by Loki Renard
Whose room was this? It had to be somebody’s, but she couldn’t see any suitcases, or other personal effects. She went to the door and opened it. To her relief, there was a man standing just outside. He was dressed in the weirdest hotel livery she had ever seen, but she didn’t have time to question his fashion. There was something weird about his face too, but she could barely stand to look at it thanks to her rough condition.
“Hey,” she mumbled, looking at the floor. “Is there room service here? I can’t find the telephone.”
“Return to your quarters,” the doorman said grimly.
“Excuse me?” Mika couldn’t hide her shock at his rudeness. “What’s going on?”
“Return to your quarters,” the man repeated.
“Uhm, no. I need a phone. I have to find my friends,” Mika said. She tried to leave the room, but found herself firmly pushed back inside it. “Hey!” she protested loudly. “Quit that! I need to call my friends, they’re going to wonder where I am.”
The door was closed in her face and when she tried to open it again, it wouldn’t. She’d been locked in.
What the hell was going on? Did this have something to do with the prince with the singed cock? That hadn’t even been her fault. What was going on? She went to the window to see where she was. Maybe she could see her hotel, or at least one of the landmarks. Maybe she could call out for help.
The moment she looked outside, everything got worse. Much worse.
“Oh, fuck,” she cursed to herself. The city outside her window was not Ibiza Town. Gone where the white stacked villas, and the old fortress walls that had risen above them. Gone were the palm trees and the azure sea. In their place was a vast expanse of gleaming buildings that were turreted and domed in diamonds and the same precious jewels that adorned her prison. But it wasn’t the abrupt change in architecture that shocked her the most.
“Holy. Fuck.”
There were dragons flying above the city. Great lizards with wings dipping back and forth, rising from the ground and swooping from the sky and generally definitely being dragons.
“I’m still high,” she muttered to herself. “I just have to go back to bed. Sleep it off. Sleep the dragons away.”
She tried her best to do that, but it was difficult to close her eyes against the bright dawn. She pulled the blankets over her head and curled up. Her mouth was dry and the aches of her recovery from the mushrooms did not allow for much in the way of rest.
When she did finally doze off, she dreamed that she was at home, in her bedroom. Her parents were standing next to her empty bed, looking miserable. Her father had his arm around her mother and her mother was sobbing against his chest.
“She’s gone, Vilka,” her mother cried. “She’s gone forever.”
“I’m here!” Mika tried to walk up to them, but she passed right through them, as if they were mere shades of the past, or as if she were. She could not touch them, and they could not see her. As much as she tried to get their attention, they kept standing there, her father stoic in his misery, her mother giving into utter despair.
She woke from the dream, tears drying on her cheeks as her eyes opened to the room she had first woken in. The bed beneath her felt solid and real and it was a small relief to simply feel it there. She threw back the covers and ran to the window, certain that Ibiza would reappear where it should be, but when she looked it was the same jeweled city with the same whirling dragons in the sky.
“I’ve gone crazy,” she muttered to herself. “I’m stuck in the trip. I’m never going to come down. I’m never going to be okay.”
In the middle of what was becoming a full-on panic attack, the doors of her room opened and two women entered. They were very beautiful and foreign-looking in a way Mika couldn’t quite articulate even in her own mind. They brought with them bowls of sweet-smelling hot water and long towels and silk robes. They both had raven dark hair and earthen eyes, brown of a kind, but so warm they were almost amber in hue. Their lips curled up in smiles as they saw Mika sitting on the bed.
“Hello, young lady,” the woman on the right said. She seemed a little older than the one on the left, perhaps forty or so years old. The younger one looked close to Mika’s age, and quite nervous. “We are here to ready you for your audience with the king.”
King? What king? Mika was confused, but at least she wasn’t alone anymore. “Is this to do with the prince? Because I didn’t hurt him… I mean, I really didn’t.”
The women exchanged looks with one another. “Prince? No, young lady. You need worry only about one member of the royal family.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ve annoyed any kings I know,” Mika said. “What king is it?”
“What king?” The younger woman laughed as if Mika had made a funny joke.
Suddenly, Mika realized just why they looked so strange. Their eyes were wrong. They didn’t have round pupils, they had catlike slits where their pupils should be, dark little ovals.
“Are you wearing contact lenses or something? Is it the fashion here?”
“I know you have many questions, young Lady Mika,” the older woman said calmly. “But we are not here to answer questions, we are here to help you prepare to meet the king.”
“Oh,” Mika said with a little frown. “Well, uhm, I’d love to meet the king, and all, but I need to get back to my hotel room. I’ve lost my phone somewhere and I know my friends will be looking for me. I must have gone into the wrong room or something last night.”
“Wrong room,” the younger woman giggled again. She reminded Mika a little of Traci. “Yes, you definitely chose the wrong room,” she giggled again.
“Quiet, Lythia!” the older woman scolded her. “I’m sorry, Lady Mika,” she said. “My protégée is easily excited. My name is Maryon. I’m here to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?”
“Bathe you,” Maryon said, gesturing toward the bowls of warm water and the towels.
