Alcor stood before all that remained of the life he had known. Nothing but ash and pieces of burned wood, little more than charcoal now. Here and there were chunks of stone that had not quite succumbed to the intense, destructive heat of faerie flames. A thousand emotions made him forget for a time that he had not eaten in three days and that his entire body ached with a pain like no other.
He remembered nothing.
Well, that as not entirely true. He wished it were, because having no memories would be so much easier than what he did have. He remembered the smell of burning flesh. His father's screams. His father burning until he was nothing but ashes quickly lost to the inferno. He remembered dragonweed, that it had been his twentieth birthday. He recalled the man—the dark faerie—who was responsible for it all.
After that, he remembered only an eternity of pain, hands holding him down, rough rope keeping him in place despite the way they added wounds of their own, cold things smeared over his body, nasty things poured down his throat.
Nightmares. Even now, whenever he was foolish enough to close his eyes, there were nightmares filled with pain and fear and fire.
But no nightmare could compare to finally, truly waking up to the hell that was his new reality—a reality in which he was too scarred, too ruined, too hideous for anyone to bear looking upon. He had found a mirror, in the depths of the monastery where he'd been taken, and dared at last to look upon his own reflection.
He had promptly thrown up and since then had not been able to stomach food.
Gone was his beautiful, long blue-black hair. It had finally begun to grow in again, but it was white and coarse. His one remaining eye was still green, but that single bit of health and color could not overcome the horror of the rest of his body. Burn scars over the whole, accented by cuts and rope scars where he had struggled throughout the healing process. He did not remember any of it. And though the hair on his head had returned, such as it was, it would grow nowhere else.
Across his throat, the crowning touch, was a livid scar put there by a cursed blade. He remembered that blade, the way it had felt hot-cold as it sliced his throat. He had not known, then, that it was cursed. They'd told him that after he'd woken up fully aware of himself at last.
In slicing his throat, the dark faerie had cast his terrible curse—to live as the dark faerie had for so long: reviled, rejected, unwanted, unloved, hated, feared, and all that he had been forgotten by all who had known him.
To live nameless and alone, loathed by all, and unable even to die unless the curse was broken.
The monks had healed his body and eased his pain as best they could, but only for the sake of their duty. They had not shoved him out the door in the end, but neither had they seemed unhappy to tell him goodbye.
He had asked them how the curse might be broken, but when he heard the answer, he had wished he had not. It was nothing but nonsense. Love, the monks had said. He had angered a dark faerie something fierce, and the curse upon him was the kind reserved for only the cruelest of transgressors.
Alcor wished the dark faerie were still alive, that he might kill the bastard himself. If anyone should have been cursed, it was his father—
He immediately stopped thinking about his father, the memory of burning flesh and screaming making him almost grateful that he had no real need to eat—he could not die, not even of starvation.
Just over a decade ago, his father and his small army had wiped out the dark faerie from that part of the world. Victorious, they had taken over the castle and surrounding land to make of it a small village. There they had lived from the time Alcor was eight.
Obviously they had missed one, but why had the faerie cursed Alcor and not his father? He'd only been eight years old when his father had slaughtered the dark faerie, and that at the bidding of the King. Why was Alcor left a cursed monster while his father—
It wasn't fair. He'd done nothing, nothing at all. Why was he alone left to suffer this way?
He had asked the monks that very question, but their answers had held no sympathy, nor even pity. Nothing, they had said, was a crime all its own.
Shortly thereafter, he had taken his leave. He was miserable enough without their high and mighty prattling. Love, they had said. If he ever wanted to break the curse inscribed on his throat, then he must get someone to fall in love with him—and return that love. Love and be loved.
Personally, he thought the monks were nitwits. Love? Even pretending love was real and not a tool to use on lesser minds, who would love someone who looked like a living nightmare? It was a curse with no true way to be broken, which struck him as cheating and a typical faerie thing to do.
Then again, nothing was harder to endure than the impossible. If the bastard faerie had sought to ruin his life and make him suffer forever, well, he obviously had known what he was doing. It was as brilliant as it was stupid.
Alcor made his way slowly through the remains of his home, not certain why he bothered, but what else did he have to do? The monks had given him clothes, a warm cloak, food for a couple of weeks—not that he needed it, he doubted his appetite would ever return—and some coin that did him no good because wherever he went, people screamed or cried or threatened to kill him if he did not leave immediately. All of them made the sign of warding against evil.
It wasn't fair, but after weeks of trying, he was starting to accept there was nothing he could do. He was cursed and cursed forever.
Something caught his eye, a flash and sparkle, completely at odds with the remains of what had once been a beautiful old castle. Alcor walked toward it, kicking away bits of debris. He had not been here in over a year, yet so much of the destruction remained.
Kneeling in the grime, he pushed away bits of burned wood and stone to reveal a small bottle. It was made of crystal, flawless and beautiful in the light, the delicate stopper made to resemble a rosebud. It was filled with some clear liquid, and he could not say for certain if it was the crystal or the contents which sparkled.
