Stain

by A. G. Howard

  Both entities—songstress and thief—intertwined in his fuzzy memories. In hopes to reconcile the two, he took the princess’s hand then molded her fingertips around his jaw.

  “My darling Vesper.” Her intimate, lyrical greeting should have brought him to his feet in triumph, yet he stayed flat on his back. There was no discounting the desire and astonishment on her face, but her eyes were wrong; they didn’t sparkle with that fractious intellect he’d always seen looking back at him in the ravine. Only one way to be sure . . .

  He pulled her down, clutched the silken hair at her nape, and pressed his mouth to hers, drinking of her until her knees gave and she swooned. She saved herself from falling by taking a seat beside him, breathless and beaming.

  However lovely a princess she was, she didn’t belong beside him. Those weren’t the lips of the one who had given all of herself—her moonlight, her fierceness, her hope. And the fingertips stroking his cheek weren’t the same as those that had snuffed out the fire meant to devour his soul.

  Vesper sat up and looked pointedly at all those gathered around—his sister, his first knight, gardeners and guards alike. “She’s not the one who saved me.” A harsh sentiment that he couldn’t contain.

  “What?” The princess scrambled to her feet, appearing more horrified than wounded. “You must know that’s not true! I’m your betrothed! All of the missives we’ve shared, the beautiful roses you’ve sent. The prophecy promised us a happy future. My song indeed saved you.”

  Her rebuttal, spoken in that birdsong voice, felt as rehearsed and cautious as all the letters he’d read at her hand. She lacked the fire . . . that stringent honesty and raw emotions that had broken through the most guarded corners of his mind while he ran alongside an orphan in an enchanted forest.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Vesper assured himself as he sat up to catch the length of hair hanging across the princess’s shoulder.

  She touched his hand, her features rearranging themselves to an expression of relief. “Yes, you can feel me. I’m real . . . I’m not a dream. I’m here.”

  He winced. “The illusion of tangible things.” He lifted the strands of silver and let them fall in a lustrous cascade. “A braid of hair, a vial of tears, a snippet of song. And words on a page. But ink blurs and paper frays. Vials break. Hair thins and brittles. Songs fade once the final note rings. The only thing that lasts is trust and understanding, speaking without words spoken.” Holding her gaze, he felt nothing between them other than physical attraction. He attempted to tap into her mind with silent thoughts; but she didn’t answer, for she couldn’t hear. “Your songbird voice is to be just that. A song without words. No more, no less.”

  “I’ve learned to speak over the years. All for you. Don’t you see?”

  “Oh, I see. But eyes can lie. The heart doesn’t.”

  Their spectators gasped. The princess gawked in stunned disbelief as clear tears streamed her face.

  Vesper caught one on his fingertip and held it to a strand of light. “Clear tears . . . that’s wrong as well.”

  Baffled and bemused, he nudged his betrothed aside so he could walk out of the shrine. He ignored the audience’s murmurs and the princess’s sobs. He didn’t turn back to comfort her. That brutality—once housed within a winged demon-steed—occupied him again, and only one girl had ever managed to gentle it.

  Madame Dyadia arrived at the arboretum’s iron doorway just as he was stepping out of the balmy warmth and into the frigid, blustering wind. He said nothing to her, simply led the way. A small procession followed, growing to a confused and murmuring crowd. By the time they reached the door, his queenly mother was already there, crying inky tears of happiness upon her son’s miraculous reclamation of health.

  Everyone within the obsidian castle was in a tizzy—from servants and royal family members to the military personnel and guests who’d been honored enough to receive invitations to the wedding and coronation. Noblemen and commoners alike congregated in the great hall where a luncheon feast awaited, the tables laden with roasted wild boar, fish pies, pears in red wine, plums stewed in rosewater, sturgeon coated with powdered ginger, and jellies and creams flavored with dried fig and fennel seeds. They drank spiced mead and hot cider while discussing the fairy tale taking place before their very eyes.

