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«Do I disgust you?» He spoke calmly, thoughtfully, unable to tell if there was a firestorm raging inside him, or if all the old wounds had been healed by the ice.
She turned her attention to the spikes almost wounding his forehead. He was in no pain, and the flowers on top of the thorny crown were so beautiful. They set off his beauty perfectly. Rhianon involuntarily reached for them with her hand. She clearly imagined the picture – Madael, about to go into battle, wearing a wreath of roses over his golden curls instead of his helmet. He has a helmet with which he is obliged to cover his inhuman appearance in battle, as well as his wings. For his help he would be offered the crown of any country. Humans can only dream of such a thing, but to him worldly values mean nothing. He would give it all up for Rhianon. He must be to her what he once delighted her to be, so he would go into battle with his head uncovered, with a wreath of roses in his golden curls. No mortal would dare do such a thing, for he too could so easily be blown off his head in battle if he crossed reasonable boundaries, but he didn’t care anymore, for her sake he must be bold and reckless. Is it possible to think that roses are protective? Perhaps it was only a legend, but now he himself was the legend of eternity.
He followed the movement of her hand and did not recoil when the flaming fingers touched him. She could smell the faint scent of roses, and heard his voice as if it had come from afar.
«They were said to ward off more wounds than any shield, and he who wears them is invulnerable, but I have been invulnerable since before the rose with thorns appeared.»
«How do you believe yourself?» She ventured to ask.
«I have always believed that the rose is the girl you love. It is one look at her before you even touch her, and you are too hurt.»
«My name is not rose.»
«But you hurt me before I even knew your name, before you even noticed me.»
His voice was calm, but it conveyed a brutal truth. Rhianon didn’t even have time to sob when strong arms tightened around her waist. It was frightening to even imagine how powerful they were. He could have crushed her with a single thrust, crushing her flesh like chunks of marble statue. Instead, he jerked her off the ground and set her on the parapet.
The height! Rhianon nearly suffocated. The teeth of the parapet beneath her feet were wet with rain and slippery. If Madael hadn’t continued to hold her, she would have fallen, but he didn’t loosen his embrace. His palms slid smoothly around her waist.
The long-standing fear of heights came back to life, but it was different. Maybe it was because someone else’s wings were fluttering behind her back. They were Madael’s wings. It was as if they were her own. His wings were for the two of them. As long as he was with her, she would not fall.
The heights were so dizzying. Someone else’s voices might have beckoned her from heaven and from the abyss, but she was with Madael. What would happen if he left her?
What would he want to do? He set her on the parapet of the roof. Is this not a dream?
«Are you tired of living?» His fingers lightly touched her cheek. How like the touch of a moth’s wings. «Everyone who sees me and can’t forget me eventually finds their way down,» he nodded at the sharp rocks. «Do you seek your death in battle? Or do you wish to fall prey to court intrigue?»
«Guard me from them if you wish,» she allowed graciously.
«Am I your enemy?»
Strangely, she wanted to fight him, and yet she did not consider him her enemy.
«Are you drawn to the abyss? Do you want to kill yourself? Do you want to fly down the parapet?»
She hesitated. No, she was not being pulled down. Perhaps he thought otherwise. He was used to the fact that once you see it, you can’t go on living.
«You won’t jump without me, because I am your wings,» Madael whispered to her.
Then he let her go. Rhianon didn’t even have time to see that they had switched places. She was now standing near the parapet, and Madael was hovering beside her. He himself was not afraid of heights. The golden-haired figure with wings, suspended in the air, was both strikingly beautiful and somewhat frightening at the same time.
The angel tilted his head slightly to touch her lips with his lips. The kiss was quick but sweet, just like touching the petals of a rose.
«Love me and I will give you wings.»
He had said those words before. Rhianon recoiled. They were empty words, beautiful though they were.
Madael grinned, noticing the change in her mood.
«Still want to fight me?»
She didn’t have to answer that question. She could have spared her the trouble of answering that question. A moment’s pause to make up had been and gone. Madael gently flapped his wings.
