Anathema's Veil
written by axisixas
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Chapter 2: The Dark Hold
"Father! Father! What have you brought for me?"
Manon looked at the man. He sounded more like a child than a grown man the way he asked his father. Manon looked at him judgingly. Then their eyes met.
He stared at her with deep curiosity. His eyes looked dead. But everything about his physical features were sharp and brooding.
He had dark hair, dark eyes and yet his attitude didn't fit the Dark Hold. This place was a bottomless pit. Their courtyards look like graveyards, their trees overgrown and wilting. Their manor, pointy and grotesque.
She didn't know a place like this could exist in the fae realm. She imagined that it would look like just trees and nature, tinkerbell and peter pan. Stuff like that. But not absolute darkness and grotesque monsters. There were hundreds of monsters lurking outside, working for the Dark Hold.
Until his bony fingers touched her hair, softly.
"Does it break, father? Does it break?" His eyes never leaving her. His pupils dilated.
Then his fingers left her hair so that the back of his hand could slowly caress her cheeks. Cold skin against her. She shivered. She saw how his eyes were now filled with something close to want and interest.
Manon looked at the older Shadow fae, pleading. He still hadn't spoken a word.
"Can I have her, instead? Can I have her heart? Let me have her heart, father."
This time, Manon took two steps back, fear crawling over her like the thousand legs of a centipede.
He was quick with his hands so he grabbed her by the back of her neck. He held her possessively as if he asked for his father's permission but staking his claim on her already.
He made her look up to him. Her eyes met his dark ones, they were hollow black. His emotions were all over his face, one felt like a predator needing to play with his prey until it breaks, and the other consuming lust that threatens to break.
His beauty was incomparable and yet darkness filled the entirety of his being. His shoulders were lean and wide as he made her focus on him fully. He was looming over her small frame. She smelled death on him.
Manon hated that this man had dead eyes and that everything about him was real and incomprehensible and yet overall dangerously spellbinding. Hypnotic beauty that made her want to be under his shadows and let him enchant his way with her.
She felt sick. She heard how everyone in fae realm was enchantingly beautiful and that most of humans couldn't fight their way out of falling over the enchanting beauty they possess.
"I will let you have her. But not now."
His face was crestfallen, and it was clear he didn't like his father's statement. She could feel it in the way his fingers dug into her skin, causing her to cry out in pain.
"Maden, release her."
"No, father. Give me her heart. Let me have her!"
His father commanded the shadows. Manon ducked away when Maden's back hit the walls. He clamped around his heart. Torment in his voice as he plead his heart to be released from his father's hold.
"I said. No. She will serve another purpose other than being your toy. You will not touch her even after she have entered the games."
"The games?" Maden scoffed. Black blood dripping down the side of his mouth. He removed it using his shadows. "She would not stand a chance. The players are all human males. Do you not know of the difference in their strengths? She's better off being my human."
"You will honor my decisions, Maden."
He grabbed both sides of his hair as if he was losing his sanity to the shadows around him. Maden was now mumbling something to no one.
"Let me have her, father. Let me have her!"
"I said no, Maden. You have not even controlled the shadows. How do you expect me to give you a prize? How do you expect me to make you heir to the Dark Hold?"
"I want her! I have never been with a human. I've always wanted one! Let me have her and I promise to control them!"
Cloud of shadows rested upon them, blocking Maden's way towards Manon. A steward emerged somewhere bowing its head towards the High Lord of the Dark Hold.
The High Lord didn't speak another word and stalked off towards the end of the hall.
"Follow me, human."
Manon scrumbled to her feet. Invisible chains wrapped arround her heart into a command, a pull she couldn't defy. She couldn't see it and yet she knows there was something keeping her in place.
Manon felt like loosing her mind. There was nothing stopping her from physically escaping and yet she couldn't run.
The halls were lit with shadow fire, illuminating pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and towering spires. Everything was cast in shades of black—it was a palace, but one ruled by an entirely different kind of king.
She was brought inside a chapel-like place only to find herself inside a room. It was hers.
"You will eat, bathe and sleep inside this quarters. You are not allowed to ask questions. Or to speak to servants attending you. You will only speak when allowed. You will not demand anything to the High Lord. Understood?"
Manon had stopped eyeing the entirety of the room to meet the eyes of the old steward waiting for her answer.
"Yes."
Only then she realized she hadn't been allowed to speak the entire time she was here only when a pull around her soul could breathe as if a release to let her speak.
A shudder struck her throat. A vile forming as fear traces her skin. She realized as she looked at her hands her new reality. These are not humans. She told herself.
"And lastly, do not speak to the Heir. You've met him." Maden. "Do not even let your mind wonder off about him. He is as powerful as the High Lord himself. Do not let his shadows in."
"What do you mean by in? I have no power over this beings."
"Inside your thoughts. Your thoughts has a way towards your heart. The Shadow faes control the heart, the soul of the human body."
And when the steward left. Manon felt a stare burning at the back of her head. A sharp turn almost twisted her neck. She could feel it but cannot see with mortal eyes.
She uttered a silent prayer. To live. To survive. And when she open her eyes, her breath caught up in her throat.
A few inches away from her was a face of a man as beautiful as the sea, blue hauntingly deep, luring you into its depthless abyss.