving shirts while her hands puffed into scars? Why did she live by herself, friend only to animals and the two of them?
Why was she punishing herself?
She knelt and started putting the shirts back into her basket, stopping only when Griffin tugged one from her hands. The nettles stung them both, drops of his blood all over the nettles and even on the ground when he ripped it so hard the right sleeve came off of the garment. Gwyneth glared at him, hands automatically going to the pouch at her belt where Gwyneth kept her sewing kit. She rocked back onto her heels and began tacking the sleeve onto the shirt, whipstitching as quickly as she could.
Griffin turned his back on her.
It was Wynfor who knelt down next to her, picking up shirts while she continued to sew. ‘We found her,’ he said. And Gwyneth had heard enough of their story to know whom they had found. She knew enough of her own to recognize the description, to realize that the thing that had sundered their family had cursed hers. They shared the same foe, something she could never tell, and they had come to say goodbye.
The way Griffin’s shoulders shook, Gwyneth almost hoped that they had come to ask her to join them but she knew such a thing could never be.
She was a wild thing covered in bruises and the space between her thighs burned with a fire no amount of water from her cool stream would quench. The girl she was would have run in shame, instead of stitching up a sleeve so that she could finish the task that she had started the night she gave up her voice. A proper woman would have cleaned herself off and gone to her kin for amends but they were flying the night skies, as wild as she was, and part of her wished she could grab Griffin’s sleeve with a hand as fair as hers used to be.
Gwyneth wanted to say his name, just once, before they left her.
None of that mattered. The brothers were coming to the end of their long journey, going to kill the thing that hurt them all. Gwyneth would not stop them. But she had a task of her own to perform, a task that would end with nettles watered by her own tears, gathered by the sweat of her own hands and anointed with her own blood as she wove them in silence.
Wishes were never granted for less.
And she had more desire than most, sneaking after the brothers when Wynfor gave a sigh and followed Griffin back into the forest.
Gwyneth was stealthy when the situation required, taught by her protectors to skirt shadows and trees when they both realized she would remain in the forest until she was ready to leave. Neither of them turned to look at her as she followed them, an untamed girl camouflaged by bark and her bare feet silent in the leaves that muffled her passage, and she fell asleep listening to them breathe from across a clearing.
But the next morning, there was a tap on her arm and a flash of blue-green eyes above hers. Gwyneth closed her hand around a strip of beef jerky and waited for him to leave, the silence broken by Wynfor’s whistle as he nudged his brother awake.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
He believed in the value of object lessons.
On those rare occasions that Rion showed himself below, his passage was marked by scuttling claws amidst dead silence. A cacophony of eyes watched him warily, waiting for the example to be picked from their numbers the same way he picked roses from the air and watched their petals fall. It was always the slow pulling apart, the slow skinning of sins, when those crimson eyes marked the unlucky recipient of his attentions.
When he stopped in front of where they sat, backs against the wall and seven creatures standing vigil in their semi-circle, she was unafraid. Rion had already taken her name, had already taken her voice, but he could not take the one thing from her that mattered. He was bound by rules, as much a slave to his bargains as his victims, and Alex was safe - kept as an honor price to seal the deal with Alex’s father.
“You meddle,” Rion said simply. Alex said nothing but her eyes widened when one long-fingered hand suddenly reached down and yanked Alex by the hair. “You have filled my sweet promise with lies. You have taught her to resist.” Rion was twisting the hair so tightly, drops of blood started bubbling along Alex’s hairline. “You have earned punishment, Alexander Thomas Newbery - proscriptions and contracts notwithstanding.”
Alex jerked when Rion used his full name, body going as slack as a rag doll. He had tried to warn her, once, about the power of names; a lesson she had failed to learn despite the way Rion had plucked hers away with a kiss. Alex slumped like every bone in his body had turned to jello, lurching onto her shoulder, and his mouth worked silently - one thin string of drool dropping onto her lap, her hand automatically going to the bottom of her gown and wiping it gently.
It was her fault.
You have filled my sweet promise with lies.
It was their ritual, his litany of her life. She could hear Alex’s voice in her sleep, when Matthew wrapped around her for warmth and that midnight dark was a blessing; her name burned back into her brain with a vengeance as loud as the big black car that no Unseelie spell could silence, that roar in her dreams as it pulled into a driveway she could no longer reconstruct.
The dusty spider in Alex’s hair twitched and then fluttered back to Rion’s side. “The punishment shall pain me more than it pains you, Alex.” It was a voice that could make angels weep but the sickly sweet smell grew worse. She could taste it, on the nubs that remained on the stub in her mouth. “I do not relish the idea of hurting my precious heart,” he added, all reason and sadness despite the crimson gleam sheeting off of his wet hair.
