Surprise! It’s not a Saturday, but I’m posting anyway because why not? You might remember that back in January, I may have damaged a few hearts with a piece of flash fiction called
Ann Marie. I’m participating in Starting Sparks again today, though I think your hearts will stay intact this time. Ann Marie was a rainy, emotional, grieving piece. This one is more wintery (seeing as I’m clinging fiercely to spring right now, I haven’t the foggiest idea
why this thing insisted on snow) and feisty . . . but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
Starting Sparks is a monthly linkup hosted by Emily @ Ink, Inc. and Ashley G. @ [insert title here], in which they take turns providing writing prompts. If you’re in a writing slump, or just need to switch gears for a while, prompts are a fabulous solution. Trust me.
When I saw the May Edition, I thought it was too fun to pass up. Dialogue prompts might be some of my favorites, come to think of it. This is also one of my first conscious attempts at something like an omniscient POV. Or a more distant third-person. Or the much condemned head-hopping. I’m not really sure at this point. Anyhoozens, enough dithering. Here it is. Enjoy!
* * *
“No,
not you. Anyone but you.” Prince Tyrus—by all appearances thoroughly
overwhelmed by the sight before him—covered his eyes, then scrubbed his hand
down his face as if resigning himself to meet it head-on after all.
“And why,
pray tell, am I not suitable?” Voice prickling with ice, Evaleen shook a
fistful of her voluminous skirt. Tiny shards of crystal sewn into the
barely-blue fabric tinkled. “I certainly look the part, thanks to your staff.
No one will know that I’m a bridgekeeper.”
Prince
Tyrus waved a hand. “You could be a digger in the chasms for all I care.
Station has nothing to do with it. It’s just—” Again the hand waving. His
fingers whisked the air as if to thread words from it.
“It’s
just what?” Evaleen crossed her arms. Her toned biceps stretched the
long sleeves designed for the insipid girls of Wavening Court, and not for
sturdy women who shoveled snow off the bridges all day. The pale afternoon
light shining through the palace windows glinted in her defiant gaze.
Tyrus
gestured between them. “This. You and I. We don’t exactly get along. The
court’s not going to believe me for a minute if I walk in there with you on my
arm. They want me to choose a wife, not adopt a sister with whom to squabble.”
A beat
of silence passed, during which a sudden wind gusted over the palace turrets
and sent a flurry of snow crystals whirling past the windows and down, down,
down into the dark abyss surrounding the castle on all four sides.
Evaleen’s
ruddy, wind-burnt cheeks lifted in a smile. “But as long as they believe me,
things will be just fine.”
Tyrus
released a ragged noise that was half sigh, half groan. He turned to the window
and stared outside, hands gripping the stone sill. His floor-length fur mantle
bristled like it was still attached to the snow bear from which it came. “I
never thought I’d tell Wavening Court that I intend to marry the girl who cast
me out in the first place,” he muttered darkly.
“Cast
you out, ha.” Evaleen plucked at her crystal-sewn bodice, wrapped tight around
her ribs. How ladies managed to breathe in such constricting garments, she
hadn’t the foggiest idea. But maybe the lack of oxygen was the cause of their
weak voices and limp smiles. The thought nearly made her snort, but she caught
herself just in time. “I sent you to safety. Curse the hinterwinds, I
practically saved the kingdom. You should be thanking me.”
Tyrus,
oblivious to her clothing hardships, let the abyss outside the window suck his
gaze downward into its blackness. “For throwing me into that wind glider and
launching me south? South, Evaleen. Did anyone ever tell you what kind of
people live there? What they do to northeners, especially young ones? I nearly
lost my life multiple times, and on top of that, I nearly lost my father’s
kingdom.” His fingers kneaded the stone windowsill. Memories a decade and a
half old throbbed in his mind . . .
Floating
for miles on the cold drafts rising from the network of chasms . . . Touching
down in a place green and sticky with heat . . . Clan men jabbering in a
foreign tongue, carrying him by his ankles and wrists.
Taking
him to the Purification Pit.
Pitch
blackness.
Fat
slugs crawling over his skin, his face, their acidic slime burning his young
flesh. His own screams echoing back to him.
Years
of slavery.
Weekly
trips to the Pit.
Evaleen
dropped her hands to her sides. The sound broke his reverie. “And if I had done
nothing, the invaders would have put you in the family plot next to your
father’s grave.”
Tyrus’s
shoulders stiffened. “’Ware how you speak of the dead, bridgekeeper.”
“My
soul is safe regardless of my manner of speech regarding decomposing flesh,
Prince. Didn’t the south cure you of such superstitions?”
Lips
pinched over a sharp retort, Tyrus finally turned from the window to face her
again. Better to scrap the whole conversation and return to the point. “I cannot
walk in there with you. Return to the regent and tell him to find a replacement
actress.”
