Blood roses: a Duke x reader story

Chapter 4

Hello my beasties! The next chapter is finally ready! Just so you know, I'm combining Daria Cohen's deleted song along with your song into this chapter! The deleted song is up above so you can familiarize yourself with it before we dive in. On another note, the results are in for deciding your song! The most popular choice that I've picked is Little Bird by Rachel Rose Mitchell! Due to the popularity of the song due to your votes I've decided to choose this song! (Also because it fits the story I'm planning than Hey Alice.) Now for all of you beasties wondering about when I'm introducing my OC'S, I've come to ease your worries. You see, there will be a few references to my OC'S in this chapter but you guys will be able to officially meet the first OC in the next chapter!(She kind of  popped into my head when I was looking for Ideas and both she and I are very excited for our first introduction!) Now beasties let us return to the castle where something very interesting will be happening.....

Y/N's P.O.V:

It was what you would have called a stereotypically dark and stormy night. Outside the castle, the rain was pouring down, with the occasional echoes of thunderbolts reradiating through the castle. Bare branches scraped menacingly against the windows, the flashing lightning creating shadows that resembled gnarled, twisting fingers......

Yes, it was a night of true darkness, a night that signified that bad things were on their way, ill omens afoot..... The type of night that would make Edgar Allen Poe himself roll over in his grave.

But you paid little attention to the storm outside because you were currently in the castle's vast library, absorbed in a tiny leather-bound volume you'd just plucked off of the shelves. It was one of the rare moments when you found yourself out from under Missi's service, so of course, you were taking full advantage of your temporary freedom.....

And besides, the library was deserted at least. Missi had taken to locking herself in this room for nights at a stretch, practicing her dark arts, barely sleeping, drinking any blood, or barely even acknowledging your own existence.......

But none of that mattered right now in this moment in time, as you delved deeper into the realm of escapism, in this library of dark treasures..... 

And what treasures they were! Shelves upon shelves of books, papers, journals, and more all organized in a chaotic bizarre matter, with classic books mixed in with tomes of dark magic, no visible method of organization, and even some books shoved into whatever tiny bit of space was available, making sometimes for a unexpected booby trap when a volume would drop on your head or on your foot when you just wanted to read about elemental magic......

It was..... beautiful, in a chaotic sort of way.

And you'd read a great deal of those dark treasures over the past  year......

A leathery volume that for all the world appeared to have a humanoid face on the cover, and on closer inspection, the covering of the book was revealed to be made of something akin to human skin.....

A child's picture book of fairytales, with illustrations so beautiful you could almost swear that the animals breathed, the wind whipped through the lavishly painted trees...... but the stories in the book were another matter entirely, stories of children who found witches in the woods(and how the witches found the children delicious), nightmarish beasts, and the most horrible deaths saved for the unwitting heroes who dared oppose them.....

A great deal of books from The Story of O to Carmilla, that looked in good enough condition to be considered first editions......

Countless tomes of magic, from dark magic to elemental command, to spells to turn a person invisible.......