Stolen by Shadows: A Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance (Into the Labyrinth Book 1)

by Evelyn Avery

  It was Vaughn who had pressured me into producing this play, based partly on my own imaginings but also on the book I’d read over and over again at least a thousand times.

  The Tale of the Erlking.

  Although, it was both fascinating and appalling to watch Vaughn transform into the terrible ruler of the goblins, dark elves, and all other manner of creatures inhabiting the Underground. He was all light, and the character was all darkness, but his acting skills were more than enough to pull it off.

  From the stage, Vaughn smiled down at me in a way that made me feel warm and comforted, like sliding under the covers between soft sheets.

  “Will you just quit with the armchair directing and say your lines.” I pointed at his mark on the stage floor and gestured for him to start again. “You are not offer-only, buddy. Someone else might get this part if you don’t start taking it seriously.”

  As if I would ever in a million years want someone else playing that role. Screw that. But Vaughn doesn’t need to know he’s been the only one I envisioned as the star from the very beginning.

  “Oh, please. I’m the best thing that ever happened to this theater department.”

  I rolled my eyes, fighting off a smile. “At least the size of its collective ego.”

  “Bitch.”

  “No talent hack.”

  “You wound me.” He knew damn well I would never give the part to someone else, but made a show of rushing to get back into place. “Just don’t spank me. You know, since you’re the master and all.”

  My lip quirked, but I forced myself not to laugh. “Spankings have to be earned. Now, start from the top of page twenty.”

  Vaughn launched into character as the magical and maniacal Erlking with gusto. His claims about being the best weren’t just bravado, the man could act. This play was only going to be performed at a student showcase, but he treated it like we were weeks away from going on Broadway.

  “Good job,” I told him, yawning as I glanced down at my watch. We’d been at this for two hours. I was always tired, but it was difficult to sleep these days, dreams woke me up all night long. “We can probably break for the day.”

  He swiped at his forehead, where beads of sweat dotted the skin, both of us overheated under the bright lights. “When are you going to let me in on who you picked for the female role?”

  I hadn’t found the right person to play the kidnapped orphan-turned-princess fighting for her freedom. None of the other girls in our program felt like a good fit, and it had to be someone I was willing to spend dozens of hours working alongside. That alone excluded most people, let alone the handful of good actresses in our program. I’d always struggled to make friends with girls. Hell, I struggled to make friends with anyone, but girls were a difficulty setting on Insanity mode. Aside from Vaughn, most of the other students treated me like the resident crazy person who should be avoided at all costs.

  Wisps of dark hair fell into my face, and I pushed them away impatiently. My hair refused to stay in the messy bun on my head, no matter how many times I redid it. It had always had a mind of its own, and now it wanted to flow free down my back no matter how much that might get in my way.

  Okay, I knew my hair didn’t have sentient thought processes or a will of its own, but still. I’d always been prone to flights of fancy.

  “You must have read a lot of Tolkien when you were a kid.” Vaughn flipped through the script before casting a sly glance at me. “Although parts of this read more like an erotic fairytale.”

  “I like to think of the sexual aspects as subtext,” I replied primly. “Maybe you should keep your mind out of the gutter.”

  Vaughn jumped off the stage and slumped down into the chair next to me. “The guy is urging her to submit to him while she talks about pleasure and pain. How else am I supposed to read that?”

  “Most fairy tales have darker themes than Disney wants you to believe.” I didn’t spend my childhood reading Tolkien, more like fairy tales full of girls being spirited away or visited in the night by dark spirits bent on nefarious deeds. “In the original Rapunzel, the prince gets her pregnant before she escapes from the tower. And you should hear all the Freudian theories about Sleeping Beauty. Issues of consent aside, what kind of prince goes around kissing girls that look dead?”

  He grabbed my bun and playfully shook it. “You sure know how to make everything weird. I love that.”

  I was weird. Weirder than any of them really knew. I made a point of choosing a college far enough away from where I grew up that nobody here knew my history.

  Foster kid who couldn’t remember most of her early years.

  Former mental patient with fixed delusions that no medication ever touched.

  Girl who honestly believed some of that shit from fairy tales had to be true because most of it felt more real than anything people told her was true.

  These days, I’d learned to keep most of that to myself. I took my meds because they were the only thing that allowed me to sleep and kept at least a dull edge on my sanity. But there was something in the way I carried myself or how I talked that let people know I was more than a little off. It used to make me feel broken, but over the years I’d glued most of my pieces back together and only spent time with people who appreciated that I would never be completely whole—if I ever had been.

  Vaughn turned to me with an expression that was suddenly serious. “You should really consider playing the role yourself. I can’t think of anyone better. You say those lines, and it’s like you’re living them.”

  A dark sense of foreboding washed over me. I forced myself to smile and shake my head. “I want to produce, not star. There isn’t a single bone in my body that was meant to act.”

  “There goes that false modesty again. It’s only cute until it’s not.”

