What was I thinking?
Sitting in the hot bath, I remembered the puppy dog eyed look Orisin gave me and flinched internally. I leaned back in the tub. At least the elves weren't here to bathe me. I guess since they got rid of the worst of it, they figured they would let me soak in peace. How the hell was I going to get the dagger back?
You could just seduce him.
That was Orisin's helpful plan. I sunk into the water and blew bubbles into it. I don't think I could seduce him even if he wanted me. I'm not a great liar. He didn't even like me. I dunk my head under the water and screamed. Why did he even want me? Just because of my sight? Why was that the only thing faeries cared about? Even Drake only looked-
Someone grabbed me by the back of my throat and yanked me up. I coughed and my hands went to grab and scratch someone, but another hand grabbed one of my hands.
"Matty, what are you doing?" The voice is strong, deep and pissed off.
I opened my eyes, coughing. "I'm bathing!" I yelled and Erasmus let me go.
"I thought you were drowning yourself."
"I'm a lot of things, but I'm not suicidal," I yelled and snagged the dress off the floor so I could hide my body. Erasmus sat on the edge of the bath after slipping off his heavy cloak. His shoulders sagged and he smelled like smoke. He held his head between his hands and he breathed hard. "Uh, you okay?"
He opened one eye. "Not particularly, but that's what happens when you're dealing with nobility." I put the dress down and sank back into the water. He eyed the water and he took off his shirt before kicking off his boots.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
"Getting in," he said. "You could move a little."
"And I'm getting out," I said quickly.
"We might as well get used to each other." Erasmus said and I ignored this. I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him.
"No we don't."
"And why's that?"
I turned my back to him and grabbed a hold of the dress. I felt exposed in this warm room and water dripping down my back.
"I just have to produce a kid and then I'd get to go home, right?" It wasn't that simple, but I was hoping.
"Yes and not produce with anyone else if you don't mind." The sarcasm in his voice made me want to punch him.
"No shit, really? I mean that's why people get married, right?" It's still strange to think that once upon a time I wanted to marry this man. I used to lay back in the grass out in my backyard, staring up at the clouds and daydreamed about it. I would laugh and giggle at the images dancing in my head where I'm wearing a white wedding dress.
"Yes."
Erasmus slipped into the hot tub and he looked at me. He gave my body a once over and I quickly threw the dress back on. The memory of Rose sitting on my sofa popped into my mind. She held a large glass of vodka and the glaze of alcohol colored her cheeks. Her eyes watered slightly and she stared me down.
"Did it ever both you?" I asked as a I ran a hand through my hair. There knots stopped my fingers and I had to untangle the knots as I did. The dress felt soaked and became another layer of skin.
"Did what bother me?" Erasmus asked before dunking his head in the water. He came back up after a long moment. I wondered if he was trying to show off. When I was a little girl, I would've gawked at him and asked how he did that. He'd smile then. He would've reached out for me and ruffled my hair and tell me that it was because he was a faerie and that made him stronger than me.
But don't worry, I'll protect you.
Now I felt like he might rip me apart if he could.
"Having a stupid human girl fall in love with you?" I asked. It was true.
Erasmus turned his back to me. "I was...I was trying to have you trust me as a child. You were terrified if I remember correctly."
Of course he was remembering correctly. How could I not be terrified?
"That isn't really answering the question." I said and sat on the edge of the tube. My knees poked out a bit and I looked down at the bruises on them. They were a dark purple green and I imagined them as rotting roses, but they only looked bad. They didn't hurt as much.
"I wanted you to trust me and I wanted you to come to me when you grew up," he said and then looked back at me. "Why didn't you? Most humans would have." Oh so now he was blaming me.
"I created a life for myself," I said.
Erasmus waited.
I had Lowell. He held my hand when I cried at thirteen when Erasmus left. I picked up a camera. For some reason, translating what I saw and put it in a photo saved me a lot. Mom stopped shoving pills into my mouth. I knew how to fake it for her and pretend. I had Drake.
"Humans are amazingly a lot more complicated than you thought."
"That is not answering my question." He parroted back at me.
I smiled at him as his eyes met mine. I focused on a muscular shoulder. That was a shoulder I used to rest my head on when I was upset or tired. I remember closing my eyes before feeling the weight of his head on mine after pressing a kiss to the crown of my head. I remember how warm that felt.
