Body of Ash

by Eli Constant

  Likewise, I cannot feel Kyle. Though that is because I’ve never held his blood within the palm of my power. I need to change that. Maybe if my power touched him in that way, I could reach him on another level. I could feel what he was feeling right now. Our metaphysical connection between necromancer and Beserker was different than my own magic as Blood Queen. I had to find a way to help him through this, not just be on the sidelines as Liam pushed him to control his animal.

  Heavy, bestial breathing comes to life then, too close for comfort. “And that, my Queen, signals our departure.” He grips my body and shoves me gently in front of him. Walking through the tree feels strange, like the way your toes feel wriggling in sand at the beach, except all over your entire body, pulsing through your clothing to rub against your skin like sandpaper... but pleasant sandpaper. Silky sandpaper. The sort you finish a project with and it glides with very little friction across the wood.

  I know that Liam’s behind me, but he’s also lost to me as I filter through the magical barrier towards whatever place awaits. I can focus on nothing save for the feel of my skin as it tingles and sparks.

  Air greets my hand first, as the sands of reality release me into the new space. Once I am fully free, the sensation of no longer being touched is a memory lost against my body. I want it back, the way I want a heavy and comforting blanket after a hard day.

  Liam appears behind me. He does a full body shake, as if he too is still feeling the aftereffects of the barrier. Yet, unlike me, he does not seem to enjoy the sensation.

  I stare at him a little while longer, as he shakes off the experience I’ve found fascinating. Then for the first time, I take in the place we’ve entered.

  The room has cathedral ceilings, fingers of vines reaching towards huge expanses of stained glass skylights. Pale light transformed into a prismatic art show filters into the room. Spinning slowly, I find a rustic fire place burning with blue light and two deep sapphire chairs sat cozily in the mix of firelight and dancing glass. A nook is hidden in the corner of the space, if it can be called a corner since the entire room is made of arcs and angles and the oddest little crannies, and it is a wonderland of ancient-looking books piled up haphazardly. It’s exactly how a true book connoisseur would operate. Leaning towers of devoured books, and those living too long in the to-be-read piles.

  As if my eyes have been avoiding it, they reluctantly move to gaze at the large circular bed with the canopy from which hangs gauzy blue material and more vines that have grown and mingled with the fabric. There is also a small kitchen area that looks like something out of a fairytale. Slices of thick, dark bread sits on a chipped clay platter. Beside that is deeply yellow butter and an open jar of what looks to be marmalade. A bowl of fruit is next to the sink, apples bright red and nearly neon green.

  “What is this?” I finally ask.

  “I have to have somewhere to live, Victoria.” Liam answers without inflection. I am glad, though, that the formality of ‘queen’ has gone for now. “And I needed to be close to you. There weren’t exactly many homes for rent or purchase in your tiny town. Besides, I need to be... incognito.”

  “Around humans?” I move further into the room, towards the bed and the puffy comforter that looks so cozy. It’s been such a long day, and I feel safe in this odd fairy hideaway.

  “No. I can handle the humans.” Liam hesitates, then speaks in a low voice that threads through the room with enough force to hit me in the heart. “I have to remain under the radar so that my king does not find me. I would, as it were, like to stay alive.”

  My legs are concrete, but I force myself to turn around and face him. I know I am slack-jawed, my face giving away what I’m thinking. I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought about all the ways he’s having to change his living simply because he loves me. He’s lost his home. His king. He will lose his life if he’s found. “I’m sorry, Liam.” I swallow hard, yet the lump in my throat doesn’t shift. “I’ve been so mad at you. For leaving, for not telling me everything about Oran. I’ve not let myself think about the sacrifices you’ve made, because if I do...” I’ll stop being mad at you. And if I stop being mad at you, then other feelings will rush in and I can’t have that. I’m a one-man woman. I can’t, no, I won’t love more than one man at a time. God, if I had my choice, I’d love one man for the rest of my life. But that’s not an option. Adam sneaks into my mind. His smile. His eyes.

