THE VILLAIN OF RAVENHOLLOW

The kingdom of Aelthorn had spent 100 years telling the story of its hero - Prince Alistair the Radiant. Golden hair. Golden heart. The man who slayed dragons and saved maidens. No one told the story of his brother. I am Cassian Nocturne, the second-born, the spare, the shadow they locked in the North Tower because my magic wasn't golden - it was black. My magic didn't heal. It _took_. It took light, it took heat, it took memories if I wanted it to. My mother called me a curse. So at 16, I burned the North Tower down and disappeared into the Whispering Woods. The woods where no knight dared to enter. For ten years, I became the Villain. The one mothers warned about. The Witch of the North who traded in desires. That's how she found me. Elara Vane. Fiancee to my perfect brother Alistair. The most beautiful girl in Aelthorn. Ice-blonde hair, skin like fresh snow, lips that had never been kissed by anyone but a prince. She came barefoot through the snow in a white silk dress, bleeding from her feet, furious. "You," she spat, slamming the doors of my castle open. "You have to kill him." I lounged on my throne made of frozen thorns. "Hello to you too, future sister-in-law." "I heard you grant wishes for a price," she said. "I want my fiance dead. Prince Alistair." Now that was interesting. "Why? Isn't he the dream? Charming, heroic, good in bed I assume?" Her perfect face twisted. "He's a monster. He beats the maids. He drowned my brother's dog because it barked. He told me if I ever disobey him, he'll lock me in a convent and take my family's lands. Everyone thinks he's light. He's rotten inside. But you - everyone says YOU'RE the monster, and you haven't hurt anyone." She was right. I hadn't. The great Villain of Ravenhollow had spent ten years scaring off hunters and healing wounded wolves. "What's your price?" she asked. I looked at her - shivering, desperate, beautiful in a way that made my dark magic curl inside my chest. "You. For one month. Stay here with me in this castle. Be my queen of villains. No guards, no rules, no Prince Charming. Just us." She should have said no. A good girl would have. She said, "Done." *THE DIRTY ROMANCE* We were terrible together. That was the point. In the day, she learned to use my magic. I taught her how to pull shadows like silk, how to make roses bloom black. She taught me how to laugh - really laugh - for the first time since I was 7. At night, in a castle where no one could judge us, we were not a princess and a villain. We were just two broken people who finally found someone equally broken. She would sit in my lap on the throne while we plotted Alistair's downfall, her white dress slipping off one shoulder, my hands in her hair. We kissed like we were fighting wars. We fought like we were making love. She bit my lip until it bled and called it payment. "You are so much worse than they said," she whispered one night, pressed against the cold stone wall of the library, my forehead against hers. "And you love it," I whispered back. "I love that you let me be bad." The truth was, I was falling for her in a way that villains are not supposed to fall. Obsessively. Possessively. Romantically. I wanted to burn Aelthorn down just so she would never have to go back. On the 29th day, we finally had a plan to expose Alistair. Letters, proof, witnesses hidden in my woods. And then Alistair himself came to my gates with 200 knights, because he had tracked his missing fiancee. *THE TWISTS* Twist 1: Elara walked out to him willingly. Kissed his cheek. Said, "Thank god you found me, my love. He kidnapped me. He kept me." My heart stopped. Had I been played? Alistair smiled and pulled her behind him. "Brother. You always wanted what was mine." Twist 2: Elara turned, and in her hand was my black dagger - the one made of my own magic. She drove it straight into Alistair's chest. Not deep enough to kill, deep enough to make him scream and fall to his knees, revealing the brand on his chest - the mark of the Old Gods who demanded blood sacrifices. The mark of a true dark mage. She had used me to get close enough to expose him. The villain wasn't me. Or even her. "You see?" she shouted to the knights, holding up his bleeding tunic. "Your Radiant Prince!" The knights saw it. The truth. Their hero was the real monster who had been sacrificing village girls for power for years. Twist 3: The knights didn't arrest Alistair. They knelt... to _him_. "My lord, we knew," their captain said. "We serve the darkness." I realized we were surrounded. It was a trap within a trap. Elara and I had been set up. So I did what a true villain does. I burned everything. I let my magic go - all ten years of pent-up darkness, loneliness, rage. The sky over Ravenhollow turned black. The snow turned to ash. My castle screamed. And in the middle of that apocalypse, Elara ran _towards_ me, not away. She jumped into my arms, laughing like a maniac, her white dress now black with ash. "You i***t! You're going to kill us both!" she yelled, kissing me. "Then we die together, my dirty queen." We didn't die. The magic, fed by love instead of hate for the first time, changed. It didn't destroy. It _erased_ Alistair and his knights from existence, like they were never written. Silence. Snow falling again, clean. The kingdom of Aelthorn woke up the next morning with no memory of a Prince Alistair. Only a story of a King and Queen who lived in a beautiful, terrifying castle in the north. Me and her. The Villain and his Villainess. And this time, when she said "I want you," there was no deal, no price, no month limit. Just forever. And we were very, very good at being bad together. ---