"What do you want to know?" I asked as he turned around and rested his chin on his forearms. The veins bulged out against the skin and I remember being a hormonal teenager staring at them like I am now, but not feeling the same surge of lust and curiosity about his body.
"What was this amazingly complicated life?"
"Really?" I asked as he nodded.
"Most humans would've gone searching for me as soon as they could." I was starting to think he was a bit insulted by this.
"You were really relying on that, weren't you?"
"As you said, you were in love with me." He seemed so confident in this statement. I wondered if it did bug him just a little to make a kid fall in love with him, but I guess he underestimated how quickly humans moved on. I wondered if faeries changed much at all. I mean, they lived forever. It could make them stuck in their ways. Maybe when I was younger or maybe I was in a different time, I would've run after him.
"I picked up a camera." I wasn't going to launch into a lecture about what human companionship can do for the mental well being. I wasn't sure someone like Erasmus could really understand that. "It was a good way to show what I was seeing in my head. I got lucky and people happened to like it."
"A camera?" He said. "Those big things where they break a light bulb?"
"Tiny black square." I said, giving him a reference. I was half tempted to launch into different dslrs, lights, lenses, and all that just to confuse him, but decided that it was not going to work in my favor if I pissed off the prince. Squinting at the prince, I wondered why I thought this guy was so sweet and innocent. This was the face that I wanted to be with all the time when I was a kid.
"Photos."
"Yup," I said and tried smiling. I knew my smiles made people nervous because of the scars. Erasmus kept his eyes locked on mine though. I almost appreciated it. "I pose people. Sometimes for art and sometimes to sell things."
"You pose them?"
I nodded. "It depends on what people want. A lot of times, it's selling sex." Which made my job sound a lot less artsy and more corporate greed.
At the mention of intercourse, Erasmus tilted his chin up. "Oh?"
"Make people look pretty," I said, "but sometimes I could pose them for my art. I posed one as you once."
I almost bit my tongue off at that.
"You did?" Erasmus sat up at this. I hadn't realized how close he was.
"Yeah, it was for a fairytale section I'm working on. I started it off in college," I said. It had actually been one of the first photos I took with Jorge. Jorge wanted to see what I could figure out by myself and he watched silently. I had thought about redoing it since it had been a few years.
"How did you view me?"
A fantasy.
"Uh, Lowell modeled as you." Lowell wanted to kill me. I had to promise a lot of vodka back then and the promise to pick him up for a month from whatever party he was at. "And I had you sitting on the rock in the forest." It had been a bit of a challenge to get all those lights up and reflectors.
"A little off, don't you think?" Erasmus said. He seemed rather curious now and he sat up taller now, looking at me curiously.
"How so?" Lowell was about the same size as Erasmus and they both fit into the unattainable love. Really it was almost too perfect. Erasmus saved me from my childhood nightmares and Lowell saved me from the insanity of growing up.
"He's human. Humans aren't known for being handsome."
Oh god.
I rolled my eyes.
"I'm still rather fond of those photos." I said. I liked how the light looked on Lowell and to see him in some question knight outfits that I had to get from the theater kids. I smiled at this thought and looked down at him.
"And these photos kept you in the human world?"
"It's a bit more complicated than that." I wasn't going to bring up Lowell.
"Does it have to do with that kid?" I tried to keep my face blank. Erasmus suddenly grinned. "I'm the one who taught you that trick, my dearest." My dearest rolled off the tongue in a sarcastic hiss that made me want to stick my tongue out at him and flip him off. "So it was the boy. How does a human boy want to keep you in a frail world?" I bit my tongue. I didn't want to give him a reason to hurt Lowell. "Just be honest," he said, "you're not a very good liar anyway."
Drake said the same.
"I love him."
Erasmus blinked and turned his back to me. "You fell in love with that skinny little child?"
"He's not a child anymore."
"That's what I remember." Erasmus snorted.
"He's kind and he liked me for me," I said and this explanation should've been enough for him. He looked back at me when I said this.
"Does your mother still make you take those pills?" He asked. My heart cracked at this. I didn't think he would remember this. Why would he? Maybe he kept a hold of this to throw it in front of my face. "I figured that would give you enough reason to leave."
"I hid them under my tongue and spat them out. She couldn't force me into therapy when I turned eighteen." I said.
