by Jaide Fox
She needed her freedom. She would come back.
As the hours ticked by in an agony of waiting, Morpheus told himself over and over again that she would come back. When she did not, anger began to grow inside of him. He tamped it with an effort, thinking. When it occurred to him that she might have been injured and that was why she had not come back, he berated himself for a fool.
Imagining her broken and bleeding, he tore from his castle, mounted his night-mare and searched far and wide for her. There was no sign of either Adriana or her mare, however, and finally, weary, angry, but still worried sick, he went to the castle of Daegon. There he saw the little winged mare contentedly grazing in the pasture with Daegon’s horses.
Relief suffered a quick death. Fury washed through him. He would take the castle apart stone by stone if he had to to find her and when he had found her she would rue the day she had broken his trust! He would take her back to his castle in chains! He would confine her to her chamber and use her lovely body until she was old and gray and no man would look at her and then he would cast her out!
Seething, he glared down at the peacefully sleeping castle, as if he could penetrate the walls even from so far away and watch her slumbering in her bed. “To hell with her!” he growled finally, digging his heels into his mare’s sides and sending her racing through the night sky homeward.
It was his own castle that he took apart in his rage and pain, first destroying all the gifts that he had so carefully selected for his beauty, Adriana, and when he had ground them to dust like the unwanted, discarded nothings they were, he destroyed the chamber he had filled with beautiful things to comfort her.
His pain and anger knew no bounds. Instead of flagging, it seemed to feed upon itself, growing harder and stronger the more he destroyed. When at last he had expended every ounce of his anger, he felt hollow, empty. As weary as an ancient, bent old man, he climbed the stairs of his castle until he had reached the battlements and crossed to the wall that looked out over Hellsing wood, toward the castle of Daegon many leagues away.
She was gone, he realized finally, and she would never return. Why, he wondered with renewed anguish, could she not have left him in peace? He had been content before. He had not known loneliness or need in so very long that he had grown accustomed to his solitude. Now, because Adriana had brought light and hope and joy into his empty existence, loneliness and need ate at him like birds of carrion.
* * * *
To keep from worrying her sister, Adriana struggled to control her sorrow and keep her misery to herself. It took so much effort to try to behave as if nothing had ever happened to destroy her world that even a faint smile was exhausting, and she spent far more time by herself than with anyone, sometimes strolling along the walkways of the castle garden, sometimes curled up in a chair in the library, reading a book.
When Cerise chided her about it, Adriana merely shrugged. “When Father locked me into the tower, I grew accustomed to having no company but my own. I’m sorry, but truly, I prefer to be alone.”
One dreary day when she went to the library in search of a book, she discovered a copy of the book of legends. Tears filled her eyes at once. Blinking to dispel them, she pushed the book back on the shelf, but even as she began to turn away she thought about what Drago had told her about the legend of Morpheus.
She stared at the book, wondering if she could read the tale without weeping hysterically, but she had to know the ending. She had to know that, in the end, Morpheus was alright, that he was happy in his domain of dreams.
Glancing around to make certain no one had seen her, she snatched the book from the shelf and retreated quickly upstairs to her bed chamber with it. When she had climbed onto the bed, she settled the book on her lap and merely stared at the worn cover for many moments, trying to work up her nerve. Finally, she flipped the book open and searched for the story about Morpheus, Lord of the Night.
* * * *
Cerise was worried about her sister and at her wit’s end to think of anything at all that she could do for Adriana. She had thought it was for the best when she had bullied Adriana to leave her room and rejoin the world, but she could not comfort herself that Adriana was greatly improved and it had been nigh a full month since she had come to them. Sometimes, Adriana would actually smile and behave almost like her old self, but mostly she moved about the castle like a ghost.
Finally, in desperation, she sent word to Bianca, begging their eldest sister to come and help her. To her relief, Bianca came at once. Cerise greeted her sister at the door. “Thank heavens! Adriana is bound to perk up when she sees that you have come! Let us find where she has gone off to hide.”
Arm in arm, they went first to the gardens to look for her. Seeing no sign of the girl, Cerise shook her head. “She has curled up in that stuffy library with a book, mark my words!”
They found, though, that the library was empty, as well.
Cerise looked around the empty room in disgust.
“Perhaps she went riding?” Bianca suggested.
Cerise shook her head. “She has not gone near that poor little mare since she came to us. It reminds her of him and she can’t bear to look at it. Come. She has gone to hide in her room. I am sure of it.”
A worried frown creased Cerise’s brow, however, when she had rapped at the wooden panel and gotten no response. Turning the knob, she pushed the door open anyway. To her relief, she saw that Adriana was curled up on top of her bed, reading—just as she had suspected—which explained why she hadn’t responded to the knock. “Look who has come to see you and help me to cheer you up!” she exclaimed, dragging Bianca into the room with her.
