Moonbeams by Ennalee
Chapter Notes: Written for electronicquillster, for SecretSpewII.
"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."
James Baldwin
Moonbeams
i.
He meets her where the silver branches glide against the sky, and the touch of the moonbeams falls soft and sensuous on her skin. It is a secret romance, pure and somewhat inconsequential in the great scheme of the world, but it keeps her holding on, and she holds him under the velvet sky and thinks that maybe, somewhere, the stars are singing.
His hands, silver in the moonlight, caress her skin, sweep through her dark hair. “My radiant Rowena,” he whispers. “This is our place, here in the darkness, and it is glorious. You shall be crowned with moonbeams, the beauteous queen of the night.”
With the moonlight falling on his face, kissing his skin with silver, he looks like the statue of a god. His mouth finds hers “ the moonlight binds them together; she believes.
ii.
During the daylight golden Helga reigns. They sit in the sun, and Helga glows under its rays. Rowena can feel the gold soaking into her own skin; her hair is warm to the touch, dark waves glinting with the sun’s reflection. Three laughing bodies on the grass, and Salazar waits in the shadows. Godric, laughing, calls him, brother-friend come join us. He steps into the light and when he touches her she feels the cool darkness of moonbeams, shivering. His smile holds a secret, a promise, a midnight kiss. She smiles back.
iii.
She never was alive before, she thinks, trapped in the fading remnants of words, half-forgotten in the morning of an already fallen world. With a single touch he teaches her of colors, and life seems fresh and new in a vibrant world that is still young “ perhaps things are not fading as fast as she had thought.
He teaches her to love with whispered words and soft caresses, glances shared across the wide, empty halls of the castle. She knows the taste of darkness on her lips. Passionate, sweet, she has never tasted anything before, and perhaps this is all that is real.
Love, his eyes promise, forever love. For years in dusty volumes she has read of love “ it strengthens the heroes beyond the lot of their mortality, that they may pluck the apples of the sun and of the moon “ but she never thought it could be like this, this passionate awakening sometimes silver, sometimes scarlet.
She thinks she would go to the end of the world for this man.
iv.
There are secrets in his eyes. Her own eyes are clear and honest, but his hold secrets deep and dark like wells “ don’t lean too far you’ll fall, her mother’s voice warns. She wonders what it is like to plunge past stars into the darkness, cold water rushing “ one long glorious dive, and then-
She does not know. She has volumes, scrolls, tablets from all corners of the world, and this one thing they will not tell her. She takes his outstretched hand and wonders if falling is the only way to live.
Perhaps she is falling already. She thinks she is enchanted by the moonbeams, but her traitorous mind asks her if it is not the darkness itself that she is in love with.
v.
Some nights she does not meet him in the forest. Some nights he goes alone; she watches from her window as his dark figure fades into the shadows.
One night she follows him. He is dark and silent as a shadow among the trees, and hardly as real. She feels like a shadow herself, her pale skin cold, her cloak black.
The glade where they meet is guarded by invisible barriers and she knows that she alone could follow him undetected; she wonders whom she is betraying, and whether love is possible in a world where lies are gilded in sweet silver.
Under the tree where they kiss “ silver and darkness bound together by moonlight, cobwebs woven by the stars “ Salazar now stands alone. He raises his hands and white light pours down, devouring. She watches silently, the bright gleam of the knife, the blood on the ground, and then she turns and walks away.
When did she start hiding from the day, she wonders.
vi.
She loves him.
She knows that, even as he returns in the morning (pale light creeping up the stone walls, the dawn of a new day already tinged in blood). He does not touch her, nor speak, but she watches him bathed in the morning light and knows.
She cannot stop loving him.
vii.
There is something lurking in the castle. It is nothing tangible “ no black beast creeping through the halls, no blood in the light of day. It lurks in the spaces between people, in the folds of the tattered hat that divides them, in the shadows on their faces.
“The magic of the night is dangerous,” Godric warns. “It is done where no one can see, and it leads to death. Take care, Rowena. Take care.”
Godric blames her, she knows, because he cannot see the darkness in Salazar, his friend. She drops her gaze to the ground and says nothing, for there is nothing to say “ her eyes hold secrets now.
She wonders when the darkness began to cling to her, and whether her hair still reflects the light of the sun. Her face in the burnished mirror is lined and weary, dark hair threaded with streaks of silver. Salazar has not changed. She no longer meets him in the forest at night.
viii.
