Amber’s revelation in discovering Seungho brought great joy but just as many questions she was unable to answer herself.  Of course, looking down at him resting in her lap, she wasn’t in such a hurry to try and answer them yet.  The contact was something she had been missing as well, without even realizing it.  Long, slow breaths moved through her lungs as Amber continued to rest with him, his golden fur silky soft against her cheek.

                She stayed with him in the room until he finally decided to move, though her legs were falling asleep by the time he did so.  As he clambered to his feet with a hint of chagrin and uncertainty, Amber struggled to get up herself.  With a groan, she convinced uncooperative knees to bend and flex, but she was more than a little surprised when Seungho offered her his hand.  The clawed appendage hovered in front of her and she blinked before laughing once with a bright smile.

                “Thank you,” Amber murmured, carefully accepting the gesture so she wouldn’t cut herself on his fingertips.  His long, bony fingers curled around her hand with so much care she thought he might be afraid to hurt her.  It reminded her of when they’d first met and he honestly had no idea how to treat her.  The thought pulled another smile from her lips and she turned her head up to look at him.  Hunched over, he was still taller than her by a head or two and it made her feel strangely short in his company.  “Can you speak?” she asked, peering at his maw curiously.

                Seungho ducked his head in obvious embarrassment with a subdued groan.  Then he looked back up to gesture at his mouth with his free hand and shook his head.

                The answer was obvious to Amber.  Due to his form, the creature’s mouth didn’t allow for words, which was frustrating but not unlike what she’d already been dealing with around the villagers.  She was, however, amused that he had not let her hand go yet.  “Can you write then?” she inquired, gently pulling him backwards towards the door so they could step out of the room and into the better lighting of the hallway.

                Seungho followed without complaint, his balance somewhat awkward while walking on two feet.  For a moment, he seemed as if he was going to shake his head but then he frowned in thought, his furry brows dipping down as he thought about it.  With an uncertain shrug, he answered as best he could.  But he paused as he caught sight of something below her chin.

                Amber held very still when Seungho reached his hand hesitantly towards her.  Her heart sped up a little bit and she searched his face for any sign of his thoughts.  She knew it was Seungho but it was also hard to forget the beast he’d been up until this point.  A small part of her was still nervous, especially because she couldn’t see his goal.  But then she felt the tips of his nails scratch oh so lightly against her chest and she flinched before the sensation was gone.  More curious than ever, she glanced down and saw that he was staring at the wire strawman around her neck.  “Of course I kept it,” Amber reassured him, giving his other hand a gentle squeeze.

                Though his mouth was more beast than man, Amber was certain she saw the beginnings of a smile pull at his lips.  He set the figure back down and wrapped his hand around her shoulder, his palm warm and comforting.  Seungho gave her a solemn nod and chuckled, the sound a deep rumble coming from his throat.

                Amber laughed in response, a joyous and delighted sound.  “Oh, you have no idea how good it is to hear something like that,” she exhaled, feeling days’ worth of tension beginning to ease away in his presence.  Even when they were younger, he always could make her feel better.  Somehow or other.  “Come on.  I think writing with a quill might be difficult with your hands, but the dirt outside should be doable.  Auntie Park does it all the time,” she added as an afterthought, already pulling him along again.

                She felt slight resistance when he heard the name but he didn’t stop.  As they moved through the hallways, he relaxed a bit when she explained the villagers were all outside the castle, where she’d asked them to stay in the meantime.  She didn’t know how her idea was going to work and so had wanted to make sure they didn’t get broken in the process.  Seungho visibly flinched at the reminder and Amber badly wanted to know why he hadn’t recognized them like she had.  Eventually.  Or if he did, why he had felt the need to attack them.

                They made it to the courtyard easy enough and though Seungho looked at the door leading into the castle uncertainly, Amber’s hand on his arm made him focus on her instead.  “Can you write here?” she asked, gesturing towards the barren dirt.

                Seungho’s nose wrinkled and he squatted down, finally relinquishing her hand since it was the one he needed to write with.  Yes, he wrote and nodded at the same time, looking up at her expectantly.

