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Rhian smiles, taking her in.
She is beautiful, more so than anyone he ever met. More than Vulcan and Hook and every blasted Ever that ever walked the halls of his school. She is absolutely breathtaking in every way that he previously thought meant nothing. For years, he saw his good students come out in pairs, both as the Good School Master and as the only School Master, and always saw it as nothing more than a pointless distraction. He now understands all of those brain rotted fools, he now sees the world in this... girl.
Sophie doesn't even look in his direction. She stares out of window towards New Evil with an awfully complicated look in her sharp jade eyes; they're nothing like the green eyes which haunt him in his dreams. Rafal's eyes were deep and earnest, and looked at Rhian with nothing more than honest love and admiration. They were bright and brilliant like stars, bright and brilliant like his brother. Green was also the color of Peter's eye, that wretched imp; his eyes were small and beady, but matched the shades of rot and mold, the festering disgusting things which grow on what is not properly cared for. Peter's eyes were nothing like Sophie's.
Sharp and full like precious stones, burning with a deep passion. He recognizes that hungry look of hers, he feels how unsettled she is. The eyes are a window to the soul, and her eyes show everything; she wants more, and knows she is destined for more. She knew that even in that horrid little village of her; then she didn't know what was meant for her, nor how would Rhian help her get it. Now he is certain that both of the Saders were right; Marialena knew it then, and August affirmed it years ago. Sophie is his one true love.
Sophie doesn't know it yet, though. She doesn't see him as what he is, just a man trying to do his best. That angers Rhian, that old familiar flair burning his chest. His soul is restless, as is Sophie's. They're so similar. How can he make her see that?
Evil will win again, he is sure of that. He'll break once more into the Woods Beyond, now without his brother, now with his Queen. She'll kill her own blood and reverse his sins. She'll bring a golden age of Evil to the world, but only if she'll truly accept their love as the earnest truth.
Pulling a mask of confidence, Rhian steps forwards and places his hand around Sophie's waist. "Where's your mind today? You keep going somewhere else. Stay right here with me, my love." He says, voice soft like velvet as he picks up her hand with his free one and places a gentle kiss.
He pretends to not notice how she still tenses at his touch.
"Just nerves," She lies, leaning into him, forcing her shoulders to relax. "My class today went about as well as I expected."
Rhian smiles, looking at the onyx castle, gleaming under the moon. He still remembers building it, and yet now it's far more enchanting that the day he did so. "You'll get there. Teaching doesn't come easy to all, but you're the most exceptional person in the world. If anyone can do it, it's you."
A beat passes before Sophie asks. "Were you a teacher, once?"
"When needed," He admits. "I came to this school with my brother as School Masters. But at times with short staffed faculties, one must step up. It what it means to be a great leader, just as I'm certain you'd be."
Sophie doesn't speak for a long moment. They stand in silence, breaths synchronizing slowly until their hearts beat as one; just as it was always meant to be. They stand at the window, blue and green eyes sweeping across Halfway Bright and the two castles. "Was the school always like this?" She asks. "Architecturally, I mean."
"No, it was not." Rhian sighs, rage murmuring in his soul and tugging at the fringes of his heart, remembering his own humiliation after the Trial. "It used to be very different."
She raises her head, meeting his eyes. "Let's go for a walk."
Rhian spends the next hour waiting for her to get dressed. When she suggested the walk, it has been near sundown, and now the school was entirely in the dark. Not that he minds it; he can see in the dark, and even if he could not, he knows this place like the back of his hand. Now his wrinkle free band.
"I'm ready," Sophie steps out of her bedchamber, grinning. She walks towards him, beaming with pride. Her beauty is her crowning achievement, and he can understand why.
Rhian picks up his Queen, his smile turning wily, and flies them down to Halfway Bridge. "This will never get old," Sophie says, fixing her golden hair in the reflection of the lake. "Just a moment, dear."
He looks around, breathing in the cool night air. "Where would you like to take a walk?" He asks, gazing at her from the side.
"I want..." Sophie says, turning towards him with a sly, almost seductive smile. "A story."
Rhian raises a perfectly shaped brow. "I have thousands in my tower, you know."
"I want for you to tell me a story," She rolls her emerald eyes. "Of how this place came to be."
