PROLOGUE:
The trumpets blared, the gates made a booming noise and the palace servants parted in bows. All signaling the arrival of the kidnapped young virgin witch. It was late in the night, close to midnight but no one who was in the Palace was asleep nor clueless about what was the bother.
A bloody old and rotten cold Royal family dressed in red and wet in blood awaited the virgin's delivery with hidden batted breaths and stoic faces. They needed to extract every single drop of her pure magic blood to save their family's youngest.
The king's favorite son.
Harold Sinclair.
The Royal special corps treadled into the monstrous Palace with hard studded boots. That pummelled into the mosaic tiled floors with cruel precision and poisonous pride for doing their King right. One of the King's children narrowed their eyes at the scene before them and held back any inclination to express their distaste for the unnecessary extravagance.
Peasants were dying from starvation, the church was ostracizing the lepers from society, nobles were no longer shy about their decadent lifestyles and incestuous structures. Maintained to keep their wealth within controlled perimeters. Only so they could gamble portions of it away in brothels and salons at the end of the day. Everyone in their kingdom was selfish in their own way. Even the peasants with the way they gave each other understanding.
The young virgin was raw and puffed up from crying too much but even that did not earn any sympathy or distract from the enchanting beauty her face held. She was shoved forward by the bottom of a guard's dirty boot. The poor girl gracelessly landed on the floor, her pumpkin coloured dress bunching itself around her knees. She hurried to fix herself up, bowing before the Royals in a perfect pose of submission.
"Exalted, mercy." she begged, in a cry that fell like a song to her captors ears.
The King's lips curled into a sinister smile, a hand resting calmly under his bearded chin. He looked over to his wife and gave a nod that may as well have been a green light. With the help of her oldest son —Ernest, the Crown Prince — the Queen stood to her full height. With a sophisticated kind of grace only the French held in that century.
The Queen left the Throne Podium in one second and in the next, she hovered over the peasant girl, circling around her like a python studying it's helpless, trembling prey. "Don't worry dear you won't feel a thing." she said but it only sounded like a taunt to everyone's hearing.
The girl sobbed, hard.
The spectacle of the moment, Prince Harold who was also the youngest of the Royal offspring, was lying lifelessly in the arms of Princess Harriet and Prince Ernest. Prince Harold couldn't speak, not after the fresh accident in the woods but he could see. So he took a long glance at the kidnapped maiden. Her face although almost all covered by long hair looked ashen, fear was evident in the way her wet lashes fluttered and he took great pity on her. She didn't deserve to die anymore than he deserved true immortality. He never could stand up to his family though, they didn't realize it yet but it was because of their invisible chains he was in that state.
"Don't waste your time crying child, this is the time to recite your last prayers and make peace with your failures." The Queen said, her slender fingers twirling strands of the brittle hair on the young maiden.
She flinched, "I'm a direct descended of the Aries Coven of Witches, they will come for me." She'd managed to threaten in a thick but wavering voice.
The Aries Coven was infamously famous amongst creatures of the night for their intriguing secretive lifestyle and powerful but deathly abilities. They were notorious for hiding their truest existence from even their own offspring. Most of the coven's witches would only be taught of their roots in their thirties, or at times of dire need but most died in blissful ignorance. Yet this young virgin who could have been at least fifteen or seventeen at most was aware of her roots and had let it known carelessly. To creatures that could use that truth against her.
"A gifted fool indeed." Princess Harriet remarked.
Prince Harold closed his eyes both in pain and pity for the girl.
"My great grandparents are Cecily and Hendrick Belhovenor. I'm a direct descended of the Aries witch coven and I know what you are, you're blood reapers." she repeated, possibly hoping to incite fear or reverence in her captors.
Prince Harold groaned, he wished he could help shut her up but his siblings urgently stuffed his open ribcage wound. With more methanol dipped cloths thinking it was the pain from the mysterious animal bite on the side of his rib making him groan.
The sophisticated Queen widened her sterling blue eyes in the line of direction to her equally stunned husband. "An Aries witch in the Royal Palace. Did you hear that my Lord." she marvelled with raised eyebrows and growing interest.
Ernest, The Crown Prince who was now beside the family's wounded treasured jewel whistled his joy, "Oh dear, she's so clearly poorly bred."
The emotionless Princess Harriet wore a look of hope on her face that was visible to everyone in the palace. "...or perhaps just a poor student, you should relate dear brother."
The Crown Prince cast her a wicked glance, then winked.
"Can you prove it?" the King's stone cold voice boomed from his throne.
The young maiden shed more tears nodding. It was clear she was just pitifully realizing her revelation hadn't worked in her favour as well as she had hoped.
"Well?" Prince Antony the middle child prodded the maiden to make haste. His obsidian strong voice, serious demeanour and entire rigid semantics resonated very deeply with the King. By all standards either he the educated and actively involved sibling or the first born Crown Prince Ernest Sinclair should have been the King's favourite son. But for some reason it was the troublesome and forever lovesick Prince Harold who was King Sinclair's favourite son. "Prove it!" Prince Antony pressed, his tone boring no room for hesitance.
"That" she nodded to the Young Prince's fatal wound. "...is a wound from the bite of a Helga."
"Is there a reason you're telling us something even scullery maids already know?
Her voice waivered "Helgaz never bite unprovoked, or without arousal... but when they do bite. It's especially fatal for blood reapers as I'm sure you're all aware..."
Prince Antony raised his chin, "Do you harness the magic to retain your Prince's immortality? You are of the Aries Coven aren't you?"
"I must know how he got bit first?" Her look crossed over to where Prince Harold was lying in a steam of his own blood. "Was the Helga provoked in violence or...or caressed into arousal?"