Adriana looked up at them, but blindly. Her face was white as death.
“Adriana! What is it?” Bianca demanded fearfully. “Are you ill?”
“I made it happen,” Adriana said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “I made it happen.”
Cerise frowned, snatching the book from her sister. “You made what happen?”
“Look! Read for yourself. It says it right there in the book! Morpheus fell in love with the mortal woman and when she left him he was inconsolable. To escape his pain, he entered the dream world—never to roam the world of light again.”
Cerise and Bianca struggled briefly over the book and finally shared it, reading the ending of the legend of Morpheus.
“You don’t know that it is you!” Cerise said sharply.
Tears were streaming down Adriana’s cheeks. “The winged horse! He gave his love a winged horse and she left him! He did love me! And he will never forgive me now!” Dashing the tears from her face, she leapt from the bed. “I have to go to him, before it’s too late!”
Cerise and Bianca both grabbed her. “You can’t!”
“I have to! Don’t you see! I thought that I could prevent the legend from coming true by leaving. Instead, I made it happen. I have to go back, now, before it’s too late!”
Her older sisters exchanged a look, knowing that it was probably already too late.
Bianca wrapped an arm around her little sister’s waist. “You must see that we can not let you go like this. You are distraught. Stay. We will send someone to him with a token of love from you and everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
“I don’t want to send a token!” Adriana said angrily, stamping her foot. “I need to see for myself that he is all right.”
“You will feel excessively silly if you dash back to him and discover that you have gotten everything wrong again,” Cerise said.
Bianca gave her a chiding look, but she saw that as unkind as the remark was it had given Adriana pause. “A few more hours can certainly make no difference,” she added.
“We will send Drago. He will tell you all that you need to know.”
* * * *
Once Drago had been summoned, the sisters went down to the main hall to await his return. He would use his magic to hasten his journey, painful that it might be to him. Too anxious to rem
ain still, Adriana paced back and forth across the room until Cerise at last lost patience and swore that she would wear a hole in the carpet if she did not cease. Chastened, Adriana moved to a chair and sat, but she only perched for a few moments and then she was up and pacing again.
At long last, when Adriana thought she could bear the suspense no more, Drago returned. His face was grim and Adriana’s heart failed her. Weakly, she wilted into the seat she had only just leapt up from. “Tell me! For pity’s sake do not make me wait to hear it.”
Drago glanced at her sisters and finally spoke. “I did not go in. He has placed some sort of spell over his domain and I was prevented from entering the castle, but brambles grow everywhere, as if the place has been abandoned a hundred years.”
Despair settled over Adriana like a cloud. She clutched her chest where her heart throbbed painfully. “I must go to him.”
Drago’s gaze was sympathetic. “I fear it is too late.”
She sprang to her feet. “I must go!”
Bianca and Cerise tried to reason with her but she shut them out, covering her ears with her hands. “I will go! If you try to stop me I will never, ever forgive you as long as I live.”
Bowing to the inevitable, they asked Drago to go with her.
The little mare was not pleased to have two riders, but Bianca and Cerise had been fearful that Adriana was too upset to ride alone, that she would fall from the mare to her death and they insisted. Regardless of the weight of the additional rider, the mare seemed to have little difficulty and within moments they were soaring above the treetops.
Impatience ate at Adriana, despite the fact that the mare flew at such speed that the wind whipped around her, tearing the pins from her long hair so that it fluttered behind her like a bright banner. At last the spires of Morpheus’ castle came into view and Adriana strained forward, as if by doing so she could make the mare reach it faster.
Morpheus’ night-mare trotted up to them when they alighted at last in the pasture. “Poor beast,” Adriana murmured, stroking the horse’s muzzle, but her heart failed her, for she knew if the mare was here that Morpheus was also.
Turning away from the mare, she moved quickly up the long walk that led to the castle doors. She had already reached them before she remembered what Drago had said about the spell. When she looked back, she saw that Drago stood where she had left him.
A flicker of hope arose. If the spell had not kept her out, she thought, surely it must mean that Morpheus had not come to hate her for her perfidy. Thrusting the doors open, she paused on the threshold. Only darkness greeted her. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness of the interior, her heart sank and fear seized her.
The main hall was a shambles. Tapestries had been torn from the walls, the furniture destroyed. It looked as if a great battle had been fought within the walls of the castle. Gathering her skirts, Adriana moved quickly inside. “Morpheus!” she cried out.
Nothing answered her but the mournful groan of the wind as it whistled through the door she had left standing wide.
“Too late! I am too late!” she cried out in despair.
She could not accept that. Crossing the main hall, she rushed up the stairs, nearly stumbling and falling in her haste and distress, calling to Morpheus again and again. He did not answer and she raced about the upper floor, searching for him. Each room lay empty—as empty as her heart had begun to feel, and still she searched, climbing at last onto the battlements.