“Nnnn…” Alex tried to sit up, his head cracking into her shoulder blade.
She kicked out when one of Rion’s guards wrapped a meaty fist around her shoulder, a scissor kick around an ankle that didn’t keep the thing from dragging her out into the middle of the room. All points of the floor met in the spot, dipping down into a drain that was stained with rust. A grating noise echoed through the room and she looked up, staring at the metallic glint that was coming down out of the ceiling.
She kicked again, a ragged noise erupting from her chest that wasn’t even a scream, before something heavy thumped into the back of her head.
Her hands were bound when she awakened, two small claws locked wrist to wrist with a thick knot of rope that left welts when she moved. Toes brushed the smooth stone, the bare tips cold against the floor, as she swung slowly back and forth; nothing to get purchase against as she moved. A spray of goose bumps trailed down her arms, her thighs, as a rip pulled off the tatters of her hospital gown. Long-fingered hands tickled the backs of each knee as Rion knelt before her, hair going from crimson to a shock of thick black hair as his mouth dipped forward to kiss her on the abdomen.
“Don’t fight me,” he whispered, chuckling when she jerked against the rope. His hands squeezed on her knees, hard enough for her to push away from him - but it gave him enough leverage to force open her thighs, shoving them backwards with an ache. “You know you want this. You’ve always wanted this.” One slick pass of his tongue on the crease where her thigh met her hips made her whimper, tiny burns erupting across the goose bumps, and the rabbit thumping away inside couldn’t run.
The dimples in his smile made her muscles clench all over again and the shattered moan pouring out of her throat made his blue-green eyes go wild. He flipped her knees up over his shoulders and five bruises bloomed across each thigh as he held her down, restraining her while his burning tongue snaked between the folds - another round of burns as the acid flickered across her clit.
Another half-scream that made her wrench and rear away from his dimpled mouth.
“I always knew you were a slut,” he said. A new voice, smug but so like the memory of how she used to sound. He was younger now, grinning up at her between her bruised thighs and using his teeth. “So fucking wet,” he murmured. His eyes shimmered, more green than blue, and he jammed fingers up inside her cunt. “And so fucking tight. You’ve been holding out on us, little sister,” he groaned, with a new shade of brown hair color and a shaky lilt to his voice.
He bit his way up her thigh, back to her abdomen, as her knees slid off his shoulders - stopping to lick off the blood on each wound as his hand worked, all five fingers pumping in and out with nails so sharp her eyes rolled up into her head. “Going to bang you,” he grumbled against her stomach. “Can’t fight me.”
So many faces that should have been familiar until he found the one that made the scabs in her mouth pull apart when she shrieked, ankles kicking against his thighs as thick fingers held her hips - tongue fucking her mouth and licking each cut, shoving down her throat and brushing against the stump. His cock rammed inside of her and the rabbit was running on its wheel. “You going to come for Daddy?” he breathed into her neck, teeth making gouges and her heart was beating fast faster fastest, with its rhythm of not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy, but he smelled like shellac and he smelled like varnish and he thrust inside of her every time she pulled away with a ragged breath.
“You going to come all over Daddy’s cock?” he added, her head going backwards when he rocked against her hips - nails ripping into her ass as he held her close, tearing across the backs of her thighs, and the pain pressed and something like a slow drum pounded through her belly and her hips started bucking because she couldn’t push him out and, fuck, she was clamping around his cock with not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy and, oh god, why couldn’t she push him out. He moaned, pulsing deep inside with a slick shot that ached.
“You going to give Daddy your heart, baby doll?” he asked, breath hot against her ear.
She lowered her head, semen sticky on her thighs as he throbbed inside of her. His freckles were exactly like her own, sprinkled in cinnamon and chocolate across his nose. All she could breathe was not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy and oh daddy it hurts. Another whimper as the rabbit beat itself to death against the sides of its cage.
Rion chuckled as his features shifted, pulling himself out of her with a scalding slide. The tips of his fingers were covered in her blood, matching the throbbing gashes in her legs. He licked his index finger and looked at her coolly. “Your body is already mine, my sweet Hermia.”
And he left her hanging, a hunk of torso rotting on its hook.
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Matthew was the one who cut her down with the help of a giant.
After one quick swipe of his claws against the rope, she was sprawled on the stone floor with her bound hands above her head. It took him longer to slice through the knots at her wrists, his tears dropping onto her palms when he sliced through skin and she didn’t even flinch. He was too small to carry her and the giant did not want to feel the taint of Rion that still slithered in every pore so Matthew rolled her slowly across the floor until she was laying beside Alex.
