Gilded Cage (Legends and Lovers)

Then, she gave me one of her greatest gifts, a song. Her red hair flowed in the sun as her voice wrapped around my heart, tying it in a red ribbon forever bound to her as she was to me. She told me she had not found the courage to sing since her father’s death. Not until me.

After that, I knew, and that is when I went to her friend, the witch’s daughter, Odette.

She’d been at the gathering, and she’d turned up in many places where I was, usually without Calliope, and we formed a friendship of our own. I liked her, appreciated her intelligence. She was still learning her mother’s craft, but she was political, with contacts in both Aramoth and Dennith, but she steadfastly refused to be bound to either. It made her neutral, and so I went to her. Asked her everything about what Calliope liked, disliked, I wanted to know everything.

She seemed sad but in my fervor, I didn’t take enough notice. She told me to return the next day and she would have a list of everything she knew about Calliope, everything I would need to make her happy. Make her mine.

Only, the next day, when I arrived, Odette was nervous. She said she wasn’t ready, offered me tea, said she had to write a few more things down. In my haste, I drank her tea in one gulp.

She laughed, crying out in surprised delight that it worked, then left me there, writhing in an agony I’d only heard about in battle and curses. When I woke the next morning, everything had changed. All the light was gone.

Darkness was everywhere.

“My Lord. Prince!”

I hear Makson’s voice echoing through the trees, but my eyes are still pinned on the shimmering light in the golden castle. The last of her silhouette retreating deeper into her chamber as the vacuum of darkness fills my chest.

“Rian!” He’s yelling now, and I spin on my heel to see the dark outline of my friend and a royal guardsman barreling my way on foot.

“What is so important out here? You know I’m not going anywhere. If it’s just more intelligence about the elf movements, take it to my mother.”

“Yes, the elf party is still on the move. Not a war party, some sort of political delegation. Heading for Aramoth, as far as we can tell. But that’s not why I’m here.” He stumbles the last few steps, bracing his arm on a thick oak as he heaves labored breaths in and out, and I can’t help but turn back toward her.

My obsession.

The one thing I wanted more than my own life, that was taken from me by my own stupidity. An error I will never forgive myself for.

It taught me trust is a weakness. Longing and desire make us dim witted. Betrayal is always lurking behind each friendly smile, each handshake, every whisper of assurance.

Trust me, Prince Rian. I need just another moment. Drink your tea and you will have your wish.

The words haunt me here in the darkness, my ever-present companion along with the thoughts of how to invoke the greatest revenge and damage upon the one that said them.

What Odette released, was more than my own doom. More than a gilded prison for Calliope.

She threatened our very world. Without strength in our kingdoms, we were left weak. The Aramoth people blamed me for cursing their princess. The hatred for my ancestors rose again as I took full orc form, the curse banishing me to the forest and the darkness. Calliope to the golden cage and the blazing light. We will never touch again. Her light to my dark.

War is coming. Between our kingdoms yes, but worse. The elves know of our weakness and as they have done for centuries, millennia, they will come. They will take. They will conquer, one way or another.

“Then what?” I mutter.

“We’ve found something,” Makson says finally, standing back to his full height, and even in the dim light of the rising moon, filtering through the skyward trees, I see the excitement in his eyes.

“What?” I manage, clenching and unclenching my fists as I think about her.

I can smell her honey and peony scent on the breeze. Hear the birdlike song of her voice as she sings on the balcony every morning, her voice swirling around me, tightening my chest, hardening my cock and my hatred for a world that would dangle such a prize in front of me, then laugh as it is stolen away forever.

“A tunnel.” He throws his gaze to the east, from the direction he came. “It’s old. Probably from the before times, during the territory wars. A century ago, maybe two. Unfinished, but still… A tunnel heading toward…” He takes a long breath as my temples pound, another sleepless night coming calling, then points across the forest. “A tunnel, toward the golden castle. There was an old garrison there once. Before the king re-built it into what it is now.”