He’d test her responsiveness first by wiping her tears away with his thumb. Then, when she edged her face further into his hand, he’d kiss away the tears on her opposite cheek. Clare’s gasp and uplifted breasts would encourage him to slide his lips to her exposed neck. The simplest of his actions would bring him substantial rewards. His praise of her bravery would quickly turn to amorous worship. Gauging by their substantial mutual moans of delight, Clare reciprocated his desire, perhaps by placing her hand high on his thigh as he nibbled on the delicate skin behind her ear.
Viper held her breath tight in her lungs and watched them through the bedroom mirror. Then, her immortal heart did something unexpected.
Her heartbeat quickened and her breath matched its pace to theirs. Living for thousands of years among humans, Viper wasn’t unaccustomed to their sexual habits. She had impassively witnessed Elizabeth and Robert explore each other’s bodies several times. She couldn’t explain why coming upon Clare and Dhillon in such an intimate situation provoked such embarrassment and curiosity.
Viper felt the warmth of passion spread through her body as she spied on the youths’ foreplay in the shower. The immortal’s body refused to let her be a disconnected observer. Each movement of the lovers imprinted on her mind, as if she longed for someone to show her the same tenderness.
Dhillon and Clare embraced under the shower head. Water sluiced away the trauma of the day and any regrets they might have about their hurried coupling. Their actions displayed the eager enthusiasm of new lovers perverted by the awkwardness of haste.
Clare clung to him like the soaked shirt he still wore. She pulled him closer. The action made his nose poke her in the eye. Viper blushed at their affectionate giggle, spontaneous and beautiful. The youths pressed their foreheads together and eased into an open mouthed kiss. Their tongues made the apologies their bodies didn’t need to make. Dhillon cupped Clare’s breast, the squeeze of his palm as firm as his kisses upon her body.
Viper tiptoed, still unseen, as close as she dared to experience the surging sensuality inside. Viper felt every stroke of Dhillon’s hand on Clare as if it were on her own body. When Clare ran her nails up Dhillon’s back and into his hair, Viper wanted the same sensation on her own skin. Clare reached beneath Dhillon’s shirt. He quickly guided it lower. Her hand cusped the modest curve of his buttock before she grasped his penis.
Clare’s gasp of pleasure when Dhillon entered her broke Viper’s spell. She tried to steady her thoughts and calm her emotions. Viper pressed her hand on a newly formed glyph-scar where the stone had penetrated her chest. Her world spun with the conflicting sensations of shame and of need that arose within her. The Mort Lake Glass in her body had transposed her.
Viper felt a longing inside that wouldn’t be satisfied by feeding alone, and an ache that wouldn’t be answered by being alone.
The Daoine Tor caught her reflection. Her skin glimmered with a rich purple that she’d never seen before. The glyph on her chest shone crimson. Arousal inflamed the dusky ridges on her body like living flames.
Confused, and suddenly humiliated, she squeezed her eyes shut. The image of Clare and Dhillon making love wouldn’t leave her mind, nor would the pull of the new cravings within her. Viper stumbled as she made for the door. She knocked what clothes lay on the bed to the floor. The immortal glamoured herself and glanced to the bathroom door. Neither of the young humans had heard her blunder. When Viper gathered the clothes, her fingertips grazed an object on the carpet.
She picked up a flat black stone on a silver chain. Viper recognized the necklace. The pendant was the item Dhillon clutched under his shirt so often.
Something about the costume jewelry nagged her like a word just out of reach. Viper felt like she shouldn’t trust Dhillon, although he’d done nothing to deserve her mistrust. He was, at best, someone who could help her transition to the new world. At worst, he was a bumbling hindrance.
The lights flickered and blacked out momentarily. Viper cast her eyes about, anticipating a new threat. She tossed the pendant back on the crumpled clothes, intending to ask Dhillon about it at a future date. It would not matter if Dhillon was a false lover or true protector if Viper, Owain, and the others weren’t safe underground. Viper hastened to the command centre, eager to claim her role as leader of this, her team, for the first time.
28: Elizabeth’s Tree
August Solstice, 1584.
The Forest, Hampton Court Palace.
