Authors: Aurelia T. Evans

Winter Howl (Sanctuary) (41 page)

BOOK: Winter Howl (Sanctuary)

2.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

“Yes,” Laurs said, stopping to stand before her. If she were allowed to look in his eyes, she would have to crane her neck. But with her eyes downcast, she could only see his hands tightening on his belt. “Very good. But I am afraid that it is time for your correction. Prepare yourself, my daughter.”

“Yes, Father.”

She had never been a particularly difficult child, as some could be, even with the threats of the stocks and the service and the danger of exile. But she could never seem to be good enough as Queen. If she showed even so much as an ounce of humanity, Laurs made to correct it.

Syra often believed that she could carve a replacement Queen from white stone, and it would finally be the perfection the State—and her Father—wanted.

* * * *

She rested on her stomach in her bed. Her buttocks and thighs were too sore for her to lie on her back. Tears had dried salt onto her cheeks and temples. Now all she could do was try to feel tired enough to sleep, hoping her deep-seated exhaustion would overcome her restlessness. She did not know the origin of that restlessness, but it felt forbidden.

“I regret that my actions caused you pain,” Gilian said.

Syra started and turned her head to see him crouched on her windowsill.

“It will fade,” Syra replied. Even as she spoke, she knew she should call for the servants, who would notify the Enforcers again. Not only was she addressing someone to whom she was not allowed to speak, but he was in her bedroom, and no man but her father could enter the Queen’s bedroom. It was improper, indecent, indecorous, even dangerous. But somehow, all she could do was rest her head on her arms and meet his gaze, aware of several things at once—the gentle wave of her body from her neck, down her back and over her legs, the burn of pain against the cool cloth of her night linens, and the return of the heat in her face. But she could also sense a queer heat in her gaze as well, matched by the quiet, deliberate stillness of the man across the room.

“May I enter?” he asked.

“What could a body do to stop you, magician?” she said.

He unfurled, standing, a giant shadow that found its solidness as it came into the light. He stopped just short of her bed, and she simply watched him. His expression was inscrutable—she did not recognise it.

“You are supposed to be pilloried,” Syra said.

“I slipped free to see if you fared the night well after the events of the evening.” Gilian looked to the night table, where the roses he had given her were resting in a vase. Her father had noted them, but now that they existed—no matter the circumstances of their creation—he had left them where her servant had arranged them.

“How did you manage to slip free, so close to the church?” she asked. The State church had little use for magic and condemned it as the work of the Adversary, like all passions. That was why magicians who overstepped their bounds were always brought to the pillory outside the church, the centre of the State. It was farthest from the untamed forests, and closest to condemnation of magic. That condemnation should have been enough to dampen his magic for a week. The church pillory rarely saw a magician in this day and age.

“Escape was simple. They will never know I left to walk the night, for I will return in the morning to keep up appearances. Do you wish me to return so that you can sleep?”

He turned towards the window, but he kept his gaze on her.

“I will not cast you out,” Syra said quietly. “I am not overtired.”

“Did your father tell you stories when you were a little child?” Gilian asked. Slowly, as though gauging her permission, he sat down on the side of her bed. She shifted to lie on her hip, which made the mattress press against some of her bruises, but any pain was suddenly very far away. Syra felt his eyes settle on new softness displayed. Her father had always told her to stay away from men, but had never told her why, since explaining the why was as immoderate as
doing
the why—life was one mystery after another, mysteries that so many in the State seemed to accept without question.

“My father told me why things are the way they are, and why they are better than they once were—at least, what he could tell a little girl,” Syra replied.

“Would you like to hear more?” he whispered, leaning in. His countenance, always dramatic, looked deadly serious, but for a slight quirk to the side of his mouth.

Syra rested her head on the inside of her arm and curled her fingers like a closing flower. “Tell me.”

“Very well,” he said. “There was a time when our State was very much like the others surrounding us. Like Textiltalian, Bianima, Protectaria, Memoratemplet. Our State, now nameless, once had a beating heart of magic, like all states—a heart that has since been replaced with a stone replica of a church. Oh, it is not the church that has destroyed our magic or is even its replacement. In other states, the priests play discs with the soothsayers, and sisters welcome a salamander in their hearth fire. Prayers in the cathedrals and the peel of church bells mingle with the coloured chimney smoke of healing and protection rites. They were once not so separate.

“Three lifetimes ago, do you know what our State was?”

“No,” Syra murmured, ensnared by the richness of his tone, and unafraid.

“We were Dragonsong. The wild forests of Mane that encircle us, and the mountains just beyond them, were home to our dragon guardians, and we were keepers of their welfare, just as they were concerned with ours. We once spoke the same language, singing it to the sky and celebrating their wonder with giant torches at sunset and sunrise. We would offer sacrifices, and they would give us what they no longer needed—a discarded scale or tooth or claw, a trifle of riches, news from faraway lands. If they deigned to, they would carry us, and we would take to the skies. It was three lifetimes ago—you could not know the priceless sensation of a dragon trusting a man—or a woman—to ride on its back and not collar it.”

