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The sun was setting, bubbling like a drop of blood between the trees. Slow. Steady. Spreading. The way a wound would. It made the sky look pierced, or bruised, but words like blood and wound and bruise made the back of Izuku’s throat itch. He squinted through the crack in the coach’s velvet curtains and tried to think of another word for it.
The coach bounced. Someone giggled, the gloom trapped inside the carriage pressing closer. It made the dark feel heavy. A mouth breathing down the back of Izuku’s neck, swallowing down the snap of paper fans, the rustle of fabric, the clip clip clap of the Clydesdales pulling them up the road. He caught a flash of their furred, white hooves through the window.
He had never seen horses so elegant, so monstrous. Tall, black, thick with muscle. Beasts only the Lord of Musutafu could have owned.
Then again, no one had ever seen the Lord. Or the manor.
A prickle of nerves tickled the back of his throat again, but Izuku couldn’t bring himself to look away from the window. Not yet.
The spires of beetle-eaten oaks clumped alongside the road were beginning to give way to tangles of forest. Splashes of gold, green, and deep, autumnal reds as bloody as the sunset. Izuku frowned. He still hadn’t thought of a new word to describe the color red .
Maybe there wasn’t one.
He angled away from the window. New words weren’t helping.
An arm slipped through the crook of his elbow.
“Boo.” Ochako perched her chin on his shoulder, following his gaze out the window. Outside, the trees had begun to thicken, blotting out the village, and the miles of pumpkin fields painting the hillsides orange. The last bit of wealth that Musutafu had to offer, besides the pigs:
Pumpkins.
Izuku’s stomach clenched.
And now, the ball.
“Counting pumpkins?” Ochako asked teasingly.
Izuku smiled, easing out a breath. “If only it were so easy.” He twined a gloved hand with hers, wishing her sweet, vanilla scent was enough to iron out the nervous coil in his gut.
“I stopped counting a mile ago, after one hundred and fifty-three.” He leaned against the glass, contemplative. He hadn’t been able to shake the creeping feeling that he’d somehow heard of this all before—the carriage, the ball, the lonely hilltop manor. A fairy tale that kept growing thorns the longer he thought about it.
Ochako leaned in to whisper, “three hundred and forty-seven.”
The tight feeling in Izuku’s chest loosened, less strained, a bloom of affection warming his chest. “More than last time.”
“Tax day. You were thrilled then, too.”
He tried to laugh. It sounded more like a wheeze. “Elated.”
It was their own secret game—counting pumpkins. There hadn’t been much else to do growing up, and even less to play with. Rice sack dolls the dams made in winter. Marbles sires brought home from market days at the Capital. But the one thing Izuku and Ochako always had were the pumpkins. Thousands and thousands of pumpkins.
They were there when Izuku raced Ochako barefoot through the fields so she wouldn’t hear her mother cry on tax day. When Izuku’s father left to sell their harvest in the city and never came back. They counted pumpkins—then fireflies, then stars while the scarecrows watched—until their dams came looking for them by lantern light.
Other times they counted until they didn’t know what numbers came next, and there was nothing left to do but pretend their pumpkins were princes, spiriting them away from their gray little farms in their gray little village. Sometimes his prince even had a name. Izuku’s smile slipped, a sharp pang of longing lancing through him.
Sixteen years later, he was still counting. Daydreaming, Mama would have said.
Even if he had long outgrown his pumpkin prince.
The lanterns mounted outside the coach windows suddenly winked to life. The trees grew higher. Thicker. Darker. The pumpkin fields had disappeared, and so had the sun. Gooseflesh rippled down Izuku’s arms, his hands going cold.
There would be no princes waiting for him tonight. No pumpkins to count to keep his thoughts from spiraling.
“It’s going to be alright,” Ochako promised. She laced her fingers with his, and the truth of what was waiting for them at the end of the road froze the breath in Izuku’s lungs.
The masquerade mask obscuring Ochako’s face glittered in the dying light. A butterfly, its wings made of shimmering crystal. It made her eyes glow amber against the glare of the evening. There was something impossibly beautiful about it: the swirls of silk and ribbon, its thousand crystals and fine, gold wire. A gift from the Lord of Musutafu.
A gift very much like his own.
The clench in Izuku’s gut coiled tight again. He forced himself not to touch his own mask. Told himself not to trace the ribbon again, or run his fingers along the beads, the sleek, black goose feathers that made up the face, tapering up into ears. The shape had chilled him when he’d unwrapped it.
