1
An end, finally…
… was her only thought when the blinding light of day stung her eyelids. The sound of booted feet marching confirmed her fate. Darkness and a constant dripping noise from somewhere in the distance had been the mainstays of her existence these past few days. Such was the life of a prisoner in the dungeon of Eldwith Castle. A sideways view from the damp ground afforded one no more awareness than that. Aside from the pain which was constant.
The pains in her body from the tortures she had endured took most of her conscious thought. Too weak from starvation and rough handling, this sideways view would be her last.
What more could a siren of the dark worlds expect? Accused then convicted of every foul crime by a kingdom that feared and hated her, she was so vile even dungeon rats would not come near. They too must have heard the legend every man, woman, and child knew. A murderess at the ripe, old age of eighteen, Odile the Black had killed their beloved Prince Siegfried.
She, alone now, was the terror that was the Black Swan of Aarroughac Castle. Not even as old as her legend, the reviled sorceress would meet her end on the pyre today and terrorize the countryside no more.
Every inch of her body had been battered in such a way that she yearned for the numbing state of death. Surely, that was what the light and the footsteps meant. Her execution was nigh. One fleeting feeling of regret raced through her. To die shrieking in the witches’ fires in front of the full mass of a kingdom as a spectacle was not how she’d have planned to depart the mortal world. She was too solitary a creature for that. But if it would bring the mourning villagers peace, then so be it.
“Here she is sire.”
The footsteps stopped, replaced by voices. Each breath she took was a labor, pushing at her broken ribs. She squeezed her eyes shut against the glaring light, so accustomed now to the darkness that even the blessed sun was a misery.
“Odile of Aarroughac, sire, the black witch and murdering sorceress of the prince,” her jailor’s voice announced with a flourish.
Still, she did not stir.
“She doesn’t look to be much,” a new voice said. Something tugged at Odile’s memory at the sound. A glimmer of a pleasant kind of feeling washed through her but it could only be due to the insanity of her sorry state. The Black Swan knew nothing of pleasantness, even less of kindness. Still, through the heavy fog of pain and acceptance of her fate, curiosity pulled at her eyelids. Moving her bruised cheek a torturous fraction of an inch, she looked up.
The dark shadow of a man hovered above her, a striking silhouette blocking the glare of daylight but obscured and faceless. Her jailor grunted.
“Not anymore she’s not. The wizard’s daughter will work no more spells that is certain,” he said. Then Odile more felt than saw him move as he bent his leg back, preparing to deliver a kick to her gut. She flinched inward on reflex, causing all the agonies of her broken body to flare anew. Her cracked lips and bloodstained mouth opened on a soundless scream but the dryness of her throat made it impossible to force out anything more than a hiss. Rope dug into her wrists and ankles, the fibers crusted with blood.
The boot’s impact didn’t come though. The other man’s shadow moved in front of the guard, taking away more of the blinding sun as he stayed the guard with his arm.
“Leave her. She’s mine now, by order of the queen. I’ll finish this.”
“Whu-?”
“I said go.”
The voice was deep, commanding.
“Yes, sir.”
The dungeon master’s footsteps hurried away then faded. He left as a tarry blackness began to make up her awareness. It dripped thickly over her blurred vision.
Before she could drift completely out, as she had been between the torture sessions that the queen had ordered her to endure, the shadow man moved like the lash of a whip. Drawing a blade from the sheath on his hip, he moved quickly. The sound the metal made was shrill in the stagnant, dungeon air—cleansing. Odile would have laughed at the insanity of that thought. Her mind was slipping. Not much longer now, she told herself.
She’d expected fire, but this was closer to the end she wanted. Instead of ashes, her flesh would slowly feed the soils of the earth. That made sense. She knew the underground well and would be happy to nourish the creatures there. They were her only friends, those beasts of the darkness.
A skull of roses came up out of the pervasive black murk of her delirium with a serpent’s head sliding through its oral cavity. Like a fine weave of cloth, she could feel its scales slip past her lips, along her cheek. Then, in the vision, the reptile threaded itself through both eye sockets. A fitting home for a serpent she thought.