                It was clear he was slightly nervous.  Even uneasy now that they had gotten this far, but Amber had so many questions and she needed answers.  Very badly.  “Okay,” she smiled, laying a hand on his shoulder in quiet reassurance.  He brushed his cheek against her fingers and waited without looking at her, fingertip resting in the dirt, unmoving.  “So, I figured some things out myself.  But I need your help in understanding the rest.  What happened here and where is my father?” she whispered, her fingers tightening on his shoulder as she tried to keep her hopes from getting too high.

                Seungho was eager enough to answer her first question in short responses.  It was obvious writing out whole sentences was troublesome and Amber could see the frustration building in his features as he tried the first couple times.  But his writing was sloppy, some of the words misspelled, and they only seemed to frustrate him more.  At the point where he was about to give up in anger at himself, Amber knelt on the ground beside him and grabbed his hand in both of hers.

                “It’s alright,” she soothed while staring at his profile, feeling her own frustration just as keenly.  He was the only one with answers and they were trapped in his head, but her getting annoyed with him wasn’t going to help either of them.  She knew that.  What was more, she knew how he was feeling.  She’d dealt with that angry frustration herself for longer than she cared to think about.  “Let’s try one word at a time.  Alright?” she prompted with a soft smile, raising one hand to brush the backs of her fingertips against his cheek.

                For a moment, he didn’t move at all, but then Seungho sighed and his shoulders relaxed a touch.  With a slight nod, he agreed, though he didn’t look at her as he remained focused on the ground.  He wiped it clean with his other hand and then pulled free of Amber’s hold so he could try again.

                Word by word, he spelled out the problem they faced.  Portal.  Transmewtayshun.  Scry.  Wrong in spell.  Try 2 fix.  Master saw a thing.  U came.  Broke.  Master stay.  I stay 2 help.

                “I remember that much.  Changsun explained it to me when we were first trying to figure everything out,” Amber nodded, going over the words with narrowed eyes.  She felt an unmistakable shift in him when she mentioned Changsun’s name though, and it made her pause.  He didn’t look at her, but she went ahead with her question anyway, “What went wrong with the spell?”  Seungho growled softly and looked away, wiping the ground clean with a swipe of his hand.  “You know don’t you?” she prodded, resting her palm gently against his arm.

                 He hesitated for a long time.  Amber waited beside him, not speaking as she let him decide on his own.  Finally, he exhaled and shook his head as he wrote, Don’t know.

                “But you said the spell was wrong,” Amber prodded with a frown.  “If you knew it was wrong, then wouldn’t you know how?”  His ears flicked to and fro, listening to her words, but Seungho didn’t look at her.  He simply started scratching lines in the ground distractedly.  When it felt like he was ignoring her, Amber shook his arm and called out, “Seungho!”

                He bared his teeth and growled when he swung his head around to look at her.  Amber gasped and fell back, her heart jumping into .  Before she even had time to be fully afraid, Seungho’s expression shifted just as quickly.  The reactive anger fled in the face of guilt and he curled in on himself, not looking at her.  With small, apologetic , he wrote out: Sorry.  Don’t know.  Shield fail.

                Amber stared at the words on the ground before looking back at Seungho with one hand pressed against her chest and her eyes wide.  Her heart still felt like it was going to leap out of and she had to remind herself he was not going to hurt her.  She hoped.  “It’s alright,” she whispered instead, swallowing the lump in .  “It was my fault.  I shouldn’t have pressed,” Amber admitted, though it was all she wanted to do.  After all, he had answers, but she couldn’t just assume he was going to be magically himself again after spending three years as a beast.

                She was going to ask more but then she saw him writing again.  How is he?

                “Changsun?” Amber murmured in surprise, her brows rising on her forehead.  At Seungho’s nod she took a breath and shrugged.  “He’s… good,” she hedged, not exactly sure what to tell him.  Now it was her turn to look away while she searched for words to say.  Even if she did want answers, he deserved that much at least.  “He’s back at his family’s summer estate.  Just last year he became a Master Mage too.  When he got back from Bannersport, he was helping me to try and figure out what happened at Karith,” she shrugged, brushing at the hair over her ear nervously.

                You stay?

