Vampyre Bride ✔️

XXIV⎮Mal Aria

Notwithstanding the undercroft, the castle itself had been silent, but the untamed gardens of Castle Winterly were alive with symphonies — crickets, nightingales, and the majestic solo of a tawny owl somewhere in the boughs overhead.

She listened to it all, felt the rhythm of the night as it floated around her, seductive and powerful. Like the creature at her side. Her hand no longer rested over his steely arm, but he did, more than once, brush her arm with his ever and anon — and not by accident, she was sure — as they perambulated over the cats eyes glinting from the pathway.

Why did he not speak? she wondered. Why had he brought her out here? What was this all to the purpose? And did she dare seek to know the answer to these disturbing questions? "Why will you not remove your mask?" she asked at last, deeming that question the least perilous of them all.

"Suppose instead that I have only ever worn a mask; perhaps the mask incarnates who I really am, and the face beneath — the face you think you know — is only a lie."

"Do you mean to tell me you're a devil?" Satyr or not, on his imposing frame the mask certainly appeared demoniacal.

"As you fancy." His teeth flashed white as he smiled into the gloom. "How I wonder what you might do if you knew what I really looked like; what I really am."

"Then remove the lie," she challenged, her own mask affording her a dauntlessness she did not wholly feel, "and you shall see."

"And ruin this little idyll?"

"If the idyll is the lie, then yes. Howsoever treacherous the truth may be, I wish to know it."

"There are some truths not worth the knowing," he cautioned, his voice hard. "The lamb ought not tempt the wolf overmuch with impulsive curiosity."

After that, and by tacit agreement, they continued on in silence, Emma somewhat subdued by what he'd said. At length they passed by a massy hedgerow of wild roses, the carmine petals gleaming blackly in the nighttime.

She had, at first stepping outside, been entranced by the wild beauty of the castle grounds — lit by hundreds of red lanterns strung up in the trees — but now that they had left the stone pathway, and were passing deeper into the shadows, she stopped and would go no further.

"Before we continue I must know what it is you wish to show me." She'd grown more leery with every step that had taken her farther from the castle.

"Still suspicious of me?"

"Always." Especially now that she could hardly make him out in the darkness at all, even the delineation of his horrible mask was now lost to the umbrage. "Devil that you claim to be."

"Why then are you here?" he asked, with an elegant flick of his wrist to encompass the dark copse they'd entered, voice husky. He then stepped closer. "You are no milk-blooded miss, but what can you mean by going off into the night alone ... with me. My intentions I have made no secret — I care nothing for your virtue. I mean to take it for myself, and I'll be bound you know that much already."

"By force?" Her hands trembled violently with the thought.

"I have no need to enforce or ensorcel you, Emma; I have only to be patient, for you will gladly bestow it soon enough." There was no hint of conceit, as she might have expected from such a claim, but merely a quiet confidence that irked.

Presumptuous devil. "You are very sure of yourself," she scoffed.

"Why are you here?" he asked again, disregarding her gibe.