Birch & Bone

Lifting the Veil: Kaspar

I watched her. I waited for the scream.

Most humans lose their minds when the veil is lifted. They see the horns, real bone, slick with the marrow of the earth, and they see the eyes that have watched empires fall to ash. They see the cloven shadow and the claws that were made for rending the wicked, and they scream.

But Sloane…Sloane just stood there.

Her pupils were blown wide, blacking out the iris until her eyes looked as dark as the night itself. She watched as I shed the skin of the man I called Kaspar. I felt the familiar ache of my true form expanding, the snap of my spine as it lengthened, the weight of my horns finally free of the glamour.

I was ten feet of muscle, fur, and ancient judgement. The bells on the trees finally began to chime a discordant, haunting melody that signaled the presence of the Master of the Hunt.

I stepped towards her, my hooves cracking the frozen earth. I loomed over her, my shadow swallowing her whole. I expected her to run. I almost wanted her to run so I could feel the thrill of the chase. The primal satisfaction of pinning her to the mountain.

Instead, she reached out.

Her small, pale hand trembled, but she didn’t pull back. She pressed her palm against the coarse, black fur of my chest, right where the heavy beat of my heart thrummed like a war drum. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered.

The beast inside me went still. The hunger that usually defined my existence - the need to punish, to tear, to drag souls into the dark - was suddenly eclipsed by something far more dangerous.

Desire.

“You are a strange creature,” I rumbled, my voice a tectonic shift. I lowered my head, the tips of my horns grazing the branches above us. I brought my face within inches from hers, and my breath came out in thick plumes of steam. “I am the nightmare they tell children about to keep them in their beds.”

“I stopped being a child the night my grandmother took her last breath,” she said, her eyes defiant. “I’m not looking for a bedtime story, Kaspar.”

I leaned in even closer, my tongue flickering over my sharp teeth as I caught the scent of her fear mixed with that intoxicating violet-and-sin aroma. “You are mine now,” I growled, my clawed hand coming up to cup the back of her head. My thumb traced the sensitive skin behind her ear and I could feel the shiver that ran through her whole body. “The moment you stayed, the moment you touched the monster, you signed the ledger.”

I felt her heart speed up, a frantic, delicious rhythm.

“What happens now?” she asked, swallowing.

“Now,” I whispered, pulling her closer until the heat of my body began to sear her, “I show you why they call this the Long Night.”

I didn’t give her a chance to rethink. I didn’t want to see the moment the logic of her world finally caught up to her bravery. I reached down, lifting her, my arms beneath her knees and behind her back. She was so small, like a flicker of candlelight against the mountain’s shadow. She gasped and her fingers dug into the thick fur of my shoulders as I held her against my chest.

“Hold tight, little bird,” I rumbled against her hair. “The path to my home was not built for human feet.”

I turned away from the clearing and toward the jagged face of the Dachstein. I didn’t climb. I leaped. With the strength of the earth in my joints, I caught the narrowest of ledges. The bells on the trees below faded into a distant, ghostly tinkling.

Sloane tucked her face into the crook of my neck, hiding from the rush of the wind and the dizzying drop beneath us. I could feel her breath, hot and rapid, against my neck.

We reached a fissure in the rock, hidden behind a frozen waterfall that hung like a curtain of diamonds. I stepped through the ice. The temperature dropped for a heartbeat before the air turned thick and heavy with the scent of sulfur, old parchment, and burning cedar.

The tunnel opened into a cathedral of stone and shadow. This was no cave. It was a fortress carved from the bones of the earth. Great iron braziers roared with blue-tinged flames, casting long, dancing shadows of my horns against walls lined with books, chains, and the spoils of a thousand years.

I didn’t stop until we reached the back of the hall. A massive bed draped in furs and heavy silks sat before a fireplace large enough to roast a stag. I set her down on her feet, but I didn’t let go of her.

The glamour of the tavern was gone. Here, in the heart of the mountain, there were no lies. There was only the monster and the girl who had called him beautiful.