My Little Peasant
DAPHNE
“Ash!” I scream as I fall into a tunnel and begin to slide down, down, down. I can see nothing but darkness in the first few moments until a flash like a pulse rides through the tunnel and the veins in the rock all around me begin to glow a luminescent teal. Urging yet another scream from my throat, the rocks begin to throb with violent color, creating the mirage of being within a rushing fountain of water. I holler once again, “ASHHHHH!!!” But no sooner does his name complete do I find myself spinning like a top out into the pale early afternoon light of a near open hallway.
No… not open, but with a ceiling made of shattered glass.
No, not glass. It’s crystal.
I must be near the center of the mountain.
A vibrant glow of orange hues the air beyond the closed balcony to my left and I am momentarily speechless as I spy the rise of something like an enormous tiered fireplace beyond the glass doors.
“Oh my…” a voice says from somewhere beyond my sight and I scramble up onto my knees to investigate, the swirl of my skirt laying about me like the petals of a wilted flower.
The ceilings in this corridor are high indeed. So raised are they that for a moment I wonder if I am in the same castle at all or if maybe I somehow transported to a different one altogether.
But that is when I spy her. A woman that is so undoubtedly queenlike that I am grateful to already be kneeling.
This is Ash’s mother. I know it.
She wears a beautifully stitched silver gown of what could be silk or muslin, the fabric shimmering in the light and contrasting the gold of her skin mercilessly. Long midnight hair swirls about her waist, the bottom of which appears to be sectioned off, separated by seven or eight heavy silver beads that perfectly match her eyes almost whimsically so, but that is not what gives it away most. No. It is her energy. Her… aura. She is commanding of the air around her in the same way that her son is and when she smiles down at me I see him. Ash.
And now… I am suddenly angry.
How dare he?!
He sent me down a blasted doggy door to meet his mother. On. My. Own.
I’ll kill him.
Okay… maybe I won’t, but I can most certainly withhold pleasure.
Except… that would mean withholding my pleasure as well…
Damn him.
A slithering sound matching that of a giant serpent in the walls crests my ears and I spin around to face what appears to be a large vent, or an air chamber pressed into the bottom of the wall in the shape of an arch.
Is that what I came out of?
“Stand back, sweet girl,” the queen says, reaching down for me, exasperated. “That will most assuredly be my son, the imbecile.”
Helping me onto my feet with no time to waste I am barely out of the way in time for Ash to come sliding out of the crevice with a broad, carefree grin on his face. His descent comes to a complete halt at my feet and I swear it is all I can do not to kick him in his handsome face.
“I haven’t used that passage in years,” he admits, his eyes trailing toward the slits in my skirt that have somehow gone askew. “The view has definitely improved.”
“Oh for Goddess sake! I know you didn’t just send my pregnant daughter-in-love down that blasted shaft like a discarded wh-” she stops, silver eyes widening into enormous moons of embarrassment before snapping in my direction “b-bedm-mate-p-partner-mate!” She slams her eyes shut. “Damn.”
But all I can figure to reply with is, “Daughter-in-love?”
“Most certainly in love,” Ash chides me from the floor. “Daphne, meet my mother, Felice, the reigning Queen of Fury Rekyr.”
“Ash!” his mother scolds, her eyes falling open on me apologetically before they turn toward her son in a rage of simmering red heat.
“Oh come now, mother,” he says, leaping to his feet to grin at me. “I placed a balm of protective enchantment over her first. I simply didn’t want her to learn the regular route to your rooms or she might feel inclined to leave. Especially since, this is where I’ve decided she will be staying while I go on my little… trip.”
I can’t help the smile that breaks over my lips with the knowledge that he does not plan to leave me in the dungeons as Klyesque and I originally feared he would do. Instead, he plans to leave me here with his mother with the only difficulty being that I do not know my way back.
Could this be any more perfect?
“Oh, Ash!” I exclaim, happier than I’ve been since before learning of my sister’s plight. “Thank you!” I gush, throwing my arms around his neck gratuitously.
I can feel the skeptical eyes of Ash’s mother even when Ash returns my embrace with a bone crushing one of his own.
“Dove” he whispers, his lips trekking over my ear almost suspiciously before a heavy sigh releases from his chest and he breathes me in. “You will be comfortable here in my mother’s suite of rooms. She’s already had the guest chamber made up for you and you should be… at home… in it.”
“At home…” I whisper, the words settling over me with a ring of truth despite that soon Klyesque and I shall be on the road to my mother’s origins. “Yes… of course. You remember what we talked about? What you promised me?”
“I do,” he says, his hands sliding up my back to cradle the back of my head. Tangling his fingers in my hair, he yanks my head back ever so gently to look down on me with smokey eyes. “I’ll not let her touch me. I swear it.”
Then, it’s as if he’s in pain as he dips his face downward to swallow my lips in an extravagantly slow kiss. A kiss that leaves me breathless and shameless there in front of his mother. Without another word, he rips himself from me and that is when I see what waits beyond the glass doors at the opposite end of the hallway.
Finn and Dionie, both super suited in some heavy looking armor. But the look on Dionie’s face… there’s something wrong with it.
He wears a frown of betrayal.
And when Ash suddenly shoves me backward to race toward the doors, toward the exit, I start to understand something…
“Ash?” I whisper, knowing he can hear me though he’s a good twenty feet away. “What have you done?”
“I’m sorry, dove,” he mouths, stepping backward through the doors even as I race for him.
“Ash!” I yell as I reach for the golden turn of the doorknob only to be knocked back into the main hall but an invisible, impenetrable wind. “Ash?!”
“My magic will ensure your safety,” he says with a frown, before mouthing the words, “And I love you too, my little peasant.”