The Bloody Nightingale: Adult Fairytales

The Devil I Know

Old wives' tales go thus: Behind every man, a monster. Behind every husband, beast. And roses become thorns in time.

But the curse of my egregious veins only ever comes at midnight: turning me to a monster.

Assuredly, Nurse fixes me potions and poultices to mask the stench of my devilish, rotting flesh come supper. The court whispers that the Crown Prince wears a mask after I was scarred in war, and completely covers my limbs in the finest of Parisian fabrics out of a sense of Apollonian vanity, so as not to let the inelegant sun spoil my lily-white flesh.

Nurse was the only one who knew - who had been there when mother bargained with the Devil to give her stillborn son life: a drop of Satan's blood flowed through me, and I had the Devil's gold hair to prove it.

I had been raised by the Council of Lords and was now the de facto ruler after my coming of age, with Marchioness Peters the head of state before I reached eighteen. Marchioness Peters had been my father the King's right-hand man before the King and Queen had been killed on a hunting trip - only five red claws left on each of their bare breasts, with their torn shrouds like a bier mound around my fainted form.

I was twelve the eve of the hunting accident, the only survivor, and the maids always whispered that my teeth grew sharper by the day after my parents perished.

Tonight - tonight, I would choose a Queen. Nurse said it was the way of Kings to take a bride before assuming the throne, and Marchioness Peters agreed. Prince Charming, who had won the Crusades and battle against the Dragon of Claremont, who never revealed his face beyond merry, bright blue eyes peeping through my Harlequin mask, would choose a noblewoman to wed by the stroke of midnight. Then, a King. My father's birthright.

Pulchritude, I thought. When my flesh turns to maggots and mold each night, and I grow horns, claws, venom, and wings - aren't I worth only dog meat?

And so a bride. Every man's dream. But for a monster that hungered for flesh, I was wary of women. Their elegant throats, their breasts that could cut - the Beast in me unleashed each midnight would have even had his way with old Nurse if I - the aberrant Prince - was not restrained and enchained with seven lashings and bindings to my quarters each strike of the twelfth hour.

But this bride of mine would have to know my secret... to share my bed, the bed of a monster. And to bear us little beastlings. It would be a treacherous arrangement, and I was half-given to a life of virginity and tax ledgers.

"Char, it's time, the ball," Nurse said, grinning widely. She was the only attendant I let serve me, the handmaiden of my mother and my wet nurse, who had taken the King and Queen's deathbed secrets close to her breast.

I buttoned my blue suit and fanned out the starched coattails. Hunger rose in me - and not the dynastic kind - as I thought of the feast of ladies' white necks that would be available to partake of in eye alone tonight. Gleaming, ivory throats - cheeks ablush. Women always scared me. But now, I had to find a wife.

"I think I'm ready," I said, my voice clear as a burbling brook. I stood 6'5, towering like my blood father - Lucifer. I arranged my mask so it obscured all but my hair and eyes. It was part of my facade by now, a way to distance myself from commoners and noblefolk alike. Only Nan ever saw my handsome, angular face, with lips like cherries, when it was off. "Let's get this over with."

Nan wished me luck, and I made my way to the ball.

Marchioness Peters was dressed in a Tyrian purple suit and waistcoat. He avidly introduced me to the up-and-coming maidenfolk of the provinces and London alike. But Buckingham was dull for a beast like me - I craved Herne's woods.