It was a lovely afternoon in Aragonia, though not quite lovely as the weather always dampened it with its gloominess and heavy clouds that always seemed like it would rain. The young Belle sat at the side of the carriage, her legs punched up on the seat as she stared outside the moving vehicle's window while her family traveled to Barbara to attend a cousin's wedding. This was her first travel, and she did not want to miss anything, not the towns and villages they passed by. She was so attentive, looking around at everything that when they reached the border between Aragonia and Barbara, she was the first to see what the rest did not see.
"Mama, look! There is a man outside in the rain," she gasped as she pointed out the window.
Since it was not a surprising thing for someone to be out in the rain, her mother did not appreciate that she had disturbed her sleep and woke her sleeping sister with her loud gasp.
"Get away from the window, Belle," her mother hissed. "You've woken Eve. Whoever is outside in such weather and in this part of the land must be insane. Sit down straight."
There was a tone of rebuke in her mama's voice, but Belle did not sit down and kept crouching on the seat with her head turned towards the window.
"Mama, he is not alone. There are a lot of men. Look, one is running toward our carriage. He looks sick and angry. We should run, we should..." Belle hurried to say as she stared at the men from different angles of the side roads. But she did not get to complete her words or give the warning that the men had no eyes and had large teeth before a loud thud rang out on the roof of their carriage, startling them and causing her mother to scream, waking up the sleeping Eve completely.
There was a groan outside the carriage and the sound of the horses neighing before the carriage came to a sudden stop, causing Belle to hit her forehead against an ornament on the side of the carriage wall. She felt warm, hot liquid begin to trail down her face before the pain came. She turned to where her mother had been and found her passed out on the seat, whether from shock or the hit. Eve was crying in her arms.
Belle managed to move back to the window and looked out. Her eyes rounded in horror as she saw their family guards traveling with them being torn apart like rag dolls by strange-looking people. Blood splashed against the carriage window as one of the guards' arms was torn out of his shoulder. Belle hastily stepped away from the window and tried to shakily wake her mother.
Suddenly, the top of the carriage was ripped off as she made to reach for her crying sister when their mother did not move. Rain poured in, and along with it came the view of one of the men she had seen through the window. He was no man. He had no eyes, or perhaps they were too dark to show, and his skin was ashen with dark veins underneath. He had long, darkened nails and teeth.
Belle's eyes widened at the sight of him. She did not scream because she was too afraid to. She recoiled as she watched him sniff the air, his eyes locking onto her bleeding forehead. His eyes glowed deep red. Before he could savagely reach for her, another one ran to the top of the carriage, trying to reach them. But it seemed their savage nature did not allow them to act calmly, and they began to fight each other. More of them rushed onto the carriage, swarming all around it like possessed beings fighting to get their souls back.
Being young and terrified, Belle still courageously reached for her sister and hugged her while singing to her to stay quiet. There was nowhere to run. She crouched in the corner, crying, shaking, and hugging her sister. And right when she thought they would fight each other to death, the side of the carriage she was in was ripped off, and the savage-looking vampire reached out and grabbed her by the neck. He yanked her out of the carriage in one violent pull.
Belle gasped awake from her nightmare, her heart thundering against her ribs like it would burst out. Her throat felt dry, and her lungs felt like she wasn't breathing in enough air. It was when she tried to move that she realized she was not on her bed in her chamber as usual when the nightmare of that day haunted her. She was lying against something hard and warm. It was when he spoke, and she heard the vibration of his deep voice against her ear, that Belle jerked away.
"You had a bad dream, Isa?" came her husband's quiet question as he watched her face with knitted brows and a look she could only think was curiosity.
Belle saw his eyes trail away from her face to settle on her chest—the side where her heart was still beating violently. He stared hard at it until she felt uncomfortable under his gaze.