"Oh good," he said. "It really did annoy me when she would drag you to that tiny room with that hairy little man. He'd always nod and ask you questions about me. He talked as if I weren't real!"
I bit back a smile. Erasmus would sit by my knees when I sat in the doctor's office. He rested his head on my knees as a sign of comfort. When the doctor really annoyed him, he'd get up and go behind him, making funny faces behind his back. The doctor would always get really frustrated when I would burst out laughing in the middle of his sessions.
"You don't see him, now?"
I shook my head.
"Good, I don't think I could tolerate it."
I wasn't sure what to make of that. "You make it sound like you're going to come with me to the human world."
"I will for certain intervals," he said. "I need to make sure you're taken care of. I won't have a queen living in the streets when she goes back home." He waved a hand at me. "You can still keep your lovers just make sure they don't impregnant you." And for a second there, I thought he might actually care about me. "Just not the Dragon." It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Drake.
"Uhm, well he...uhh..."
"I don't need my wife sleeping with a rival."
That legitimately made sense.
"Did the Dragon take you?"
I felt my face burn and Drake probably would've burst out laughing at my face before making a sarcastic comment.
"That's not really any of your business."
"I could just ask Endymion." I forgot that Unicorns could sense that virginity. "I'll find out tonight anyway. Might as well as be honest with me now. It'd let me know if I should be soft to you."
It was hard to believe that I loved this man when I was a kid. My stomach curled at the image of Erasmus above me. He sighed and relaxed in the tub. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
"You know, you don't have to do this." I said and pulled my knees up to my chest. Erasmus opened one eye.
"What do you mean by that?"
"You don't even like me," I said, "and you want to marry me? Do you know how insane that sounds? You make it sound like I'm disgusting and you hate everything I am."
Erasmus opened both eyes now. "What are your choices Matty? Live in the human world and slowly have your insanity chipped away as you pretend your normal? Or become a queen and go back to your world once in awhile with a protection of a court?" Erasmus stood up suddenly and grabbed a towel to wrap it around his waist. "Don't ask such silly questions Matty. You need to get ready for the ball. It is for you after all."
He walked out and I sat there. I really would've run after him when I was a teenager. I wanted to, but I didn't want to leave my family. I was scared and after awhile, I wondered if maybe I made up Erasmus to help my own heart. All he would've had to do was come to me when I was a bit older and I would've gone.
Hell, I might've gone with him now if he just looked back at me.
_________
"Her hair is too short to do anything with it."
I actually liked my shoulder length hair, but the elf women couldn't put it in a fancy style apparently.
"At least she thin enough for the dress." Another elf said as she tightened the corset even more. The dress that they stuffed me into was a silvery white and felt like water on my skin. The bosom was covered in golden circles with a string of pearls right underneath my breasts. The sleeves were in the shape of seashells and slid off the shoulders. The dress goes to my feet, but the front half is opened up front to my knees, revealing the translucent silk underneath it, giving the dress a watery feel. There was a large bow in the back of the dress. It made of the same translucent material.
"Don't make her wear the shoes," Erasmus said as another set of elves helped him get ready. "She's not comfortable and I don't want her to trip over her feet."
He might be a jackass, but not an idiot.
Matty.
Huh? I looked up. Drake? I looked around me and didn't see him. Looking down at my hands, I wondered where he was. If he was okay. I bit my tongue. God, I'm losing my mind. A heavy crown of pearls and what looked like frozen white roses.
"What am I? A bride?" I asked.
"It's good to show that you are, yes," Erasmus said.
"What shoes should we give her?" An elf asked Erasmus.
"Keep her barefooted," he said after a moment of thought. "It'll give her a holy look, I think and we should present her as such."
I wondered why he wanted me to look holy.
"Wise, my prince," an elf said.
Erasmus was playing it down for this ball I realized as he wore a black shirt and cloak. The cloak outlined with silver and he wore heavy silver pads on his shoulders. He wore a simple silver crown for his princeliness I think. He was not the main star tonight and the idea of where it was made my stomach sick.
Erasmus looked at me.
"Relax." He said as he walked over to me. "Breathe through your nose and out your mouth." This was something my therapist told me to do when I was about to have a panic attack. Erasmus added to this comfort when I was a kid by hugging me. This time, he grabbed my shoulders. "It's about time you were center stage, wouldn't you think?"