A rabbit.
He wondered if he was meant to feel afraid like one.
“Don’t be nervous.” Ochako reached up to smooth a feather into place. “It’s only a dance.”
Laughter cut through the gloom.
“Yes, the Lord is opening the manor doors for the first time in a hundred years to dance .”
Two pairs of eyes swiveled toward them, bright behind their masks. One made of silk flowers clustered around tiny silver skulls. The other fashioned with beads cut to look like scales.
There was a mask for every unbonded omega invited to dance at the manor tonight.
The woman in the scales smiled. “The Lord of Musutafu really is too generous.” The gleam of her teeth made her face sharper. Snakelike.
“Blessing the village with its first autumnal ball of the century, yet still having the grace to invite the less fortunate.” She swept a pointed look down Ochako’s dress, a skirt and bodice of blue silk her dam had kept from his mother’s days in the Capital once upon a time. Before she’d sealed her fate and eloped with a pumpkin farmer. Ochako stiffened, her light, sweet scent growing dense with anger. She and her mother had slaved to reinvent it. Every stitch, every ruffle, had to mean something tonight.
No one could remember the last time the manor had opened its gates. Maybe it would be the last.
Another ripple of laughter. The snake mask woman whispering behind her paper fan. The flower mask, a young man Izuku recognized as the tailor’s son, Aoyama Yuuga, looked away. Izuku squeezed Ochako’s hand.
“The less fortunate,” he said, “yet here you are, in a coach filled with Unfortunates.” The coach fell silent. The snake mask woman—Tokage Setsuna, he realized suddenly—the reeve’s daughter, watched him with narrow, cold eyes. A twist of anger soured the cloud of sweet enhancement perfumes mingling in the coach. Tokage lifted her chin, her fan fluttering faster.
Izuku wondered if she was afraid, too.
“Your sire shoveled pig shit.” Tokage’s mouth hooked, fanged like her voice. “Mine decides whether or not you get paid for shoveling it right. We’re not the same, Midoriya. We never will be. So I’d keep my mouth shut. ”
It was true. She was everything he was not—curved and tall where he was short and stocky. Her dark green hair shone like the daughter of someone important should. His curled, drab and pine-needle green. Her skin was smooth. His sported freckles from a childhood spent in the sun. Her clothes had the newly stitched look of money; his frayed at the sleeves. Her scent bloomed light and tart, while his own ripened, like an apple.
But tonight, that didn’t matter.
Izuku’s fingers curled, brushing against the fraying cuffs of his jacket—Mama’s sire’s, still as white as the day it was stitched, and the nicest thing she had left to give him. The nervous itch in his throat tickled again.
Mama had left that part bare.
“No,” he said quietly, trying to think past the quick, rabbit-like thump of his heart. “We’re not. That is the curse of our society isn’t it? I know better than anyone that not all men are created equal. Yet you’re here, the reeve’s own daughter. Mask on, throat bare, and just as alone as the rest of us in this little dark carriage, wondering what use Musutafu has for a ball no one’s thrown in one hundred years, for a Lord no one’s seen in longer, not even your mother.”
Tokage’s fan stopped fluttering, the pale swells of her breasts heaving over the fit of her bodice. She didn’t answer.
Izuku turned back toward the window, a heavy dread settling in his bones. “Tonight, we’re the same. All of us here for only one thing.”
The coach slowed. Woah, the driver called out. Everyone turned to look.
A wrought black iron gate sprouted through the wood like horns. The manor loomed behind it, as monstrous as the Clydesdales. It glared through the trees, every window dark except for one. It flickered in the twilight, bright with candlelight. Izuku's hands went cold again, a pop of orange in the corner of the coach window drawing his eye away from it.
Pumpkins. Hundreds and hundreds of pumpkins.
They lined the lawn. The gardens. The gravel road, their vines slithering over the estate lawns like snakes. The coach inched forward.
Ahead of them, three gleaming black coaches pulled through the gate where the staff waited on the lawn, as rigid as statues.
Even they wore masks. Full-faced porcelain that made them glimmer like wraiths.
A footman strode toward the first waiting coach. One by one, omega men and women stepped out into the evening, each mask more extravagant than the last. Izuku saw a wickedly carved paper-mâché beak. The pointed ears of a fox. A wolf. Black, curling horns.