                The question took Amber a moment to puzzle out and then her stomach sank just a bit when she understood what he was asking.  After an uncertain pause, she nodded.  “Since you disappeared.  I had nowhere else to go,” she added, biting her lip.  She could feel him shifting uneasily beside her, even without looking over.

                How long?

                Another question that made her groan internally.  “Three years,” she admitted, casting a sidelong glance at Seungho as she tried to judge his reaction.  The only thing he did was to lean closer and take a tentative sniff.  His expression didn’t change but he did get up to all fours and start to walk off with a strange stiffness to his posture.  “Hey!  Seungho!” Amber called after him, awkwardly following in his wake.

                He paused long enough to wave her off with one paw, giving her a long look with unreadable eyes.  Then he shook his head and turned about to head inside the tower once more.

                “Where are you going?” she shouted after him, feeling more than a little confused and hurt.  Seungho stopped to point at the writing on the ground.  Amber squinted at the etchings and realized he was probably referring to the ‘Don’t know’ section.  She frowned at the response and balled her hands into fists.  “Fine, but can you at least tell me where my father is?!”  Her voice echoed back to her from the hallway leading in but Seungho stopped again before he could round the bend.  Once more, he pointed at the ground and then resolutely headed out of sight.  “Ugh!  Be that way then!” she shouted after the beast, feeling more than a little frustrated.

                For whatever reason, she didn’t think that going after him would help her any.  It might only serve to irritate him more and with him just finding himself, there was no telling how he’d react to such an intrusion.  Roughing her hair in frustration, Amber kicked at the dirt and muttered under her breath.  It wasn’t like he could go anywhere she couldn’t.  And maybe time would help him cool down with whatever was bothering him.  Unfortunately, she had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with Changsun…

                With that in mind, Amber opted to find Auntie Park and speak with her to see if the older woman would be able to help her make sense of things.  It wouldn’t hurt to let the villagers know she had managed to make a truce with the beast by discovering he was in fact Seungho.  “I bet they didn’t see that coming,” she laughed to herself, glaring at the tower once more before heading towards the outer gate.

                No, the villagers had not and they had just as many questions as Amber did, few of which she could actually answer.  No, she didn’t know how to get them out.  No, she didn’t specifically know what had affected all of them.  No, she didn’t know if Seungho could help now.  No, she didn’t know where her father was.

                No!  She didn’t know anything.  Barring her time spent trying to find what had gone wrong in the first place, that feeling alone was probably one of the most confounding in her life.  And it was the one that sent her back into the tower after a conversation with Auntie Park did little to settle herself.  Amber didn’t want to have to wonder over the mysteries of men, cursed or magical in nature, and she just wanted him to help her figure out how to get home.  She couldn’t do that if he decided he didn’t want to try and speak with her anymore.  And why was he being evasive anyway?  Didn’t he want to get out of here too?!

                Although, even if she wasn’t closer to any answers, she could take solace in the fact that Seungho was here.  Despite him looking frightening, underneath the beast, she knew most of him was still the young man she’d last seen in this very tower.  She had another chance to see a glimpse of him when she returned to the study hall to resume her straightening and begin seeing what new information she could find.  After all, the spells they’d been performing had come from these books in particular, many of which had her father’s notes in the margins.  Maybe she could find an answer in one of them instead.

                While sorting books, Amber heard the door open behind her.  She assumed it was just one of the villagers come to give her a hand but when she heard Hyukjae and Youngwoon shuffling towards her quickly, she looked up.  Seungho was in the doorway instead, his hand resting lightly on the door as he waited uncertainly to see how she would react.  Though Amber was still a bit annoyed with him for his response earlier, a smile tugged at the corners of and she gestured with her hand.

                “Come on then,” she laughed softly, nodding towards the rest of the room.  “You know this place as well as I do.”

                Seungho huffed once and nodded in agreement before he padded into the room slowly, taking care so as to not frighten the villagers more.  Without a word or any suggestion from Amber, he set his strength to righting the shelves she couldn’t and bending some of the more warped ones into shape.

                She continued to work for a little while longer, sneaking thoughtful glances his way as she ran through things in her head.  “Did you have to make such a mess of the study hall?” she teased gently to try and lighten the mood, waiting to see how he’d react.