Rhian freezes. He turns the prospect over in his head for a long moment; he doesn't linger on the past much as a result of the fact that he has no need of it. He worked towards the future ever since killing Rafal; how to ensure his own Happily Never After and to give Evil finally the greatness they deserve. Thinking about his time when he falsely assumed himself Good, and about the Great War... he can't change the past. Not to mention, there is no man alive who knows his true identity, no one who remembers all his sins.
They know him as Rafal. And Rhian? He died a martyr.
He sees the ring on Sophie's finger, his ring. The sign that she wants this as much as he does. The sign that Marialena was right. A love that only two purely Evil souls could sustain; that's what she said. And Sophie proved herself to be the most wicked of all. "Very well," He sighs in defeat, already planning his lies ahead. He offers her his hand, which she gladly take with a satisfied smile. "I'll start with a little bit of history."
Sophie snorts. "Can't leave it alone in the classroom?"
"You asked for this," He argues back, leading her towards the castle glistening under the moonlight. "Many years ago, two brothers ruled this hallowed institution together, side by side. They wanted to promote unity among their students, to see Good and Evil thrive side by side. We had a quaint little mansion for a school where Evers and Nevers studied and lived together."
"Clearly didn't last." She mumbles
"It did, for a very long time." Rhian says. "That is until my brother and I had a wicked fight. We had a bet, I won, and he left the school entirely, leaving me as the sole Master of two schools."
She chuckles. "And how did the story end for him?"
"Well, he came back eventually. And we ruled together again for a while, but I'll get to that part." He explains, mulling in his head on how to explain his entanglement with Vulcan without giving her the entire story. "While my brother was away, I decided to build a castle. This castle." They stop, staring up at the new obsidian towers of the School for New Evil. Sophie opens her mouth, but Rhian cuts her to the punch. "It was originally meant to be a castle for both schools. Ended up everyone hated it, and they struck rebellion. Spent their days in the sun outside instead of the castle I built for them. Ingrates."
Sophie doesn't ask anything, so Rhian continues in his tale. "Following this strike, I realized that I'm in over my head. I was young then, and I couldn't rule two schools alone. So I summoned a man to replace my brother in hopes he could help me rule this place. His name was Vulcan."
"Sounds like an ogre."
"He was a man, and a very handsome one at that." Rhian pretends not to notice the surprise in Sophie's eyes. "I appointmented him as the Evil School Master while I took over my brother's post."
Sophie raises an eyebrow. "You took over Good? Why?"
He shrugs. "I was young and stupid. I thought that the Evers would not respect a new authority, while the Nevers could be instilled with enough fear to obey anyone." He explains, hoping she'd buy it. Lying was always more Rafal's forte, and Rhian was terrible in it. And during the last 200 years, he mostly talked with no one. "It turned out a terrible mess, which resulted in a small scale war which ended with two castles, my tower, and the lake."
Sophie looks around as they step off the bridge, the gears clearly spinning. "That's not all." She says, slowly, almost unsure of herself.
He chuckles at her uncertainty, as if she didn't learn in his school for the past two years. "No. After the whole Vulcan fiasco, me and my brother remained side by side as twin School Masters. Only that my dean left the school after what happened, and I needed to recruit a new one, which was my next mistake." He sighs, thinking about how own misguided choices led him to Rafal's murder. The act itself was a crime of passion, but everything up to that point was a vain attempt to be as Good as possible. Perhaps if they had recognized from the start the true nature of their souls, things would have turned out different . Perhaps Rafal would still be alive and they could rule side by side.
He doesn't regret anything. Not one bit.
"His name was James and my brother loved him so deeply. But, well, I wanted James for myself." He says. "James was a filthy snake. I brought him to the school and promised him the world, but he betrayed him and stole my students off to galavant Neverland. Foolishly I trusted him to do my dirty work and kill a pesky nuisance. So I gave him a piece of my soul, and a piece of my magic."
This time, Rhian doesn't ignore the surprise rising on his queen's lovely features. "It was something ordinary, in the olden days," He explains. "Akin to naming one's champion in a tourney. I placed a piece of myself in him, a sign of trust and brotherhood. Of course, he betrayed me, but not before conjuring this bridge."
Rafal and he breathed pieces of their souls to a few over the years. James was the last of several champions in their quiet, on-going rivalry. They had used that method to settle debates in a trial by combat fashion; each would breathe a piece of them into a chosen warrior, and the two battled it out. Rhian always chose handsome, strapping lads, while Rafal had a liking to underdogs and rapscallions. Back them he took it as a sign of his own good soul and his brother's born Evil; now he knows it's was the proof of the other way around - Rhian's own vanity, and Rafal's incessant need to see only the best in those worthless souls.