“I don’t need to be bathed,” Mika said. “If you’ll just tell me where the bathroom is, I’ll have a shower. I just really want to get back to my room. I’m so tired.”
“It is the king’s wish that you be bathed and clothed,” Maryon said calmly and certainly, as if the king’s wish were all that mattered.
“Well, it’s not my wish,” Mika said. “I can wash myself. You can leave the water and the clothes if you like.”
Maryon cast a dubious look at her. “The king will not be pleased with us if you are not adequately prepared. He is very particular about his concubines…”
“I’m not a concubine!” Mika gasped, horrified. “There has been a mistake! I’m Mika Ferrier. I’m the daughter of Kate and Vilka Ferrier and I’m on holiday here in Ibiza. I know I met a prince last night and it didn’t go great, but I’m not a concubine. I’m a tourist.”
Maryon and Lythia looked at one another again.
“She’s really confused,” Lythia whispered to Maryon, her voice carrying clearly.
“Hush,” Maryon replied. She turned her attention back to Mika. “You look tired, my lady, and you seem to have been through a lot. Allow us to take care of you. You will feel better after your bath.”
Perhaps it was only because she was lonely and scared, but Mika relented. Whoever these women were, they did not seem to intend her any harm, and it seemed that they would possibly be in trouble with this king who was holding her prisoner if she did not allow them to do at least some of their work. She wasn’t about to get anybody fired, that wasn’t her style.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess this isn’t any weirder than a spa treatment. And I do need to relax…”
“Thank you, Lady Mika,” Maryon said. They placed the bowls on a large marbled stand evidently constructed for the purpose and beckoned for Mika to sit on a seat set in a half circle lower than the rest of the floor. Apparently this was the bathing area. The moment Mika sat, the women began their work in a familiar way.
Mika really could almost make belie
ve that she was at a very strange beauty spa as her hair was brushed out and wetted, lathered with a soft scented soap, and massaged until she felt vaguely human again. The younger handmaiden gave her some water to drink, cool spring fluid that quenched her thirst.
“You’re very beautiful,” Maryon said as she massaged Mika’s scalp.
“Thank you,” Mika said, almost on autopilot. “Tell me, Maryon. Am I insane, or are there dragons flying around outside?”
“You have not lost your senses,” Maryon said. “There is a flightpath to the north and you will see many in the skies.”
“And nobody cares about the fact that there are dragons all over the place. Nobody is running or screaming or panicking? There’s stories about dragons coming to California long before I was born, but there was war. It doesn’t look like there’s any war here… have your people made a truce?”
“I think the king will wish to explain all these things to you,” Maryon replied, cupping her hand just below Mika’s hairline on her forehead and pouring a slow trickle of warm water through her freshly washed hair. “You have streaks of red at the very base of your hair, my lady.”
“It’s my natural hair color, I changed it,” Mika admitted.
“Were you attempting to disguise yourself?”
“No.” Mika allowed herself to laugh, in spite of her strange circumstances. “I just like trying different colors.”
“Strange,” Maryon said. “But it is alluring.”
“How do you do it?” the shy Lythia piped up, blushing as she did.
“Well, to go lighter, you need a bleach. To go darker, you need a pigment that will hold. There’s lots of commercially available dyes.”
“Not here,” Lythia said. “There isn’t anything like that here.”
“Lythia, fetch me more hot water,” Maryon said, shooing the younger woman away. “I’m sorry,” she said when the younger woman obeyed. “She is very curious about you, and where you come from.”
“You mean, New York?”
Maryon smiled and did not reply. She had rinsed the last of the shampoo from Mika’s hair and was applying conditioning agents that smelled delicious, like berries and chocolate. Her long fingers worked the concoction into Mika’s hair with practiced ease and in spite of everything she had been through, Mika was starting to relax. Wherever she was, she was being looked after.
“I do really need to make a call soon,” she said, her eyes half-closing like a cat. “My friends will call the police if I don’t get back soon, and then my parents will find out I’m not at summer college like I said I was. And then my parents will freak out and my dad, you really don’t want to mess with him when he’s angry. So I’ve got to make sure that they don’t think I’m missing.”
“You’re worried about upsetting your parents,” Maryon said. “That’s sweet.”
“Sweet?” Mika smirked. “It’s self-preservation. My father is going to kill me if he finds out what I did.”
“Well, I don’t think you need to worry too much about that,” Maryon soothed as she rinsed Mika’s hair again, then began to slide Mika’s shirt from her shoulders and began to soap her body. Mika thought about protesting, but it was soon apparent that Maryon knew how to give a massage and Mika was in need of comforting.
“It was said you’ve been feeling unwell,” Maryon said as she ran her hands down Mika’s left arm.
“I wasn’t unwell,” Mika said. “My friends got some mushroom tea and we drank it and then everything got crazy. I don’t know what happened, but I had the weirdest dreams and then I woke up here, so I am guessing I must have gone to the wrong hotel. Maybe your king was kind enough to take me in.”
“He has certainly taken an interest in you, and he is very wise and very kind,” Maryon said, her tone becoming reverent. “You are very fortunate to have a second audience with him.”
