The red glow from the castle's torches gently tainted everything it touched, filling the folds of the maiden's red dress with shadows as she stepped among them. The spiraling vine sprouting embroidered black feathers along her tutu was twisted further in the parody of light, while the velvet top was lent a bloodstained sheen. Her burning orange hair was the color of poison, as opposed to being the mark of a fiery spirit, and the dull silver crown atop it seemed to laze, refusing to gleam in the scarlet. She was regal, perhaps, but her smile was too pure. She could not be the dark princess of this palace knowing only happiness, as Princess Tutu did while clung her precious parcel with the utmost care. She cradled the sleeping prince against her as they passed unharried through the castle, though the blackly sharp cries of ravens' ricocheted in the narrow corridors and feathers swerved slowly around the pair as they were loosed from the birds that flew near overhead.

“Don't let them disturb you, my prince... They are silly things- Oh!” She hunched forward over him as a raven swept close with its beak angled for the prince's flesh, and giggled musically as it slashed her shoulder. “I won't let them bother you. They're so ill-mannered, aren't they? But they want us to be together, too, that's what they say.” Each caw rings ragged and meaningless, but Tutu can hear nothing in the world but sweet delight in their wild calls over fresh carcasses. “They say that you will dance with me. And you will. My king will make it so that you always dance with me. Once you are only mine, my prince, we can dance for him, to show him our gratitude.”

She carried him into a wide hall, the ceiling's magnificent arching beams overhead providing ample roosts for the ravens. Three thrones laid with ebony velvet had been set on a platform at the far end, and a sharply angled figure lounged against the back of the most overwrought; the largest one in the center. He straightened as Tutu entered, and though his somber expression did not lighten, he was obviously pleased. She curtsied delicately, still holding the prince, and the foul lord waved her forward.

“Set him beside me,” The Raven ordered, cold satisfaction dripping from his growing smirk. She obeyed, skipping forward on airy feet to arrange the prince in one of the smaller thrones. The Raven stood fluidly, prompting another curtsy from Tutu, and takes up a position looming over his prone enemy. He lifted a crow-colored crown on the palms of both hands together, inspecting it with mocking dismay. “Oh, such a plain thing for such a /handsome/ storybook prince... Your princess must not suffer you to be unadorned for her, at the very least.”

He passed the ornament to Tutu, who accepted it as though it was a precious thing made of torn butterfly wings to fall apart at her touch, and withdrew a feather. He slashed his wrist on the feather's impossible edge, and gave his princess a nod. She held out the crown reverently, without a word of protest from her blankly happy mind, and kept it steady as he allowed his blood to trickle over the headpiece. The droplets rippled against the metal, embedding themselves forcefully into the crown's surface and swimming together to shape a single round gem that trapped the light and turned it crimson. He spoke slowly as he examined his creation once more, the infinite consideration of unhurried evil stretching his words. “Princess... would you like to do the honors?” Without waiting for an answer, as he knew better than anyone that she had no opinion to give, he urged her on in a fiendish whisper, a voice that served as the strings for his marionette. “Crown him your prince.”

Her painted smile never wavered as she perched the crown atop his swan-feather hair, nor did she show fear when a whirlwind, black and laden with feathers, engulfed him. The Raven's laughter took on a serpentine hiss. “Now, Prince... Your heart has given me enough trouble, so I will have your mind.”

The wind swept off at a wave of the creature's hand to reveal a prince, but perhaps not the nobly kind prisoner who had rested on the throne before. The gem on this prince's jet crown was now merely the accent for his richly red shirt, flowing satin sleeves that tapered at the wrists with wide black bands. The bands were embroidered with a pattern of thorny scarlet vines, matching the similar winding of feathers over his sable sash. Even on his sleeping face, something had changed, from worried discomfort to a blankness too empty to be called peace.

“Rise.” The Raven smirked, and the limp prince stood with such smoothness that it seemed more as though he had been lifted to his feet. His eyelids brushed open, but all that was underneath them was heavy, dull metal, gold as lifeless as what came from the ground. The Raven had to smile fully, then, teeth devouring his own face as the glow from his eyes stained the prince's pale features. This prince, unlike his irritatingly bright enemy, that sickeningly brave creature who tormented him for countless edges, was now pristine, and it was only fitting that he be given a perfectly sculpted mind to match his body. The Raven would set his skillful talons to the task, and craft him into something warped and breakable.

“Oh, poor, lost prince... You have lost it all, truly. Not a memory nor a feeling remains to trouble your dead mind, and indeed, aren't such things troublesome? They have been released.... There is only me, and your princess there.” Tutu may not have heard him, or perhaps there was simply no room for more artificial bliss on her lovely face. The Raven entertained her with a brief glance, his own features etched with triumph; well, was not that better for her? Hope was a flower, and petals could be shredded before their inevitable wilting, but now the princess would live in eternal joy, even if it had been crafted falsely of fabric and breathless wood and Raven's blood. The prince, however, would not be allowed joy. There would be no pain for him, either. The heart he had fought so hard for... The Raven would not take it, no, his revenge would far more delectable. The prince would have his treasured heart, and be utterly unable to use it. The bird continued calmly, “No one else may claim your awareness, all words that are not mine will slip from your empty head, and your useless heart may do what it will.”

His grin brightened to match his eyes as he lashed out, directing the prince's smothered gaze into his own. There was a rush of blood there, a river, a tide, plumes of redness that could douse the sun with fiercer heat. And yet his voice was gentle, a numbing anesthetic that could obliterate pain as well as clear thought, so even the gaping gash and fragmented ribs when the heart was gone did not heart the bird's victims. “You are a doll. You existed solely for my amusement. Tell me what you are!” His voice pitched to a wild volume, a morbid screech that rent the air and left the unbreathable malady of fear sealing lungs in its wake. Yet directly beside him, Tutu smiled, the meaning of the quiver in her heart forgotten in the grip of her bewitched pleasure. As for the prince, he heard only the command, and his existence was for nothing but following it.

“I am a doll.” His voice was so thoroughly hollow that it could not possibly have belonged to him. It was the Raven's possession, incapable of swelling in graceful anger against its former foe.

“That's right. You are not even alive anymore. Just a pretty toy, and I am your master.” He paused, then chuckled coldly. “Go on.”

“You are...” He repeated, and then stopped, but he had only vaguely began to recall what reluctance was when the Raven's confident satisfaction flickered ominously. And here he had believed that the poor doll was learning to listen. No, he wouldn't even think of the other as a prince anymore, he belonged to his enemy now, and he would be nothing but a toy. The prince had been his enemy, this boy was a frail doll. The Raven drew a fraction of his old power around his voice to set his words echoing around the prince as a binding cage. “I am your master.”

The prince dulled immediately. “You are my master.”

The Raven nodded grandly, lifting his arms and snapping them to his sides to propel a vast leap to his throne. “Then dance for me. Both of you, together, I command you to dance for eternity.” Not, of course, until they died, because dolls had no lives to begin with. The command was the same as the thoughts they could no longer have for the porcelain pair. They moved as a set of clockwork toys, in slowly flawless unison, flitting together with stilted poise. The prince did not have even a faint consciousness for his own actions, he only danced; dancing became all he knew because that was the single thing required of him by his master. Tutu, however, delighted to have his fragile fingers around her waist, his thin arms supporting her back. He was perfect, her prince, her beloved prince, and his nothingness was what made him that way, because that was why the could dance together. Time wore on, and so did their muscles, but that was all she could think as pained tears set the light trembling on her rosy cheeks. That the aching quiver of his loveless arms around her was perfect.