Her executioner stepped closer, blade lifted. Her heart leapt. One last agonizing pulse in her chest before this dark angel of mercy ended her life. His powerful outline lowered to the floor. The blade flashed and she imagined him in that split second as a lover. He would take her away from this place. That was enough to call him such. Odile, who’d never known the press of a lover’s lips, would soon know the kiss of ending. She laughed silently inside herself because all the legends about her were wrong and only she knew.
Well, one other knew her shame, but he’d fled, leaving her alone to face this moment in his stead. Now there was only the man of the shadows. His large hand clasped her shoulder then the knife tip came up and she thought no more. The serpent slithered away as the water rose. The skull flooded then submerged in death’s still lake.
2
Three days earlier…
All her life had been a cold, dark affair, shrouded in the mists of an evil sorcery she could not have taken part in, even if she’d wanted. Some things just are not in a person’s nature. They are not in the soil that particular body has sprung from. Child of such a misfortune was Odile of Aarroughac—The Death Black Swan.
Such a waste and a pity, she’d always thought—that she was nowhere near as forbidding a spirit as she was believed to have been. For all her fame of bringing destruction to men, she’d never been so empowered. Never harmed a fly… until that night…
***
She wore an emerald gown with black lace. A mask decorated with beading and black feathers concealed her face. Rothebart’s motives were grim as ever and she couldn’t calm the frantic fluttering in her belly. The wizard had cast an enchantment on her before they’d left Aarroughac but they both knew it wouldn’t work. His magic never took with her. It was one of the reasons he hated her beyond the fact that she was the bastard child of his love—the peasant maid Odette.
Odile repelled magic, she always had. The wizard had tried all the same for tonight’s plans had to come together seamlessly. The carriage they rode in bumped, jostling her and sending a new wave of dread through her middle. She hated having any part in Rothebart’s scheming but tonight she had plans of her own. She would warn the prince away from her, away from the one he thought he loved. Not her, no one loved “Odile—the temptress of death”—no one ever could. But, tonight, she was to impersonate the enchanted white swan that had captured Prince Siegfried’s heart. She was to trick the entire kingdom of Eldwith into an alliance with Von Rothebart.
For the first time ever, she’d left the walls of the Owl Wizard’s keep to venture out into the lands beyond it. The lands that told her fearsome legend.
Nerves wracked her as the carriage made the trip to Eldwith Castle. If she were any normal maiden, she would be worried about fumbling her steps while dancing or about whether her gown looked beautiful enough but she wasn’t. She was the supposed sorceress of Aarroughac masquerading as Prince Siegfried’s love. But aside from all that, she had to defy her guardian.
Eldwith couldn’t fall into the hands of Rothebart. His power grew by the day. His insanity, coupled with his ambitions to rule the dark realms, meant horror for the normal people of the kingdom. Though no one would ever believe it, Odile considered herself one of these “normal people.” For all that they sang about her in fearsome terms, the bards had it all wrong. She had no magic, she had no power. She was just a commoner. Tonight it was up to her to stop the one she’d lived in fear of her whole life. She had one moment to capture the prince’s ear. She must warn him of what Rothebart intended.
When her mother, Odette, died, it had sparked a madness in the wizard, more madness than ever before. He had been determined to bring the peasant maid back to life. One night, through a dark blood spell, he succeeded. He created a shifting spirit woman. White swan by day—maiden by night, Odette had lived again even if it was a half sort of existence. In Rothebart’s wild imaginings, he had harnessed the ultimate power.
Success made him bold, seeking to rule the dark realms as the greatest sorcerer the world had ever known. He made more of them, more swans for his lake, but his true ambitions were to have an army. Odile shuddered to think of what he planned. Prince Siegfried’s infatuation with one of the “Odettes” had given Rothebart the opening he needed to gain control over Eldwith but Odile meant to stop him.
