Author's Note: TWO UPDATES IN ONE DAY?! IS THAT LEGAL?!627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsUPTwfmTdS
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ6h1kvc955
Stefan's knees nearly gave out beneath him. He stared as Adva ran towards him, her arms outstretched.
“Stefan!” she repeated, sighing. Her voice was thick with tears. She buried her face in his coat, embracing him.
His hands hovered over her back like uncertain spiders. She didn't seem to notice his hesitance, only holding him tighter.
“Adva,” he breathed, looking down at her small face resting against his coat. His tongue felt thick and heavy. “You're...alive. You're here. How...?”
“Yes, Stefan!” She stepped away from him and spun, letting her skirts fan out merrily. “And my voice has been returned to me!” Adva grasped his hand and tugged at him. “Come, we must tell Peter! I must see Peter right away!”
He had the presence of mind to pull back on her hand, prompting a confused pause from Adva.
“Wait. Wait!”
She stilled, hearing his sharpness.
Stefan grasped her hand with both of his. “Adva,” he said, “you can't stay here.”
The little creature gaped at him. “What? Why can't I stay? I must see Peter. I have to tell him that I'm alive!” She put her little white hand over Stefan's, her eyes shining. “I must tell him—that I love him, Stefan! That I have always loved him!”
The prince grabbed her arm as she tried to slip away again. “No!”
Adva looked back at him, her eyes now wide with fear. His grip on her arm was painful, the delicate skin bruising under his fingers. She cried out a little, twisting about.
“You're hurting me, Stefan! Let go!”
“I can't let you go to him, Adva!” Stefan said, turning his eyes away from her. He loosened his grip. “The sight of you will drive Peter to madness! He believes you dead! What strange magic brought you back here, I don't know, but you do not belong here!”
Adva ceased her struggling. Her eyes still brimmed with the joyful tears she had greeted him with. Now, they were tears of frustration and confusion.
“I don't belong here? What do you mean, Stefan?” She grasped the hand he held her with. “I belong where Peter is! Please, let me go to him! I love him!”
His grip grew tight again at her confession. “Don't say that! Please, Adva, promise me that you'll leave. That you'll return from wherever you've come from...”
“I cannot! I come from the sea!” she cried. “I cannot return. I shall turn to foam!” At his narrowed eyes, she sobbed, her large blue eyes pleading. “I am what your kind call a mercreature. Look, I will tell you all, Stefan, only let me go! I will tell you where I am from, I will show you!”
Stefan's eyes blazed. “Adva, you mock me now? Do you think I am some kind of child, to believe such a story?”
“No! It is no story! I traded my voice to the sea witch—she gave me legs for a tail! She changed me! I left behind father, sisters, kingdom—everything—to come to the surface!” Her voice broke and she could only weep now.
Stefan's face was cold as he regarded the young woman crying in front of him.
She is as mad as he is. What a fine pair. He grimaced. But heaven alone knows how she survived.
“You disappeared. No one was able to find your body. How did you return?” he said, trying to make his voice gentle.
Adva looked up. “I jumped, but when I fell into the water, it took me back as sea foam. It was as the sea witch said. Peter betrothed himself to another. And then you told me...” She stopped and shook her head. “...and my heart broke!” She paused, weeping. “When a mermaid's heart breaks, Mathis says that the ocean takes them eternally, scattering their remains to the seven seas.” Then she grasped his coat, her eyes shining. “But I heard him call for me, Stefan! I heard Peter's voice call for me with so much pain! And suddenly I was filled with hope! The sea could not destroy me as it was meant to do. Instead, it freed me! The current brought me back to shore!”
“Mathis?” murmured Stefan, shaking his head and furrowing his brow. He tried to remember where he had heard the name. “The witch from sailors' tales! More invention.” His eyes flashed, and he shook her sharply. “Now, tell me the truth. No more child's stories!”
“It is the truth, Stefan! I swear it!” She gasped when he squeezed her arm, grimacing.