  You lost a very great love. Liam’s words float through me, gentle and understanding. I want to protest him invading my mind. But, lately, it just doesn’t bother me the way it used to. And besides, I’m the one who’d spoken to him this time.

  “I gave up on love for a long time. Then Kyle came into my life.”

  I saw you first. Liam smirks as he thinks it.

  “And I’ve told you it’s not a choice. Who you love. When you left, it made the choice for me and I don’t regret it.”

  Not even a little? He sobers, walking towards me. Lifting his right hand, he plays with my hair, twirling strands around his pale fingers that are still glowing with a hint of fae light.

  “I’m tired, Liam. Where are you going to sleep?” I don’t even ask if the bed is mine. It’s not like Liam would make his ‘queen’ sleep upright in a chair by the fire.

  “I will make do.” His hand drops from my hair and his face is stoic. “I’m sorry that I keep pushing you, Victoria. I truly am. The heart is... a hard beat to ignore.”

  Moving away from him, each footfall an effort of will, I stand at the side of the bed and strip off my jacket. I fold it and lay it against a small table made of twisted branches and a circular cut of tree. Kicking off my dirty shoes, I wish that I had something else to sleep in. One of my big peeves is getting into a clean, or clean-looking bed, in day clothes that carry the filth of the world on them.

  “Here.” Liam keeps his distance, but reaches out to hand me an expanse of black silk. I lift it with both hands, letting the material fall in a shiny curtain. It’s a long gown with lace cap sleeves and a slit that would make anyone blush. But, otherwise, it’s modest. And looks to be my size. “Before you say anything, it was going to be a Christmas gift. One I decided against obviously.”

  “That was... probably a smart move,” I addressed the nightgown instead of the man, heat slipping into my cheeks. “It’s lovely though, thank you. Erhm,” I look about the room, “where can I change?”

  “Behind that door there,” Liam points behind me, angled to the left of the nightstand. At first, I don’t see the door. It is a near-perfect match to the surrounding wall. The door knob is the only proof it exists. I open it, finding a bathroom that is a distinct contradiction to the room behind me. It’s modern, with white marble veined with gold seeming to cover every surface save for the ceiling which glimmers with its own metallic sheen.

  “This is unexpected.”

  “A man needs a few luxuries,” he smiles slightly and then turns away from me. “I’m going to check on our beastly friend.”

  “You’re leaving?” Unearned fear coils in my stomach. I know I’m safe here, hidden from the world outside.

  “Only for a little while,” his smooth-as-good-coffee voice says quietly. “You needn’t be afraid, either for your wellbeing or my own.”

  I watch him leave, disappearing into that particulate portal. He loves me, yet he’s risking himself to check on the man I’m dating. I don’t know how that makes me feel.

  Chapter Nine

  I CHANGE INTO THE NIGHTGOWN and brush my hair with a comb Liam has perched on his sink. It’s black, with sharp tines, and it yanks at my hair a little. I glance at the large corner bathtub, debating filling it and soaking in hot water. It would be an easy thing to take the nightgown back off, but, no.

  Kyle is roaming about, a dangerous animal, and my... my fairy is out in the dark trying to make sure my boyfriend is okay. There’s so much wrong about those things.

  When I leave the bathroom, I can’t bring myself to go straight
to the bed, though I’m sleepier than I’ve been in a very long time. Instead, I go over to the stacks of books, with their muted colors and pages turning tan with age. I pick up a small dark brown volume, its insides wrinkled like it’s a wizened old man seen too much time in the world. I suspect it’s been exposed to the damp at some point, but the picture of the elder with a long beard and keen eyes is too enamoring to trade for simple, fantasy-void reality.

  Settling into one of the chairs by the fire, I’m soon warm to my bones. The flame heat licks out at my toes like a playful cat. With the warmth comes the drooping of eyes. And the unread volume falls into my lap as my hands go limp. I didn’t even read the title, and the book deserved at least that much. Books always do.

  I sink into pleasantness at first, my head empty of hard thoughts, floating about in a paradise of semi-wakefulness. Then I sink further into that oft-not-restful abyss of subconscious thoughts that needs a door opened to work its way into our awareness.