She would pass her eighteenth year soon and never had she been inside Eldwith Castle or to a ball for that matter, but Rothebart had schooled her in everything she needed to carry out this night’s charade. The prince thought himself in love with a replica of Odile’s mother and thereby of herself. The Owl Wizard finally had a use for the black-haired girl that had been nothing but a thorn in his side as well as a painful reminder of his lost love. Tonight it would be the black swan for the white and no one would ever guess that the stronghold of Eldwith Castle had been invaded so easily.
“Speak very little,” Rothebart hissed at her inside the carriage as they rode to the castle, “or not at all. The mask will help to hide your identity.”
Odile adjusted the stiff mask over her emerald eyes. She looked like her mother but there were subtle differences. She wanted to pull back the window curtain so she could see out but didn’t dare. She never knew when her simplest action might set Rothebart off. When the carriage pulled to a stop, her stomach rose up in her throat. This was it, her moment of reckoning. The door to the coach opened from the outside, letting in the evening air.
Rothebart pushed passed her to exit, not waiting or offering her any help in stepping down. That wasn’t unexpected. He’d never given her any consideration before, but as Odile pushed up off the hard seat of the carriage, a new figure came into the opening.
A man wearing a black cloak filled the small doorway. Everything he wore was black, in fact, and he was masked too in a black and silver columbina. Where Odile assumed the dark colors of Aarroughac made her look grim, on him they were plainly dangerous. He must have come from the castle, but to her he looked more the villain than courtly guard.
What could be seen of his face captured her imagination. Immediately, she thought of some drawings she’d seen in one of Rothebart’s spell books from faraway lands. She’d spirited it away to her hiding place to look at in secret. The wizard had never missed it so she’d kept it among her treasures. The writing on the pages had been foreign, but the pictures told stories of Eastern magic and Arabian royalty fit to feed her young fascination. Some had even depicted royal courtships and other, more lurid scenes.
At just a glimpse, this man made her think of those pictures by the mysterious figure he cut. A strong chin and firm lips appeared through the shadows. Behind his mask was the most unusual pair of eyes she had ever seen. Catching the moonlight, they flashed the color of storm clouds just before they narrowed and she knew she had stared too long.
He didn’t smile but her eyes held on his mouth for no reason she could fathom. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips before she ducked her head down. For all that he’d only just peeked into the carriage door, she felt like she’d revealed herself. Through her mask, could this stranger see her for what she was… an imposter? Had he come to arrest her for her role in tonight’s treachery?
Moving closer, he reached into the carriage. Odile’s eyes jumped up. She felt like a hare trapped in a log with a fox coming for her. She couldn’t see Rothebart beyond the carriage door.
“Mistress?”
The man spoke then bowed slightly though his stare remained firmly on her. Odile looked from his extended hand to his masked face again. Then he pulled her hands from her lap and tugged her toward him.
This night was a bad dream about to start. But for one strange moment, as she was pulled toward the door of the carriage, it felt like it could have been something different. The stranger’s hands encircled her waist, then he lifted her. Once her feet touched the ground, Rothebart grunted beside her and the moment was gone. The wizard stood scowling, disapproving as ever. When Odile looked back toward the carriage, the man in black was gone.
A tug at her wrist brought her attention back to Rothebart.
“Give this token to the queen,” he said, tying a black pouch above the lace of her sleeve cuff. It felt weighty for such a small bag. She felt it with her other hand. “Leave it!” He snarled at her. “It’s a token, a bridal gift. Get it to Queen Magda after the prince announces your betrothal.”
“Yes, as you say,” Odile answered him but he’d already begun striding toward the steps of the castle.
Swallowing down bile, she lifted her chin, then followed. The torchlight all around the courtyard burned at her eyes. Once more, she felt like she was in a slowly moving nightmare. Oh, why couldn’t the prince have stayed away from the lake, she thought. And how had the Odette managed to capture Siegfried’s affection so completely in just one night?
At the top of the steps Rothebart waited, glaring. When his eyes fell on her, she straightened. Head held high, she walked under the arching doorway of Castle Eldwith. Tonight she would warn the prince of all the evil he planned. She would shed the lies told of the girl that lived in the Owl Wizard’s castle. Tonight, the Black Swan would rewrite her own legend.
3
The woods beyond Eldwith…
The smell of smoke filled her nostrils. Sounds of crackling and popping stirred her senses awake.