She stared out at the sliver of rope still wrapped around the hook and closed her eyes, the stone floor cold against her cheek and leg. And every piece of her body ached. Head. Muscles. Fingers. Stomach. Skin. Everything burned where he had touched, tiny blisters from his tongue and scratches from his fingers, and her cunt was cracked open just like her heart was going to be.
This is the story of a girl with six older brothers.
It snuck in between the welts and the bite marks - a woman’s voice telling stories, a catalogue of creatures that breathed only in fairy tales. It even hurt to laugh, a harsh little chuckle that didn’t require words. She had finally splintered into pieces, left for slag and cut down from a hook and using a children’s story as a talisman against the green-grainy dark.
Something settled on top of her, light like a sheet, and her body was pulled backwards so that her head rested on a denim-covered lap. She could remember the girl’s name. Gwyneth. All luck and skinned knees. A woman’s smooth cadence recalled every moment of suffering, of six brothers and a silence Gwyneth would not break while she wove six shirts with bloody handfuls of nettle she gathered herself and watered with her own tears; one moment of grace given by the Kindly Ones themselves, bought by nothing less than total devotion.
But she didn’t have a faerie godmother, just the woman’s voice in her head as she started shivering.
Wishes were never granted for less.
Matthew curled around her and she whimpered when prickles brushed against her bruised skin. The smell of varnish was thick in the back of her throat and the only thing keeping her from pushing out and running was one hand on her forehead, soothing her with a storyteller’s voice. There was always water when she started throwing up and cool cloths on her forehead the longer she burned but she couldn’t stay warm and her fingers and toes curled from the cold.
She couldn’t even hold up her head, eyes fluttering closed as she tried to stay conscious. She stopped counting every time Alex sucked in a breath, trapped in hummingbird wings and wincing as he lanced the festering cuts on her arms or the backs of her thighs, and she knew that she was sinking into the dark when Matthew’s tears rained heavy in her hair as he begged her to wake up.
The cuts inside were never going to heal, scarred over because she couldn’t dig the nettles out without cracking herself open - a wish she had earned with her own blood, sweat and tears. The three trials, the woman’s voice whispered. It’s how heroes save their princesses. But she couldn’t ask Alex, who knew all of her stories, and his voice was begging something, someone, in a tear-stained sing-song promise.
Alex was giving her up and she was powerless; couldn’t even raise a pinkie to fight for what they might have had and she wanted to scream when she heard the low laugh because she knew that Rion needed her alive or the magic would be lost, wouldn’t let her die because wishes needed to be given freely once they were earned. Wishes relied on the heart’s desire and a heart without its beat had no desire at all. It was just a dead rabbit in a rib cage, ready for skinning and nothing but meat.
A hunk of torso rotting on its hook.
Rough hands grabbed her arms and her toes were dragging behind her again, head lolling forward, until something bitter was forced down her throat and she opened her eyes. She was back in the beige room, being held up as Rion stared down at her with his hands folded across his chest. She focused on his mouth, watched his perfect white teeth gleam as he smiled.
“Your champion has requested a boon, little one.” He was leaning back against his black desk, stars blinking outside his window, and one eyebrow rose wryly when he shook his head. “He will give you up.” Rion chuckled. “As if he had any prior claim upon you.”
She tried to clench her fists but she couldn’t even work her fingers. There’d be no one to sing her to sleep at night, no one to remind her of names that she could no longer tie to faces. His gentle hands had tended her wounds, had kept that brief spark of hope alive, and now they were both being punished for it. Alex was just another thing Rion could take from his sweet Hermia until she gave in, his smile the thing that ate worlds while he watched her.
“Does your heart belong to me,” Rion asked softly.
No.
But she nodded, eyes going dim as Rion smiled. She had a job to do, a job that would end with nettles watered by her own tears, gathered by the sweat of her own hands and anointed with her own blood as she wove them in silence.
Her heart was all she had left.
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Gwyneth followed the brothers for a week, falling asleep to the whistle of Wynfor’s breathing and Griffin’s long paces around their fire; hidden underneath whatever pile of scrub she found when they stopped for the night. The rain covered the sound of her tears but it could not block the memories of faces that took their pleasure from her and had left nothing but slag in their wake.
But she had a task to perform.
The weather turned the day they crossed the border into her father’s lands, the clouds hiding the sun from the fields, but those who tended the farms still completed their work. Gwyneth stayed within the trees, skirting the road, but the brothers walked right through the front gates along with those attending the festival - heads held high, weapons hidden under cloaks and clothing.
Power was gathering in the earth, tingling up through her feet as Gwyneth walked the perimeter of the white walls. She placed one rough hand on the stone when she found the opening her brothers had made when they were children and wanted to sneak out into the night to curl up in the roots of the oak tree without their father ever knowing.