"Your heart... I like the sound of it. Does it hurt when it beats that hard?" He asked her without looking away from her chest, where her veil had fallen away and the white flesh of the swell of her breasts was in his view. His eyes narrowed as he focused on her, watching the way her heart made her chest rise and thud. He could almost picture its movement within her ribcage. He knew what a heart looked like—he had touched and squeezed many in his lifetime.
He wanted to reach out and feel hers, to press his palm against its warmth and drink from it. How would the blood from her heart taste?
Belle blinked at him, and then she looked down to where his gaze was. Realizing her veil had fallen away and her low neckline had moved lower with the way she sat half-bent toward him on the seat, she hurriedly sat straighter and pulled up her dress at the neckline.
"Does it hurt?" he repeated his question, this time his eyes leaving her chest to fall on her face. Not her eyes, he never looked into her eyes for some reason she did not know.
She would have wondered why anyone would ask such a question if she did not know that he did not have a heart. She wet her dry lips with her tongue and shook her head.
"No, it doesn't..." Her voice sounded as dry as her throat, and she reached her hand up to touch her throat. His eyes followed her actions with his predatory gaze that made her uncomfortable. There was something about him that unsettled her. He seemed like a man hiding behind a false mask, trying to appear kind. Or was she judging him unfairly because of the rumors she had heard about him? After all, he had even let her sleep on his chest.
Vampires were creatures who looked down on humans, and even the ones who had accompanied him to marry her had refused to sit when offered a seat. They hadn't even bowed to their king.
Without looking away from her, he reached behind him, grabbed something, and then presented a crystal flask to her.
"Drink," he told her as he thrust it toward her hand.
As thirsty as she was, she didn't hesitate and nervously, yet hurriedly, clasped the cold crystal he thrust at her and drank deeply of its contents. She gasped when she tasted something sharp instead of water, but the liquid burned a fiery trail to her stomach, and her head banged for a moment before it cleared. Liquor! He gave her liquor to drink, she realized as she tried to clear her throat.
Once she could breathe again after the burning sensation in her throat, she blinked as she wiped her lips and looked around her as if confused. They were still in the moving carriage, and it was morning, or was it afternoon? She saw the ray of sun, which meant they had left Aragonia, as one rarely saw the sun in their land. The glow of it penetrated the window curtains and landed on the face of the man in front of her.
His honey-colored skin seemed to glow under the ray of sun. She thought she saw diamond-like sparks underneath his skin as she stared at his face. She'd never seen anyone glow like diamonds under the sun...
He was seated sideways, one leg still stretched behind her and the other stretched on the seat in front of her. He had been in that position probably because he had held her to sleep. He looked no worse than a man who had just woken up from his bed. He was tenfold more handsome than he had been under the gloomy weather of Aragonia. And as she moved away from him to put her legs down on the floor, she realized his coat was around her shoulders, and it slid down.
No wonder she had slept comfortably and had not woken up all through the heavy rain until morning. He had kept her warm with his coat and body. And the thought of it, as she looked down at the black coat, made her heart flutter.
Rohan took the glass flask from her and seated himself properly on the chair, moving far too close to her. He put his lips to the mouth of the flask where Belle had just drunk from and finished off the contents.
A flush of heat rose to her cheeks as she watched a stray droplet linger on his lower lip, and she suddenly wanted to wipe it off for him with her fingers.
To drag her mind from such a thought, she drew the window curtains but quickly pulled them back when the sun poured in. She had heard that vampires did not do well with the sun, and though she did not know why she cared that it might harm him, she did not want to cause him harm when he had let her use his body as her bed. As commanding and strange as he was, he was still her husband for as long as she would be in Nightbrook.
"The sun does not harm me, sweetheart. You can open it."
She heard his voice from behind and turned to him, realizing he was watching her with what seemed like a soft expression—no, not soft, but like an expression one had when watching their pet. It was as if he were watching a mischievous little puppy, monitoring its movements and studying it so he could better understand how to handle it later on.
It always unnerved her how he could read her thoughts or how easily he addressed her with names that made her heart waver and tremble.