"Fuck no!" I yelled and the elves scoffed at this. I was perfectly content being behind the camera. That's why I do what I do and he wants to shove me in the center of a bunch of faeries. Erasmus stepped back a bit and let me go.
"It'll be good for you."
He started sounding like a parent trying to convince his kid to eat vegetables.
"Why? Why do people care? You don't even care!" The words fell out before I could really think about what I was saying. Erasmus looked down at me with a thin frown on his lips. "Why should anyone in your court care?" This was true. He shook his head at me.
"You'll be queen. It's time to act like it." Erasmus said. "I think we're ready. Let's go."
He walked out of the room, grabbing my hand. I followed behind him and bit my tongue hard. I didn't need to say anything else stupid. He squeezed my hand and ran a thumb over my knuckles. He circled them slowly as we walked down the stairs. We went down, down, down as the roaring of the waterfall blocked everything else out. Footsteps followed behind us as he opened the door and revealed a dark tunnel lit by torches. The air tasted heavy on my tongue. Voices echoed around us.
"Do you hear them?" Erasmus's voice roared above the waterfall.
"The people? Yeah."
"They're here for you," Erasmus said. "They're here to meet their queen. They want to know who I gave my trust to. Who I gave my heart to." He's being awfully dramatic. My feet felt cold against the stones as he relaxed his grip and slowed down so I could keep up with him. I wondered if people believe that he gave me his heart. I didn't think so. Faeries weren't romantics and seemed rather cold against the idea of clinging to something or someone.
He gripped my forearm hard. Geeze, what was it with faeries wanting to try to break my arm? Erasmus led me down another set of stairs until we reached the bottom, revealing a large river flowing under all the stone beneath the castle. Slow wide boats drifted down the river. Some filled with fruits, flowers, and gold. An empty boat came up to the edge. A mouse, dressed in the finest silk I've ever seen a mouse wear, put up a small walkway.
"Prince Erasmus!" The mouse squeaked." I bit my bottom lip hard to keep from laughing. Oh god, I can't burst out laughing at this poor mouse who is now ruffling some silk tie around his neck.
Erasmus nodded.
"Err, and how should I announce the lady here?" The mouse eyed my feet. I'm sorry, but you're a rodent in my world so don't judge, I thought about saying this with my middle finger up.
"Do not call me princess," I said quickly.
Erasmus hummed and ahhed for a moment. The mouse's whiskers twitched and rubbed his paws together and Erasmus grinned suddenly. It looked like a half-mad and showed off the sharp fangs that could probably rip my throat out. They looked almost bigger than Antonio's fangs.
The memory of the silver-haired vampire made me grin. I tried to imagine the silver haired cranky vampire standing here, glancing down at Erasmus and scowling. He'd lean on top of my head, I think. You're the perfect height for it. And he'd grin, revealing the fangs.
"Future queen should suffice for my father, don't you think?" His grin melted so his lips smoothed over. The little white mouse didn't look like he could get pale, but all the pink poking out beneath the fur went white.
"O-Of course!"
Erasmus stepped on the boat and held my forearm. He gave me a pleasant kiss on my cheek. "Just breathe Matty. Try not to look so intense." Erasmus pressed his lips to my ear and I jumped. "Ah, are your ears sensitive, my dear?" Apparently. I thought about pushing him into the water. Splash, splash, I was taking a bath. A sharp mean edge tempted is voice.
I leaned back. "Screw off."
Erasmus squeezed my forearm and imagined him snapping it. Loud trumpets began to take over the tunnel as we floated down.
"Hold my hand." Erasmus whispered as the tunnel suddenly opened up and a thin, scarlet cloak covered up the large opening. I saw faeries going up and down steps carrying food and what I guess was wine. They were small, ugly faeries with long noses and bigger claws. The boat hit a soft platform. The mouse made sure we got off first before running up the large velvet stairs. The trumpets were staring to make my head throb. Why does everything have to be so loud and why was this damn fucking corset too tight?
"Breathe Matty."
Oh yeah, like-
"Introducing the Prince Erasmus and the...future queen, Matty!"
___________________________________________________________________________
Author's Note:
Hey guys! Sorry for getting back to you so late. We were exhausted after the trip. I'll be giving you guys another chapter tomorrow as I promised. Thank you guys so much for the love for the new version of the Rose Series.
I really appreciate it. I've had so much fun going through the series and writing it.