Alarick’s eyes darkened, looked even more haunted despite the obvious pleasure he felt. His fingers curled around Roald’s shoulders turned claw-like in their grip as he tipped his head back, his mouth slack, his eyes unseeing, while panting and grunting under Roald’s weight.
“Close your eyes for me,” Roald hissed, gritting his teeth and feeling more beads of sweat bursting out of his pores. No, he didn’t want to see that uncertainty in Alarick. Not now, not ever. Everything was good. Everything.
Alarick’s glazed eyes fluttered shut, and Roald rewarded him with a deep, salty kiss, their sweat and the remains of their swim mingling in their mouths. There was something deliciously filthy about making a prince obey a subordinate’s order, which turned all the sweeter when Alarick clearly enjoyed being dominated.
Time moved forward. Desires were sated in a rush of wild sensations and breathless cries. Roald’s thrusts quickened, went deeper, drove Alarick’s willing body against the crumpled grass with increasing ferocity. Release finally overtook them, with Alarick not even touching himself, and Roald cried out first, shuddering and emptying himself in his lover. Alarick mingled his voice with Roald’s gasps when he released, coating his stomach with ropes of semen. The flight back to earth was languid, much like the gentle kisses they exchanged, with each young man brushing sweat-pasted hair away from his lover’s fogged eyes. Then came rest—fitful, refreshing. When they awakened, both of them wondered what had just happened, wondered why the sudden unsettling doubts in the midst of lovemaking. They gazed around them, and everything looked perfect as it had always been in that tiny patch of paradise.
The sun’s position in the sky urged them to return to the palace, and they reluctantly rose from their grassy bed and dressed up. An embrace, a kiss, and they were on their way. They led their horses through the trees, Roald in front. He stepped into the open countryside, turned around to look for Alarick, and was suddenly enveloped in darkness. The last glimpse he had of the prince was that of Alarick in the arms of a large man, his face almost fully covered by a rag. The horses whinnied, and the calm was further violated by voices, low and harsh, and footsteps, mixed and hurried.
“Roald,” a voice whispered harshly amid the confusion. “You force my hand in this.”
Roald barely had time to recognize his father’s voice before something struck him from behind, painfully wrenching the world and his consciousness away.
* * *
Sounds of running feet and hurried voices filled the air outside Ulrike’s cottage.
“Why are there so many people in this garden?” she demanded, outraged, as she pressed her face against the glass of her bedroom window. Below her, servants and nobles broke through the trees, hurrying along down the romantic lanes, in pairs, in small groups, their voices raised in consternation.
“How dare they!” Ulrike muttered, and she pounded against her window, stopping only when she thought she heard the glass crack. “This part of the garden is only meant for the royal family! Out! Get out!”
No one heard her, however, and the cottage was ignored by everyone who appeared. Only servants were allowed inside ordinarily, but then again, no one, even when running in fear for their own lives, wanted to find safety in a madwoman’s little retreat. At any rate, they’d be discovered, for the cottage would surely be one of the first places to be searched by those who hunted them.
It had been going on for a while now, and while Ulrike at first walked over to the door and pressed her ear against it, muttering gibberish to herself while listening, she now knew that something was very, very wrong.
“Where’s my looking-glass?” she demanded as she paced around the foyer before going upstairs. “Where is it? I’ve some business with it still.”
She paused every so often, holding her breath and straining to catch that curious stream of sounds outside. Running feet and hurried voices now partly drowned out the distant sounds of weapons clanging. There were also shouts and cries rising from the confusion of voices, as well as several pistol shots ringing out from the direction of the palace.
What were the voices saying? Ulrike couldn’t rightly tell, for she’d more than too many voices to sort through in her head already, and her damned sister refused to shut up.
You’ve already seen what’s in the mirror. Why would you look into it again? The dead princess’s shade chuckled from the cold, dark corner where it stood, barely visible, fading in and out with the shifting light that entered the room from two windows. What, Sister? Did you think that looking into the glass on different days would somehow change the course of our family’s story? Our paths have long been chosen for us. Don’t you remember?
Ulrike shook her head, scowling, as she swept back and forth. Her heavy skirts rustled, barely muffling the soft padding of her hand-sewn slippers. Though caged like a wild beast and mad beyond all help, somehow, at that moment, she’d managed to find what little remained of her former regal self. She paced in her room with her head held high, her shoulders squared back, her hands clenched into fists as her eyes flashed.
“My loom, then,” she hissed, casting a look of cold disdain in her dead sister’s direction. “I can tell a far better story than that mirror. I’ve control of my own destiny.”
Tsk. You really are mad. For all the trouble you’ve put into weaving that tapestry of yours, it certainly hasn’t helped you much in your present state. Control your own destiny, indeed! How does your story end, anyway? I doubt if you’ve even reached the midpoint yet.
“How dare you challenge me, you treacherous bitch! Feeling a bit smug, now that you’re protected by the grave, are you? You were never this bold before—bold enough, perhaps, but what can one expect from high-minded mongrels like you?”
She burst out laughing, her voice clear and full.