Two kestrels burst from the burgeoning forest canopy around Hampton Court Palace, the female noticeably larger than the male. With pale brown, spotted plumage, they soared in the clear sky high above the adjacent clearing with eyes sharply watching for voles in the long grasses. Able to identify vole urine in the sunlight, the birds of prey stalked the entrance to a subterranean burrow not far from the tree line from high in the air. The vole scurried out of its burrow, unaware of the danger overhead. The male kestrel made a short steep dive towards its small, black prey.
Before the bird could snatch its unsuspecting victim, a pure, white destrier stampeded from between trees. The kestrel swerved, finding the upstream wind to take it to safety. A second horse, a dappled grey courser, followed at a distance after the first, both racing to the giant oak that once marked the limit of Princess Elizabeth’s boundary at Hampton Palace.
Viper watched Elizabeth gallop ahead of Robert from the upper branches of Elizabeth’s tree. The immortal had abandoned her Court gown in preference for a red linen kirtle with a thigh-high slit up the front, over which she wore a hip-length leather jerkin with full sleeves. Studs etched with Celtic triskeles decorated the seams. Viper braced her riding boot against the tree trunk, her body tense.
Today, she would enact her revised plan for the mortal queen.
First to arrive, Elizabeth rounded her horse beneath Viper with a hearty, “Huzzah!” She patted her destrier’s neck with ornate, calf-skin riding gloves. Her clothes, by comparison, were uncharacteristically plain. In the warmer than usual summer morning, she had abandoned her riding coat, wearing only a structured, white bodice embroidered with gold and green ivy to accompany her pale, silk underdress. Her brocade black and brown skirt lacked ornamentation.
Elizabeth’s horse fidgeted, as though sensing Viper’s angst. An expert horsewoman, Elizabeth clamped her leg to the upright horn of the side saddle to steady herself. With coaxing words, she brought the animal to heel before Robert Dudley reined in alongside her.
“Your Majesty, queen of my too-strained heart,” he scolded gently, “you still ride too a-spirited! The horse will throw you.”
“Ease your misgivings, my Eyes,” Elizabeth said, glancing at Viper. “The beast was affrighted by a snake. Be not alarmed. ’Tis nothing I cannot control.”
Viper knew the full rise and fall of the woman’s chest had less to do with Elizabeth’s riding than it did with her anticipation of what was to come. The immortal gripped the branches, worried that Elizabeth would back out of their latest accord.
Robert threw his leg over his horse and dismounted. “Everything in your kingdom is under your command, Bess.” He ran his hands up Elizabeth’s torso to help from her horse without straining himself. Despite his fifty some odd years of age, he had kept himself fit, and lived longer than most Englishmen.
She made her nose graze his as she slid down the front of his body. “Everything Robert? Including you?”
They breathed as one.
Viper saw the love that kept them young. They were, at that moment, unhindered by the passage of time. The decades that wrinkled their faces and softened their muscles melted away.
“For all time, my queen.”
“Really?” Elizabeth put her hand on his arm, preventing him from turning away from her. “Is that why you married Lady Lettice Knolls without my consent?” she asked with a coy, firm smile.
Robert cleared his throat, face flushed at Elizabeth’s stinging barb. “If I sought your consent, Elizabeth, you would not give it me. Yo
u promised yourself to your kingdom and swore not to take a husband.” He moved away and looped the reins over the horses’ necks before he set them to pasture. When he faced his queen, Robert’s eyes aged with weariness. “What else could I do? Of your beauty, I would sing from now until the end of time. You are the Faerie Queen, but I am only a man.” He plopped himself onto the ground, unable to engage in their tired rhetoric.
Viper sniggered above the ill-fated lovers. In proclaiming herself the Virgin Queen, mistress to no man, Elizabeth had marred her own future. She would never take Robert as a husband, thus, Elizabeth would forever be alone on her throne.
Elizabeth wore her insecurity bravely. She lay on the ground next to Robert and placed her head in his lap.
“Bess,” he scolded softly, “you will green your skirts.”
“Let the Court wag their chins.” Elizabeth took his hand and placed it on the sheer partlet, on top of her upper breast, above her corset. “Why should I be troubled if they are loose-lipped about us, my sweet Robin? I hath spent greater than half my life on the throne with my cuckolds in tow.” She kissed away his protests. He opened his hand under hers, pressing the heat of his palm against her.