There were thirteen. The Lord of Musutafu had invited thirteen omega tonight. Izuku counted them before the carriages appeared in the village square that evening. All of them in masks, all of them bare-throated.
It seemed Musutafu did have something other than pumpkins left to give after all.
A crow cried out, settling itself into a nearby tree. Another. And another. Izuku wrung his hands. A murder of crows clustered in the trees, carrion watching for a corpse behind the spikes of the Lord’s wrought iron gates. Spikes that jutted up into the twilight until the evening seemed to bleed.
There it was again. That likeness. Those words made the back of Izuku’s throat itch. Blood. Bruise. Wound.
Izuku gripped the edge of his seat. A throat. That’s what the sky looked like. A throat after Claiming.
The ninth guest stepped out onto the gravel. Now, there were only four left to usher inside. Tokage, Aoyama, Izuku, and Ochako.
The realization struck him like a blow to the chest.
Thirteen.
There was a reason this felt so familiar. The manor with its single lit window. The omega guests. The chilled, autumn night. The masks.
The footman stepped toward their coach, his mask gleaming. Izuku squeezed Ochako’s hand again.
“We’re like the song,” he whispered. His corset vest felt too tight, a vice against his ribs. His galloping heart. Tokage and Aoyama were staring at him now, a faint thread of something acrid twisting through the air. Sweat. Or fear.
Ochako tightened her fingers around his.
“Which one?”
The sun sank lower behind the trees, the iron lamp posts flickering to life, ringing the gravel driveway in gold light.
Soon, the sun would be gone.
And so would their virginity.
Izuku looked at them over his shoulder. “Thirteen pretty brides.”
The door opened, a chill creeping into the coach when the footman peered inside. A fanged devil mask grinned at them.
“Sirs. Ladies. Good evening.” He bowed at the waist, extending a white, gloved hand. “The Lord of Musutafu extends his warmest welcome.”
Ochako shrank into Izuku’s side, quiet.
Tokage shivered, masking her unease by straightening her shoulders with a proud jut of her chin. “He could not greet us?”
The footman bowed again like a little windup soldier. The grin on his mask leered. “My Lord awaits his guests inside.”
No one moved. The footman waited, hand outstretched.
Tokage huffed, as if the Lord of Musutafu himself had committed a grievous social faux pas . “And when can we await the return of our carriages?" She caught Izuku’s eye. Glanced away, her fan fluttering faster. "Will the horses be kept tacked and ready should we wish to leave before the night ends?”
Izuku tensed, feeling like the rabbit he was hiding behind.
The footman glanced up, firelight reflecting off his porcelain mask and red, grinning mouth. A heavy silence stretched. Somewhere beyond the manor doors, a violin began to play.
“The Lord of Musutafu will personally see to the end of your night,” the footman answered in a baritone so deep Izuku felt it settle in his bones. He shivered.
“Will he?”
The footman’s leering mask turned, and Izuku clenched his jaw, a chill sweeping up his spine. The footman inclined his head.
“Always.”
Ochako made a little noise in the back of her throat.
Tokage snapped her fan shut, reaching for the footman’s hand without a backward glance. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
Aoyama moved gracefully out onto the lawn after her, then Ochako, hesitating only a moment before Izuku gently nudged her forward.
“I’m right behind you,” he promised. “Wait for me inside.” She nodded, whisked away by the footman, and then, the gloved hand was reaching for him . The blood rushing through Izuku’s ears roared as five white fingers curled around his wrist, the footman’s scent strangely muted.
Izuku wondered what he looked like behind the smile carved into his mask.
The footman bowed again once Izuku had been guided onto the lawn, bringing Izuku's wrist to the mouth of his mask in the mockery of a kiss. The lamp light flickered, and for a moment, Izuku thought the footman’s dark eyes glowed red. “Enjoy your night,” he said. And let go.
He didn’t look back.
Izuku watched him disappear into the night, alone on the gravel. Beyond the gate, the forest caged him in like teeth. Izuku swallowed. The air felt thinner, colder, a curling evening mist veiling the estate in a shroud, the estate sitting at the edge of the driveway like the gargoyles guarding its gates.
A sweet smell threaded through the air. Salt. Butter. Sugar. Izuku’s mouth watered. He couldn't remember the last time dinner had been anything but boiled pumpkin and tea. Here he smelled meat. Somewhere, music was playing, floating out onto the lawn in a haunting, melancholy lilt.