Something flickered through his mind, then was gone, like a candle lit and promptly snuffed—the scent of honeysuckle, warm and soft and sweet. Frowning, confused and annoyed, Alcor stood and examined the bottle more closely. Perfume of some sort? How had it survived the fire? He grasped the stopper and pulled, but it would not come free. He pulled and pulled and began to swear, but all for nothing.
Irritated, he tucked the bottle away to figure out later and continued to make his way through the ruin that had once been his home. His stomach roiled as he caught a faint whiff of dragonweed, but surely that must be his imagination. Any such scents would be long gone, given fifteen months had passed.
The dark faerie who was dead now, and that was perhaps the hardest part to take. The bastard had taken his revenge—on Alcor, unfairly—then killed himself to cheat Alcor of his own chance at revenge. He had questioned the monks a thousand times on it, but they had been quite firm about it. They had recognized enough of what was left of one corpse to know it for a faerie.
Another glint caught his attention, and Alcor immediately went toward it, curious despite himself that anything—let alone two things—would survive the inferno that had leveled a centuries old faerie castle. Reaching into the broken bits, he pulled free a dagger which seemed to be made of purest silver with a hilt of gold and sapphires. Useless, but beautiful.
This time an image came to mind, fragile as morning mist burned away by the sun—pale gold hair, long and soft looking.
Mysteries and more mysteries, and didn't he have enough problems without adding that to the mess? When was enough enough? Stifling a sigh, he tucked the dagger into his jacket with the crystal bottle and decided he'd had enough. What was the point in coming back here? Nothing remained, no one remembered, and he would not break his curse by skulking around these pathetic ruins.
But as he was nearly clear of them, he caught sight of yet another oddity. It not the sparkle of crystal or the shine of silver. No, this time it was color. A deep, rich red. It was like nothing he had ever seen, not really. Kneeling, Alcor plunged his hand into the muck and grime—and managed to prick his finger on something. Jerking his hand back, swearing loudly, he glared at the blood which well up from the small puncture at the tip of his finger.
Wiping his hand on his filthy breeches, he reached again into the mix of mud and ash, and this time was braced for when his fingers were again pricked by something. Pulling the object free, he stared in shock. A rose. A perfect scarlet rose. It was the color of fresh blood or a dark ruby or a heady wine, and yet none of those exactly captured the depth and richness of its color.
Loyalty. Protection. Love.
Alcor frowned and held one dirty hand to his head, which had begun to throb. He could hear the words in his head, spoken in a soft, shy voice. He could see the pale gold hair, smell the honeysuckle—
That was all, and the dreamlike image was gone. Until he brought the rose close and caught its scent. It did not smell like a rose, however, but like honeysuckle and green things, herbs and spices, tea and lemon. He heard the soft, shy voice again, but could not quite hear the words it said. Saw the pale hair…
It must be some dream, a hallucination or some such. Anyone so soft spoken was not his sort; they were too easily broken, the nice, gentle, weak ones. But why dream such a thing? Was it a memory from that awful night?
Perhaps it was some faerie trick. That would explain how the three objects had survived the inferno. If that were the case, he was best rid of them, yet he could not bring himself to throw them away.
Shrugging, irritated by his own strange behavior, Alcor nevertheless inhaled the bizarre scents of the rose once more before tucking it away with the bottle and dagger.
Then he strode to clean grass and cleaned his hands as best he could of the filth of the ruins, ignoring the way his skin and muscles pulled and ached. Finished, he stood at a complete loss. The monks had tended him in a little church closer to the village when first they had been called to save him. When he was strong enough to be moved, they had carried him to their monastery for proper healing. All told, he had spent just over a year recovering his full health—or as much of it as he would ever recover.
When he and the monks had no longer been able to stand one another, he had decided to return home. But whatever he had hoped to find, it was not here. Nothing was here, and this had been a waste of time, but what else did he have to do? No goals, no acquaintances who would talk to him whether they remembered him or not.
Not for the first time, and far from the last, he wished he were dead. Everyone else was, including the damned faerie, so why couldn't he die as well?
He had tried to do it, back when the pain had still been more than he could bear, but it had only added further scars to his body and made the monks give him even more of their condescending looks. As if they had any idea what it was like to live the existence forced upon him. They had no right to judge.
Distant thunder rumbled along the mountains a few miles off. A storm was coming, which meant he should try to find shelter of some sort. If the foul weather stood no chance of killing him, then he saw no point in suffering it.
Getting away from the rain was, at least, a goal. Pathetic, really, when once his only priorities had been which of the dozens of parties to attend, who to invite to his castle, and which ones were worthy of being taken to his bed for a short time.
There was something else he would never again experience. No more fucking, no more pretty men and woman. Even if anyone could stand the sight of him, he no longer had any interest. Recollections of the pretty things he'd fucked night after night left him cold. Beyond that, he suspected that even if he had the interest, the ability would not be there.
He was not eager to confirm the fact, either, and so left well enough alone.