“You coward. You can’t touch me, and you can’t touch my son. He’ll change things around here, you know. He’ll avenge me and his father in ways that no one will ever expect.”
The dead princess smiled back, her stained teeth barely visible in a mouth that was nothing more than a black and red mass. I’ve never doubted that. I look forward to it, in fact. Have a care, Sister. He will avenge, but even you can’t see how, for all your pride and venom.
“We’ll see. That filthy bastard I married will have his day. In fact, I think it’s already here.” Ulrike paused, grinning, as the distant noise of confusion reached her ears. The garden paths had gone silent, with only occasional scurrying feet breaking the calm, and everyone else seemed to have converged onto the open areas beyond the trees. She hurried over to the wardrobe and pulled out a cloak, throwing it around her shoulders before running downstairs like an excited, restless child. The two nurses assigned to her had gone off somewhere, most likely to the palace for something, and Ulrike was free to wander.
She burst through the front door, looking around her in hopes of catching sight of trespassing villains, but they all seemed to have scattered farther into the pleasure garden, and all she had were frantic voices coming from the deepest shadows of the trees.
Ulrike took the path that led her out into the massive lawn beyond the garden, and against one of the trees she hid herself, peering out and watching the amazing scene unfold before her.
“Oh, look,” she murmured, shivering. “They’re preparing for an execution—or two, perhaps, maybe more. How delightful.”
Her sister’s ghost laughed from somewhere in the shadows behind her. It is, isn’t it? I’m glad to see that you never lost your macabre sense of humor. Then again, I suppose it runs in the family.
Ulrike barely heard her. Her tattered mind had long vanished in a swirl of murky memories, odd, familiar sensations, a painful yearning for a child long taken away from her…and rage. Insurmountable, unquenchable rage.
* * *
Farther away, in the depths of the palace—in the ballroom—Lambrecht sat in a haze that was far more than his usual drunken state. It was frightening to those closest to him as th
ey stood before their monarch in a panic. There were only a handful of them left, for everyone else had turned against the king, quickly claiming allegiance to the traitorous ministers and nobles who’d instigated the uprising.
Lambrecht slumped in a chair, a pathetic, wizened wretch, subtly and methodically poisoned till nothing was left of his reason. He might as well be left roaming the pleasure garden or some neglected location like his unfortunate wife, but leaderless, the court simply wouldn’t know how to function.
They’d long been used to being dictated to, what passed for truth to the king being fed to everyone else below him. This was how they should think. That was how they should act. No questions, no challenges, unless one intended to pass the rest of his days in the cold, wet dinginess of the prison cells. Dissent was tantamount to treason, and while a harsh thought, it was rather easy to think in absolutes, in black or white, in yes or no. And if they gave the right answer, they were all rewarded with extravagance and excesses.
Now the court had shaken loose its opulent fetters, and a new generation of possible leaders had emerged, but like an infant just out of its mother’s womb, they all teetered and wobbled, baffled and unsure, flailing and gurgling unintelligible sounds. They knew what they wanted: freedom from their monarch’s cursed bloodline and freedom to think for themselves. But what came next, they knew, was a treacherous step for them, for it required the choosing of a new leader among those who weren’t born into the role. How would it be done? How much blood would be shed among them? How many factions would arise from it?
What a great irony now faced them, having gained their independence.
“What do we do?” the small, huddled group of loyalists asked one another.
Beyond the secured doors, the noise of cries and weapons could be heard. After the initial surprise and shocked apathy, small waves of resistance had begun to ripple through the court. Blood was now being spilled, but no one had yet to determine which side had the advantage.
“We wait?”
“We fight?”
“We give him up?”
They felt more lost than ever. On the lawn outside, the gallows were being erected in a hurry. Frightened subjects, mostly poor, could do nothing but follow orders from the usurpers. Loyalist peasants were rounded up beyond the palace walls, hordes of filthy, ignorant folks who knew no other life but mindless allegiance to their king.
It was fortunate that the rebels chose to show them more mercy compared to nobles and gentry who stood defiant and unwavering in their fealty to their king. Peasants were forced to choose, and the collective response wasn’t surprising. It didn’t take long for the entire countryside to swear loyalty to the rebels, for those farmers, potters, blacksmiths, and butchers were simply too cowed by any show of force and knew of nothing else beyond the dreary limits of their own wretched lives. Loyalist nobles were condemned to die on the gibbet, unless they’d already been hewn down by the sword or silenced by the pistol as they fought for their honor and their lives.
As for the king? Well…
A decision was finally made among Lambrecht’s last circle of supporters, and the hastily erected barricade of furniture was pulled aside. As the ballroom’s great doors swung inward, bringing with it a rush of warm wind that made everyone recoil from what was about to happen, the small group parted with bowed heads, forming a short path from the door to the chair on which Lambrecht slumped—a boneless, brainless mass of useless flesh.
“For our people,” they said in a scattered chorus of trembling voices and a collection of cringing forms.
Leaders of the uprising marched forward, and the ballroom was emptied with surprising ease, for Lambrecht was too far gone to struggle.