                Seungho didn’t answer her verbally but his expression spoke volumes.  He looked at her with annoyance and resolutely straightened a bent beam back into place with inhuman strength.  When he was finished with as many shelves as he could reach, he started to try and carefully place the books back on them, struggling with the control needed from his changed hands.

                Amber managed a sad smile for him and returned to the books she was trying to put back into place.  It had been frustrating enough for her being able to read everything and still not make any progress.  But she had been herself.  Unchanged physically by what had happened.  And she’d had Changsun.  Despite how things had fallen out between them, he had helped to make everything bearable in the early days.  As had having some kind of outlet, like working in the kitchens with Soonkyu or training with Sungmin and Minho or learning to ride with Taemin.

                Seungho had none of that…  Just the tower, his own inability to do anything, and the Mobian portal outside.  “And I thought I was in a difficult place,” she admitted regretfully, recalling how powerless she’d felt in not being able to do more.  How would she have felt if she had been able to cast magic before but no longer had the ability in a different form?

                He huffed at her statement and slowly walked over to her on his hind legs.  Doing so was awkward and he towered over Amber when he did, but it made him seem more human.  When he got close enough, he reached a hand out to carefully squeeze her shoulder, looking at her with those startling golden eyes that held all the essence of the boy she’d spent two years growing up with.

                “You had it so much worse,” she added, grabbing his hand with hers and holding on.  “No wonder you lost yourself.”  The words twisted her gut as they reminded her she had lost herself as well.  Not as noticeably but it had happened under much nicer circumstances.

                She dropped her gaze to look at the books on the mostly whole table and was surprised when a large hand came into view.  Seungho carefully grabbed the wire-strawman and held it in his palm until Amber looked up.  Then he nodded solemnly and set it back down before touching the one her father had given her.  She glanced down and up once more, confused by the shake of his head.

                “Do you know where my father is?” she asked softly, hoping this time he would give her a different answer.  “Can you at least tell me where the casting hall is located?” she tried again when he didn’t respond immediately.  Another shake of his head was her response.  Frustratingly.  Tamping down on her irritation, she argued there had to be some reason he wouldn’t tell her.  “Okay,” she sighed, meeting his eyes, but when he looked away, it only further fueled her suspicions.  “You know,” she began, opening a book and looking through it without seeing anything.  “I didn’t know what to do when you and my father disappeared.”

                Seungho moved to the other side of the table to start working with her, shuffling books around and listening to her speak though he did not look up.  In his company, Amber simply started talking about everything that had happened since her and Changsun had made it through the portal.  She explained how frightened and heartbroken she’d been.  How lost she became when Changsun left and how she had to fight hopelessness more often than she wanted to admit.  As she spoke, they worked in tandem and when her words ran out for a time, they moved outside so that Seungho could speak with her.

                In painfully slow scrawls, he explained bits about what he knew and how he had first been aware though physically changed.  But then the beast began to take over, bit by bit until he couldn’t recognize or remember what had once been familiar.  He explained that was why he’d attacked her when she first arrived; he had thought her another trick of his mind.  Some phantom come to taunt him from his previous life.  She had changed so much and she smelled so different, so much like Changsun, he couldn’t recognize her at first.  Amber hadn’t quite been able to ask why smelling like Changsun would have made Seungho so very angry…

                Some things ran deeper than sight though, which was why he had never been able to touch her room – it was Amber, the one memory he couldn’t forget completely, no matter how hard the beast tried to take over.  Seungho’s own helplessness fueled it though, and he remembered ransacking the study hall.  Enough of him had been left to make sure he didn’t destroy it entirely.  Not like his room.

                Sometimes when Amber would press too hard for answers too soon, Seungho would snarl and storm off again, leaving her with her frustrations once more.  But he would always return, repentant and ready to help her again.  Their relationship was strangely like it had been when they were younger.  They had always been able to understand each other without words when they needed.  Sometimes, silent company was the best medicine and they were well versed in that.