“A second audience?”
“You met him, I believe, in a state of advanced inebriation,” Maryon said. “It has been the talk of the household for quite some hours now. You already have some fame as a result.”
“Really? Good fame or bad fame?” Mika giggled to herself. “There’s really only one kind of fame, I guess. This is so confusing. I don’t think I’m going to take mushrooms again.”
“I don’t imagine you’ll be allowed to do such a thing,” Maryon said. “Those in the king’s care are strictly forbidden from taking any kind of intoxicants. There are many protocols associated with being part of the royal household. You will have to learn them all.”
“They sound boring,” Mika murmured as Maryon took care of her.
“They may be boring,” Maryon replied. “But the consequences for failing to observe them are not.”
The veiled threat went over Mika’s head. The massaging motions of the woman’s hands were lulling her into a state of relaxation that she desperately needed. Her touch soon reached Mika’s most intimate areas, but it was less uncomfortable than the bikini waxes Mika was used to getting so she made no complaints as the woman’s warm fingers soaped and rinsed every part of her.
Finally she was dried and clad in a light ivory gauzy gown made of the softest fabric Mika had ever felt against her skin.
“The king will see you soon, I am sure,” Maryon said. “He can be kind, but he can also be very frightening if he is crossed. Mind your manners as best you can.”
With that warning, she departed, leaving Mika feeling a strange mixture of being simultaneously relaxed, pampered, and nervous.
Alone again, Mika clutched her gauzy gown about her body, hoping that it covered more than it seemed to. It probably covered more than her bikini did, but she was feeling extremely vulnerable in that moment. The comfort that had briefly visited her when the ladies were bathing her soon evaporated with their departure, leaving her very unsettled. There was something incredibly strange about the place she’d found herself in, and something very strange about how she’d gotten there. She tried not to think about it too much. It would all be cleared up soon, she was sure. She’d talk to this king and he’d send her home.
“Hail the king!”
She heard a guttural shout from the other side of those tall doors and looked toward them with a haunted blue and gold gaze as they began to slide open.
The king entered with one long, powerful stride and Mika let out an involuntary gasp.
He was impossibly tall, at least eight feet, possibly more. His masculine beauty was so great she couldn’t speak. The lady Maryon had been right. She had met the king before. He was the man from her dream, the man who had been at the head of all the finely dressed people through the glowing door.
He was real. How was that possible? She had been so certain that she must have imagined him. He did not seem like the sort of person that could possibly exist. He was too beautiful, too fearsome, too imposing, and too entirely elegant in a way that hinted at a certain kind of potential for brutality, perhaps even cruelty, if necessary.
His features were sculpted: a long nose, strong brow, eyes of blue ice set above high cheekbones, well-formed lips, and a solid chin and jaw. He looked like a heightened version of Scandinavian models she had known, muscular and yet finely put together.
He was wearing very strange clothing. A mixture of black leather and some kind of thick pale silk that held a multitude of opalescent hues. It played off the shock white of his hair and the magnetic ice blue of his eyes. Like the others, he had catlike slits for pupils. They really didn’t look like contact lenses either.
Mika couldn’t help but let out little sobs of fear as he drew closer, the doors closing behind him so that she was trapped in his presence. There was no doubt that this man was used to having great power. It was in every line of his body and in every facet of his expressions. He looked down at her as if she were an object of interest, something new he possessed. She had seen that expression on the faces of rich people purchasing new stones. It was an eager, lustful expression that reflected not just their joy in the beaut
y of the object, but the pleasure of possessing it.
“Dry your tears,” he intoned, his voice rich and deep. “There is no reason to cry.”
“I don’t know where I am,” she sniffed. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what’s happening. Those are pretty good reasons.”
“In many respects, you are home,” the king said. He looked like a man in all ostensible ways: a head, two arms, two legs, a torso and such. But she knew he was not a man. There was something about him that made her senses tingle, every hair on the back of her neck stand erect.
“Where am I?” Her eyes welled again. “This isn’t my home.”
“You are in my realm,” he intoned deeply. “The realm from which you came in some small way.”
“Realm? Did the mushrooms somehow bring me here? Am I high? Am I psychotic?”
“The mushrooms did not bring you here. You are no longer intoxicated, and you are certainly not insane,” the king said. “You brought yourself here when you stepped through the small portal we opened in your room. It is long since closed and another will not be opened. This is your world now, Mika Ferrier.”
His answers spawned a thousand more questions. “How do you know my name? Why did you take me? I have to go home. My friends will look for me. My parents will miss me. My father is going to be furious…”
“I am sure he will be,” he said, smirking as if something about that amused him. Was he some kind of sick sadist who liked to kidnap young women and hold them from their families? He didn’t look that desperate. He didn’t look like someone who needed to entertain himself that way either.
“Oh, you think this is funny?” Her temper flared. “It’s not funny. You’ve really scared me, and I don’t know what you mean about portals, but…”
“Your species has the shortest memory,” the king interrupted. “You do not know what a portal is, how is that possible?”