Syra blinked languidly. “And you…how do you know it?”

Still that strange, slight smile, but he gave no answer, only continued, “I wish I could say that it ended because a dragon accidentally scorched a field or a man accidentally stepped on dragon eggs hidden in the forests. But no—it was nothing to do with the dragons, or the magicians, witches, and sorcerers that accompanied their presence with their knowledge and power. Old papers were found in the catacombs under the State’s centre, detailing a time before the dragons had come. With them came a set of archaic laws that promised to create everlasting peace and prosperity.

“I cannot deny, my Queen, that the old days were not perfect. They were far from idyllic. Dragons are not tame, and magic—while willing to be used—is not always as reliable as two prayers in the morning to calm the mind, measuring twice and cutting once, or a glass of warm milk in the evening to retire.

“But the price of safety is the denial of passions. To have peace, one must forego the things that make life a pleasurable journey. Things are no longer pleasurable—they are simply pleasant. The rules were applied first by the monks, then by the sisters, then by the Court. But the merchants—who had very little dealings with dragons, magicians, witches, and sorcerers and who had always been imminently practical—eventually took the rules and applied them to such efficacy that their coffers swelled and they wrested power from nobility, which to this day still only survives by the weight of their names. The Court yielded to the Council, and the Council set the laws of the State to those Edicts of Detan.

“The magical creatures of the forests, the ones that did not wish to yield to their more mundane existences—the dryads yielding to their trees, the werewolves yielding to their wolves, the lamia to their serpents—were driven out. Magic was no match for such plodding, stolid, persistent practicality. Magic thrives on passion, on the nurturing of the spirit, and there was no more spirit for it to nurture. It fled to find less barren fields. Sorcerers and witches found their powers terribly weakened; dragons were insulted by being ignored as if they did not even exist, and where magic did not sustain them as it used to. No one knows where they have gone, for it is not easy for a dragon to hide itself, and yet there has been nary a word from other States, who will have little to do with our State but for its undeniably fine commerce.

“So you see, my Queen, that is why the faces of the Council have so few lines. That is why a church is a gloomy, darkened building that so easily becomes a tradesman’s meeting house. That is why the alehouses are filled with slumber instead of brawls. And that is why the forest is unwelcoming and, as far as anyone outside the State can tell, mostly empty. And it is why, my Queen, you sense that there is something more to this life, to each plodding second in which your muscles yearn for movement faster than a calm walk, in which your skin wishes for more than just the brush of fabric, in which your feet wish to dance, in which your eyes strain to find the colour they know once inhabited our world. In the course of one lifetime, our State transformed from its Dragonsong days. We now have peace, and many do not understand what they lack.”

“But I can tell you what the State lacks, in embracing tranquillity and rejecting the tempests of passion.” His eyes burned like dark coals as he raised his hand over her. She remained so still, as though frozen, but the heat of her cheeks had now spread down over her chest and into her stomach, all the way down to her toes. She could not have moved even if she had wanted to, and she did not want to. Her chest constricted. Her breathing was shallow. It was as if she had not eaten, but it was not her belly that felt hunger, and it was not her lungs that lacked for air. She could not name the place in her body, nor the pulling feeling it caused—a deep, unknown
yearning
for something she did not know or understand, but desperately wanted.

“In welcoming security, the State has relinquished satisfaction. With no passions, there cannot be fulfilment. And life here, while offering no greater dangers than raised voices over a trade agreement, has lost excitement.”

“But, my Queen,” he whispered, slowly passing his hand over her from shoulder to ankle, close enough that she could sense heat from his palm against the fabric of her gown, “passions ultimately cannot be quelled. Already it has been too long, so that the memory of magic is nothing more than magician’s tricks, and that memory is fading. Yet with the fading memory, the minds of the people are aware of an unknown loss. They will seek to fill that growing chasm. You know of what I speak. Keep it in your memory, Syra, and I will return.”

His breath had been warm on her ear. Her body trembled now, as though cold, and yet she was so hot. But now he swept off the bed in one motion, hurrying to the window. When he looked back at her, she thought he was shaking as well.

“Have good dreams, my Queen,” he murmured, and then he leapt out of the window.

Syra scrambled up and ran to the windowsill. She did not think she had moved so fast since her childhood, before she had learned, with the help of correction after correction, not to. A great white owl spread its silver wings against the moonlight, and she gasped, her hand flying to her lips. More forbidden transformation, this time of such magnitude that if anyone saw him the Council would have him exiled.

Gilian disappeared around a corner of the castle, and as she returned to bed, Syra realised that the bruises from her earlier correction were completely gone.

Get your copy now

About the Author

Aurelia T. Evans is an erotic writer with a fondness for horror and the supernatural. In addition to writing, Aurelia enjoys baking, taking late night walks, and listening to almost every genre of music.