  I swatted at him, and he caught my wrist in his hand, not letting go until I yanked my arm away. “It isn’t false modesty, so stop trying to blow my head up as big as yours is. Besides, acting track students have to perform in the showcase to get credit, so I would just be taking a spot from someone who needs it. I applied for this program to be behind the scenes, and I plan to stay there. Thank you very much.”

  “Fine.” He flipped open his script and turned to the first page. “We still have a few more minutes until our time is up. Walk me through this character a little bit. Who is the Erlking? For starters, does he have a real name?”

  There was a name, one that filtered through my mind when I stopped forcing my thoughts away from it. But for some reason speaking it aloud terrified me. “Not that I know of.” When he gave me a curious look, I quickly added. “I mean, not one I gave him. If it helps, you can come up with your own name.”

  “Nah. The Erlking works, I guess. Although I’m picturing some guy with pebbled skin and a humpback because it means king of the gnomes, right? Gnomes live in caves like those ugly things from the Hobbit movies, I think.”

  I shook my head. For reasons I didn’t understand, it was suddenly very important to me that he got this right. “The Erlking is fae, one of the most beautiful of his kind. He uses that beauty as a weapon to entice young women away from the human realm and trap them in his castle. Eventually, they wither away as he feeds off their life to sustain his power. Once one is gone, he goes in search of the next.”

  Vaughn nodded as if enthralled. It wasn’t just the story, he was the type to take his work seriously. If he accepted a role, then he needed to understand everything about the character. “Then what’s all this stuff about asking her to submit? Why not just take her?”

  “It has to be fair. The realms of Faerie are bound by rules, strict ones. The girl has to agree to give herself to the Erlking, or else he can’t have her. Faeries can deceive, but they can’t outright lie, and they can’t take what doesn’t belong to them without permission. Everyone knows that.”

  “Everyone, huh?” He laughed when I glared at him. “Calm down, this is great stuff. No one else at the showcase will hav
e anything like it. Although, I have to say that you have an amazing imagination.”

  Writing this play felt pretty close to cheating. I didn’t really believe that it was my amazing imagination. Instead, the scenes I’d written down felt like a forgotten dream that I’d spun out from memory as if I’d watched it happen to someone else.

  My rational mind knew it was fantasy, but the delusional part barely held in check of copious amounts of neuroleptic medication refused to believe it.

  Shaking off the nonsense thoughts, I frowned at Vaughn. “I’m going to ignore everything but the compliment. You have to think of the Erlking like a fantasy come to life. He is too cruel and too beautiful to exist in this world.”

  Vaughn gave me a wide smile. “The perfect role for me, then.”

  “There’s that all important modesty we were talking about.”

  Most of the time, I managed not to notice how gorgeous Vaughn was. He was the type who became an actor because everyone had been telling him his entire life that he could make it in Hollywood. And it would be a shame for anyone to miss out on seeing that face in high-definition. And just to prove that life was never fair, he also happened to be one of the most talented actors in our program. Incredible looks with talent to match was a potent combination.

  He was doing me a favor by starring in my showcase when he literally had his choice of any of them. And I couldn’t think of anyone more fitting for the role, ego included.

  Vaughn tapped his pencil against his full lips, expression pensive. “I’m still trying to figure out the whole gnome angle. There is literally nothing attractive about that.”

  “Translating from the original German is tricky, they used the same words for all kinds of different mythical creatures. Goblins, elves, gnomes, and a bunch of others are referred to interchangeably. The Erlking is a member of the highest court of Faerie, like their version of royalty, who has been forced to rule a realm of lesser creatures for a thousand years. It’s called the Underground, but not everything there is dark and ugly. But the goblins, not gnomes, are who the land belonged to before the Erlking arrived. And goblins are hideous creatures, full of greed for flesh and gold. They horde their riches in mountain caves, and they’ll take anything they can get their hands on, including people. It’s those creatures whose greed and lust the Erlking must serve if he wants to hold his throne and avoid being devoured. Even though the Erlking is cruel, he’s only doing what he has been compelled to do by the situation.”

  “So you’re humanizing your villain a bit, huh? I like it.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “But the girl in your story refuses him,” Vaughn mused, studying the words in front of him. My words. “And then his world begins to fall apart.”

  A shiver worked its way down my spine even though I had no idea why I suddenly felt so anxious. “Something like that.”

  “The girl is going to be your most important casting decision. She’s going to be hard to get right, vulnerable and resolute at the same time.”

  The doors at the back of the theater banged open, making me jump. Another group of students entered the space, laughing and talking together like they didn’t have a care in the world. And they probably didn’t, I was the one who always had one foot in the real world and the other in a nightmare.

  Sometimes, I wished they could just cut out the part of my brain where all the crazy came from.

  “I guess our time is up.” Vaughn stood and gestured for me to follow him. “Come backstage with me. I want to show you something.”

  My heart beating a little too hard in my chest, I followed him out of the theater and behind the stage. The gazes of the students behind us burned into my back. I knew what they thought when they saw us together, wondering what a golden boy like Vaughn Latimer was doing with a girl as strange as I was.