Izuku closed his eyes. Beneath the smells of a feast, a burst of cloves hit the back of his tongue. Spice. He imagined walking through the manor halls just to breathe it in.
He opened his eyes with a jolt. The manor doors gaped open, light spilling past its stone steps, paper lanterns lighting the steps. Warm. Inviting. Beckoning him inside.
He almost turned. Looked back toward the manor’s jagged gates, its black stone. The gargoyles keeping vigil, their mouths leering like the masks of the manor’s staff.
“Izuku, what are you still doing outside?”
Izuku blinked, startled. Ochako waved to him from the manor’s front steps.
Izuku lifted a hand, clenching his fists at his sides, urging his heart to slow. He wondered what he’d find when he stepped through the jaws of the manor.
He had read a book on ocean creatures once. The many mysteries and oddities of the deep. The angler fish, who had perfected the art of patience, waited open-mouthed on the blackest floors of the ocean, luring prey into its mouth with nothing but a promising little glow.
The manor waited. Ochako beckoned him inside, turning on her heel with a laugh when Aoyama whispered something in her ear, offering his arm. The staff’s heads turned in unison, white, porcelain faces expectant as Izuku stood alone in the driveway.
A chill skittered up his spine.
He tilted his head back. The single lit window was still glowing. A candle, maybe, left to burn on the sill. Izuku thought about his mother, humming Thirteen Pretty Brides every Hallow's Eve. About the secret he'd kept from Ochako since the night before the invitations arrived.
Izuku swallowed the thump of his heartbeat.
“See the candle burning, way out in the wood,” he murmured, and walked inside.
A butler was waiting in the foyer with a lantern, his face hidden beneath a full-feathered crow’s head. He cocked his head like one, too.
“Welcome. The Lord of Musutafu has been expecting you.”
Izuku didn’t answer, at a loss of what to say. He settled on, “thank you.”
They were alone, the foyer stretching on in endless peeling, damask walls and high cavernous ceilings. He slowly turned in place, the marble floor polished to a shine so bright he caught a glimpse of his own reflection. The black hare mask in his fraying white jacket and green corset vest stared back at him, a doppelganger.
Izuku crossed his arms, his breath misting out in a cloud.
The Lord of Musutafu must enjoy his fortune on things other than coal.
He wondered where the bright hallway Ochako had disappeared in had gone.
“Shall I escort you to the east wing?” the butler asked, his voice as rusted and deep as the footman’s. A dark staircase wound up the manor behind him, red velvet stairs disappearing into the gloom.
Izuku’s heart crawled up his throat again, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. The smells on the lawn were absent here. No feast. No cloves. No spice. Only dust and loam, the sharp, cold scent of snow. The lonely, drifting echo of a piano. Izuku thought of Ochako, alone somewhere in a cold, dark ballroom.
He nodded. “Please.”
The butler held up his lantern, starting up the stairs. “Come along.” His shadow loped behind him, large and jagged. Monstrous. When the butler turned, it seemed to twitch, as if it had a life all its own. Izuku shivered, hurrying after him. Trick of the light, he told himself, eyeing the dust clinging to the staircase.
“Does the Lord not usually make use of this wing? When we arrived I saw only one lit window. Is that where–”
“One shouldn’t keep his lordship waiting,” the butler interrupted. He had a sharp voice. Commanding. A voice an alpha might have used, if he hadn’t been as scentless as the footman. The thought curled in Izuku’s mind, hung there.
Strange, he thought. The lack of scent. The dust. The chill. As if no one had lived here in the one hundred years since the manor had opened its doors.
The butler glanced at Izuku over his shoulder. On the wall, his shadow skittered. “Especially on a night like tonight.”
Izuku didn’t ask what he meant.
He quickened his steps.
“I understand,” he said softly. The butler didn’t answer, only led them further into the gloom until it swallowed them whole.
The cold ended where the ballroom doors began, and Izuku sighed in relief when warmth began to trickle back into his fingertips. The buter stopped before a heavy, black oak door that reached to the ceiling. Gold light bled out from underneath. The sound of laughter. A murmur of voices. Music. And–
Izuku’s mouth watered again.
Cloves. Spice.
“This is where I leave you.” The butler reached for the curved iron handles. Izuku flinched back. A face sneered up at them through the metalwork. The open, jagged mouth of a gargoyle, the door handle sprouting from its throat.
