Prey (part 2)

A fairytale with fangs

💕✨🌙Part 2 of a mini-serial in 4 parts🌙✨💕

In last week’s episode, Robert stumbled across a bewitching creature in the forest who ensnared him in her coils—literally. One narrow escape later…

The Two Crowns (detail) Frank Dicksee

The castle was bright with summer roses, heady with the scent of lavender as Aurelia and her brother, Lucien entered under the raised portcullis, with all the pomp and pageantry due to a royal party from the Sylvan court. The peasantry thronging the bridleway threw golden calendula blossoms, and the horses’ hooves crushed the sweet scent of white bridewort into the midsummer air. Amid the crowd of smiling faces, Aurelia’s alone wore an expression like approaching thunderclouds.

“Smile, Aurie, your new court is watching.” Lucien waved regally, if vaguely about him. “I hate this as much as you do.”

“I doubt it. You’re not the one marrying a human!” his sister hissed through lips that remained more grimace than smile.

“Oh my day will come. We both know Father is just holding out until he needs another peace treaty. Or until he can find a regal bride who will put up with my penchant for libraries and my peculiar dislike of killing things.”

Aurelia muttered something about the deep and unfair irony of existence, but it was drowned out by a fanfare of trumpets.

Their cortege came to a stop in a vast courtyard edged by towers and battlements. The cream stones were draped in gorgeous tapestries emblazoned with the entwined coat of arms of Aurelia’s noble house and that of her intended bridegroom. On a raised central dais, a group of richly attired nobles got to their feet, their arms raised in welcome. One, a greybeard with a gold band encircling his thinning hair was obviously her father’s counterpart, but much more feeble. He was propped up on either side by two women, clearly mother and daughter, wilting in gowns far too hot for the June day, and weighed down with the glitter of jewels.

At the centre of the group stood the man who must be Aurelia’s bridegroom-to-be. His tunic was as richly jewelled as that of his mother and sister, but gaudy in peacock silk. He was tall and broad, with the swagger of a man spoiled from the cradle. He beamed at the crowd, absorbing their cheers like a sponge, and pettishly waved away the footman who scurried to pull out his chair when he rose. As a bevy of foot soldiers hurried to help the Sylvans down from their mounts, Lucien leaned in toward his sister and whispered, “don’t worry, you can always bite him on the wedding night. He’ll make a rather pleasant thrall.”

The look she shot him in return was pure venom.

But then her eyes narrowed and her lips parted in amused surprise. A fifth noble was stepping up to the dais to join the royal welcome party, and being greeted as if he belonged. A man whose eyes lighted on Aurelia with the confused flicker of a memory that won’t be caught.

“Perhaps,” she murmured “I shall find more diverting prey.”

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Lorenzo and Isabella, by John Everett Millais

Sophia hated banquets. It wasn’t so much the rich food and free-flowing wine, or even the incessant caterwauling of the minstrels. Indeed, she might have enjoyed them if she’d been allowed to lose herself in the crowd and the noise like everyone else. But a princess’s place is at the head table, and a princess must smile and nod and be attentive to whatever is being spouted by important men. Even when the princess in question happens to know that the lion’s share of all they say is nonsense.

“Pure superstition!” her brother Engstrand was braying. “Peasant poppycock!”

“I might agree,” conceded the solemn young man, his jaw set grimly, “but the folk often know more of the country than we do. The local priest swears to having glimpsed it with his own eyes. And there is something uncanny in that forest. I went hunting there myself and recall nothing. Hours of the day lost, just a black mist.”

“Probably hit your head on a branch!” Engstrand guffawed and Sophia winced. It didn’t seem fair that she was expected to charm the visiting thane while her brother was allowed to be as rude and callow as he wished. But then, she supposed, Engstrand wasn’t the one marrying him. She searched in vain for something consoling to say to her fiancé, but Princess Aurelia had already stepped in, the picture of grace, to calm and mollify both men.

Veronica Veronese, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sophia observed her with academic detachment, devoid of envy for her flawless skin, the bright copper of her hair, the way men’s faces turned to her like sunflowers to the sun, and seemed to actually listen when she spoke. Almost. Even Engstrand had softened the derisive tone he usually employed for women, including herself and his royal mother. Perhaps this foreign princess would be able to stand up to him. But then Sophia’s eyes fell on Aurelia’s slender arms with their pale, soft skin, and her heart sank. Stifling a sigh, she turned her attention to her own soon-to-be-husband, and tried to assess him as a woman, not merely a scholar.

Regarding the thane’s storybook blond looks and muscular physique, Sophia decided it could be worse. Of course, she should feel humiliated to be marrying so far below her rank, but as her brother had brutally made clear, once word had got out of her (he had paused to give the words the contempt they deserved) book learning, it was impossible to find a prince to go near her. He had, of course, taken on the task of finding her a husband himself, her father no longer being up to the task. Sophia smiled sadly at the grizzled old man nodding off at the head of the great table. How long now before Engstrand took the final step, and sat that throne himself? And what would become of the country then? Her mother had often murmured that one of her children had got all the strength and the other one all the wisdom, and there was the tragedy of it. She had not meant it as a compliment to either of them.

