**DAPHNE**
I awaken in the tower room, clad in a dressing gown made from gold silk. Sharp slivers of light scatter through the heavy velvet bed curtains around me, blinding my sight with each of my movements.
*Wait a minute!*
*How did I get here?*
*Where’s Ash?*
Sitting up with a start, I am unprepared for the sensation that follows. My bed spins around me and I groan, dropping back down against the feathered goodness of my pillows. I pull the covers over my head and clamp my eyes shut to will the awful churning from my gut.
“Oh my,” I hiss to myself only to be answered by Petra’s soft giggle.
“Sweet girl,” Petra’s voice travels toward me as the curtains slowly gather against one post. “How are you feeling?”
I moan, not wanting to answer until my stomach has settled.
“What’s the matter? Long night?”
A shadow casts over my person, blocking the streaming sunlight that warms my eyelids. “You might say that,” I admit, still with my eyes closed.
I sigh as a cool, sweet scented cloth is placed over my brow. Lavender and vanilla invade my senses, lulling me and calming my belly.
“Oh really?” Petra laughs again. Her arms snake behind my head as she carefully props me higher upon the pillows. “Today, you are to remain in this room under the guise of illness.”
My eyes pop open and I am greeted with a knowing smile.
“Illness?” I quip. “Truth be told, I don’t feel all that well, but I’m sure it’s more the fault of a certain red drink. I’m not actually sick.”
She feigns shock as she steps up to the bed and leans closer to my ears. “I know. Ash’s orders. He wants you to remain out of harm’s way until his return.”
“His return?” I repeat, suddenly overcome with longing. Then, with a steady red heat coating my cheeks, I hiss, “Did he carry me here? F-from his chamber?”
She nods with a sly smile, and I sit up feeling the fire in my cheeks come to life.
*Did all that really happen?*
*Am I no longer a virgin?*
The glowing vision of golden skin and glistening muscles brings a new clench to my center. I clamp my eyes shut against the image of Ash’s exquisite features, the way he looked as he moved between my legs in utter rapture. How he gazed down on me last night - his silver fire shaded with dark lashes and lust - it is burned into my mind. The pain and the pleasure of him, as his liquid heat pounded into my core, has me moaning even now.
The way he touched me, commanded me, explored me, it’s all there - branded upon my soul.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, sliding my hand down between my legs and wincing at the tenderness of my sex.
Another giggle. “I have prepared a special herbal bath for you. It will take away your soreness. Come, get in the tub before the water goes cold.”
Then, blinking a couple of more times, I say, “Your eyes are brown again.”
She jolts, then ignoring my comment, pulls down the duvet to expose my body to the cold stale air around the tower. I watch her throat as it bobs, and she swallows. Her brow is furrowed with confusion as she helps me undress.
“Perhaps the light in here plays a trick or two from time to time. You are, after all, in the highest room of the palace.”
My eyes narrow at her as she avoids my gaze.
*There’s no bloody way it was a trick of the light.*
*Your eyes turned blue yesterday.*
*And not just any blue.*
*They were electrifyingly bright.*
*They were glowing.*
*And so was your hair.*
She reminded me of a faerie in that moment. Her appearance fit the description of a character alive with glamor, as they were in many of my sister Isabel’s stories.
Suddenly I am overcome with a long-forgotten desire. The desire to hear a tale or two. As I step into the sweltering heat of the copper basin, I smile to myself with a new type of joy.
Sitting low in the water, my chin and breasts bobbing just at the surface, I attempt to question Petra in a different manner.
“Petra? Do you know any stories?” I sigh as she begins lathering my hair and massaging my scalp. Closing my eyes, I attempt to sound nonchalant. “Faerie stories are my favorite.”
Her hands tense, and I pretend not to notice as she begins to work each of my locks with slow, deliberate movements. “I do,” she whispers.
“I’d love to hear one. My oldest sister, Isabel, used to tell them to us all the time. Such beautiful poems of lost love and treacherous mischief. For years she had me convinced that they were real.” I held my breath as she poured a pale of water over my head and began to comb out my tangles. “Might you tell me one?”
Taking a deep breath, she lathers a linen sponge with a light purple soap bar riddled with tiny floral accents. “There’s a rhyme. One that is quite famous where I am from. I suppose I could recite it for you.”
“Where you’re from?” I comment. “Aren’t you from here?”
Hadn’t she said she was born here?
Into this life of servitude?
“I am and I am not.” She corrects herself with a cough, “My origins are not, but I have been here since a babe. Which is what I meant.”
“Huh,” I scoff, and she pulls on my hair with mock aggravation.
“Would you like to hear it or not?”
“I would.” I grin, satisfied.
Clearing her throat, Petra speaks close to my ear in an almost whisper, “Tis’ about tribute.” Then, in a sing song voice, saturated with resounding power, she recites...
“The Fires of Faery were alive with glee,
on the longest of midnights when her soul was set free.
Mayhap it was summer; mayhap it was spring,
with the slip of a blade through her beauty, we sing.
Kings from each corner and Queens from each birth,
gathering power from the smoke of the hearth.
Then all through the river they danced; they wade,
bellies full from the games they played.
And smiling they were as they washed off her stench,
the blood of the slave; of the dead human wench."