Milli stumbled backwards and gave a shriek of fright.
For her part, Emma stood transfixed. "Kassiel," she whispered, all amazement.
When he'd disclosed his ... otherworldly nature to her last night — or rather, this morning — he'd not intimated anything about wings! Though, really, she ought not to have assumed that just because he was a fallen angel that he would not still possess his wings. They were truly stunning, and frightening, to behold. Even the feathers appeared unlike a bird's — an empyrean luster gleaming gem-like across the indurative black surface. At the carpal bends — the highest joints of his wings when they were folded behind him, as they were now — were vicious-looking black barbs that jutted out from his steely ... plumage. No, indeed, nothing of a bird's fragility here; these wings might very well cleave a man's skull!
Victoria, meanwhile, had fixed a shocking glare to Emma, having distinctly heard that name, of all names, pass softly from Emma's astonished lips. To her brother she said, "You told her?!"
"Is that not my prerogative?" he answered his sister impassively, watching as Milli threw herself into Emma's arms. "Am I not master here?"
"I want to go home!" Milli sobbed into Emma's shoulder.
"That is now quite out of the question." Victoria made to approach Milli, but the girl balked. "My dearest Milli, am I not still your loving friend?"
"A friend," Emma seethed, stepping between the vampyre and her sister, "would not have so 'lovingly' availed themselves of 'dearest Milli's' lifeblood."
The lash struck true, and Victoria's attentions were transferred at once to the elder Miss Lucas. But being the recipient of such a hellish glare was nothing to witnessing that same glare transmute into something entirely more sinister. The whites of Victoria's eyes were engulfed suddenly by inky shadows, seeming to stretch out like black veins from each iris, so that her unholy orbs gleamed like onyx from one side of her lids to the other.
Milli was instantly beset with hysteria, her panicked incredulity affecting horrific tremors in her entire body. She dug her whitened fingers, now claw-like, deep into her sister's arms as she backed away from Victoria.
Winterly gave an impatient growl. "Do cease your theatrics, Victoria."
She swung around to face him, a pointed look at his great wings. "I was merely following your example!"
"Markus," Emma's voice was almost inaudible, but to the vampyres it rang out like a clap of thunder. It had been a calculating step, on her part, to use his name against him. The name he urged her so often to use.
It worked instantly, his eyes shift towards her like black lightening. Curious. Watchful. Waiting.
She ran her tongue out over her parched underlip and took a bolstering gulp of air. "Am I to ... understand that Victoria imagines my sister her p-property?"
"You are," he replied. "She marked your sister the night you first crossed my threshold."
Though Emma could see no obvious marks, she doubted not his claim. Her jaw clenched with the dire implications of such an obscene reality.
"I myself," he continued, "have marked you, but not with blood." He bent his eyes to the bracelet that sat heavily on her wrist. "There is my sigil, as I explained. It is merely that, and that alone, which imports to the nocturnal world to whom it is that you belong."
"But I will not truly belong to you unless it is by my will to be ... owned." Again she swallowed. "So let us strike a bargain."
Victoria gave a nasty hiss. "A god does not make bargains with a—"
"Go on," his Lordship replied coldly, lifting a peremptory hand to silence his vicious-looking sister. "I am listening."
"My life in exchange for Milli's. I will remain here, with you, willingly, so long as you remove my sister from all—" she shot Victoria a fleeting look "—vampiric influences. She must nevermore be used as a comestible. Nevermore be harmed in any way. These are my terms."
"And you will remain here? To act as defrayal for Milli's everlasting protection?" He stroked his jaw a moment. "Consider carefully, Emma, I do not strike bargains lightly."
"You cannot do that!" Victoria screeched. "The girl belongs—"
"Can I not?" he answered cooly. "Perhaps you overestimate what you are to me?" He bared his fangs threateningly at her. "I am grown wearied by your presence. Leave us ... sister. I have borne your interpolations and scheming long enough. Return to London."
His sister seemed to want to quarrel further, but after a silence she ostensibly thought better of it. "Sire," she acceded at last with a stiff bow of her golden head. Then, turning on Emma, who had maneuvered herself close to the library door, she narrowed her eyes to blackened slits and then stalked purposefully towards the girls. Her lips were pulled back from her wolf-like canines as she brought her nose to within an inch of Emma's. "I love Milli enough to let her go; but Markus will never feel the same about you!"