He thought of the angler fish again, waiting patiently on its black ocean floor.
A cluster of nerves churned in his belly.
There was danger in beauty.
The butler began to pull. Izuku fidgeted, panic clawing through his chest.
“Wait. The window—”
“The Lord hosts his autumnal ball in the ballroom,” the butler said darkly, reaching for the doors again. “Nowhere else.”
The doors groaned open, a rush of warmth bleeding out across the floor.
Izuku froze.
Crystal chandeliers dripped from the ceiling, gold gilding the walls. The balustrades. The ceiling, where paintings of gargoyles danced with pumpkins across vast golden fields. Candlelight glinted off flutes of champagne the waitstaff held on shining, silver trays. An orchestra played on a raised platform, chocolate fountains and tables piled high with every delicacy he could ever dream of waiting for him to take a bite. His mouth watered again, his stomach twisting in want.
He leaned forward.
“Enjoy,” the butler said over his shoulder. Izuku jerked, but the butler was already gone, nothing but the black, winding staircase looming in the dark hall. He looked away from the ballroom.
He had caught the lingering, spiced scent of cloves again.
He sucked down a heavy, full breath, studying the staircase. He could have sworn the scent had come from the ballroom.
Behind him, the music died away, the musicians’ porcelain masks glittering over his shoulder, as eerie as the waitstaff, weaving between the guests like bees. All in black. All wearing white, leering faces. They turned to stare when Izuku only waited outside the doors. He stiffened.
He didn’t step into the ballroom. They looked away.
The conductor raised his baton again, the orchestra launching into another song, a jaunty waltz that cut through the panic rooting Izuku to the floor. The crowd twirled, laughing again, lords and ladies dripping in gems, gold, and full face porcelain masks reaching for the omegas from the coaches.
Izuku watched Tokage take a woman's hand demurely, her emerald skirts flaring as she spun.
But Ochako was nowhere to be seen.
Izuku thought of the single lit window. The dark stairs leading higher into the manor. The portraits on the wall. His secret.
A stab of fear clawed through his chest.
None of the lords and ladies here were the Lord of Mustuafu. None of them were Ochako. Cloves tickled the back of his throat. The sweet smell of vanilla. Izuku turned.
Somewhere, someone was still walking through the halls. Somewhere, so was Ochako.
He stepped back into the dark and slipped up the stairs.
The music had stopped playing long ago, the warmth of the ballroom fading until only the cold remained.
Clouds of dust puffed up from the carpet like steam with each step.
Izuku breathed slowly through his mouth, that same heavy dread seeping back into his chest. The spiced scent he’d followed up the stairs was gone.
A sweet, moldy rot clung to the walls.
He passed rusted suits of armor. A collection of swords. Floor length mirrors. A room filled entirely with silver goblets. Portraits veiled in cobwebs.
Pale, red-eyed faces watched as he passed, each one more beautiful than the last. Men and women in silk. Cloaks. Brocade doublets. Bright, golden hair. Izuku paused at the end of the hall.
The last portrait glared down at him, the light from the only lit sconce glancing off the sharp angle of his jaw. The blood rushing through Izuku’s veins heated. There was something vicious in it. In the broad, even strokes of his face. The curl of his lip. The cloak he wore, blood-red and trimmed in ermine fur. Like royalty. Or worse. As if he might reach out of his dark, dreary cage to wrap a hand around Izuku’s throat.
He traced a finger across the the metal frame, cutting through the gathering dust. He studied the face in the portrait again. No, Izuku thought. There was more to him than that.
Longing pierced through him again, something hot curling where it shouldn’t be. He could stay here, he thought suddenly. No one would look for him—
Izuku forced his hand away, a ribbon of unease curling through his gut. How could he have thought of staying here, even for a moment, when Ochako needed him? He closed his eyes. Counted to ten. Opened them again.
Something flickered at the end of the hall. Light spilling from an open door. Izuku swallowed dryly, sweat beading behind his mask. He gulped down a breath to steel himself, his stomach twisting when he caught it again:
Cloves. Spice. Something else.
“Ochako?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer. The floor creaked when he moved. Izuku crept closer. The portraits watched him reach for the door, freezing like a rabbit when it sighed, cracking open a little wider. Izuku peered inside, his heart in his throat.
“Ochako?”