«There are no more sentries on the towers,» Rhianon reminded him sarcastically. «You have no one left to kill.»
He grinned, dismissive and arrogant.
«I’ll always find someone,» he said menacingly.
Rhianon couldn’t even believe that he had flown away. Her first impulse was to go back to the bedroom and find the sword hidden there. So she did. With it in her hands she no longer felt weak and defenseless. It was a pity she couldn’t wear it at her side all the time. For that she would have had to give up her dress and flaunt it in men’s clothing. Of course, she’s the only lord here and any of her antics should be turned a blind eye by those around her.
Orpheus was pleased to tell her that Ferdinand had returned to Vinor with the rest of his troops and was waiting there to hear from Rhianon.
«I pretended to be a messenger and took him a letter from you and a couple of pretty gifts. He believes he must stay away from you for the time being for your own safety. He no longer claims to share the throne of Loretta with you,» Orpheus explained. «Well, I’ve managed to convince him. Well, I also cut a lock from your head while you were asleep and took it to him. It was necessary. And something else needs to be done to keep him from forgetting you while you’re away and choosing a minion, needing blood, his and yours, and some memorabilia.»
«Leave him alone,» Rhianon slid her fingers over the hilt of her sword. The dwarves had done their best for her. The blade gleamed in the candlelight as soon as the scabbard was removed. It thirsted for blood and was already vibrating quietly. Only now could Rhianon hold it for any length of time. Her hand grew stronger. The vibration of the blade was felt in her palm no more than the beat of her pulse. It should be. If Madael didn’t know how to control his powers exactly the same way, they would crush the world.
Rhianon caught herself thinking that she wanted to be like him in everything. Even if the next time he showed up at her window not with romantic confessions, but with threats of war and reprisals, she would still try to copy him in everything.
«Ferdinand deserves amusement,» she told Orpheus. «He must have someone to keep him from going mad. I will only encourage him to choose.»
«He has to want it himself,» Orpheus muttered, almost resentfully.
«And if he doesn’t want it, what’s the point of the spell?»
«It is just in case. I want to take care of longevity of his feelings. He’s not an angel or even a spirit, and people are so fickle.»
«Not everyone,» she thought of Ron, rotting in a deep grave, where his remains must have been devoured by something buried there with him, or nurtured by the earth after he’d fallen. There are always demons living in treasures, and it is the same in graves. If this young man had not turned out to be fanatically devoted to her, he would still be alive.
«Still, it wouldn’t hurt to secure our place in Vinor,» Orpheus snorted. «I could remove the heirs.»
«Don’t you dare!» Rhianon was distracted when she heard a low shriek. The sound had come from Hildegard’s chambers. It was easy for her to tell. For some reason she felt a strong urge to go and check what was going on there.
Her chamber was just below, in one of the towers. Rhianon had to go down there. A door opened and she beckoned. She hid her sword behind her back and entered. What she saw reminded her of a scene she had seen once before in this very bedchamber, in this very bed. Everything was the same, the candles lit in the candelabra, the dark silk of the canopy, and the strange, heady smells. Only the bodies entwined on the bed were different. It was one of them, to be exact. It was not the body of a girl; it was the body of an angel. Rhianon almost shrieked. Shimmering wings spread behind her sleek back, golden curls covered Hildegard’s dark-haired head, pale lips brushed against ruby ones, almost transparent hands intertwined with human ones.
The violent act of copulation was coming to an end. Rhianon vividly imagined the murals in Madael’s tower and the ghosts in the barn. Before the fire engulfed it, the same thing must have been happening there.
In her hand was a sword. Rhianon gripped the hilt tightly and stepped closer. She could not see the angel’s face. But it could have been Madael, after all. Then why did she feel no pain, only unaccountable anger? There is no treason here, or is there?