No reasonable man wants a clever wife. Engstrand’s words sang mockingly in her ears, and her fiancé seemed to be a reasonable man. It had taken a considerable dowry and more than one new title to convince Thane Robert’s father to shackle his son to such a burden. And though her betrothed had been nothing but gallant toward her, he was clearly unenthusiastic about the idea himself. As if on cue, Engstrand made a crass remark about the ignorance of peasants and women, and Sophia winced again.

Across the table, her brother’s intended caught her eye with questioning look that Sophie realised, with a start, was a challenge. Against all her training in decorum, she took it. She rolled her eyes meaningfully in Engstrand’s direction and was rewarded with a lightning-fast wink, and the first genuine smile Sophie had seen on those perfect rosy lips since Princess Aurelia had arrived.

Then she opened her eyes wide, because Aurelia’s brother was speaking, and for once she found herself listening to a man who was willing to admit he didn’t know everything.

“As a prince of the forest lands, I must disagree. There are large parts of my father’s realm that even we do not venture into, creatures whose existence we can avow by the traces they leave, though no living soul has seen them, much less been able to prove it.”

“The greatest wisdom consists in knowing how little we truly know,” mused Sophie aloud, and Prince Lucien turned to her eagerly.

“Yes! You put it perfectly! We miss so much when we assume we already know the answers! Tell me, have you read Cairgill on the limits of learning?”

“I have! But I prefer his works on herb lore.”

“Fascinating! And so very useful. Such a shame we have lost the folk knowledge of where to find so many of the plants.”

“Oh yes! But if you read him alongside Wenner, you can piece together the sort of climate many of them favoured, and I have a theory—that is, one day I’d like to set out on a quest to—”

“Quest!” Engstrand snorted. “Really Sophia, you are ridiculous! Whoever heard of a female on a quest!”

Sophie coloured and fell silent. Across the table, Aurelia burned with barely concealed resentment noticed only by one other person. Thane Robert stared at her as if trying to solve a puzzle.

As the chatter moved on and attention shifted back to the loudest voices, Lucien murmured, “I don’t think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s a marvellous idea.”

Sophia smiled gratefully, and thought how kind he was to say it, even if he was only being gallant. Shyly, she encouraged him to tell her more about his studies, and so engrossed was she in their conversation that she hardly noticed the banquet wearing on into the small hours of the night. When it was time to retire to bed, she found herself genuinely sorry, for possibly the first time ever.

The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (detail) Frederic William Burton

As Robert climbed the tower steps to his chamber, he paused outside a door on the lower floor, arrested by the sound of water splashing, and singing. Something about the woman’s voice seemed to freeze his feet to the flagstones. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he bent his eye to the keyhole.

In a second, he was throwing open the door, his dagger drawn.

Aurelia leapt up and screamed, scattering bathwater and soapsuds. She snatched a linen cloth to cover her breasts, but it did nothing to hide her glinting, snakelike tail.

“You!” Cried Robert, the spell broken and his memories flooding back. He brandished his dagger, swiftly casting his eyes to the ground.

“Me!” Aurelia laughed, her surprise evaporated like steam. “Afraid to look at me, dear thane? Worried that I’ll bewitch you again?”

“You shan’t ensnare me twice!”

“Oh, but I shall!”

Again, the tail wound around him, pulling him toward her. This time her nimble fingers unlaced his tunic, baring his chest.

“Very nice,” she crooned, running a curved nail across the firm muscles of his chest. “Now let me see… I think—here!” She sank her nail into his flesh, drawing a fine line of blood in two strokes above his heart. “X marks the spot. Do you know what I shall do this time?”

Robert shook his head, dimly aware of distant shouts, that she had screamed, and guards would be on their way, if he could just play along.

“A kiss of the Lamia wipes the memory,” Aurelia murmured, intimate as a lover. “But a bite can be deadly.” As his eyes widened, she laughed, a tinkling sound like silver bells, or water in a brook. “Oh, don’t worry. You’re too much fun to kill just yet. A little bite… just a nibble… well, that’s much more interesting. You see, it leaves your memory intact. But for a few moments it makes you very… susceptible. Whatever I command, you will comply, until I rescind my order.”

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (detail) Frank Dicksee

She pulled him to her then, his naked chest tight against hers, and even with his eyes averted he felt a dizziness coming over him, like the encroaching of a fever. Then a sharp pain made him look, and her fangs were in his chest above his heart, her pink tongue licking up the droplets of blood that oozed there, and he was falling, unaware of anything but her voice.

“You will remember everything. You will know who I am, and what I am. But you will be unable to tell a living soul, either by utterance of your mouth, word of your pen, or sign of your hand.”

She stepped from the bathtub, releasing him from her coils and he fell weakly to the floor. Moments later the guards came rushing in.

Robert watched as Aurelia played a pantomime of shock and fear, telling the guards how a terrible creature had crawled through her window to attack her in her bath, how her screams had brought the valiant thane running to her rescue and how he had surely saved her life! But the monster had injured him! See! You can see the marks of its teeth upon his breast! Oh help him! Fetch the court physician!

And all the while, Robert could only lie there gasping, gazing helpless at the creamy skin beneath the linen towel, that just moments before had been scales.

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Copyright notice

© Moll Moonlight. All rights reserved.

Has Aurelia bitten of more than she can chew?

Does Robert deserve everything he gets for disturbing a lady in her bath—twice?

Don’t miss next week’s episode:

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A Sea Spell (detail), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

All photos courtesy of Wiki Commons