Hey people J Thanks to Magentagirl15, iameviltara, CrimsonFuchsia and Nicolette for the great reviews, they totally made my day! Here's chapter II…

Sleep

The low clouds had rolled back to pile in the corners of the sky, where they rumbled with a sullen purple thunder. The moon had swelled up from behind the hills and hung against the boulevard of stars, grey-cratered.

Fuchsia was at her window, and her face was luminous in its light. She sighed a long, resigned breath and looked out. Spectator. As always. She sighed again and turned away.

The wind was whispering between the sleeping stones, whistling high through the shingle-splinter turrets and then blowing woodwind-low across the tops of soot-wise chimneys.

Fuchsia took out one of her notebooks, and, stretched upon her bed, began to write. A mind of diamond edges and inscrutable angles, ice embodied in cheekbones, the browbone glacial, lips set in permafrost.

Eventually she slept, round cheek on her arm, hair fanned out like so many raven feathers. The candles sputtered lower and she wandered through the uneven pathways of her own head and breathed the mild air.

In he crept—stealthy as the jungle cat, silent as settled dust.

He sat, lean as the sapling, on the edge of the bed and watched her, his eyes coming to rest on the notebook. He read one page, a slow and calculating smile spreading over his smooth face.

He bent forward so that his lips were next to her ear. He inhaled her warm skin and her hair, heavy lavender. He paused, considering—and then said her name, his voice low and breathy. She stirred. He said it again, "Fuchsia. Lady Fuchsia."

She woke with a start, so that he had to raise his head quickly to avoid being hit in the mouth. She sat up quickly and stared at him, eyes unfocused, bewildered.

His face was open, and his pupils widened and the smile spread again, like a rift in the earth—his surface lips crumbling back, the teeth of limestone and granite, and the tongue of magma core.

Fuchsia sat transfixed, her eyes wide as innocence and her cheeks pink as sunrise and her heart expanding like the galaxy.