The room stank of rot. Water dripped from a crack in the ceiling, a steady little plink, plink, plink, the fire long gone out. A rumpled shape, a cloak that might have once been human, huddled in a chair by the fireplace. A forgotten porcelain mask sat waiting on the mantle. And by the single window, in a silver candle holder, a black candle sputtered.
Izuku’s heart jerked in his chest. Carefully, he stepped through the doorway. “Hello?”
The room stayed silent. There was only the candle on the sill, its flame flaring taller when Izuku edged toward the window. He sucked down a breath, forcing himself to gaze out into the grounds below.
The estate sprawled ahead of him in a maze. Veins of roads. A dark crown of trees. Pumpkins.
Izuku’s breath stuttered. Alone, dancing through the pumpkins, was a woman. She spun, blue silk rippling under the moonlight.
Ochako.
Izuku rushed for the door.
Behind him, the candle burned higher, the door snapping shut. Izuku’s breath hitched. He didn’t look back, dust filling his mouth.
The portraits watched him run.
He felt eyes burning the back of his neck long after he burst through the manor doors.
Mama hadn’t seen the light. Only Izuku.
He hadn’t been able to sleep that night, out under the eaves after midnight counting pumpkins, when he saw it: a flicker.
He’d stopped counting. Squinted into the dark, his heart beating a little faster. The flicker sparked again. Brighter.
Fireflies, he thought.
But it was too cold for fireflies. And there was no one out past the fields. No one, except for the manor.
Two days later, the invitations arrived. Parchment stamped with red wax. Curling black ink. The mask in its pretty brown box and clove-scented scented paper. Toshinori, the kind, gaunt man Mama had married last spring who Izuku now loved like a father, hadn’t liked it. Mama hadn’t either. They’d watched him with wide, frightened eyes when the carriages came for the thirteen omegas gathered in the square.
Be careful, they said. Ochako’s parents had watched too, leaving them with only five words:
Watch out for each other.
The gardens were gilded silver with moonlight, and as silent as the witching hour when Izuku skidded through the gate.
Ochako didn’t look up. She danced. Her hair had come loose in bronze waves, whipping in the wind.
Izuku watched her from the hedges. She dipped. Twirled. Giggled. She lowered her head, offering her palm wrist up, as if an alpha suitor had asked her to dance, to taste the little thread of her scent her wrist would offer. She tucked her chin shyly.
“I would love to, but what will people say, my lady, when my dance card is filled with nothing but your name?” She spun away, her mouth split with a bright smile.
Izuku stepped over a pumpkin, fear curdling his gut.
“Ochako.”
She froze, her expression blank before flitting into a bright smile.
“Izuku!” She looked over her shoulder. Laughed again. “I must introduce you to Lady Toga.”
Izuku looked. Rows of pumpkins stared back. His heart hammered in his chest with a beat hard enough to feel in his temples, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.
“Ochako,” he tried to smile, “it’s time to go.”
She giggled, reaching for his hands. “Come meet her first. You’ll love her—” He ripped away from her.
“Ochako.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide. He could smell her hurt and confusion, clouding the vanilla sweetness he knew so well.
“Izuku,” she whispered, “what’s wrong?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Found he couldn’t answer.
A crow cawed, watching them from the hedges. Izuku glanced at it and reached for her again, his hands shaking. Crows were messengers, Toshinori liked to say. Not always the good ones.
“It's late. We have to go.”
Ochako didn't move. “Not,” she said, “until I have my last dance with Lady Toga.”
He caught her wrist before she could spin away. “Ochako, please , you don’t understand. The manor–just come with me, I’ll show you—”
She tried tugging free. “Izuku—”
More crows dropped into the hedges. Izuku’s heart beat a wild, staccato rhythm.
“The night before the invitations arrived, I saw it! A light burning in the wood. I saw it, Ochako! Don’t you understand? See the candle burning, way out in the wood. One flame, two flame, three, four, five, village virgins rising from their beds to-night! It’s the song, we are the song!”
The wind hissed. Leaves scraped over the garden floor, through spaces between the pumpkins. In the hedge, the crows cawed again, cocking their heads. Ochako’s face softened.
“Izuku,” she said gently, cupping his cheek. “It’s only a dance.”
She twirled away in a ripple of silk and crystal. Izuku watched her go, terror cleaving his chest in two.
“Ochako!” he shouted, but then the pumpkins shivered. Bulged. Shadows leapt from their vines. Grew legs. A torso. Broad shoulders. A horned head hidden behind a jack-o-lantern’s grimace.