Elizabeth met Viper’s eyes in the leaves above. The Daoine Tor nodded, unwilling to let the romance between two mortals stand in the way of her objective. Elizabeth’s tears, like rain on white rose petals, glistened on her whitened cheek.
“How now, turtle dove? Surely you did not have me join you this morning in secret for melancholy.”
“Your heart is my heart, Robert. Your eyes are my eyes. I hath brought you here to give unto you a gift long deserved. I am afeared that ’tis one you shall ne’er remember.”
“Bess, you speak in riddles.” His questioning brow made her tears spill without reservation. Viper landed behind him, so quietly that he didn’t hear her above his own thoughts. Before Elizabeth could answer, Viper cast a sleeping enchantment upon him.
“Dry your womanly brine, Elizabeth,” Viper chastised. “He is not dead. When we are prepared, we shall wake him, and when we hath finished, he shall remember this moment as if in a dream. He will hath made love to the Faerie Queen in her treetop fortress. You could wish upon him no sweeter memory.”
Elizabeth’s sad sigh offered little argument in the face of Viper’s prose. She rose to her feet and held out the Parhelion. The unrest in her eyes flickered in its glow.
“If your elldyr magic should fail…” The uncomfortable memory of their previous dalliance with the Parhelion hung between them.
“’Twill not fail me this time.” Viper began burning the same glyphs in the ground around Elizabeth as she had in the chapel when they first used the amulet. Robert lay nearby, outside the magical ring. “The Parhelion will take up your aeir. This time,” she said, setting Elizabeth within the circle, “I shall send my elldyr creft into it as well.”
The tantalizing draw of Elizabeth’s aeir made doubt surge in Viper. She pushed herself to carry on. Viper continued, the lie on her face calm and steady. “In the years I lived with the Sisters, I hath learned how I did err afore. I spake words of creation, a spell which opens a door upon a new life, not to a new place as I had thought. At that time, your body was preparing for a magical childbirth. Without a child influenced by Daoine Tor magic in your womb, the enchantment failed. With my elldyr creft and your aeir together, we hath the power to create a Foundling.” Viper hoped she sounded confident.
She had seen the resentment now present in Elizabeth’s face before, during the many discussions about her marital status with her Privy Council early in Reign. Viper was afraid her friend would change her mind.
The Parhelion rested in Elizabeth’s palms. Viper cupped her hands underneath Elizabeth’s without touching her skin. The heat of the amulet felt like raw sunshine to Viper. With a compelling wish for a Foundling of her own, the immoral would not move.
“I do not know whether or not I shall find my home,” she pressed Elizabeth further. “I do know that after your life hath ended, I shall be alone. I hath waited a year for you to commit to this day, Elizabeth, when the solstice powers of Earth and the V’Braed are paralleled. The Sisters hath said the magic will not be so aligned for some four hundred years. If you deny me, you will be long dead afore I may come upon this opportunity, if ever it comes again.”
Elizabeth glanced in the direction of the palace. “’Twill not be long afore the courtiers will arise and come in search of Robert and I,” she said resignedly. Elizabeth had held a grand ball the night before, filling the hall and her courtiers with liberal quantities of wine and spirits. Everyone except Elizabeth and Robert drank heartily. The courtiers had remained in their beds as she and Robert met discretely for their pre-arranged morning rendezvous. “Cast your magic that we will finish afore the Court comes a-searching for me.”
Viper repeated the incantation she spoke at Hatfield. A clover green circle linked the glyphs, fed by Elizabeth’s aeir. The Parhelion rose above them, taking with it Elizabeth’s energy. Elizabeth shifted her position slightly and Viper thought the humaine would run away in panic.
Elizabeth stopped squirming when she saw Viper’s arm runes shine startling white, not red as they had during this spell last time. The glyphs projected from the immortal’s body, floating on a purple elldyr river around the amulet.
Elldyr and aeir spun around the Parhelion in opposite directions until they melded into one silvery-gold energy. Viper grasped Elizabeth’s hands. She realized that she had never touched her friend before today. The thought both excited and saddened her.