The neck beneath the golden curls was finally exposed. Curls like snakes slipped from it. Here was the right moment. Rhianon struck so quickly that no one would have had time to dodge. She heard Hildegard scream deafeningly. She was splattered with blood. Or rather, it was a black viscous slurry that looked so much like blood. The still convulsively moving decapitated body tried to rise on its elbows and found no support. His fingers slid over the sheets, and his head recoiled so far from them that they couldn’t find it. Rhianon grasped the tangle of tangled strands before anyone else could pick it up. Slowly she lifted it in her outstretched hand. The face, still writhing in agony, was unfamiliar to her. It wasn’t Madael. He was not the one in Hildegard’s arms. She should have felt relief, but all she felt was black anger.
Hildegard’s screams still wouldn’t stop. Before the servants could rush to them, Rhianon emerged from the bedroom, carrying the still-living head in her outstretched hand. A liquid that looked like blood dripped from the stump of its neck. It hissed and almost ignited as it fell on the carpet or the hem of her dress. His long hair was wrapped around her arm, tying it into a bundle, but Rhianon kept the strands in place. His face, distorted in pain, seemed pleasing to her. There was even a moment of admiration in his tormented eyes. Maybe that was what made her joke.
«Well, that you still love her and not me?»
The cracked lips quivered, trying to say something, but no words came out, just blood flowing from his lips. The head seemed to choke on it. Rhianon thought that the severed head would begin to grow ugly and rot right before her eyes, but that one remained beautiful, while the body in Hildegard’s room might be turning black and falling apart. If so, it was only becoming what it should be. It was ashes.
Barely reaching her room, Rhianon tossed the head into the fireplace without regret. Orpheus’s shrieking did not distract her. She watched arrogantly as the fire touched the beautiful features, but could not destroy them at once.
She felt no regret. What if this is the same creature that crawled in the ground and drank the remnants of life from her friend’s relics. To many of Madael’s fallen angels, beauty returned only after drinking someone else’s blood or someone else’s life. Setius was a case in point. And this angel she did not know at all.
At least she had managed to do something to spare Hildegard. Rhianon liked to take things from others, just as she had been taken from herself. Perhaps after Loretta she would like to take other people’s kingdoms, such as the Duchy of Rothbert. She found the very idea tempting.
«What have you done?» Orpheus held his own neck in horror, as if she could decapitate him as well.
Rhianon turned to him, still holding the bloodied sword in her hand.
«You’re not happy about something.»
He did not answer, and she added:
«If I am truly their queen, I have the right to take their lives.»
If they are immortal, they can rise from the flames like the phoenix. Rhianon stepped back from the fireplace. Sparks splashed the hem of her dress, but it did not burst into flames.
«See to Hildegard,» she said to Orpheus.
She is the madwoman?» He was clearly dissatisfied.
«I don’t want her plotting anything against us or making any noise today,» Rhianon explained.
«Then it will be done.»
Orpheus disappeared quickly.
Rhianon hid her sword back in its scabbard. She did not scrub the blade because she knew it would absorb blood like a sponge instead of rusting from it. She didn’t need a squire. How would he cope with such a sword that sought to slaughter him? She, on the other hand, was beginning to have the strength she needed to do it.
Strength! What if it were to be tested? No one who spent more than an hour in forbidden towers usually retained their wits. Sometimes convicts were locked up there on purpose. If someone snuck in and stole something, his hands were cut off. For those who tried to read the manuscripts, the punishment was blindness or insanity. What would happen to her?
Rhianon decided to check it out. She knew the secret passage that connected the towers to the castle. She could get there in a matter of minutes. But if she had called her retinue and left the castle gate, the journey to the towers in Loretta would have taken more than half an hour.
Rhianon was unpleasantly surprised to find herself inside. Everything here seemed to retain the memory of Madael. His presence was felt in the crushing emptiness, as if a golden cobweb stretched over the dusty shelves. She could almost see the two of them huddled against the wall. From the outside it looked beautiful and frightening. It was as if the picture was imprinted on her retina. It was there, near that niche… Rhianon went that way.