  Braeden, that bastard brother of mine, is stood next to a pillar of light. A... pillar of light with a stream of waxen gold hair floating about it, carried on magical winds. Oran. I am seeing The Prince of Light, as my mind has constructed him, though I cannot imagine him as anything else in this moment. He is brightness next to Braeden’s oppressive black. The golden calls to me, as fiercely as my half-brother’s obsidian repels me.

  I’m not fully immersed in the dream. If I were, I would be able to move and operate, to affect what is going on around me. I have always been a lucid dreamer, I wonder now if that is due in some part to my gifts.

  Moments pass, Braeden and Oran standing still like two sides of a coin or a promise and a threat forever at odds.

  And then I feel the change in me that signals that I might stand and move and interact. It comes on like a rush of wind, not unlike being passed through by an apparition.

  Part of me wants to rush away from the two men in front of me, but I cannot. There is something here that my brain wants me to process. Some feeling that I’ve not yet come to terms with in reality. As I come closer to the pillar of light, features begin to form. A strong nose with a mild hook on the end. A large forehead giving way to the nearly-white hair. Lavender eyes that hold understanding that no human could.

  The light swirls into a twister. Braeden has reached out and touched it, letting a tiny morsel of the tar in him cling to the pure brightness. “Stop,” I say forcefully, reaching out and shoving my half-brother’s hand down from the prince. “Stop, you’ll ruin him.” I don’t know why I say these particular words. How can one prince ruin another simply with a touch?

  But he has, somehow. The pillar of light is slightly shadowed, a thread of oil tracing through the once-unmarred material of Oran.

  “You want to ruin everything, don’t you?” I ask my brother, who is grinning maliciously. I knew this though; it is no revelation to me. “But... you can’t. Can you? You can only touch the surface. You can only meddle. Who holds your strings, brother?”

  He says nothing in response. I move around the duo of royalty to see what is lurking in the further reaches of this dream. Strings of dark material, undulating like airborne slime, reach from Braeden’s back and towards a figure of obscure fog. Hands weave through the air and I see the movements are mimicked in my brother the puppet.

  My brother the puppet. I think back, to the times he has tried to hurt me. Hurt, but not killed. Because... he can’t kill me. Can he? He’s not allowed to kill me. But who controls Braeden?

  The Dark Court King.

  The thought rushes at me like a python ready to strike. I fall back as the figure of fog, the puppet master, also launches forward. His face comes into full relief. Fiercely handsome, but aged around the edges. A shock of black hair over a face with no brows. A nose that is malformed, twisted to the right until the tip of it nearly grazes his cheek. I can feel evil pushing off of his body in sickening waves. Acid hanging in the air.

  “Little one. Blood Queen. Distant kin of my kin. The Dark Court calls.” He hisses out the last. “The Dark Court wants.” A serpent’s tongue flicks out from between his cracked lips.

  “Well you can’t fucking have,” I spat out, stumbling backwards. “If memory serves, it’s the Light Court’s privilege this time-around.” I could feel a thousand feminists reeling in their graves as I copped to the fact that I was an item to be tossed back and forth between ruling kingdoms.

  The Dark King smiled, his ghostly fog lips curving up in a sinister expression. “We shall see. It has been hundredssssssssssssss of yearssssssssssssss since a blood heir has risennnnnnnnn. It is time for the olde games to decide your fateeeeeeeeeee, little one. Kin of my kin.” His hands reach out for me. Though I do not think his see-through appendages could touch me, I still flinch. And I hate that I flinched. “Do not fear me,” the hissing voice of my... what was he? The father of my half-brother, no relation to me. The lover of my mother, who is dead. “I see the thoughts in your mind. The worry that my son the prince will take you for his own. He cannot. If the Dark Court has you, it will have you in full flesh and full rite. It will have you as the Queen in truth to our black blood.” His hand is hovering over my cheek. One finger extends further and touches my skin.

  I do not think I will feel it, but I do.

  It is like being touched by a bird’s feather, so soft and unassuming. The lightest fluttering, the lightest breeze. Gentleness from an animal.

