The Proud Princess and Eluded Futures

In the image, manacles glittered around her bare feet. A golden choker like a slave band encircled her pale throat. And she sat on the stone floor beside Darian’s chair while he lounged like a warlord on the upholstery, his hand resting on her braided hair as if she were a beloved pet.

Continuing the fairy tale which I wrote in Czech and am translating into English for fun! What’s happened so far is SO CLICHE! All the cliches, y’all. A dastardly masked mage ruins a spoiled princess’s ball with the news that she must marry him and then he spirits her away in his flying carriage to his black castle. Oh, dear, what will she do with such a cliched problem?

If you want to start from the beginning, all the previous parts are here: The Proud Princess and the Masked Mage. Otherwise jump right in lol–>

IN THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT:

“If you are not tired now,” he went on, “I can show you to the library. Conjure up tea and biscuits.”

She quirked her mouth in the tiniest, oddest smile. “Stolen again?”

“Stolen from my own kitchen. Is that clandestine enough for you?”

She bit her lip, which was trying to smile. “It will do.”

And so, he led her into another unexpected nook of his world.

The continuation:

Darian gestured her into a library, where mounted candelabra on the soaring shelves cast blushes of gold across the books, over the polished ladders and cushioned stools in the aisles, and across the patterned carpets of antique gold and rust-red. The lambent candlelight ribboned through Damarishka’s curls.

Opposite the entry glittered a magnificent arched and latticed window, beyond which the moon shimmered like a pearl on a midnight velvet sky.

Like a scene in magical realm (well, Darian’s was a magical realm, Damarishka supposed), a tray of culinary delights already perched on a low glass table.

Her manner fastidious (in truth, she found herself suddenly shy), she trailed her fingers along the spines of the books, murmuring some of the titles out loud and admiring how others had frames of curlicues, blooms, and thorns, until one title snatched her attention up.

Futures Eluded.

Curious, she slid it out, aware like a prickle on the back of her neck that Darian had gone tersely motionless, and she flopped the volume open—and nearly dropped it.

Not words, but scenes swooped across the page—scenes of her, of Darian, of his black castle’s vast dining hall, crazily illumined by a hearthfire as hungrily large as a horse, its mane dancing bright in some unfelt wind.

In the center of the dark hall, mangled shadows flickered in the captivity of torches which were borne aloft in the gloved hands of warriors. The men’s armor was like snakeskin, the scales gleaming like black leeches and tiny mirrors. And she—

Damarishka was with him.

Her breath clotted like blood inside her lungs, any sound smothered as though under a blanket, for in the image, manacles glittered around her bare feet. A golden choker like a slave band encircled her pale throat. And she sat on the stone floor beside Darian’s chair while he lounged like a warlord on the upholstery, his hand resting on her braided hair as if she were a beloved pet.

The intricate weave of a thousand thoughts and reactions pricked and snarled inside her.

“What—?” she started, then swallowed, feeling as though the world around her was gulping her down. “What…” She turned a page to find herself and him again, but lovers this time, quivering and clasped together on a silken bed. One of her hands was strapped to a bedpost, her fingers white-knuckled around the leather strap, her other hand twisting a fistful of his hair, their passion obviously nearly spent.

Her cheeks aflame, she flipped to another page.

In this one, he slept, stomach-down, the vertebrae visible on his nude back, while she loomed above him. Her limbs shifted ethereally in a thready gown, her person untethered now, although the leather strap dangled from her wrist, knifed free, and—

Reprisal glinted in the blade of her upraised dagger.

She slammed the tome shut, her breath whooshing out like a punched bellows. “What is this?”

“Our potential futures,” Darian clipped out, “had we chosen something different in our past. Walked different paths than what we’ve chosen now.” Gingerly, with a pained contortion of his mouth, he eased the book from her limp fingers and clapped it back into its place with unwarranted—no, warranted—fury. His thumb smashed across the embossed title. “Futures Eluded,” he read, emphasis on the ‘eluded’.

Her heart slowed, her breathing stertorous. “You mean none of those will happen?”

“They should not, no. All the scenes shown within these pages are eluded fates.”

“So I won’t kill you?”

“I don’t plan on giving you a reason to, no.”

Still stuttering in the aftermath of what she’d seen, she couldn’t match his wry smile. “And you won’t become… what you were when you had me chained?”

He, too, eschewed any smile. “At one point in my life, I did have the potential to become that man, but no more.”

“Did—did you see these futures before you came for me?”

“I saw… many, yes. More where you slew me. Some where you loved me—as darkly as I loved you. One, the worst, where—”

“Where what?”

“We never came together at all.”

Her breath caught. That was the worst? Not the ones where she obviously despised him—where she planned his murder?

He spun away and unlatched a windowpane, and into the library’s stuffy air swirled the rainy, mossy, wetly musty sent of petrichor, which intermingled with the lemon, carrots, and sugar of the iced cakes.

Somehow, the freshness invigorated her boldness. “Do you know what choice in the past would have led to—to those fates?”

“I can only guess my choice to cut myself off from the world enabled me to grow up untortured. Had the world charged in when I was a boy, I think they might have repainted my barely sketched rage into violence.”

“Why did you erect your walls against the world?”

“You told me to.”

“I did?”

“Do you remember when you sneaked out of the castle to fly a kite?”

“When I was twelve?” Her lips twitched a little at the clandestine incident. “Yes.”

“You met me then.”

Her brow crinkled. “But…”

“I misted over your memory afterward. I can remove the mist-spell so that the past clears, but I must touch you as I touched you when I cast the spell upon you and speak the same words. May I?”

Bewildered, but with her heart in a strangely anticipatory rhythm, she nodded.

He stepped close (her heart syncopating even faster) and he touched his fingertips to her lips.

Her emotions beat like wings against her ribs.

As his eyes held hers, he murmured: “Your loving heart is greater magic than theirs.”

And her mind opened up.

I have a confession! Not a single part of the above was translated from Czech. I’m just unabashedly adding more crap to this story lol. Is it fun or are you hating me for writing this stuff? hahahahaah

Anyway, thanks for reading my gothically facetious fairy tale and if you want more, the next part is here 😀

Heiress of Secrets is coming along again, but slooooow.

Anyway, thrice the Shadow. Be kind to everyone this week, y’all!

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