                Despite that, there was always something more to talk about.  Mostly on Amber’s side.  She told Seungho about Soonkyu and her endeavors in the kitchen.  The beast had chuckled with a familiar shake of his head.  She spoke of Sungmin and Minho as they taught her sparring like she had done with him and Changsun in the early years.  His response had been to try and smack her with his tail.  She reacted appropriately and nearly had him on the floor in pain when it ended up being a lot more sensitive than either expected.  When she told him about learning to ride, he huffed at her teasing question to try and ride him like a horse.  And when she spoke of Hyesung and him teaching her to read and write more, Seungho handed her more advanced tomes, to her amused annoyance.

                When they needed a break from each other, Amber would retreat to her room or speak with the villagers who began to investigate the tower more now that the beast was no longer trying to destroy them.  Seungho would return to his room and neither would make any attempt to clean it or her father’s.  Some spaces just didn’t need to be touched.  Though… Amber did have to wonder about the casting hall mirror and why Seungho sometimes felt the need to break it again, even though it always repaired itself, much like the trapdoor had when she’d first entered.  She asked him about it, but he was rather evasive.  Again.

                As unknown amounts of time continued to pass and Amber tried to be patient with him, tensions occasionally rose.  Invariably, their arguments – or rather Amber yelling and demanding answers before Seungho stormed off – stemmed from two topics in particular: Changsun and her father.  After countless talks with Auntie Park, Amber had finally realized that the Changsun issue was probably some sort of jealousy – she had been living with him for three years while Seungho had been trapped – but she was pretty sure it was something else too.  And she felt very different emotions when he didn’t want to talk about her father or the casting hall.

                Eventually, feeling very much like she had no alternative, Amber finally managed to corner him in the courtyard.  Their efforts in the study hall had done nothing to help her find the answer and even Seungho could offer no assistance beyond pointing out the books they’d been working on.  He was evasive when he should have been direct and it felt as if he did not want to leave, which was utterly absurd.  He’d as good as told her did after all.

                “What aren’t you telling me?” she huffed when she studied the ground he was writing on with a critical eye.  It was filled with spell markings and hastily scratched notes she was hard pressed to understand, but he had yet to answer any of her more direct questions.

                Seungho merely continued with his writing, though he didn’t seem to have any actual purpose beyond avoiding her.

                “I know you’re jealous about Changsun,” she prodded intentionally, to which he visibly snorted and rolled his eyes, “but not telling me information isn’t going to help either of us.”  It was obvious he didn’t want to have this conversation when he started to get up to leave like he always did.  Only this time, Amber didn’t let him.  “Running away?” she glared, stepping right in front of him with her fists on her hips, daring him to say otherwise.

                Seungho’s tail twitched behind him as he glared back down at her while standing on his hind legs, a soft growl rumbling from his throat.  His lips were closed though, so he wasn’t actually trying to scare her off.  He tried to move around her and Amber shifted to stay directly in his path.

                “Do you know how long we both looked for a way to bring you back?!” Amber huffed, casting her eyes to the ground only briefly so he wouldn’t try to escape.  He exhaled quickly and turned his head away, circling around towards the wall.  Amber followed.  “Do you know how frustrating it is to know that my father isn’t dead but you won’t tell me where he is?!”  Anger and something else flashed in his eyes then as he glanced at her and away, padding along the wall, tension growing in his body.  “I want to go home, Seungho,” she admitted, keeping pace with him.  “Don’t you?”

                He snapped at her then, a brief outburst of visible anger.  Amber couldn’t help but flinch but she didn’t step away.  Seungho was left with no choice but to answer or keep moving.  He opted for the former.  With an agitated motion, he ripped a response into the wall: Yes.

                “Then why won’t you help me figure it out?!” she demanded, stomping her foot as she pointed a finger at him.

                In a very human reaction, Seungho grabbed his head with his hands and quite obviously groaned through his teeth.  The imagery struck her as so like Seungho when he was at his wits end that Amber almost missed when he fell to the ground to start writing a hasty, sloppy response.  Won’t do any good.

                Confused, Amber had to read it a couple times to make sure it was right.  But then she frowned and shook her head.  “Why?”  There had to be a reason for him to think that.

                Still tense and agitated, Seungho scratched his side and huffed again.  The ground became his canvas once more when he settled in to write a determined answer.  Broken spell.  Can’t fix.