  Rumor had spread quickly from chamber to chamber and turret to turret, reaching as far as to the dungeon. A handful of groundsmen had witnessed the miracle within the arboretum. Before the prince even opened his eyes, they had already raced to the castle to give details: the Eldorian princess, while picking wildflowers for her sleeping prince, had been moved to sing—and her song healed Vesper in the shrine just a few feet away, for they heard his victorious cry. Not only had she cured him of his sun-poisoning, but her voice, so pure and captivating, had triggered an explosion of glowing flowers and vines to grow, a surge of life so powerful it paraded through the shrine then plowed down Nerverdark’s outer door to reach into the wintry terrain outside. Even now it could be seen: a luminous pathway of creeping myrtles, clematis, bellflowers, and wisteria. The multicolored petals and ivy led through the Grim and into the badlands, melting all the ice and drifts of snow within a two-league radius of its wake. Everywhere it touched, thorns had surrendered to blossoms that shimmered like dewdrops in the moonlight.

  In the colonized province, villagers left their houses and tromped through ankle-deep puddles barefoot, for the first time in centuries able to walk outside without their furs and boots. They gathered lukewarm water by the bucketful for cooking and bathing. The sun still shied from their world, the skies were yet divided, and night still reigned. But the snow and ice were gone—at least for the moment.

  Regent Griselda and her girls didn’t share in the celebration. Instead, they holed up within their dark and opulent turret chamber to commiserate over the disastrous turn Lustacia’s triumph had taken.

  This was the last place Griselda wished to be. The glossy obsidian walls and floors reminded her too much of Nerezeth’s pitch-black sky, and the white lilies in the long-stemmed vases added to the illusion—like a sprinkling of fragrant stars. Many of the Eldorian attendees found the decor exotic and charming. She, however, shuddered, haunted by the vermin that scuttled freely along the corridors and halls of this castle. The pests hadn’t even courtesy enough to hide beneath furnishings or in corners.

  When Lustacia and her girls first arrived in their chambers, a rash of milky-white mice scampered everywhere: upon the beds, beneath the blankets, covering the wardrobe, tables, and floors. Griselda, along with her three daughters, had clung to one another, convulsing in disgust, as Sir Bartley helped Queen Nova’s chambermaids remove every one, carrying them from the room on satin pillows. That was the way here. Creatures, which in her world would be crushed beneath a heel, pounded with a book, or snapped within a miniature guillotine, were treated as royal subjects.

  Foolish. Griselda rolled the word along her tongue while sitting upon a gray-cushioned chair. She peeled the hennin from her head and the gloves from her hands. “Foolish namby-pamby.” She flung the aspersion at her youngest daughter.

  Lustacia lay on one of the three canopied beds, sniffling and dabbing her face with the handkerchief Sir Bartley had offered while escorting them to their room. She hadn’t yet been able to return it, as Bartley had left on an errand for Griselda.

  The regent wondered how long it might take him to search. She still couldn’t say what had inspired her premonition . . . that there was something in that empty shrine that needed to be found. Something that would give her the upper hand once more. It was almost as if her conscience had driven the suspicion, yet her absence of such a hindrance negated that theory. Perhaps, in all her dealings with potions and spell-chants, some magic had at last rubbed off on her.

  Absently, she patted her head where her antlers hid beneath piles of plaited hair.

  “How could you have been so careless?” She prodded her snuffling daughter to get her mind off the m
utation. “Your magical birdsong voice woke the prince out of his trance. It somehow even brought life to this colorless icy expanse. Yet you manage to ruin it all by weeping in front of him. The worst thing you could’ve done! Until we can find an elixir or potion that will conjure tears of fire to leave scorched skin in their wake, you’ve no business ever weeping. Did you forget his royal family was given a vial of Lyra’s sooty tears by Kiran himself?”

  Wrathalyne and Avaricette, seated on the bed beside their sister, smoothed her pale, shimmery hair. Their elaborate trappings tangled with Lustacia’s wedding gown—a prismatic pool of organza, lace, glittering beads, and velvety ruffles that whispered and rustled with each minute movement.

  “Mums, you’re being heartless.” Wrathalyne twirled a silver lock around her fingertip, then dropped it alongside the other strands splayed upon Lustacia’s pillow. “She just got wilted! Have some compassiveness.”