“Elizabeth, I…” Viper started.
The Parhelion unleashed its magic upon them both, incapacitating them in a blinding flash.
Viper opened her eyes upon a dull, quiet world. She heard the cry of the kestrels overhead, faint and uninteresting. She raised a bone-white hand, dying to itch her scalp. A thick wig of wiry humaine hair in tight coils blocked her way. Viper studied her fingers. They were long, delicate and devoid of the hues of her beloved purple.
Viper inhabited Elizabeth’s body. This was not what Viper had expected. Viper-as-Elizabeth kept her shock behind closed lips.
Called the Spirits of Saturn, the ceruse that camouflaged the aging brown spots on Elizabeth’s skin felt anything but light. Even the restrictive corset didn’t make Viper feel as suffocated as did being in Elizabeth’s skin. The Parhelion, glowing a delicate lavender, lay harmless on Viper-as-Elizabeth’s chest. Inwardly, she cursed how her recklessness had influenced her actions, yet again.
“Encroyable!” Elizabeth-as-Viper leapt in the field beyond the circle like a young doe, freed from her aging body. “Your body feels more and vibrant than mine did at twenty years of age. And the sights and sounds around me are so exalted!”
Viper’s experience was the opposite. Elizabeth’s human body had stripped Viper of her otherworldly senses. Viper felt dead.
Elizabeth-as-Viper ran her hands in the grass, then did a somersault. She completed her roll and elldyr fire burst from her hands, accidentally striking the shoulder of her horse. The destrier reared overtop her, threatening her with its powerful forelimbs and hooves. Elizabeth-as-Viper raised her arms with humaine instinct as the animal bore down upon her.
With the expertise of the physical memory within a rider’s body, Viper-as-Elizabeth rushed forwards. She grabbed the reins and tugged the horse away from the body that had been hers, then calmed the animal with soothing tones. Accustomed to the queen’s body, voice and commands, the white horse responded to what he thought was his Mistress.
“Elizabeth,” Viper-as-queen warned the woman in her body, “you must take care! You hath both my body and my magic. If harm should come to either of us when we are thusly switched, so may we be forever locked in these bodies, or worse, face death.”
“You might die in my body.” Elizabeth-as-Viper unclasped her jerkin and clutched the upturned breasts of the body she inhabited. “I could live forever! Oh, that I should keep th
e vitality of this body and be young for as long as the sun doth shine. My ageless soul would live in a house without creaks and cracks in its timbers.” She ran her transfigured hands over Viper’s muscular torso.
“And be eternally accursed, your youth wasted on the shadows.” Viper’s words with Elizabeth’s compelling voice made Elizabeth-as-Viper stop prancing. “You would find no comfort among humaines, for they would either fear you or hate you. If you make yourself known to just one, one in whom you find compassion, instead of loathing, then you would live out her days waiting for your heart to break. With all your magic, nothing you could do, no enchantment you could cast, would prevent the day of reaping that comes for all mortals.” Viper-as-Elizabeth felt an uncomfortable stinging as tears brewed in her eyes.
“Is this why you doth wish to create this Foundling-child? To replace me?” Elizabeth-as-Viper’s downcast face appeared all too human.
Viper-as-Elizabeth pointed at the still sleeping Robert. “Elizabeth, you hath the love of your many courtiers. You volley your favour among them like a sport. I only desire to keep some small part of you with me.”
“If I stay in your body, Robert would not love me, would he?”
“Mayhap he would be unlike other men. Mayhap not. His love for you belongs to the body which stands afore you. Believe you that he would love both woman and monster?”
With the softest touch, Elizabeth-as-Viper crouched on the ground beside Robert’s head and kissed his lips. He did not stir. She withdrew to her knees, her torso as straight as when she commanded from her throne.
“Then I abdicate this body back to you, for I cannot live without Robert’s love.”
Viper-as-Elizabeth smiled brightly, setting her clothes straight. “Place your fingers upon his temples. When you feel his aeir wrap itself around your hands, will him to open his eyes. He shall awaken in a dream turned real.”
Elizabeth-as-Viper’s hands quivered and she choked back a sob. “And when he does, he shall make love to you instead of me?”
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