  The hallway behind the stage was dark because no one else had been back here all day. I had to use the wall as a guide, so I didn’t trip over my own feet. Vaughn put a steadying hand on my arm, and I tried to ignore the tingling sensation that moved along my skin.

  We bypassed the empty dressing rooms and entered the deserted costume department. I’d always loved it back here. Thornhurst College was small, but our theater department had become its flagship program, with all the funding a group of generous donors thought we needed to put on the most beautiful productions in the valley. This room was full to bursting with period pieces from every era imaginable, along with enough accessories to outfit a battalion.

  It was one of my favorite places, and not just because my favorite places were out of the spotlight. To me, backstage was the place where the magic really happened. Without the set designers, costumers, and makeup artists, the actors would never get to the stage in the first place. The actual performance was the culmination of work from dozens of other people.

  Vaughn flipped on the lights, entering the room as if he had every right to be there. “I was helping Madame Aurora catalog everything last week. I’m so glad she’s taken over the costume department. Whoever was here last let this place become a total wreck. There’s some really cool stuff hidden back here that hasn’t been used in ages.”

  The costume mistress, Madame Aurora, was territorial as hell. It had taken me six months of sucking up to her just to make it past the doorway. We were lucky she wasn’t here to chase us away with a pair of fabric shears.

  “What did you want to show me?”

  Vaughn strode to the nearest rack with the confidence of someone who knew they could get away with anything. He rifled through the hangers on the rack, biting his lip as he flipped past one garment after another. “It was right here the other day.”

  I glanced at my watch, resisting the urge to tap my foot on the floor. It was getting late, and I hated being out after dark. Once the sun set, I needed to be ensconced in my apartment, preferably in bed and under the covers. “We can come back tomorrow.”

  “No need. Here it is.” He gently pulled a bundle of frothy fabric out from the rack and laid it over his arm, presenting it to me. “Perfect, isn’t it?”

  The dress was perfect. Hand-woven white lace over flesh-colored silk with a bodice that was meant to hug the curves. The bust was modest, cut in a straight line just below the collarbone, leaving the shoulders bare. It was exactly what I imagined the girl in my play wearing.

  I’d seen one just like it in my dreams.

  Shaking off that irrational thought, I smiled weakly. “It’s amazing.”

  His expression didn’t change. “Try it on.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Over your clothes, obviously. Don’t be a coward, just do it.”

  I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but the moment that my hands touched the delicate fabric, a shiver of awareness washed over me. This dress was meant for me, I understood it in the same way I knew I had to keep breathing in order to live.

  He let the dress fall heavily into my arms, so I was forced to take it or let it fall to the ground. I wanted to tell him no, that it didn’t matter if the dress fit because I would never wear it on stage. But it felt like mine, like something I was meant to wear.

  I stripped off my Black Flag T-shirt and then stepped into the dress, pulling it up over my skinny jeans, while Vaughn respectfully looked away. The dress was clearly in sharp contrast to my normal wardrobe, I preferred clothes that were mildly grunge because they kept people from noticing me. If I had no makeup and messy hair, then I could pretend people ignored me because of that and not for other reasons.

  There was a breathless moment as I pulled the dress over my hips, and the fragile fabric had to stretch slightly. I definitely wondered if it would tear for a heart-wrenching second. But it glided over my waist, and I gently pushed my arms into the sleeves as the full skirt bloomed around me.

  “Ta-da.”

  Vaughn turned back, and his eyes widened. “Wow.”

  I turned in the direction of the tall mirror standing upright i
n the corner. Even in its dusty surface, I could see that the dress fit me like a glove. When I breathed, the fabric pressed against my rib cage and made me feel like I was trapped in a gilded cage of lace and silk.

  “It’s nice,” I offered.

  “It’s perfect.” He waved his copy of the script in my face. “This was so close to what you described in the notes that it could have been made for your play. I hope whoever you pick to be your leading lady has the same proportions that you do. Hold on, though. We have to try one more thing.” He shifted behind me, and his hands were already in my hair when I realized what he was doing. Before I could stop him, a dark cascade of messy waves and loose curls fell around my shoulders.

  “Damnit, Vaughn. It took me forever to get my hair to stay up. I haven’t even brushed it today.”

  “Sorry,” he murmured, sounding anything but.

  I stared at my own reflection, caught in a vision of innocence and latent sexuality. The cream fabric underneath the lace gave the illusion of bare skin, making the dress seem more revealing than it was. There was a cutout just below my ribcage, revealing a flat expanse of my tummy before the stiff lace flared into a full skirt.

  “This would look great with it, too.” Going to the rack of accessories on the wall, he picked up a delicate lariat necklace, so brightly gold that it shone in the light. It had no clasp and was made of one long chain that hooked through a crescent moon to form a circle, leaving a trail of stones meant to drape down the chest when it was worn.

  “No!” Fear streaked through me for no discernible reason. All I knew was that I didn’t want to put that necklace on, no matter how beautiful it was.

  He backed up a step, obviously surprised by my outburst. “Never mind. All you have to say is it doesn’t work.”