She must be in the afterlife. Opening her eyes, Odile was met with another lopsided scene. Flames jumped at an angle not far from her face. She stared into them. It was strange that there wasn’t more heat she thought, curling in on herself. As soon as she did, pain burst through her everywhere. A moan escaped her lips, scraping at her raw vocal chords. Should she feel this way in death? Had her false legend followed her into the afterlife?
Her hands were no longer bound, but she had no hope of sitting up as broken as she was. She’d been bundled in something as well, the weight of it too great for her to throw off. Footsteps crunched on the ground by her head then a pair of booted feet came into view. She moaned again, unable to keep the sound in. Then a figure crouched down and she knew its owner even before she saw him. It was her shadowy executioner from the dungeon only they weren’t there anymore. He must be the one to escort her into Hell was her only thought.
Again, he was dark against light with the flames from the fire behind him. The background made him all the more menacing, the hard lines of his face were clearer. He looked like an avenging dark angel all in black. His eyes were clear gray in the light, his hair long and dark though maybe not as dark as her own the way the fire licked at it. When he looked at her, his eyes narrowed then his jaw and mouth clenched and on his skin she saw he had strange markings. Small, deliberate shapes blemished his tanned cheekbone on one side. As to his build, his large frame was starkly outlined in the firelight, making her feel all the more withered.
All of her air left her. She couldn’t move without agony yet she was to face this beast? She’d faced beasts before. Rothebart had been beastly to her all her life, but he’d afforded her an existence of sorts by keeping his distance. He’d let her live in his castle, surrounded by all of his dark magic, only acknowledging her when he needed someone to help him with spells or some menial task he thought her not too stupid for.
They thought her his daughter, those at court and the ones that sang the ballads about her. Rothebart allowed their misconceptions to remain for the terror they instilled.
“Rothebart, his daughter Odile and the menagerie of lost souls they keep at the haunted lake.” That’s how the story went. When the tale was told, they were always mentioned as a pair, a force of evil to avoid like a deadly plague. “Don’t go near the lake dear ones,” mothers and fathers would tell their children, “the Black Swan will lure you with her beauty and Von Rothebart will eat your hearts!” or, worse still, they’d be added to his army of enchanted creatures, changed into monsters like the maidens of the lake, the swans as pure as snow.
Odile used to creep out from the underground passage she’d haunted so many a night to watch the swans transform into women. They had fascinated her. She thought them so beautiful and fair, but it hadn’t taken long to realize that Rothebart had taken their humanity, made shifting apparitions of them. The sorcerer claimed it was love that had driven him to such hideous acts.
One evening, long ago, a beautiful, dark-haired maiden had turned up on the grounds of Aarroughac. She’d been lost and all alone. The wizard had instantly fallen in love with her. He’d hidden her, his beloved Odette, away in his castle. “Safe from the brutal world” he’d told Odile, as a child, during one of his midnight ravings
He didn’t know when he’d first seen his fair love that Odette was already with child by another man or that she’d been shunned by her village for it. But with each passing day, he grew more and more insane in his affections, promising to raise the child as his own.
His lunacy worsened when Odette died in childbed. After her death, he used the cries of the babe to lure young maids to the lake where he practiced his skills in the darkest of magics, transforming them into white swans in her image. On the lake at night, they shifted back to human women in the likeness of his dead lover. By day, they were doomed to glide the waters of Swan Lake. In either form they were mere shells, bodies with no souls. Many a night, the child Odile had been had yearned for one of those fair beauties to call her to the waters with them, to be the mother she’d never known. But they could not because of what Rothebart had stolen from them. At least, that was what she had thought.
At the moment though, she faced a new foe. This dark-haired man from the dungeon. Now that he was closer to her, crouching next to her with the firelight illuminating his face she remembered him. He’d been at Eldwith that fateful night, watching from the shadows. Before that, he’d been the coachman who’d handed her down from Rothebart’s carriage.