«They say those towers were built long before the city was built, and that they were never torn down.»
A voice came from behind her and startled her. Rhianon looked behind her and saw no one there, but the voice was still there, seemingly coming from everywhere.
«They had not been torn down because the stonemasons’ hands had not obeyed them. No one wants his hands to be cut off, do they? But the governor, to whom Denitsa later appeared, did not dare to disobey him. He did not want the angel to rob him of his mind.»
She looked up. Douglas was perched at ease on one of the higher shelves. He was folding a scroll in his lap.
«Perhaps this place would someday be assigned a custodian. It would be someone as peculiar as the place itself…» Douglas traced the huge curved dome above. «You don’t find it strange that this tower exists at all. Its contents are valuable, but completely useless to the world. It cannot be touched or read or disposed of at will. It is unusual that a tower that has no function has remained untouched by the rulers of Loretta. It stands there as if it were a curse.»
«Perhaps it is the curse,» Rhianon twirled the globe nestled in the corner. It was unusual. The drawings on it looked more like a map of the stars Orpheus had drawn for her, rather than the usual pattern of bays and continents. It looked quite beautiful. Involuntarily she was fascinated by the symmetry of the constellations and the glittering lines drawn between them. It seemed as if the entire starry sky had been turned into one magical ball. A moment and it began to whirl under her fingers. Rhianon was mesmerized.
«Careful, this thing is capable of captivating your consciousness. Believe me, I almost got caught myself.»
Rhianon nodded reluctantly, but did not take her eyes off the globe. A harpy appeared from beneath her feet and tugged at her hem. Douglas, too, jumped down, traversing the floor-to-ceiling space in one fluid motion, and stood beside her.
«It is a lot of curious things here, but I try not to touch anything. I read it sometimes,» the wizard admitted.
«But your hands are still steady and you’re not blind,» she glanced at the scroll in his hands. «You’re not insane, are you?»
«I keep nothing,» he apologized hastily. «I only look through what I am allowed to and then put it back.»
«So you take nothing away from this place except stolen knowledge.»
«I only get what my already sold soul is worth.»
«So,» Rhianon shot him a curious look. «You know a lot about them.»
«It is not all of them,» he admitted frankly.
«I could have understood it all,» she said, reaching out to take the scroll, but then ducking back in time to look at it. She needn’t look at the strange symbols. She could imagine them anyway. The time of drill was over. She had become strong both mentally and physically. Knowledge that to others would be murderous was familiar to her. It seemed as if she could even penetrate Madael’s mind and learn all that he himself knew.
«You are special,» Douglas said. «It’s not that he chose you.»
«Then what is it?»
He stared at her face for a long moment, then he turned his gaze to her lips.
«It is something…» «Douglas never finished. Rhianon turned her gaze to his pale lips. His face resembled chalk against the dark jabot, but the arcs of his eyebrows and lashes stood out in seductive dark lines. He could have been handsome, but the magical experience he had gained had exhausted him. Around his multicolored eyes appeared a dark cusp. His hair, dyed black, had lost its former silkiness. Maybe it was punishment for him for taking the heads off all his competitors. Rhianon looked into his thoughts and experienced the horrors he had experienced with him. How he had been tormented. A boy who had fallen in love with Dennitsa and discovered his hidden talents, he feared that one of his brothers or kin would become his own rival. He demanded from the king heads of his half-siblings until he executed them all. Rhianon remembered the young man being dragged to the scaffold and the star he had given her. It was Douglas’s brother, condemned by him – who would have thought. It would have disgusted her before, but now she didn’t look away, following his thoughts. They tangled into such an intricate web, and the two multicolored eyes further accentuated his singularity. One eye was blue, the other eye was emerald. Only wizards had eyes of different colors, and not all wizards, only the most powerful. Douglas was a very special, but the struggle for supremacy nearly drove him mad. What was he fighting for? Did he hope that if he became first among the damned, he would win the sympathy of his chosen one? That goal had been relegated to the back burner. Rhianon saw what he was thinking and sighed. Her lips opened like gates, ready to breathe out fire, but she already knew that Douglas would not be burned. She leaned on his shoulder and pressed her lips to his. It was just one kiss. It was sweet. The supple cold lips immediately slid open to meet hers. Experience replaced desire. Surely he wanted more, but Rhianon was quick to pull away. She had no regrets about the gift. In years of torment and abstinence, Douglas deserved at least that.