“My brother,” Stefan said, squeezing harder and pushing her so that she had to fall to her knees, “was driven slowly mad by your disappearance. He broke his engagement, denied the crown, and took to locking himself in his room staring out of his window like a fool. Mooning about, speaking and thinking of nothing but you. Grieving for you. And who was left to pick up the shards of the shattered alliances? To care for my brother's shell? Me. In mere weeks everything has fallen apart.” His eyes were distant and his voice dropped lower so that she could barely hear. “And it's all my fault. I coveted him his happiness. His certainty. As soon as Peter saw you, he never wanted anything else again.”
With this, he tugged her to her feet. “Get up. I shall have to hide you away, too.”
Adva wept, pulling at him desperately as he began to take her down a small corridor.
“Stefan! Please believe me! Please listen to me!” Her desperate exclamations turned to shouts. “Peter! Peter!”
But the prince was walking too quickly, and her cries did not reach past the empty hall.
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAGxZXjuVfx
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHCjeCZuX6u
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8DeoSZAvbq
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRzZ4fdlBpb
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtQV4SNX7Bf
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAwj1TSWg5b
The eastern wing of the castle was abandoned. Its walls were covered with a fine layer of dust, the brass candle-rests on the wall sticky with cobwebs. Pale yellow squares were left where portraits of a young woman with sparkling, dark eyes had once hung. Doors lined the walls, holding vigil in silence.
Adva had ceased shouting and merely looked about as Stefan pulled her along behind him, quiet tears streaming down her cheeks. The corridor was dark and slim. Only the barest sliver of moonlight slipped through heavy, drawn curtains. She shivered a little from the cold and the fear racing through her veins. Her lip trembled and she turned her gaze to her feet, trying not to trip as Stefan sped up.
She walked into his back when he stopped, letting out a soft gasp. They were at the end of the corridor, in front of an enormous door that Adva could barely see in the darkness. The handle was a lion's head, and there were several locks placed along its side, bolting it shut.
“Stefan,” she murmured as he reached for a key in his coat. “Please. Let me see Peter. Let me see him but once more.”
“No, Adva. You'd fill his head with your stories and make him worse than he already is.”
“I wouldn't tell him stories, Stefan! I would tell him the truth, as I've told you!”
The bolt of the door pulled back with a heavy sound. The prince didn't bother looking back at her as he took another key and worked on the second lock.
“If that story was the truth, you would have told him from the beginning.”
“I wanted to tell you both! You don't know how much I wished, and tried, to tell you!”
“But your voice had been stolen by the sea witch,” he said, pausing at the third lock.
“Yes!” she cried, thinking he was finally coming to believe her.
She reached for his shoulder, but he swatted her hand away. Opening the last of the locks, he shoved his shoulder against the door and pushed it open with a grunt. Within, Adva could only make out the barest outline of a bed, a monstrous wardrobe, and the glint of a vanity. Stefan released her arm, and she grasped where his hand had been, grimacing as feeling returned to it.
He faced her, his eyes glinting in the thread of moonlight.
“This was my mother's room when she was alive. You may tell your as many of your stories as you wish to these walls, but neither I nor Peter will hear any more.”
She sprang at him, but he slammed the door in her face.
Adva sank to the floor, beating her fists on the wooden door as bolts slid into place.
Stefan moved away from the door quickly. Adva's cries grew muffled as he walked down the hall, then disappeared completely when he rounded the next corner. Within minutes he brushed past the window where Adva had found him. His eyes streamed with hot tears and his hands were fixed firmly over his ears as he fled to his room.
Closing the door behind him, he buried his face in his hands.
Peter cannot find out she's here.
Anymore than he can find out that it was I who killed her in the first place.
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXhDQstPndI
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQafDaVDEP0
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzMELolzkRG
Author's Note: Did Stefan throw you for a loop?! He sure threw me (and I'm writing this, for goodness' sake!) One more update after this, then no more until next week!
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡskEBfWUZ0V
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDydgZdEwXX
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3mlLI2glTr
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOx5tRrGf3l
627Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjbwerUhK4y
