Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

CIII. In Dreams, I Was Yours

❦❧♱❦❧

To my first love,
In dreams, I was yours.

A haunting dance with the ghost of a Por Una Cabeza tango lingered in her ears. Like the sacred way the stars guided two ships in the night towards each other, in dreams, Sebastian was Robinʼs and Robin was Sebastianʼs. Love was cloud nine, a thunderous storm cloud, and they danced along them, ignoring the lightning bolts that pierced their skin. In dreams, Sebastian Prince was that first love, a fragile piece of glass. But when the darkness took over, that love turned toxic. A bloodthirsty, malevolent shadow cloaked in pills and guns. Stronger than a suicideʼs breath.

Hiding in that hourglass, time came like a thief, a sandman in burning cloaks. Her heart burned, bled, lost in the depths of it all Love became the quiet, the never knowing, the longing, and the silent hatred, the futureʼs jailer, with no past and no present. The "I give you everythingʼs" and "you give me nothingʼs." A quiet susurration of "please come back to meʼs" and "I love youʼs" returned with an icy coldness, the "I only f*cking love youʼs" and the "I promise" promises that were never kept.

The trail of bleeding roses began to die, burning, just as Robin and Sebastianʼs love had died.

To my first love,
In dreams, I was yours.
And you became my nightmare.

The Red Room. As the Red Room swallowed her whole, the world burned. Robinʼs engagement ring – this beguiling diamond, with an infinity symbol interwoven with an inverted cross – glistened in the moonlight, illuminating the smoke around the burning room. It craved her flesh, skinned her to the bone, and painted a picture of the world in blood. Several, gushing crimson hands, suffocating the world in a heated chokehold.

Because of Katarina.
And because of Scott. 

Katarina dʼAragon. A master manipulator. A prized wh*re. A Trojan horse wrapped in silk and sodomy. The Bathsheba of our time. Anne Boelyn in Latin flesh. Katarina was a dark beauty, toxic and vile, ready to cast her down. Hell came to her in waves, sometimes heaven, sometimes grace, but in a never ending burn. Robin saw the fire weave together a story worth of folklore, with Caithness – her right hand, a Hellbender operative – sitting with her in the flames, as she stared at Katarina in the Frederick III washroom, smoke billowing onto the grandiose mirror.

Robin, she had said. What a surprise, seeing you here.

Yes, Iʼm sorry about the...urgency. Katarina, is there anything I can get for you?

Hesitated. She always hesitated.

W-water, please. Thank you.

Of course.

Pain, for Robin, was an aphrodisiac. A high like no other. She would sleep with men because she was in pain, because she wanted to feel something, anything, as the loss of her firstborn son – and her future, as the Orderʼs heiress – slipped through her hands. Every skeleton in her closet, every book written about this pain, was nothing compared to the hole he left behind. And when Robin saw Katarina, a lilac in a field of thorns, Robin prayed to Scott, prayed for the satisfaction of feeling him buried deep inside her, filling her up in ways most men only dreamed of, making her wet with just one stare. The lust and the shame and the pain of it all only grew, and grew, and grew.

Until there was nothing left but this.

Iʼm so sorry for all this. With everything thatʼs
been happening with Sebastian, I shouldnʼt have burdened you with an invitation. It was a careless thing to do.