«Will we meet again… here?» He gazed meaningfully around the tower beneath the high dome.
Rhianon shrugged. She hadn’t thought of having a secret tryst with him just yet, especially not here. Everything here held the memory of Madael, the intimacy and kisses of the fallen angel.
Douglas was losing badly against him. Yes, he was handsome, despite his black raven robes and forced celibacy. But he’s human, and while he’s a little different from the rest of mankind, he’s mortal, too.
«You waited too long for him,» she reminded him before she left. «Is it really all the fun in the world for you to wait even longer for me? It is all eternity, for instance.»
He only shrugged his shoulders.
«Some things are worth a lot.»
Rhianon was quite in agreement with him. Only unlike him, she wouldn’t wait in vain.
Six Spinsters
When she emerged from the towers, Loretta was still drowning in twilight. The dark streets were calm. Or did it just seem that way?
As she passed the well, Rhianon stopped and glanced down, apprehensive. Could Rothbert, out of spite, have let worms like those he’d let loose in the sewers down here too, to grow into dragons? Could there already be a dragon in the well? For a moment all she could see was a hunched winged silhouette, so much like Setius. Against the gleaming water below, it seemed a mirage made of moonlight. The creature lifted its head and stared at her with those same empty, moonlit eyes.
Rhianon merely shrugged her shoulders. They say that some of Dennitsa’s companions have fallen into crevices and wells. Those who dwelled in the water helped her take the city. The young queen was grateful to them for this. Now the underwater dwellers could get away, but they still found a place for themselves in the gutters and fountains. Perhaps, in time, a sea serpent would indeed appear in one of the wells, and a kraken would take up residence in the castle moat. Rhianon wasn’t too worried about that prospect. She could handle guests seeping through the water with ease. Unless, of course, there was an ocean nearby, fire would easily scare them off. Without water, they are nothing. Their tears for Dennitsa forced them into moisture for all eternity. Every time Rhianon spotted a new pearl in her caskets, she knew who had brought it, and the wet footprints leading to the gutter or bathtub said more about the visitor than they could say for themselves. Pearls were also a symbol of tears, and also of innocence. Those who now lived under the water had compassion for Madael and paid the price for it. On the one hand Rhianon sympathized with them, on the other she was concerned about how she would keep such supporters in line if they were to rebel. In the narrow streets of Loretta, where there is little water, fire would frighten them, but what would happen in the moat. For now it was best not to think about it.
Rhianon looked into all the wells and fountains as she passed. She saw water droplets silvery on mermaid scales, unusual fish splashing in someone’s tubs, living pearls gliding down the gutter, supported by unusual creatures. Loretta came alive. Every drop of water in it became animate, and so did every leaf on the branches. As she walked past someone’s front gardens, Rhianon could hear the leaves rustling anxiously. It was as if someone was calling to her from the crowns of the trees. Sometimes she recognized the dryads, but she did not want to communicate with them today. Phyllis had long been angry with her and hid in an orange tree near the castle. Rhianon hadn’t spoken to her in a long time, and the dryad was angry. She wanted to flirt and play cards with her mistress, not remain a neglected servant. She often said that the rustling of playing cards reminded her of the foliage and her home far away in the forest. More than once she had suggested that Rhianon go back into the thicket with her, to the tree that Phyllis said grew to the heavens.
Rhianon did not doubt her words now, but she did not want to leave Loretta just yet. She walked through the streets and enjoyed the feeling that everything here now belonged to her. The streets, deserted at night, were beautiful and spacious.