The angular lines of his jaw and cheeks gave him a savage look as he leaned closer. She brought her hands up, or tried. As she made that one small movement, pain tore through her shoulders, searing through her body down to her bones. She cried out, the sound a tortured one. Any moisture left in her body filled her eyes in that instant.
“Don’t move,” he commanded.
She thought she heard something in his voice, a hint of something foreign. But a woozy, blood rushing noise came into her head so that she could rely on none of her senses.
“They’ve broken your wings, Swan.” He said. “You must hold very still until I’ve righted them.”
Then he turned his head, a soft wind blowing his black hair back. She watched, terrified but also captivated by the light brown skin of his neck, the way it stretched over the tendons there as he called out to someone behind him. He still spoke with that strange meter to his voice. Strange to her anyway, she’d rarely ventured beyond Aarroughac’s walls so what did she know of the way people of the world sounded or looked?
“Bring water.”
Odile strained her eyes to see who else was there, being careful not to move for the pain it would bring. Broken wings he’d said. That was certainly how she felt.
She’d been stretched by the queen’s henchmen, her arms ripped from their sockets. Ever since, they’d hung limp as hunks of meat at her sides. She’d been so fearful of the shadow man she’d forgotten that when she’d tried to bring her arms up. It was a hard force of will not to self protect. Another person moved in, handing something to the dark man beside her.
“Don’t sit so close to her, my lord. She can cast a curse on you with just her eyes, they say.”
The crouched man turned back to look at her. His eyes were hard, like stones. They bore into hers, searching them. For the dark magic probably—for spells, as the other had said, “curses.” If only she did possess such skills. Then every inch of her wouldn’t be lying there bruised and broken. She could have sifted away into the night as Rothebart had done before the queen’s men had captured her.
The shadow man didn’t know about her “defect”, as Rothebart called her lack of magic though, so why was he boldly meeting her eyes? Green and tilted, they had been enough to instill terror into Eldwith’s guards. He, however, was fearless in his perusal of her, his gaze dropping to look at the rest of her as his hand slid the hide she was wrapped in off of her body.
“I will be fine Benno. She poses no threat to me, rest assured.”
The other man made a sound in his throat.
“You might think that, sire, but me, I’ll just be making myself busy with the horses now.”
He walked away, grumbling about evil spirits. Odile almost thought she detected a lift of the black-haired man’s shoulders and an amused shake of his head before he brought his attention back to her. The markings on his face gave him a dark, sinister look. She had no doubt that he would not be tamed by any kind of spell or charm even if she had one to use on him.
“Here now,” he said, finally, “this will hurt but it’s better than drowning.”
Then he slid one of his large hands underneath her, lifting her head off the ground. Ignoring her wince, he brought a skin of water to her cracked lips.
“Drink girl,” he ordered, then pressed the end of the pouch between her teeth as he tipped it up.
Cool water hit Odile’s tongue, running over her throat at first, finally soaking in to relieve at least some of her thirst before he pulled the skin away. He lowered her back to the ground then pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, studying her with an unnerving stare the whole time.
His hand went to the tie at the front of her tattered gown. Odile flinched, bringing in a swift, painful breath through her nose. Of all the tortures she’d endured thus far, none of the queen’s men had thought to rape her. Probably for fear that their members would be cursed to shrivel and fall off if they did. This man seemed to know no normal amounts of fear where she was concerned though.
“Here now,” he dropped his hand to speak to her again, “I’ll have to check you if I’m to heal you.”
She glared at him. Then she gave a cynical laugh that sent more agony through her torso.
“And why would you do that? Right my ‘broken wings’ as you say?” She croaked.
She tried to give him “the evil eye” but he remained unmoved, staring at her impassively. Her heart beat harder. What new hell was he going to bring her to?
“I don’t have to give you answers. You’ve been spared the pyres. That is all you need to know. You are in my possession now and I will do with you as I please. Unless you seek to bring yourself more pain, I suggest you try holding still.”
The water hadn’t been nearly enough but Odile still managed to swallow. She pressed her lips together when she would have spoken but he grabbed her jaw.
“Open.”
