kh_drabble | To be beauty.

Challenge: [132] Worth it.
Title: To be beauty.
Word Count: 226
Rating: G for glorified. Also, Geeeez, comma abuse. Maybe PG for referencing blood? ...mrphle.

To be beauty.

The wind roars through the skeleton trees around the castle, carrying dead leaves spiraling around the towers, tearing at them until they are nothing more than shadows settling on the gargoyles. He waits, eyes on the rose (thornless and glowing, pulsing in time to a heartbeat he cannot hear), for a moment more suitable to his purposes to strike. The lord and master of this stony prison paces the corridors, madness shuttering his eyes and turning his claws inward to gouge his rage into his velvet finery and fur and flesh; he leaves in his wake blood-spotted tatters and tufts to join the ruined tapestries in shreds on the floor.

She is in her room, shameful tears blooming on her cheeks, hoping that this will be over quickly. Whether he kills her or loves her; whether he chooses to succumb to the poisons that Xaldin feeds him (drop by drop, from a golden cup) or to resist and accept her truths, she knows that no matter the pain, no matter the horrors that might await, it has been worth the cost, every drop of blood and bruise and tear, to see his eyes gentle, his paws soft as a kitten's; to dance with him for just one night, to be beautiful and loved.

She holds that night in her mind as his claws click closer to her door.