A disgusting lie if ever she'd heard one. Victoria had been commanded to leave and well Emma knew it. "Obsession is not love, Victoria!" It took every ounce of steel in her spine not to disengage her eyes or back away from the vampyre. "Do not touch my sister again, daemon!"
Victoria only smiled. "Careful my dear, this illusion of safety you seem to enjoy will last only as long as my brother's interest does." Closer still she leaned in, her breath frigid against Emma's face. "But make no mistake, girl, he will grow tired of your humble looks, and when he discards you..." She let the threat hang unfinished in the silent room. Silent save for Milli's teeth chattering perilously. Some threats were all the more potent for being unfinished; and this one was just such a harrowing sort.
"I said leave us," Winterly commanded, his scowl black.
At once she did as she'd been bade, and so withdrew from the library like a miasmic shadow. In fact, the entire room was now engulfed in chilling gloom, the sun having been chased from the sky by wolves and brume. Only the fire was unaffected by the cold and crippling disquietude.
Markus stalked to the impressive casement and flung them open to admit the night air and the whispers of the gloaming. "Come, Millicent." He held a hand out to her.
But Milli shook her head violently, overmastered by her fear of him, her tongue having long since ceased to function. It was left to Emma to guide her poor sister to the open casement and the waiting vampyre looming atop the window-seat. It was all too much for Milli, and she finally dropped to the floor in a dead faint, as before, Emma catching her sister's shoulders so that the girl's flaxen head lay resting in her lap. Though she was no longer bloodless, Milli's countenance bore an awful want of color, such as had been leeched by crippling terror.
It was easier this way, Emma decided. She had not the heart to force Milli into his arms, nor the stomach for teary farewells; she couldn't bear her sister's heart-rending sobs. Not now that her own heart was in fearsome throes. "Where will you take her?" she asked as he lifted Milli's senseless body from the floor.
"Where would you have me take her?" His jaws hardened irritably as he watched her remove the bracelet — his protection — from her own wrist and fasten it instead to her sister's.
Emma had by now already considered whence he was to take Milli. She had an older cousin in a convent in Edinburgh and it was to this far-off abby that she had resolved to send her sister. For the time being, at any rate. She did not trust Victoria to honor her brother's agreement and she was yet unsure of the extent of his power over Victoria. All the particulars of her cousin's whereabouts were hurriedly explained to him whilst he listened quietly, his stillness once more that of the unnatural. A lifelike statue.
"Deliver her directly into Sister Mary's care." As children she and Mary had ofttimes invented words and gibberish phrases that had, by and by, served to amuse them even to adulthood. Their letters to one another always included such gibberish that was understood only by themselves. But this she made no mention of, careful of holding her cards close to her heart. "I warn you, I will know of it if the safety of either my cousin or sister is in question," she said. "I intend to write her at once and beg news of Milli's safe arrival."
"Your servant, ma'am." With a dark grin he shot from the window, a monstrous black raptor, with poor Milli draped like a lifeless doll over his arms.
As soon as the twilight scud had swallowed them up, Emma bolted from the window and up to her room. She would not waste a single moment, for the length of Winterly's absence was uncertain, and so she snatched her stationary up and deposited herself at the window-seat. She would write this very minute not only to Sister Mary but to Anna Le Blanc as well, and on the morrow she would walk into Whitby, if the carriage was not available to her, and post the letters herself. Her friend seemed to know a great deal about her mysterious host and so it was to Anna she would apply for help — first to ensure Milli's continued safety, perhaps her concealment as well, and then, together, they might somehow secure her own liberation.
❦
The gale shrieked along the battlements and through the eerie grounds, whipping at the trees and flinging detritus at the casements. The sky rumbled and snapped with thunder, the drawn curtains seeming to blaze periodically to life, in awful fits and starts, mere moments before the thunderclaps rattled the panes.
Emma considered the chess board in front of her, paying no heed to the rain lashing the windows or the fire snapping lustily behind the grate. It took every ounce of her mettle just to move a chess piece calmly across the board, what with the vampiric black eyes boring into her — seeming to delve her very thoughts and discover her secrets. It was such a weighty stare to bear.
She lifted the black rook that she had just now claimed from Winterly, running her thumb over its marble crenellations. But Winterly still had a rook to spare and both bishops to aid his king and queen in the endgame, whilst her bishops were both dead and her king now protected only by the white queen and a lonely rook.