Her eyes widened when he squeezed, pressing down with his thumb on her lips and chin. Those eyes of his held hers, emotionless but insistent. Then her mouth opened and she knew he had to be a lord of dark magic himself. He turned her head side to side, hooking his thumb over her bottom lip then running it across the surface of her teeth. Finally, he removed his hand from her face.
With a surprising swiftness, he reached to his belt. The snick of leather on metal sounded as he brought out that deadly knife she’d thought would be her end in the dungeon. She knew her eyes were impossibly round even though she managed to hold herself still. Then his other hand grasped the front of her gown. The garment was barely more than a rag now, fodder for the fires. Faster than she could have blinked, he rent her bodice up its center, the frayed cloth falling immediately away, leaving her bare to the chill night air.
Her body lay helpless, every move she made a misery. Still, the urge to fight welled up in her as her muscles tensed. His large hand came to her throat, circling it almost entirely. The weight of his palm pressed down on her windpipe and again his eyes came to hers.
“My man would have you working for the Devil himself. I’m counting on it. Just know that whatever spells you have residing in your bones can be crushed to dust in my hands. No tricks, temptress.”
Odile willed her body to go slack. She blinked, the only move she could make to show she understood. He gave one brusque nod of his head then moved his fingers to the back of her neck, feeling along the knobby ridges in the middle there. When he removed his hand, he pushed her clothing back to more fully expose her as he continued his inspection. Her body should be numb by now, past feeling, but the breeze swept over her skin like a cold whisper. Sitting down beside her, the man ran his gaze over her and she felt that too, like the prick of a thousand nettles.
His eyes settled briefly on her breasts, glinting side to side in the firelight. Odile felt her nipples bead up with embarrassment. Never had she been disrobed in front of anyone before. It was funny that someone who’d faced the pyres for the acts of murder and witchcraft should feel the shame of nakedness. She shut her eyes tight as though that would help but they flew open again when she felt his hands on her once more.
With his fingertips he lightly pushed at the bones in her chest, at her sides, then slowly felt each of her ribs. Sharp pain lanced through her as he found the break further down and she cried out, her back arching off the ground, bringing even more agony.
“Shh,” he said, “there now.”
His heavy hands waited at her waist. They were large and immensely warm. A fine mist of perspiration broke out on the surface of Odile’s skin. What was he doing to her? She barely had time to wonder before he moved lower, wrapping his fingers around the back portion of her ribcage. She screamed again. He sighed as if he hadn’t heard at all then looked straight ahead. His hands stayed still on her for another moment while he let her panting even out to small shallow breaths, then he resumed. With the tips of his fingers, he pressed at different points on her belly, squeezed the joints of her hips, surveyed her legs and felt her bones. He picked up each of her feet in turn, making a tsking sound with his tongue. He shook his head at the cuts he saw from when she’d been dragged through the forest then gently placed them back down.
Odile couldn’t believe she was lying there naked before this stranger while he examined her in this manner. It only served to prove how defeated she was, how broken, just like the wings he’d spoken of before. What was even stranger, she noted through her fear and pain, was how gentle his hands were. She’d only ever been grabbed or struck harshly anytime she could remember being touched. But he took care. It made her suspect him of something but she didn’t know what.
“What do you want of me?” She finally asked, the silent examination of her person becoming more than she could bear. She could do nothing to prevent it, but that didn’t mean she had to remain silent.
As soon as the words left her mouth, his hands grasped the tops of her legs, a thigh in each one. He pulled them apart. Odile gasped and let out a small choking cough. He’d passed over that area at the center of her body earlier, to her relief. But now he pried her legs open, holding them easily though she strained against him. She could feel his eyes on her there in her most intimate place. He might as well have been shooting fire from them for the mortification she suffered. No one had ever seen her this way or even unclothed since she was an infant.
The heat from the flames was reaching out for her. Heating her all over, bringing a feverish shame to her cheeks with it to be stared at thus. She’d never given any thought to the secret places on her body until they’d begun to change as she’d come out of childhood. Beyond that, there’d been no other reason to think of them. Moisture pooled in her eyes, leaking out of the corners over her hot skin. Finally, the stranger’s hold on her eased. Gently, he brought her legs in then moved to sit at her side after bringing the torn edges of her gown together to cover her, in so much as they could.