“No.”
Evaleen tilted her chin up, daring him to a battle of the wills.
And if
there was one thing he’d learned long ago as a nine-year-old prince (back when
he was still innocent and un-orphaned) crossing the bridges from one massive
pillar of rock to the next, it was that the bridgekeepers possessed a will
stronger than anyone he’d met within Wavening Court. Hours of sun and
unforgiving wind, shoveling the snow constantly blown in, repairing cracks, and
salting the ice slicks—those conditions seemed to harden something in the
keepers.
Defying
Evaleen, commoner though she was, would be of little use.
Tyrus
shook his head, defeated before he’d begun. “They have to believe we’re betrothed.”
She
flashed her left wrist, bound in a silver strand of metal. “The regent provided
me with a betrothal band.”
“They
have to believe you’re of northern blood.”
She
pointed to her head of blonde curls. “This doesn’t get any more northern.”
“They
have to believe you’re of the Court.”
“I’ve
tended bridges crossed by hundreds of Wavening feet. I know the part better
than you do, long-lost prince.”
“They
have to believe I chose you.”
She
pointed at him. “That part is up to you. Get rid of that crease between your
eyebrows and smile a little. Keep me close when we walk into the ball, give me
all the dances, and pretend I’m the most interesting person in attendance.”
Tyrus
opened his mouth to protest that impossibly lofty order, but she marched on.
“And if
you so much as breathe a word of our, ahem, strained past, the act will
be over. You understand that, right? They don’t know I was the one who sent you
away. Your job is to keep them ignorant.”
He
grudgingly accepted the truth of her words, but then straightened with a gleam
in his eye. “Most importantly, though: they have to believe we’re in love. And
that is going to be impossible, so you may as well go talk to the regent now so
he has time to find a replacement before the ball begins in three hours.”
Evaleen
grinned now, teeth flashing in the slanted light. Wolfish. Cunning. “Not so
difficult if you take a little blood-blush wine.”
Tyrus
froze. He backed away, hands up. “No. No, I’m not taking anything of the sort.”
Blood-blush
wine was not really alcoholic, though its effects were undeniably strong. Made
from boiling water and ground up blood-blush flowers picked right before they
bloomed, some called it a love potion. It was reported to make the drinker
enraptured with whatever he or she looked at while swallowing the elixir, but
only for as long as the wine stayed in the digestive system. A sizable gulp
would swill around in his stomach all evening, long enough to convince the
court.
But no.
Being made subject to anything picked at the scabs of the past and
rankled Tyrus down to the soles of his boots. Offering his emotions up for tampering
was especially bad. Not to mention the blow the resulting behavior would be to
his dignity. Fawning in public over a girl he hated? It was too much to bear.
Evaleen
arched a brow. “The more you argue with me, the more you prove the point that
you do need a little helping along.” She withdrew a scarlet vial from the folds
of her skirt. “One night. That’s all. Suffer a little embarrassment, make the
court believe you’ll be marrying me within the fortnight, and on the morrow
they’ll crown you as king. Then the realm will be safely in your grasp, and the
invaders can be driven from our home for good. By your sword.” She came
closer, took his hand, and pressed the vial into it. “Your sword, and not Lord
Galoth’s.”
Galoth,
the uncle who’d been ruling in Tyrus’s absence, was as foolish as they came.
His thoughts seemed to zigzag like a hare’s tracks, and that was no way to run
a kingdom. Under his loose and silly reign, the invaders had settled in and
begun eroding the country with their brazen, thieving ways. Much longer of
this, and a puff of wind would cause Wavening Court to crumble into the
invaders’ waiting hands.
“And then,” Evaleen continued, “once you’re
safely on the throne, you can quietly denounce me. You’ll never have to speak
to me again.”
Tyrus
stared at the bright red vial of liquid in his palm, then at Evaleen standing
so close her skirts brushed his boots. He fought down a rising tide of
bitterness that tasted like bile. “Fine,” he spat. “But just remember—any wild proclamations
of love I make tonight will be drug-induced and thereby as false as a northern summer.”
Evaleen
smirked. “I’ll remember.” Still she remained inches from his face. It appeared
she would not move until he ingested the vial’s contents.
With
the heavy sigh of a man who knows he’s signing away his pride—and perhaps his
life—Tyrus uncorked the vial and gulped the liquid back. It tingled on the way
down and tore a mighty cough from him.
He had
a moment of sinking dread before the world seemed to glow rosy bright and the
face before him became striking in its feminine glory. In that moment before
drowning, one thought crashed through his mind like a last breath of air to
desperate lungs. One solitary thought.
This tastes a lot more potent than a single
dose.