Gwnyeth was still small enough to use it, pushing the basket through first.
There was a guard nearby, dozing against the wall. The guard stirred when Gwyneth’s foot brushed the grass on the other side of the crack but he did not wake. She had spent so many years in silence that she did not realize how noisy her old home had been and Gwyneth used the clamor to mask her steps to the courtyard.
It was full of pavilions and tents, a cacophony of colors that lined the inner walls. Merchants hocked their wares and more food than one could possibly hope to eat - pasties and pies and something that looked like tubers - were available alongside silks and jewelry and furniture for purchase. No one noticed her as she passed behind them, with her tangle of curls and hands that would never be clean; not one person glanced at her basket.
Gwyneth was a ghost compared to the woman who had taken her place.
Her stepmother was the jewel in her father’s crown, sitting next to him on a dais while a tourney played out before them. Even with storm clouds rolling overhead, Aeronwyn’s hair shone like copper. There was a little girl sitting next to her, with hair like Gwyneth’s father and an expression that could cause a grown woman to pause in her tracks and stare.
Gwyneth’s father was a shrunken shadow of himself, sitting next to his wife; sapped dry of any power he once possessed.
Aeronwen rose to her feet, a smile on her face as she raised her hands for silence, but a coil of clouds erupted above her. Six white shapes, trumpeting their arrival with defiant cries, emerged from the wispy funnel. She shrieked in return, her fingers curling into claws with sparks of fire surrounding her hands, and the scream Gwyneth would never voice was taken up by a roar as two figures rushed forward with swords held high.
She had never seen them fight - as much beauty and grace as it was the art of the sword - but they were dodging her stepmother’s spells while her brothers circled overhead. As much as she loved her man and his gentle-eyed brother, her task was all-consuming.
It was her purpose, the reason why Gwyneth was made.
The crowd parted for her, a tangle-haired forest creature carrying a basket. One hand grabbed a shirt, the nettles burrowing past the scars, and Gwyneth sighted the nearest swan. The air around her stepmother crackled, singing feathers as her brothers worked to protect Griffin and Wynfor from Aeronwen’s blows, but there were rules to the enchantment - proscriptions that Gwyneth was required to follow or else her brothers would die.
It was her only chance.
Gwyneth threw the shirt into the air. Her stepmother screamed as a white figure dove into its opening, wings turning to arms as one brother alighted on the ground. It was Twm, who no longer looked like her twin - all shining where she was dark, matted with leaves and covered in old scars. But the magic was pouring through her, and four more shirts flew up into the sky like arrows pursuing their targets.
Five brothers restored to fight the creature that had stolen so many lives, grabbing weapons to stem the tide of guards pouring forth to protect the witch while Wynfor and Griffin concentrated on Aeronwyn.
All semblance of illusion had disappeared and her stepmother’s hands flashed like white spiders in the lightning that shot from her fingers. Gwyneth hurled the last shirt just as a blast of heat knocked Wynfor backward, a spell flung towards the man who made her salve.
‘Wynfor,’ she cried as Deiniol flew into the shirt. Her brother’s right wing burst through the sleeve, and it plummeted to the ground before her brother fully transformed. Deiniol plummeted to the ground soon after, bouncing before her and rolling against the grass with a sharp crack. Gwyneth’s chest cracked open with it when she spied her brother’s wing, broken and hanging limp off of his shoulder like dead weight.
She didn’t even see the end of the battle, wrapping herself around Deiniol’s shaking form while the magic inside of her sunk back into the earth, but Gwyneth heard the bansidhe’s dying cry followed by her brothers’ shouts.
When the shouts dimmed to gasps, Gwyneth was still kneeling around Deiniol as she shielded the swan’s wing from harm while the rest of him rocked in her arms. She looked up to find Griffin, staring down at her with eyes as wild as the blood rushing inside of her. The same question between them but part of the answer was in her arms.
‘My brothers,’ Gwyneth said. ‘It was for my brothers.’
It was Griffin’s turn for silence, one of her roughened hands brushing Deiniol’s face. Her voice was icy water pouring over the rocks in her stream, crackling as it bubbled out of her throat.
The nettle shirt was rough against her arms and they were all covered in a new round of blood and bruises, new scars on top of the old. Gwyneth held on all the same, leaning into Deiniol’s shoulder when his arm twisted tight around her waist. Griffin watched them until Wynfor put a hand on his arm and they turned to assist her brothers with the aftermath of the battle.
A wish, no matter how nobly won, does not always come true in the manner intended.
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Continue on to Part Three.
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