  Avaricette groaned, her shoulders slumping. “So close, Wrath. You almost managed an astute observation. It’s forgiveness. Or compassion. Choose one or the other. And wilted is what a flower does when it’s out in the sun too long. Jilted is what the prince did . . . kissed her senseless then left her flushed and titillated with nary a by-your-leave. Will you ever read your lexicon, you dullard?”

  “Oh, shush your mouth!” Wrathalyne retorted. “Every time you open it, your rotten teeth turn the air green with stink. Are you sure an ogre didn’t crawl in there and die?’

  “Would you both just stop your prattling!” Lustacia sat up and tossed the hanky in the air like a white flag of surrender. “None of you . . .” She placed a hand over her lips to contain a sob. “Can even imagine what I’m feeling.”

  Griselda stood and straightened her ornate gown of red and gold. The bejeweled train dragged the dark floor, making tiny clacking sounds as she strode toward the cheval mirror in the adjoining antechamber. Leaving the door ajar, she watched her girls in the reflection—each so wrapped within their own obliquities they hadn’t yet noticed she’d left. She didn’t mind such indifference with the older two, expected it, in fact. She’d spent all that time in isolation teaching Lustacia the social graces, while leaving her other two daughters to their own childish, awkward ways. It was unlikely either would ever capture a man’s attention at this point. But that hardly mattered. Everything was riding on her youngest. It was time Lustacia took her role seriously, time she understood what was at stake.

  Griselda began to unravel the black braids piled high upon her head, watching the girls behind her own reflection.

  Wrathalyne leapt up, glaring at Lustacia. “Of course we can imagine your feelings, Princess Prim. We saw His Highness when he led that crowd in from the shrine. Those eyes, that skin . . . those lips . . . those muscles. You were mad to let him go. If I’d had that hard, royal body pressed to mine, I’d have clung on like a carbuncle to a longship!”

  “A carbuncle?” Avaricette snarled. “It’s barnacle, you nit!” Standing on the bed, she pummeled her sister in the face with a pillow.

  “How dare you!” Wrathalyne’s yelp was muffled by the padding crushed into her mouth. Growling, she plowed into her sister. They fell atop the mattress in a riotous melee of knobby elbows, spiky fingernails, and auburn curls.

  “Ugh!” Lustacia rolled off the other side, tugging at her gown’s train to free it from their wrestling limbs. Lips pursed, she pulled the bag containing her half-light goblins out from under her bed and opened the flap. Five shadowy forms siphoned into midair and hovered around her. She gestured to her sisters, whose antics had wrinkled the satiny bedspread. “I should like my linens refreshed, if you would please.”

  Spinning with glee, the formless silhouettes flapped the four corners of the bedspread, pulled each one up and around, then wrapped the struggling, whimpering girls within it before dragging it with a thud to the floor. Lustacia simpered at her sisters’ resulting grumbles.

  “Lustacia,” Griselda called to her youngest, having tied a cream-colored scarf around her head. “We’re not done speaking.”

  Her daughter’s moonlit complexion—flushed almost purple from crying—caught a flicker of orange light from the fireplace as she crossed the threshold to escape her sisters and their goblin tormentors.

  “Shut the door,” Griselda said, tucking the ends of the scarf beneath her chin. “We need to be alone.”

  Lustacia leaned against the closed door and sighed.

  Griselda aimed a scolding finger her direction. “I’ve had enough of your self-pity. Get cleaned up, find that prince, and marry him.”

  Lustacia gawked for all of a minute before her spirited tongue broke loose. “Certainly! Because it’s that simple to make someone love you. Or perhaps you mean to cook up a love potion I can slosh into his wine. The very one you used on Father, perhaps?”

  Griselda’s hands fisted. The insult was subtle and well-timed. She wished she’d never told her youngest that she’d used such a potion to entrap her husband years earlier. She’d never shared the fact with her other two girls . . . not that she felt guilt. It was rather more inadequacy. It wasn’t something she liked to think about . . . that the only way she’d ever been able to win a man’s loyalty was through threats, payment, or elixirs.

  “Well, did you bring a potion to help?”

  “I actually intended to,” Griselda answered. “But the prince’s impending death put a crimp in things. I had only time to gather up our Eldorian colors for the ceremonies.”