"Giving your soul to someone seems... intimate." Sophie says carefully.
Rhian grins. "Jealous?"
Her cheeks turn bright red. "No!" Sophie spatters, but he can see she's lying. Jealousy and possessiveness is a trait they both share; it is not the first time he felt this way towards a reader. He does have a soft spot for them; eager to please and rise to the occasion, nothing like the apathetic and shallow Evers and Nevers he saw floating every year in his halls.
"You can say the truth," Rhian drawls, awfully amused by her shame for wanting him all to herself. "It's okay. I'm the jealous sort too. Why do you think I murdered my own brother?"
Sophie shudders. "I'm not jealous." She asserts, but he sees beyond her. For what might be the first time ever, a boy wants her, and only her. For the first time, someone sees her fully with all her flaws (or what people like that twat Agatha would consider flaws) and chooses her regardless of them, because of them. Rhian sees her wicked, pure evil heart and loves her. Never despite it. Because of it.
They walk in silence, side by side. They pass the shimmering obsidian castle, and turn by the lake. If the school was in normal conditions, they would probably take a tour through the forest, and he could tell her all the embarrassing mishaps that happened in every corner of the forest. But now the Blue Forest is wilted and rotted, and his beloved won't enjoy it much.
Though he won't tell it to Sophie, seeing the forest dead brings him indescribable joy. The last traces of Peter Pan erased from memory, rotting like his body in the ground. He watched as James pushed his aged body from the tower through the golden exterior of his cage. It prompted a years long aversion to the metal, and the actual reason why he chose a silver mask despite it being the second most precious metal.
"And the Blue Forest?" Sophie asks eventually, following his own light of thought. "How did that came to be?"
Rhian lets out a long huff. "There had been a short period of time when Peter Pan ruled the school. A few days as I marched here into the school with an army and my brother was preoccupied with playing himself a student." He explains. "The boy tyrant made the Blue Forest, like what is found in Neverland. After his death I kept it, a way to train the students without putting them in the danger of the actual Woods."
"I had my fair share of dangers in that forest, thank you very much." She huffs, but sombers quickly. "Still, there is something sad about watching it just dying. I remember walking it the first time as a first year, marveling at its glorious beauty. It always took my breath away. It was something ethereal, beyond me... and now it's nothing more than dead plants and disgusting bugs.
He shrugs. "Yes, it is. The forest has been here as long as I have. It's a testament of Pan and his time at the school, what allowed me to kill my twin and seize control of my eminent post. Though I won't mourn it; I see no need."
"And why is that?"
"I already told you the reason the forest is dying. It's you, it's our love." He grins, a chuckle on his full lips. "Things don't grow here and they never will. They... decay. But it's our decay."
Sophie sends a gaze towards the tunnels nearby, but eventually sets her eyes back on Rhian. They stand by the lake, wish fish shimmering within like stars in the heavens. He despises Wish Fish. Rhian forgets the cursed creatures and takes in his Queen. She is... ravishing. So he tells her that.
"I know," Sophie titters with a small smile. "You look fine."
Rhian laughs, pulling her into an embrace. She doesn't tense at his touch, instead melting in him, completing him like his other half. That's what she is. More than Rafal or any of his boy lovers. Neither of them knew him, not really. No one else saw his Evil in all its glory.
Sophie does.
And she chooses to love him, every day she remains by his side.
It first he doubted Marialena. For years he thought there was no possible way for him to love anyone, certainly no one like he loved his brother, but it all became clear when he kidnapped her. Her hungry gaze, the yearning deep within her... she is meant for so much more than being the third wheel in Tedors and Agatha's story. She is meant to rule the woods.
"Rafal..." Sophie whispers the name that isn't his. Yet, it's far more intimate than if she was to call him by his given name; the name of the person he loved most of all, the person that was a part of him for so many years. "Take me back to the tower. I'm tired."
Rhian grins, pulling her closer. "As you wish, my queen." He whispers softly and they soar into the night's sky. Floating through the sky with Sophie in his arms, Rhian at least feels peace within. He has his love, he has his school, and soon he will have absolute power.
Soon, everything that he needs will be his.
And then?
Then he'll win. Once and for all.