“You will heal swan girl. Mostly, you were being kept whole for the fires I surmise.” He spoke again to the night air, not looking down at her. “I’m a physician of sorts. It is important to me that your wounds heal and you regain your strength.”
“Why?” Odile asked, following the hard line of his chin with her eyes. “Why heal me only to kill me?”
He looked down on her now, his eyes fierce again.
“Kill you?” His head dipped closer. “No, sorceress, if I’d wanted you dead you would be.”
“Why though? And who are you?”
He stared at her, his eyes taking on a savage glow.
“I am but the baron of a desolate land; that is all you need know. From now on, the questions are mine to ask. Like a falcon to the jesses you’ll be, Lady Black Swan, and I your master until I get from you what I want.”
“And what exactly is that?”
His eyes narrowed on her, a silent reprimand to remind her of what he’d said about questions but Odile clenched her jaw.
A tiny twitch of his lips moved his mouth up on one side. It made her think of the old saying that even the Devil was a beautiful creature.
“Alright, mistress, you have been through an ordeal that I would have spared you so I’ll answer. You are going to help me obtain something that is lost. Through your sorceress’s ways, you will be my partner in infamy until such time as I choose to release you.”
“You are as insane as Von Rothebart,” she breathed.
He laughed into the night at that. Her heart sank. She’d traded one terror for another. This lunatic expected feats of magic from her. He leaned closer, bringing his hands underneath her again.
“Here now, this next bit is going to hurt.”
With that grim pronouncement, he lifted her to a sitting position. Shocked and pained by the sudden movement, she yelled out in a raspy shout.
“Sit there, like a good maid,” he said simply, then strode away to return moments later with a strap of animal hide in his hand. Odile couldn’t have moved if she’d dared. The pain in her disconnected shoulders and her ribs was disabling. Then the “baron” crouched down in front of her.
“Bite down on this,” he said placing the hide between her teeth, “as hard as you can.”
She looked up at him, her shallow breaths growing quicker as she willed him to provide more of an explanation.
“Your arms, your ‘wings’, Lady Swan,” he started, “the bones have been dislodged. I’m going to reset them but the pain will be great. Do you understand?”
She looked up at him. The foreign leather was in her mouth so that all she could do was nod or blink.
“Think on me as the falconer I mentioned before, bending your will to my hand… your body. If you are obedient, wild bird, I’ll lessen your suffering.”
She glared at him. But in that moment, she felt frail like she never had before, like an empty vessel. What did he care for her condition or even that she was alive? He thought she had some dark magic in her that he could wield against the world. God help her! With a feeling of defeat, she nodded her head then let it drop down.
He moved in next to her, crouching beside her again then lifted her hand. Odile bit into the strap but when he moved her forearm, she couldn’t hold back the high-pitched scream that escaped through her teeth. Tears sprang to her eyes. He moved her elbow in his palm, acting like he didn’t notice her discomfort then pressed at her shoulder joint with his fingers.
His hands were so large against her bones that it would have been an easy thing for him to snap them one by one. That might have been preferred to the agony she felt next as he rotated her upper arm. Screaming and biting at the same time, her whole body became a stone as she fought against the pain he was meting out on her suffering limb.
“Shh,” he said in a gruff voice, “quiet your body… soften. It will do no good to fight me.”
Water coursed down her cheeks but with a muffled whimper, she tried to do as he said. The moment her muscles relaxed, he eased her bone further, rotating it slowly. So slowly that she thought she would die from it. Her breath came out in choking little sobs over the hide strip.
“Hold,” he said, and she tried not to move. “Breathe in deeply, then let out all your air at once.”
No mean feat for the short breaths that her battered ribs were demanding. Odile’s blurry eyes went to his. A silent argument, a plea, a need—she knew not why she looked at him or what she hoped to find in his hard gaze but it was impassable, unyielding. If she was seeking mercy, she found none. She could have waited all night and not moved but then something flickered in his treacherous stare and she knew it was time. Slowly she filled her lungs as much as she could.