"You either harness the magic or not you little red haired witch. But it you must know, he doesn't remember anything. One moment he was appreciating the woods and the next he was screaming on the earth bitten by a wild Helga." Princess Harriet lifted to her feet, voice raising so loud tendrils of her hair danced in the air. "So, as my brother asked. Do you harness the power?"
The virgin witch nodded, sniffing away her tears.
Her hands were freed from the strains of chains upon request and approval. She took tentative steps towards the dying Prince and took his pale cold hands in her trembling ones. The second their skin touched she took a long soundly gasp. Her eyes rolled back into her sockets, face tilting upwards already making her way into the Prince's mind. Harold, the Prince protested refusing with his mind.
The virgin forced her shaky way into his mind anyway.
Soon he started convulsing with seizures but so did she and even when everyone tried to pry them apart from each other it seemed their hands were glued together. Until she dragged out an ice sharp scream throughout the Palace. Tearing up the glass décor of the court and fell to the floor like a rag doll, hands finally disconnected.
Servant aids cried, the King lifted on his legs, the queen held her breath, trusted servants and all the Royal siblings rushed to be beside Prince Harold afraid he was dead. Instead they found his breathing was back to normal, back to a healthy state as well was his skin and the wound had seized gushing out blood.
The young maiden however...she was another story.
Tragic.
It seemed she had overtaken the Prince's symptoms, much worse than that her blood was contaminated now. For the side of her pumpkin colored dress, where her ribcage would be located was now drenched in dark blood. Which meant the ritual couldn't be done anymore not that it mattered as much for their family treasure had been healed.
The Royal family released gasps and sighs of relief, their beloved had been saved. At the command of the King, a servant, crawled to serve the young Prince with a glass of the red, warm drink. A family favourite but upon the drink reaching his throat, it came back up in rejection. It was baffling and frightening that although they had fought to win their son's life today. They would soon grow to watch him age, ache and pass on like a peasant.
"Did you mean to do this?" the King asked, once the young maiden came to.
She shook her head, chest heaving, she truly had tried her best and now that she was hurt. There wasn't much she could do to give back the Prince his birth earned immortality without killing herself in the process.
"What did you mean to do then?"
She went quiet until a female guard whip-lashed across her back mercilessly, "I-I meant to...I meant to just see where the bite came from." she coughed blood and finished "so that the appropriate spell would be easier to...." This was the truth, Helgaz took away all lives from creatures of the Royals nature. To give back into that life one had to be very intentional and careful.
"Faster!!" the Queen demanded.
"I'm still training," more blood seeped "Prince Harold w-was shutting me o-out," she cried "I had to get through and see exactly how he got his bite but I'm too weak."
It was in that moment that screams from outside the court's door filled the air. Those on guard by the door flew to the walls then floored to their deaths. All, by the hands of three witches, that had clearly used black magic to infiltrate the Palace.
The young maiden was hidden from view and the Royals watched the grotesque scene unfold with interest. Witches didn't scare them, Aries Coven witches could kill them but they were not scared, since there was a binding agreement between the two clans of creatures.
"How dare any of you break the treaty!" a very old man, with harsh wrinkled bronze skin and dry brittle white facial and head hair demanded.
"We didn't do anything, your granddaughter did it to herself it's not our fault you failed to raise her right. Especially after you told her of her roots now is it?" Prince Antony replied, voice stable but pinching.
The old man-Hendrick Belhovenor took a hard breath and demanded "Give her to me!"
"She's the only granddaughter you have isn't she?" the King tilted his head to the left inquiring from the pair of old Aries Coven Witches. They didn't have to answer for King Sinclair to drawl on, "You see our son took a walk in the woods where it seemed he was bit by a Helga. Your granddaughter was kind enough to relieve him off the wound but now we have a special proposal for you to consider." hands behind his back he waited for a reply.
The Belhovenors took one look at their granddaughter's bloody ribcage area. They had enough experience, with tragedies to know the right set of questions to ask. It was Cecily's lips that lifted open to reveal yellow and very imperfect teeth. "How did a Helga get close enough to bite you, a blood reaper?" she asked. "Who is also a Prince?"
Prince Harold, trembled at the implication looking away from the preying eyes of his family. He opened his pink lips to repeat the lie he'd been swearing all night. "I don't remember." his voice slightly wavered and he was sure his brother Prince Antony at least would press on for more. But was surprised when the King dismissed it and continued to lure the Belhovenors into returning his immortality in exchange for their granddaughter.
The negotiation didn't come easy, but it fell through in the end by means of a very long and very complicated ritual. That ended in him buried alive in a frozen coffin with a set date that he'd be released on the first year of the the twentieth century. The virgin was released and left with her grandparents.
His own family's fabric was left subjected to incompleteness.
Before he'd been bound by the spell, his Mother kissed him on the forehead and whispered affirmations of her undying mother's love in his ear. After her, each member of the Royals came to him with their last affections and promises for his return.
His Father almost hugged the life out of him a full life after his expected return to full immortality. His eldest brother, the Crown Prince Ernest whispered his promises to buy him good minutes from the best line of brothels. His second eldest brother, Antony vocalized his promises to hold his hand in the inevitable changes of the new century, he would be awakened in. And Princess Harriet promised to share with him all the gossip and knowledge she would acquire in his absence.
Then finally he remembered lying scared but certain in the glass coffin, everything in him. From the tips of his nails to that heart of his, alive. He heard the bolt to his coffin shut before he was put away, then also. From the distance he heard whispers fill the air followed by a familiar voice that belonged to a Belhovenor. "Send for the Crowlers."
The Crowlers were the only ones with a touch cruel and sharp enough to cut through the veins of the oldest and rarest Coven of witches. Prince Harold tried but failed to move, he was frozen in place wondering why the Belhovenors would call for the one creature that could end them?
If they killed him fine, but what would become of his family?
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