Defeat settled over her when she found him not. Finally, weary with heartache, she trudged down the stairs once more. She paused when she had reached the room that had been her bed chamber. She had not searched it. She had not been able to bring herself to go inside, to face the memories that dwelt there.
Finally, she reached for the knob and turned it, pushing the door wide.
He lay upon her bed as if he waited for her, still as death.
“He sleeps,” she murmured in anguish, unable at first even to command her feet to move, she crossed the room finally, stopping beside the bed to stare down at his still face. “Please,” she begged. “Don’t leave me, Morpheus. I love you so much. I’m so sorry I left you.”
Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she lifted a hand and stroked his cheek. “Warm,” she whispered brokenly. “And yet gone so far away.”
Climbing onto the bed, she curled beside him, leaning down to press her lips to his. “Forgive me, Morpheus. Come back to me,” she whispered hopelessly as she lifted her lips at last from his unresponsive ones.
His lips parted. A sigh sawed from his chest.
A sob escaped her and she buried her face against his chest, weeping for all that she had lost, all that would never be. She was so caught up in her misery that she barely noticed the first light touch upon her hair. A hand stroked soothingly over her head.
She pulled away, looking down at Morpheus. To her joy she saw that he was looking back at her. His arms came around her, pulling her tightly against his chest. “Adriana, my love. You came back to me.”
“Always, my love,” she sobbed, her heart near to bursting.
Nudging her chin up, he kissed her deeply, with desperation, with all the love he felt for her in his heart.
The End
Here’s a special sneak peek at HEART OF DARKNESS, a full length paranormal/fantasy romance coming in January 2013:
Chapter Three
A slight tug of her finger was enough to jolt Isabeau from her hazy, drug induced slumber. When seconds later, that was combined with a bolt of power from the ring snapping torturous shards of pain along the nerve endings of her arm, she instinctively flung herself backwards and away from the threat, whatever it was, before her eyes had even opened fully.
When her torso hit the bed head, Isabeau grunted as the connection felt almost as though she had jarred every organ in her damned body. She grimaced as her elbow started to tingle and ache as she had inadvertently knocked the so-called funny bone on one of the wooden carvings that decorated the piece of furniture and now, thoroughly aggrieved she turned to stare at whatever was threatening her.
Shocked to see it was a man, who was glaring angrily back at her, Isabeau licked her lips in confusion, aware that whilst she knew she was in danger because the ring had told her so, she wasn’t entirely sure why.
Blearily, she tried to remember which finger had been tugged and quickly realized that it had been her ring finger.
Did he want to steal it from her?
Was that the reason for his being here?
She studied his dirty and greasy appearance with distaste and wondered if he was one of Wolfe’s men. He had to be, for how else would he have managed to gain entrance here?
Suddenly, her thoughts came to a halt as the intruder jumped forward and landed on the bed before her. His hand reached out for her right arm and he yanked her forward and away from the wooden bed head.
She screamed and hoped to the Goddess that someone would hear and come and help her, but was quickly hushed with a fist to the face. When her jaw snapped together from the force of his punch, her teeth felt almost as though they wobbled in her mouth.
The force of the blow had her head feeling as though it had parted from her neck, as it seemed to roll against her shoulders to an absolutely impossible angle. The momentum of the move had her pistoning partially backwards, but the man’s grip on her had her also moving forwards. The discordant and agitated maneuvers made her feel like a rag doll that was being tugged apart by bickering sisters who refused to share.
The trespasser pushed her down against the mattress, ignoring her kicking legs, and pressed his forearm against her throat. It was enough to stun her into silence.
His hand wrenched at her ring finger and she let out a whining cry as the joint popped. Again, the man attempted to tug at the ring and he started to swear as the precious metal stayed glued to her skin.
Isabeau felt sure that he would realize the ring was meant to stay upon her finger and leave before h
e could be caught in the act of trying to steal from her. But there was an air of desperation about him that made her feel ten times worse about the situation. Desperate men were far more dangerous than their calmer, saner counterparts.
And she was right to feel concerned, as moments later, she felt the tip of a dagger scrape against her skin. Isabeau whimpered but forced herself to quiet down. Although she realized that he wanted her to not make one jot of sound, she couldn’t stop herself from asking him, “What do you want?”
With the pressure on her throat, the words were distorted, but understandable.
He grunted and proceeded to scowl down at her with rheumy and bloodshot eyes. Obviously he hadn’t expected her to talk to him and she watched and cringed as his fingers worked at the ring that sat regally upon her hand. The tip of the knife was now being used as a lever. Isabeau’s cries rang out as he attempted to lift the metal from her flesh with the dagger and then came the restless tugs.