She pieces together his spell as he must have done before her, from scrolls and tablets in many languages. The blood and sacrifices come together in her mind, the moonless nights when he left alone “ she knows what he is doing.
Within a circle of standing stones he stretches out his arms to receive the darkness, and the bodies lie around him in a pattern mystical and strange. She sees his face, and his smile is the one she loves.
That night when he returns she looks away. His hands gentle on her neck, caressing. Even as she turns, yielding to his embrace, she knows that this will not end as long as he lives. His hands cover hers and she sees the streaks dried crimson and rust.
“You have blood on you,” she says, and he holds out his arms and laughs.
“We all have blood on us,” he answers, “even you, my sweet Rowena. Our world is built on blood, and only through blood can it be saved. We will build a new world.” He smiles as he walks to the window, holding out his arms to the moonlight. He whispers a word, and the blood vanishes. “There,” he says, smiling. “We will be clean, and soon there will be no more blood to spill.”
The next night he does not leave; she watches him sleep, unmoving. In the morning she sees blood on his hands, the fresh bodies laid out in the forest, and she knows that this spell has gone too far “ it is linked to his very life. She spreads out her own hands, surprised to find them clean.
ix.
She can see the darkness, now. Even in the light of day, it creeps. The shadows move; they are no longer empty, but full of colors “ a darkness made of silver and blood.
Salazar runs his hands through her hair, the black streaked with grey. “A crown of moonbeams,” he smiles. There are no shadows on his face; only his eyes are dark, and she thinks she is falling.
“We can change the world,” he says, but there is blood under his fingernails, and she thinks of that long, last dive, cold water in her face, rushing deeper and deeper into the night.
“Forever,” he whispers, but his eternity is in darkness, and she finds she misses the sun.
x.
She loves him. That is, perhaps, the only thing which has not changed.
She goes to the forest while the sun is high and makes her choice.
xi.
How does it end? She knows the rules of the creatures of the night; only death will stop the bloodlust, only death will sate them. Vampire: a quick strike upwards from below the breastbone, wooden stake through the heart. Werewolves take a silver arrow, basilisks a sword, how do you kill the man you love?
He gives her a necklace of white stones that glow like tiny moons in the firelight. His breath on her neck is hot as he fastens it. “I promised you moonbeams,” he says, and his warm fingers whisper new promises as they glide across her skin.
xii.
She made her choice in the silence of the forest, but she finds she must make it again and again; kisses like cold water rushing, secret embraces in the forest, masking the stench of rising death.
She made her choice and she will not unmake it, so she mixes the poison as her lover sleeps. His hair is dark and pure, his skin silver; there is no blood on his hands now, and his eyes are closed.
When she closes her eyes she sees the bodies “ soft, gentle in the darkness of the forest “ strange symbols carved into bleeding flesh “ the warmth of his skin, his lips upon hers “ the glint of silver in the moonlight.
“I love you,” she whispers into the silence of the stone room, but he is asleep and cannot answer back. The silence is comforting; she can no longer tell his lies from truth “ could she ever? her thoughts whisper “ and she does not know if love can still exist in a world of silver lies where stones gleam with the light of the moon and every step is marked in blood.
xiii.
She will not deceive him, here at the end. If he must die “ and he must die, for the blood of the innocent is being shed, he is drowning in it “ it is right that it should be by the kiss of a woman who loves him. He watches, silent, as she scatters the roses, spreads the poison upon her lips; the chains on his hands glint red and silver in the firelight.
“Forgive me,” he says, and his eyes hold the light of promises never kept.
“I already have,” she answers, with a kiss.
xiv.
Afterwards there is no time for weeping. Salazar is gone, she says, and her voice is her own. She comforts Helga and soothes Godric, and her eyes have become dark enough to hide the truth.
Her hair is mostly silver now “ only a few threads of black remain. She walks in the daylight with her head high and a circle of white stones that shine like moons about her throat.
xv.
She stands alone where the silver branches glide against the sky, and the touch of the darkness falls soft and sensuous on her skin. She thinks that maybe, somewhere, the stars are singing, but she cannot hear them.
“I loved you,” she whispers to the night; “I love you,” the forest echoes. She closes her eyes against the darkness and reaches for the stars.