His eyes glowed as red as his cloak, white ermine fur resting on his shoulders, his black brocade jerkin shot through with gold.
He dressed like royalty. Like the portrait in the hall.
Izuku scrambled backward.
“It’s like a dream,” Ochako sighed from somewhere far away, and Izuku saw a pale woman in a black gown towering over her like a devil, a fanged smile glinting beneath her pumpkin mask. “When we were little, remember? We had princes waiting for us in the fields?”
The man in red moved closer.
Izuku’s chest heaved. “Ochako,” he begged.
She only smiled, her lady in black whisking her away.
“She’s chosen to dance,” the man in red growled. His cloak billowed in the wind when he moved. A burst of cloves and spice followed him, an alpha's scent, sticking to the back of Izuku’s tongue like honey. Captivating. So breathtakingly lovely his eyes filled with tears again. His teeth chattered.
He had gone looking for this scent. Followed it through the manor.
Izuku shook his head.
“You’ve bewitched her.” He drew himself taller, his heart racing, and for one wild moment, he wondered if it might break free from its cage, like the man in the portrait had. “I won’t let you take her.”
He should run. Drag Ochako from the garden and run.
The man in red chuckled. A low, hissing sound, like smoke between his teeth.
“Who says it’s her I want?” Beneath the jagged orange grin of his mask, his eyes burned crimson. Izuku thought of the portrait in the hall again, and wondered what face he’d find beneath the mask.
“Don’t dance tonight if you don’t want me to take you away,” he said, in a voice as smooth and dark as velvet. “But I’ve wanted to ever since you first danced in my field. My mother’s then.”
He pulled free from his pumpkin mask, the sharp lines of his face as jarring as his portrait’s. Blond. Vicious. Beautiful. He smiled, the glint of his teeth sharp and wicked. “Mine now.”
Izuku studied the points of his canines, feeling faint. “Yours?” he said, breathlessly.
The man in red bowed at the waist like a prince, holding out a hand. Izuku trembled. He thought of the angler fish again. Its warm, deceitful glow. Danger in something beautiful.
Over the hedges, Ochako’s silvery laugh rang through the garden like a bell. He wrenched his gaze away.
“Let us go,” Izuku begged, and a thought more terrifying than a dark lord from Hell wormed through his head:
He wondered if he meant it.
“Dance with me,” said the man in red. “And if you still want to walk away after, I will.”
Izuku forced back tears. He thought of Mama and Toshinori. Musutafu’s beetle-eaten trees. Ochako, lost to her lady in black.
He reached forward without thinking, his fingers sliding along a smooth, hot palm. Long fingers trapped his wrist like a viper. Yanked him close.
“A hero,” the man in red murmured, leading them into a waltz. “Admirable.” Izuku gasped, the garden tilting as the man in red dipped him, mouth hot against his ear. “I don’t dance with cowards.”
“Don’t you?” Izuku asked. They twirled over a vine. “Inviting men and women to a masquerade ball with no idea who you are because they would be too frightened to dance with you otherwise?”
The man in red grinned, his fiery gaze pinning Izuku in place. “I invited virgins,” he purred, a claw tugging at a corset lace beneath Izuku's jacket. “Or should I have refined my guest list?” The corset lace snapped. Izuku gasped, icy wind whipping through his hair when the man in red spun him. He twirled. Let himself be pulled close again, panting against his throat.
Izuku could scent him like this. Feel the heat of his skin. The thundering beat of his heart.
His breath snagged. Held the warmth of cloves and spice in his chest. Mourned the loss of it when he was twirled again.
“It’s incredible,” Izuku gasped, “that you’d imagine I wouldn’t walk away after this.”
The man in red laughed. “You won’t,” he growled, a promise that sent a shiver up Izuku’s spine. “Not when I’m done with you.”
Izuku slid hands numb with cold over his shoulders, mystified. He shook his head. “Who are you?” But beneath the staccato beat of his pulse, he thought he already knew.
He didn’t dare say it.
The man in red smiled. His canines flashed, as sleek as his horns. His long, black fingers, tipped with claws.
“I thought you would have figured it all out already, Izuku.” He bent closer, his breath hot and sweet on Izuku’s cheek. “When all you and I ever did when we were little was play together and count pumpkins.” They waltzed down a gravel path, music floating through the garden.
