Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

XLII. A Rose In Winterʼs Grasp

2

Lolita awoke to the Sirensʼ scream.

   The Servants Quartersʼ fireplace, homely and cozy inside the master bedroom, rose like an angry river. Crackling viciously against the rocks and devouring everything its wake. The darkness of the Everlasting Night, it was cannibalistic in its hunger. Blood was all it promised, all it knew, and to that – the Sirens screamed. In grief, in venerable pain, in spurned madness.

The fire illuminated her sleeping face, providing warmth amongst the silken crimson sheets, and as the Nightʼs cold wroth overwhelmed Prince Manor – the hailed Seadragonʼs Palace as it was called by the Dragonsfolk and the Enlightened – Lolita stared at the bottle of vintage de Medici scotch in the corner of the room, sighing. In the ambiance of the howling wind and the Sirensʼ howling screams, the bedside next to her was empty, save for a few ruffled sheets and the perfume of arousal.

Squeezing her thighs together in frustration, Lolita gathered her gown: a Valhallan piece, softer than silk, but inappropriate in its presentation – leaving both breasts bare, covered by little cloth. Lolita didnʼt really understand the Orderʼs culture – a hybrid of Hungarian and English practices – but as a foreigner from the Hellbendersʼ loveless territory, she appreciated the theatrics. The illustriousness of it all. Vinci was a fortress in the eyes of the Dragonsfolk and those exiled from the Order.

It was whispered about on tradersʼ ships and in Croatian brothels and within pirated banks; it was fabled by her sapphic lovers who craved a taste of its alluring power as much as she did; it was renowned for its metropolitan comeliness and medieval allure, and Prince Manorʼs infamy as an industrial money-making machine made every impoverished man and woman want its heavenly salary hikes, its land-grabbing, its extortionist ways, its railroads that polluted the skies in toxic, celestial, smoke.

Vinci was a dark paradise; Christendom where the body of Christ was enshrined, keeping the world rotating in the darkness of the Everlasting Night with the woolen moon strapped to His back.

And yet, Lolita awoke to screams of Sirens.

Sprawled on the bed as her fingers kissed her body with an intoxicating caress, the thoughts of her naked body right beside Robin's and her feverish whines divine, Lolita listened to the Sirens sing. Their voices were seraphic; a godly orchestra haunted with the rhythm of a mournful wind, and as they sang with their syrupy voices, Lolita sang the melodies of her pleasure. She drank in the Sirensʼ swan song with the carnivorous hunger of a delicate, ripening fruit, and she drank in her fingersʼ fury.

The moon and the stars were no longer lovers; and the Sirens were no longer a translucent gleam of purity and grace. They grew accustomed to the darkness, like the seaʼs lover did her dress and the Sirens did their songs, and in the velvety smokiness of her lust, she saw it. She was an alcoholic's delight, lips hungrily pressing her mouth against her body in strangled gasps. She grew more wanton, moaned with wild abandon, and every scream was trapped in her throat, a meek attempt at shrieking in pleasure, a meek attempt at relief, and she saw it...

For the first time, in Louisiana.

Snow.

She saw snow, radiant like an angelic woman, with a lightness of white lace twinkling as it cascaded down. Like a flash of diamonds, the snow blanketed Vinci with the surreality of a fairytale. The sirens were crowned with thick pillowy quilts of snow, and the winds were silvery. The moonlight licked Lolita's face with the flirtatious mirth of Robin's tongue, and as they kissed, and she saw her.

The Snow Queen.

Riding atop a steed sewn from the stars, the snowy winds were beaded into one – like a wedding veil – and they blew her away from Vinci. The Vale howled with a snarling rage, and as Lolita watched the Everlasting Night take vehement shape, the sky seemed to grow closer to the Order. Lolita watched the snow and the stars and the sky with an enraptured lust, and as the Snow Queen rode into the night, the nebulous night seemed to be embroidered onto her skin: the hues of deep, rich, blue skies and stars swirling along the expanse of her arms, face, and neck, like pearls.

Constellations, galaxies, and nebulae rhapsodic against the sapphire tinge of her skin. Her hair was blonde like the Calico Sisters on the south side of town, two Grecian muses in Desdemona Princeʼs court – but they were like woven strands of liquid gold, unique, rich, flowing down from the roots to the tips in viscous gushes; a galaxy bursting into existence. Skin white as the moon, eyes like blue stars, obsidian stallions cold as ice.

Shivering as the chill settled over them like a smothering pillow; the stars twinkling and the wind carving its way through the sky, Lolita hummed her pleasure now, distracted by the icy breath of the stallions as they floated over the Sirensʼ moat. An aching beautiful performance gracing the dark, undying night.

And she heard the Sirensʼ scream.

Just like she heard hers.