  Roaring. The animal is roaring.

  But it is not the Dark King’s sound. It is not his animal to call.

  That sound is my beast, of fur and fury. Kyle.

  Thinking his name turns my body and my mind away from the dreamscape King and Princes. It sends me running through the undefined borders of my dreaming.

  “Kyle!” I scream. “Kyle, I’m here! You’re okay!”

  Running. I’m running and going nowhere. Running so hard that my heart pounds and my chest heaves. I think it will burst, bringing forth an alien of my own making.

  Wake up. A comforting, familiar voice sews through my psyche, pulled by a needle, threading me together once more. Wake up, my Queen. Your bear is fine. Kyle is fine.

  Fluttering eyelids greet dim paleness.

  The glowing of starlight strands heralds the presence of my elf in all his elven glory. He pushes through the gloom of my illusions, yanks me back to the reality of being curled up in a chair near a fire, of a book resting unread against my lap, of security within this hidden home.

  “Liam,” I breathe out, shuffling in the seat and making the book fall with a dull thud to the floor. “Did you see that?” My heart is calming, slowing down to a range of normalcy. “My dream... did you see that?”

  He nodded slowly, his face grim. “I saw the end, Victoria. I knew you were on Braeden’s radar. He schemes like a child envious of another child’s toys. If the Dark King has plans, however, that is infinitely more serious.”

  I shake my head, because it wasn’t real. I don’t understand why Liam is acting like it was real.

  “But it was just a dream, right? Something my stupid psyche cooked up to set me on edge.” Standing, my gait feels uneven. I look down, finding the poor misused book beneath my bare foot. I rescue it, gripping the volume between my fingers, turning it over, finally reading the title. Embracing Darkness. I laugh nervously. “Power of suggestion maybe?” I lift the tome in my hands and point at the title. “I’m just a suggestive personality I guess. Impressionable till the end.”

  “Right. That must be it,” Liam says, taking the volume from me and giving it a curious glance. He doesn’t say why though, why this particular book piques his interest. I can tell by his voice that he thinks my reasoning is wrong. I didn’t dream what I had merely because of a personality flaw. Somehow, I’ve been touched by the Dark Court. Its mark lives inside of me. Its king wants me. And I’d thought only the Light Court was after my body, my power, my supposed title. “Come, you need to rest.”

  Liam takes my hand and leads
me towards the bed. “You said Kyle was fine... in my dream, I heard you. How do you know he’s fine? Did you see him?” I turn away from the bed to face my fairy. He smiles yet again, this time soft and sad.

  “Your precious bear is curled up asleep just outside these walls. He is protected, shielded from sight. I’m sure he’ll be returned to his human self by morning.”

  I sigh in relief. “Thank you, Liam. Thank you for making sure he’s okay.”

  “Anything for my Queen,” he murmurs, that weight to his words that speaks of things he cannot admit or... rather, will not admit again. Perhaps he is tired of hearing my rejections.

  He pulls back the blanket and I slide between the silky sheets like I’m at a luxury spa. One night only. Rustic. Lovely. Relaxing. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I feel the heaviness of exhaustion pull my body towards sleep once more. Before I nod off, I think of something the Dark King said in my dream, something that sounded important. Though it couldn’t have been.

  My dream was nothing more than a concoction of imagination. Still though...

  “Liam,” I yawn out, my mouth forming a little ‘o’ shape before I can finish my question, “what are the ‘olde games’?”

  He’d just turned from me, heading towards the pillars of books, no doubt to replace the tome I’d pilfered. “How do you know that? Where did you hear of those?”

  “In my dream,” I say quietly, sleepily, my vision too fogged to find him in the room now. The room is a moving sea of unfocused objects. Matter floating about the space without confinement. No bodies. No wooden shells.

  “Worry not over this now,” his voice sails to me on that ocean of unrest. “Sleep, we’ll talk in the morning.” Even my exhausted mind caught the heady worry in his words. Yet, I am simply too tired to latch onto them and pry. My mind wants the numbness of la-la land. I cannot fight.