                “You keep saying that but if we can find my father, I’m sure he can-”

                A quick negating hand gesture stopped Amber in her flow of words and she looked at him curiously before he started writing again.  Changsun.

                Even more confused, Amber shook her head and murmured, “What about him?”

                For a long time, Seungho didn’t meet her eyes.  It was obvious he was thinking over how to respond and for once, Amber was patient enough to let him.  She was so close to some sort of answer.  At last, he nodded acknowledgement, but when he turned to look at her, his eyes glimmered with tears that belied the tension in his jaw.  He looked away only so that he could write two words on the ground: His fault.

                Amber felt the world drop out from beneath her feet as she shook her head in immediate denial.  “That can’t be right,” she whispered, immediately going over everything he’d done to help her.

                IS.

                “But how?  Why?” she asked immediately, grabbing his fur in her hand.  Seungho huffed and slouched where he was crouching on the ground.  “Seungho.  How can you say it was Changsun’s fault?” Amber asked in shocked horror, unable to believe it just then.

                Conflicted emotions ran across Seungho’s bestial features and his ears laid flat on his head.  He took a deep breath and stood up on his hind legs so he could reach a hand out to her.  Amber took a step back, feeling betrayed and uncertain.  The beast merely looked at her and then reached for her hand, curling long fingers around hers so he could start leading her back inside.

                Looking over her shoulder at the words on the ground, Amber held her tongue and allowed Seungho to guide them both.  She wasn’t entirely surprised when he took her to his room.  He let go of her hand in the entryway so he could climb through the mess he had done nothing to clean, obviously looking for something.  Nearby, the mirror gleamed, unnaturally clean and beautiful in the room.  Amber was distracted by what appeared to be a shimmer on the surface before Seungho made it back to her with a mostly whole book in his hand.  He grunted and pushed it into her grasp so that she would have to accept it or drop it.

                “What’s this?” she frowned, turning the unmarked book over.  Opening the scratched cover revealed a name written on the inside: Changsun.  “Is this his journal?” Amber gaped, turning wide eyes up to look at Seungho.  Mutely, he nodded in response.  “Why do you-” she started to ask before the necklace her father gave her grew warm and a light in the corner of her eye caught her attention.

                Seungho’s head whipped towards the mirror with desperate haste as his fangs flashed.  Claws crooked in his hands and he threw himself at the shimmering surface with a savage snarl.  Amber gasped when the surface cleared just before Seungho tore into it, shattering the glass into a rain of glimmering shards.  Immediately, the light died out leaving them both in eerie, stunned silence.

                Clutching the journal tightly to her chest, Amber stared at Seungho’s bowed back.  “Seungho.  I saw the casting hall,” she whispered, her suddenly dry lips.  “Why did I see the casting hall in the mirror?” she added, staring at him as if she could command the answers from his mouth by force of will alone.

                Seungho sighed visibly, his shoulders slumping in obvious resignation before he turned and looked at Amber with uncertainty and fear plain in his face.  Glass crunched underfoot and he shrugged helplessly.

                Amber wanted to scream.  But she didn’t.  She had Changsun’s journal and she’d managed to find the casting hall, however inadvertently.  Wanting to hit Seungho for hiding that from her didn’t help either.  “I’m…” she started to speak, one finger rising to shake in his direction.  “I’m going to my room,” she announced with no further explanation.

                As she left the room, Seungho’s confused despair followed her like a cloud, but she resolutely ignored it and sought shelter in her haven.  Locking the door behind her, Amber settled on her bed with the book in her lap and her mother watching over her.  More confused than ever and no longer sure about who to trust, she opened the journal and unabashedly started reading.

(a/n: My apologies for the delay in posting!  This week has been a doozy for no writing time.  :/  So much grading of essays.  Ugh...  But I do appreciate you being patient and I hope you have enjoyed the latest update!  So things are happening between them and more answers are being revealed bit by bit with pieces of more intrigue and questionable things being thrown in.  Feel free to ask in the comments or via PM if you want but otherwise, thank you for sticking with me!  I hope to be wrapping this up in a couple more chapters - I'm terrible with estimates though so don't quote me.  haha)