A particularly powerful piece, the rook. A tricky piece. Like its master, she thought, lifting her gaze from the chess piece in her hand to her opponent sitting quietly across from her in his armchair. He too was a rook, with his obsidian eyes and onyx wings, the thick spurs not withstanding. They were folded away now, concealed beneath his skin, or so he'd intimated earlier when she'd asked how it was that he kept them hidden. He'd not been long gone from his castle and had returned, ere the heavens had ruptured, in time to dine with her. Rather, she'd dined and he'd only watched her. There was no longer any need for pretense — she knew it was not solids that he ate. Not even for the sake of easing her discomfort had he made an attempt at feigning the deed, only sat there broodingly. Watchful. His silverware remained untouched and his plate glaringly empty. After dinner she'd had every intention of escaping swiftly to her chamber, but he'd invited her to play a game of chess. In fact, he'd insisted she join him in his library for a lively match.
"I think you are very like this rook," she said, placing the piece beside her captured foes. "A lethal adversary. And I am that pawn" — pointing to the useless white pawn beside his black bishop — "to be used and resigned to a dangerous fate; at the mercy of another's whim."
He sat back and considered her with a dastardly smile. "Is that so?"
"Decidedly."
"On both accounts I must disagree. I am not your adversary, and you are not my pawn. You are and have always been a white queen — the most powerful piece on the board."
"If I were that powerful I would have my freedom. I would be your equal."
He moved his rook to menace her king without even once glancing away from her. "You do not have to possess supernatural gifts, nor be a giant, to be powerful — take the Battle of Thermopylae."
A battle he had no doubt witnessed from some distant espial. Oh, the stories he might tell her! Nevertheless, it was an abortive analogy. "A battle in which a king lost to a god, hardly a David and Goliath tale."
"Ahh, but Leonidas died as he lived, with ferocity, freedom, and honor, and thus made of Xerxes a flesh and blood mortal where once he'd been a god. The freedom I offer you is, I grant you, without glory, but it does not follow that it should not be considered a liberation of sorts, or that you will not enjoy it. If you are restrained, that is the fault of your own self-induced repression." He came out of his chair, the game, for the nonce, forgotten and prowled to her side of the board. Leaning over her, at her ear, he whispered, "Did you know that rooks mate for life?" It was a swift and unexpected reversion to the previous subject.
She angled her head only a little, nonplussed, loth to position her lips any closer to his than they already were. "I did not know that," she answered. "But I do not for a moment believe a devil like you in want of a life mate. Least of all from the likes of me."
"I think you know very well what I want from you," he murmured, lips brushing against her lobe. "And, what is more, I smell that same want in you. Deceive yourself, by all means, but to me you cannot lie. Blood does not lie" — a deep inhale — "and yours courses with desire."
Her throat convulsed with nervous deglutition. She promptly leaned forward, away from him, the better to think clearly and to move her threatened king. It was dangerous to speak without forethought; more dangerous still to do so with a vampyre in one's ear.
No sooner had she made her play than Winterly abruptly leaned away to move his bishop diagonally and, in so doing, revealed that no matter her next move her king would be taken by either his second bishop or the black queen herself. She was deadlocked with nowhere to go. A hideous parallel of her current condition.
All that was left now was for her to move her king and hear the dreaded 'checkmate' slip smugly from his lips. She couldn't bear it. They both knew he'd won — again. Resigned, she rested her hands in her lap and asked, "How do we proceed from here?"
"The time for games is at an end, my rose." He straightened and glared at her from his lofty height. "You have decried me time and again for being a devil. However, I will no longer allow you to make a devil of me."
"How so?" She wet her lips.
"Despite the affirmation you gave me, not six hours ago in this very room—" he gestured to the rug "—I will not come to your suite tonight, nor any other besides."
She was stunned. It was a reprieve most unexpected.
"Moreover, I will forget that you vouchsafed that answer at all. Now it is only for you to seek me out ... of your own free will." He stressed the word. "Let the maid make her bed where the dragon lies." He lifted the white queen and, as she'd done earlier to his rook, ran his thumb reverently over her pale curves. "Will you be prim Miss Lucas tonight, I wonder ... or are you, now and always, my lady in red?" With that said, he returned the queen to her vanquished subjects and stalked from the room, the door closing softly behind him. She, however, remained in the library long after he'd withdrawn.