* * *
From her chosen hiding place, the mad queen continued to watch the lawn and the growing swarm of humanity that gathered there, smiling, sometimes singing a lullaby, sometimes letting out peals of despairing laughter. She’d have said something about those filthy peasants soiling the grass, but she didn’t care this time, allowing their weather-beaten, cringing forms feed her rage. Her madness had also saved her from the gallows, which was more than what one could say about the king, despite his near-catatonic stupor. Indeed, he was practically a corpse when he was carried up to the platform for beheading.
“Perhaps it was a blessing that he was so far gone,” some people murmured among themselves as they watched in horrified fascination while the executioner raised up the bloody head by its tangled hair to show his audience. “It’s quite likely that he never felt the end when it came.”
“Good riddance.”
The sight of their fallen monarch made them all mute for the next several moments. Shock, perhaps? The stunned realization that they’d just rid themselves of a tyrant? The horrified understanding that they’d just committed a crime against the gods by murdering their representative on earth?
As though time itself had slowed, everyone watched in heavy silence as the king’s body was collected and laid out on a bier, his head resting on his chest. After a group of men bore the body away, the audience waited for a moment in frightened awe before dispersing without another word exchanged among them.
The kingdom had experienced insurrections before, but never one that went so smoothly and so quickly. It was, indeed, rather unnatural in that regard, and this fact only served to rouse the current of fear that now unsettled peasants up and down the countryside.
“What have we done?” they whispered among themselves.
It would be evening before a nervous calm settled upon Paradies, and the long, terrible task of taking away the bodies of executed loyalists for burial continued well into the night. Those foolish enough to seek refuge in the pleasure garden were all hunted down and dragged away, their fates dependent on their accusers’ mercy. Remarkably, none were killed in the pleasure garden, and it wasn’t long before silence fell among the trees. Blood that stained the floors and walls of the palace was quickly washed off, and by midnight, nothing but the muffled sounds of helpless sobbing from different corners could be heard. The prisons, meanwhile, remained a hive of activity.
Chapter Nine
Alarick sank under the shadow of an ancient oak and allowed himself to breathe more easily once he was certain of his safety from that man’s clutches. His clothes were soiled and tattered, his horse taken away. He’d no weapon he could use with which to defend himself. That had been taken away as well. He was injured, having been beaten by a pair of thugs, his ears filled with sneering, mocking whispers of girl and slut, the words coming with every blow. A third man had torn him away from their hold, nearly ripping his arm off his shoulder. A blessing, indeed. That fellow, though armed, stopped the beatings and ordered the others to leave.
“We can’t have some mad bitch’s bastard taking on the throne someday, can we?” the man said in a low, dead voice, as the others ran off, laughing.
“Who are you?” Alarick asked, his voice a thin, hollow counterpoint to his hired assassin’s. He ached all over, his upper-lip felt swollen, but at least his nose had stopped bleeding, if only for now. He could barely breathe, let alone speak one word, without his insides twisting in pain. It was simply a miracle that he could stumble to his feet and stay relatively upright.
The man paused, glancing behind him and in the direction that the other two thugs took. Once ensured of their privacy, his hold slackened as he bent closer to the dizzy prince.
“I won’t kill you, Your Highness,” he whispered, “but I’m charged with the task. Run to the forest and hide there. No one will dare search for you past the first line of trees, and I’ll say that I buried your body in their shadows.”
“The cursed forest? You’re sparing my life by forcing me to hide there?” If he didn’t hurt so much, Alarick would have laughed at the bizarre irony despite the fact that he’d never bought into all those fireside tales.
“I don’t believe in superstitious nonsense, but most do, and hiding in a forest they fear is the best
way to keep safe,” the man replied without hesitation, turning his head if only to spit. “What would you rather have, Your Highness? Would you prefer to stay out here and die by someone else’s hands? You’ve no protectors anywhere, no weapons. Believe me, you’ve no friends left in court—at least those who’ll continue to voice support for your family.”
“Why are you doing this? Where’s Roald? What have you done to him?” Alarick gasped once he could find his voice as he staggered beside the man, his mind barely wrapping itself around the thought of being disposed in a forest that was known to devour men foolish enough to wander in or to spit them out, stark raving mad, several days later.
“Run now,” the man hissed once they reached the forest’s clearing. “Run. Don’t look back. Don’t ask questions. Just run.”
“No, wait!”
The man grunted, pushing Alarick toward the waiting shadows. He planted both feet apart while drawing a knife from his belt and holding it up. Alarick watched him in speechless shock and horror, and somehow, a little thought, uncalled-for, crossed his mind in one mad moment. He didn’t know where it came from, but he somehow knew that it was true and that he needed to say it.
“You were the one who killed my aunt before lighting the pyre,” Alarick said, pressing a trembling hand against his aching stomach.
It was mercy on his part, Love. For that, I’ll forever be grateful.
“Run, Your Highness. I won’t tell you again,” the man replied, this time lowering his knife to aim at Alarick’s throat.
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