“It’s been a long time since Musutafu’s fields belonged to the people.”
Out of the manor doors, the lords and ladies of the ballroom spilled into the pumpkin gardens, shedding their masks.
Izuku gasped.
Not lords and ladies.
Bones in gems, wigs, and silk. Skeletons wove through the pumpkins, dipping in bows and curtsies, asking each other to dance. Izuku gripped the shoulders beneath his fingers tight.
“You’re—”
“Bakugou Katsuki. The new Lord of Musutafu.” He stepped away to sweep a hand toward his guests, dropping into a bow like a knight out of a storybook. Izuku’s throat tightened.
Or a little boy’s savior on a gray little farm, in a gray little village, a prince amongst pumpkins and bones.
The lord's crimson gaze caught his own. “And the second ring of Hell.”
Izuku’s mouth parted, dizzy with shock. The name in his memories tumbled from his mouth before he could think better of it. “Kacchan.”
His pumpkin prince grinned, a wild, sharp smile. “Me. And you—” He reached for Izuku’s mask, a claw snapping the ribbon in two. It fell away, the autumn night icy on Izuku’s cheeks.“—are the thirteenth pretty bride tonight, in white. Like a silver bell.”
A claw traced the curve of Izuku’s cheek. “Untouched,” Katsuki said darkly, brushing his cheek against Izuku’s with a deep, searching breath, “so that I might ruin you.”
Longing so deep Izuku worried it might split him in two sank through his chest. A sound left his lips. A whine. A whimper. Katsuki growled.
“Tell me you still want to leave,” he said in a voice like broken glass. Izuku shuddered.
“My family–”
“Will never want again,” Katsuki swore, settling a firm hand on Izuku's waist. “And neither will you." His voice darkened. "Not after I take you.” He pressed Izuku flush against his chest when the music started up again.
“I knew it then before I knew what fate was, and I know it now seeing you again: there will never be another. No one who thinks like you. Looks like you. Talks like you.” He skimmed his mouth along Izuku’s temple, grazed his teeth along the warm line of Izuku’s throat. “ Tastes like you.” He groaned. Forced himself to step away.
“My portrait is on the wall,” Katsuki said lowly. “Tonight, I must choose a bride.” He held out a hand. Izuku stared at it.
It ached, the thought of leaving him behind. Outgrowing him again. Izuku couldn’t bear the thought. Not yet.
He reached for Katsuki’s hand. Slipped a hand up his cheek. “You said I wouldn’t walk away when you were done with me.”
Katsuki’s red eyes dropped to his mouth. “You still can.”
On the gravel road, the carriages simmered with a glow as red as a sunset, the horses' manes rippling with fire, gargoyles alighting on the roof of the manor. A musician raised a violin of bones to his shoulder and started another waltz, the manor's single lit window shining above him like a star.
Izuku pressed closer. He’d forgotten about the angler fish. The danger in beauty. The thirteen pretty brides.
“Or,” he whispered, desire pulsing thick and hot through his veins, “you could ask me to dance.”
In the corner of his eye he saw the other lords and ladies of Hell rising from the pumpkins, seeking out omega brides amongst the crowd. Lady Toga bent Ochako into a dip, her sharp mouth finding her throat. Heat simmered under Izuku’s skin. Settled molten between his legs, wet and aching. The warm scent of cloves and spice warmed his chest. Filled his mouth like sugar.
He wondered if this was how Ochako felt when she saw Lady Toga in the garden.
It was too late to wonder if he should be frightened.
Katsuki smiled above him, crooked and vicious, sweet against Izuku’s mouth before his lips found the juncture of his throat.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Izuku didn’t feel pain. Only the heat of Katsuki’s hands on his skin. The chill of the moonlight. The crunch of dead leaves as he was lowered onto the frosted ground.
And the burn of the crimson eyes that held him there.
At the very end of the hall at Musutafu manor, above the very last flight of stairs, a portrait hung in a long line of portraits. A prince. Or a lord.
Or someone worse.
The manor creaked, the wind slipping through the holes in the walls. Old. Pained. Forgotten.
Except for the portrait on the wall.
It watched over the dust and the rats, the cobwebs, the bones of a man who’d begged a demon lord for wealth in exchange for his thirteen omega children, its red eyes piercing through the gloom.
The manor remembered. Dreamed as it lay in wait. Of balls and carriages. Lords and ladies.
And thirteen pretty brides.