When the clock on the mantelshelf finally chimed the penultimate hour, she bestirred herself from the armchair. It seemed her lengthy contemplations had been so dark as to snuff time itself, for she knew not whence the hours had slipped. The storm had abated, for now, and the castle was swathed in deathly silence. But it was an easier silence now that Victoria's presence was no longer felt in the manor. Even so, the slumberous heart of the fire, reduced now to ash and ember, pulsed its languid death throes, and the taper beside her had bled itself near to nothing, the wick all but gone.
Perhaps she welcomed the darkness. There was no denying it was a most seductive master, replete with a marvelous and cruel sort of beauty. Easier to lose oneself in sin than endure the incessant flagellations of her own scruples. Why did she still crave his touch after all that had transpired? Despite what had been done to Milli. What hellish power did he wield over her? Had he tampered with her mind? She thought not, but how was she to be sure?
"No, I am the sick rose," she admitted to the watchful shadows. "He is right, I cannot deny that I want..." God save her, she wanted his kiss — both mortal and vampiric. Craved the exquisite pain only he could grant. How godless she had become. That such darkness had always dwelled within her was a disturbing epiphany; she'd never owned it till now, not really, but that did not mean that it had not prowled always in her soul like a caged wolf in an oubliette.
What was more, she knew she would go to him tonight, for she could think of little else but him. Without regard to her own neck she had, ultimately and irrevocably, made a pact with the devil himself. The hour had come to make good on her promise, and there was no better time than the approach of the witching hour — the darkest time for darkest deeds.
Taking her candle, and the white queen from the chessboard, she quit the library and escaped the obscene grins of the cannibals on the wall.
🌟I'm so terrified that some angry feminist will pop out of the shadows and castigate me for Emma's weak character, and then blame me for publishing anti-feminist smut disguised as literature. Or that Charlotte Brontë (my favorite author btw) would have had violent heart palpitations if she'd read this nonsense. But, as a feminist, I should remind everyone that this is FANTASY! We're allowed to enjoy meaningless nonsense :) surely. Anyway, I don't think Emma is weak at all. She's just hampered by nineteenth century ideals (some of which were wonderful and some of which were naive) and perhaps more by her religion ( insofar as a woman's worth was considered to be her chastity, reserved only for her husband's privilege). I do not subscribe to those ideals myself, yet I'm still trying to make Emma's reactions as authentically Georgian as possible, which (considering my limited knowledge of that era) I don't always get right. Any way you choose to look at it, we can argue both sides of the coin: her sister has been treated like a blood-bag and now Emma's off to go shag the vampire responsible. *cringe* That does sound daft.
Whether or not Markus partook of Milli's blood (which he didn't), the point is that Milli and Emma should not have been threatened whilst living under his roof. That I agree with! But I can also understand Emma's dilemma: she's still fatally attracted to him and trying to determine if it's because she's crazy (literally sick at heart) or if it's because Winterly has used some nefarious means to entrap her. Or maybe she senses some good in him? Whatever it is, I admire that she is, for the most part, taking responsibility for that 'sickness' and not heaping blame at Winterly for his effect on her. I despise the propensity of those that choose to blame everyone and everything (politics, religion, the media) but themselves for their own bad luck or poor choices. It's entirely the fault of Emma if she acts on the demands of her raging libido. And, lets be honest, most of us have (at least once in our lives) fallen for and had our hearts trampled on by a bad boy. *another guilty cringe* It's the age old fallacy: "He'll change for me! I'm special." *rolls eyes* I say dream on! But in our fantasies we allow the impossible: he does change! He does worship the ground we walk on! WE ARE SPECIAL! Anyway, let's hope Emma isn't as much of a schmuck as I once was. Or that Winterly isn't as much a devil as she thinks he is.
I must add, though, that I also respect that she's trying to be rational: she'll never marry, so why not 👌🏻←→👈🏻😈 with a man that excites her. She's already admitted she's fallen in love with him and therefore one might argue that it's less a sin and more a physical act of love, at least on her part. How can that be wrong, to worship someone with your body? What's more, despite how she feels about him, she has no intention of being owned and kept in his castle like a pet. She wants him, no doubt of that, but on her terms ... not his!
Anyway, food for thought. My question (and you may be honest, I won't bite you): do you think Emma's more feminist or a pushover? Would you be heading to his chamber right now or would you be crawling out of the window like a cat burglar and taking your chances on the moors?🌟