  “Ribbons and sigils hardly have magic in them, Mother! Make up a batch of something now, before I have to face the prince again . . .”

  Griselda stifled the urge to correct her daughter. The Eldorian colors had more power than anyone could imagine. But better Lustacia didn’t have such knowledge. It would only add to her angst. “I haven’t ingredients or the book with me.”

  Lustacia threw her hands up in frustration. “Why wouldn’t you bring them? Did you not consider we might need a magical boost if something went awry?”

  “Use your acumen, child. If our room were to be searched, it would cast suspicion to find a grimoire within my keeping. It’s safely tucked within my chamber in Eldoria.”

  “Then how do you propose I win his heart, considering you yourself have never had success in such endeavors?”

  Griselda allowed her grimace to fully emerge this time. “I may not have had success in love, but I have transcended in lust. Lean on that. Use your assets.”

  “What, these?” Lustacia spread out her long, graceful arms. The slender lines of her glittery blush-pink gown showcased a small waist and hips juxtaposed against the tight curve of a youthful belly and the rise of voluptuous breasts—all the more enticing where they swelled above the beaded, lowcut neckline.

  “Those exactly.”

  Lustacia crossed her arms over her chest, her sleeve hems fanning like lacy wings from her wrists. “I want love, Mother. His love. I want him to admire me for the sacrifices I’ve made. To know that I’ve spent five years of my life molding myself into the image of the girl who would make him happy, and to be grateful for it.”

  Griselda clucked her tongue. “You will never have that. For by telling him, you would lose him.”

  “And thus the chasm between us,” Lustacia whimpered. “When I sang him awake and enraptured his people, I thought I had it . . . I did. I cured him, so he would be forever grateful and ravish me with poetry and passionate embraces. And when those dark eyes opened . . . oh, I could’ve fallen into them forever. I know I didn’t imagine that spark of desire.” She pressed a hand to her quivering chin. “But when he kissed me, something . . . changed. He looked me up and down like I was a stranger.” She shook her head, her silvery locks shimmering in the firelight. “After all the responses I turned out for every missive he wrote . . . answering them just as a princess would. Yet he tells me I’m not the one who saved him, and leaves. Just like that! Humiliating me in front of his subjects and mine. And you, my doting mother—” Lustacia
caught herself and rephrased. “My doting aunt, can’t even offer consolation. It’s always ‘Get back up, dust off. Never show any emotions.’”

  “Never show your hand,” Griselda corrected, looking in the mirror and smoothing the scarf around the offensive protrusions above her temples.

  “Quite literally, in your case.” Lustacia glared accusingly at her mother’s fingers—the silvery blue even more prominent against the creamy head-covering.

  Griselda’s dark eyebrows rose, wondering how long it would take her daughter to notice the lumps in the fabric . . . to question them.

  Lustacia stepped up to share the mirror, intent only on herself. “Am I ugly, then?”

  Griselda barked a laugh. “You look like one of them. Ghastly, nondescript. A vanilla cookie sprinkled with sparkly blue sugar. But gloom-dwellers are what he believes is beautiful. This had nothing to do with your appearance. You yourself said you felt an attraction, that his eyes held a spark of interest. Perhaps you simply need to work on delivering more convincing kisses.”

  Embarrassment deepened Lustacia’s bluish complexion. Along with the tears and inordinately long lashes, a proper Lyra-blush—complete with veins darkening beneath her skin’s translucent surface—was another thing they’d never quite managed.

  “Wrath was right,” Lustacia said. “You truly are heartless.”

  Griselda loosened the knot beneath her chin. “If only I were. If only I’d given away my heart instead of my conscience. Then I wouldn’t be so fearful for all of our lives.”

  Lustacia’s attention perked. “What do you mean, our lives? No one’s even questioned my tears, other than the prince. Everyone else is focused on him, concerned for his addled mind. They’re convinced he hasn’t fully awakened from his death sleep. There’s nothing . . . other than your dirty hands . . . that can cast aspersions on us. Is there?” She asked the final question with a catch in her throat, for Griselda chose that moment to whip off her scarf and unveil the prongs that were now the size of a baby’s hand.