“That’s it girl, now let it out.”
As she did what he said, he pulled her arm up and back with a steady, agonizing pressure. Another scream tore out of her, the hide falling from her mouth as a flood of tears spilled from her eyes. The slip of bone against muscle then the sucking pop that resulted was at once the worst misery and greatest relief she’d ever felt. She fell forward against the ‘physician of sorts’, her head butting into his chest as she panted.
His hand wrapped around her shoulder joint. Then he ran his palm up and down her arm, making a low humming noise once or twice. The pain lessened gradually to a throbbing ache. As his rubbing moved her frame though, it brought the sharpness of the pain in her still dislocated arm into focus. She whimpered into his chest at the thought of what would come next. She couldn’t, not again.
“Yes,” she heard him say, “the other one. You were very good though, Swan. This side will be easier.”
He was already prodding her second shoulder with his other hand, feeling his way over the bone of the hanging limb. Exhausted and slumped against him, it wasn’t as hard to bear as the one before it. What was worse was the shame of what she’d done down below, the wetness between her legs and under where she sat. She’d thought her tears would have been enough to drain the water completely out of her but apparently not. Squirming, she pressed her legs together.
“Be still,” came his rough voice over the top of her head, “we’ll deal with that later.”
He stood as he spoke then stepped over her. Through the sweat dampened veil of her hair, she looked up. She could only imagine how pathetic she appeared, ragged and beaten, broken in places with tear stains tracking down her face and now smelling of urine. She’d been relieved in the dungeon when she’d thought he’d come to end her ordeal, but now he was witnessing her shame and it was more than she could bear.
Standing astride her legs, he looked down on the pitiful mess she was. Before she could stop her tongue, she did what she hadn’t since the queen’s men had come for her at Aarroughac. She begged.
“Please sir, just take your sword and run me through. I’m not worth the trouble.”
Something in his eyes flashed as he loomed above her. She imagined it was hellfire beneath the gray stone. His face grew even harder, then he laughed. Bending, he placed his hand under her chin and lifted her bedraggled face.
“Hear this now, maid. I am not like those simple serfs and fools of Eldwith, nor am I a balladeer singing stupid songs to scare children. I have no fear of sorceresses or ‘dire black swans’ and I’ll not be moved by you. From now on, your desires are nothing so it would be best for you not to have them. I have plans for you. Never doubt it when I give my word, you will stay alive this night.”
Plans for her? She looked at him wildly. Her brain could no longer work through any kind of reasoning because of the pain she was in. Any thoughts of the future were like a lead weight.
The baron pulled his hand away roughly then stepped to her other side. Odile hung her head. Her only movement came from the prodding of his hands around her arm and shoulder. She was in total defeat as, once more, he lifted then turned her lower arm. Her desires meant nothing to him he said. They never had to anyone, didn’t he know that? The unwanted child she’d always been, cursed at birth, a thing to be feared and hated by all.
He stretched her arm until it was fully extended to the side. With no hide in her mouth this time, she howled into the night as, slowly the bone slipped back into place with another grotesque pop. Sobbing horridly by the end of the procedure, she felt a cold sweat break out all over her body. A fiery ache throbbed through her joints then spread to the whole of her being with no end in sight.
He wouldn’t let there be an end. That was his promise. Whatever plans he had for her, she would fight him until he killed her or she would end her pain herself. No longer would she bend to a madman’s will. Rothebart was gone and she was out of the queen’s torture chamber. Only she would decide her fate, not this dark beast set on prolonging her misery.
Again he stopped. This time, he made a rumbling noise in his chest and she imagined he could hear her defiant thoughts. Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. Pulling her shaking body to him, he placed her forehead gently on his chest. Worn down but with a new resolve, Odile quieted her sobs and evened her breathing. For lack of any strength with which to resist, she let him comfort her until stillness came.
4
Azarus laid the unconscious girl down to the ground again. Her body had endured too much. It was no wonder she pleaded for a swift death. He knew very little of her story, only that she’d had a magic upbringing and that her dark powers were legendary. Those were just what he needed at a time like this.
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