Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

XLIII. In the Eye of the Storm

3

Lolita always had a fondness for storms.

When Lolita woke up a second time, the wintry rain was more covetous than before. Black with the night's macabre thoughts as it ate the entrails of life surrounding the Order of the Dragon, violently sinking its frosty teeth into the desolate, eerie night. Cradling couplets of inky rain, the Nightʼs storm lashed out at the Dragonsfolk below, christening the rise of the Everlasting Night and its fleecy moon. Staring at the billowing silken cloth of Aquinasʼ Tower, the neighboring drum-tower forged from dragonʼs teeth and pale red stone, she watched smoky plumes drift from the Crownʼs holdfast darkly.

It was destructively beautiful.

The thunder growled at the rain, and the rain submitted to its authority, lightning flared. The preternatural snow gusted around Prince Manor with the malice of a ghostʼs whisper, the storm came to life. A primordial creation of upper beings, greater beings, of gods and men, weaving the essence of creation in-between their frosty fingers. Pulling on her clothes for a second time, shivering at the newfound chill of the sinister night, Lolita heard two lush, low voices with Castilian seductiveness to them, soft as a Shakespearean sonnet. A man and a woman, skirting amongst the Princely courtyard.

Someone shuffled in the room.

"It is uncommon for wolves to whisper, but when they do, I find it very...fascinating, if you will."

Lolitaʼs heart stopped.

Tilting her head to the side, she saw a man sitting in a ill-coffered chair, reading a French satire with a sullen, bored face. He was a queer creature, with a prominent Romanesque nose and brittle skin, struggling from the malignancy of cancer. And with sickly balding hair and an effeminate sense of posture, of regality, he was an odd vision in the Orderʼs court.

Ambiguous in ethnicity and mysterious in origin, with an accent so foreign it sounded almost ludicrous on his tongue. As he read his satire, he stared dubiously at Lolita with eyes of fire, his gaze unsettling and invasive, and he ruffled his ubiquitous neon crimson nightrobes with a disenchanted sense. He had a penchant for silks, velvets, the richest damasks the Order could offer, and yet, in his illustrious glory, he seemed terrifying.

He was terrifying.

"How long have you been here?" Lolita asked hotly.

"Long enough," the man replied simply, monotonous. "How long have you been here, sweet girl?"

The question took her by surprise. Coughing, Lolita cupped the upper swells of her arms and caressed them against the brunt of the cold.

"Long enough," Lolita parroted, guarded. "Iʼm, Iʼm one of Miss DeMarcusʼ ladies, Iʼm on her staff..."

The man flipped the next page of the satire novel, paying no mind to Lolitaʼs nervousness.

"How did you get in here?" Lolita snapped. "How did you get passed the Dragonsguard? Those men stand guard all day and all night, unless asked otherwise."

His lips quirked up in an amused smile as he flipped another page.

"For knighted men with the word guard in their name, isnʼt it ironic that they arenʼt really good at it?"

A beat.

"These walls are strong enough to contain the Orderʼs fiery demons, and they are strong enough to hide those fiery demons," the man told Lolita, mocking her. "Sometimes, the Orderʼs walls house fires of a s*xual kind."

Lolita blushed, face reddening, and when the man rose – shrewd in his height – plump, portly, his eyes were enflamed with the force of brutal wildfires.

"Everything true comes out storms. The frost of prehistoric deities, the cold reckoning the Blue Men of the Minch bring, the wroth of the Nightʼs corpse queens, they are all the worldʼs truths revealed in storms. The destructive nature of man-kind. But those in the storm, the Dragonsfolk skirting along the courtyard, the humble servants of Order and Chaos, they bear the brunt of the destruction; they feel the violent blows of politics. It is the truth they have always known," he commented.

Lolita held the manʼs creepy, unfettered gaze.

"We are much alike, you and I, Miss Kovačević. Just two souls muffling our needs, our wants, until we feel like it is the right time to get what we want."

The Catalan whispers continued, Hispanic in modern antiquity, but regal in historical repose. Beyond the iron-bolted doors of Sebastian Prince's master-bedroom in Le Petit Trianon – a small château where Robin DeMarcus slept – were secrets as golden as a pirateʼs cove. As the queer man spoke his queer words, Lolitaʼs mouth watered with hush-hush need, and with a subtle refinement, she turned to the mysterious man. The storm took a turn for the worst.

"And what do you think I could possibly want?" Lolita asked him.

"What every pretty fool wants," he said, voice laced with pity. "The specifics are your business, but nevertheless, I am here to help with that...want. The world is yours, sweet girl."

The man retreated, his voice a ghost's whisper hanging in the smoky sky.

"You just have to reach out and take it."