Summoning the Incubus Ch. 03

***

Maya left me at the door to the Prince's quarters.

"Aren't you coming in with me?"

She raised a sardonic brow.

"No thank you. I think I shall feel plenty too involved hearing the commotion through the walls." And with that she set away from the scene with a stride that was impressive for an elderly woman.

I stood outside the golden door, hoping to gather my thoughts and consider my options. But without my knocking, the heavy gilded door creaked open. With a resigned sigh I stepped inside. The Prince clicked the door softly shut behind me.

"Still pouting?" he asked.

I didn't respond.

This room was even more lavish in style and comfort than my own, with enormous stuffed chairs and cushions in brightly coloured silks strewn everywhere. The Prince took a seat for himself and gestured for me to do the same. The furnishings were all sized for an incubus' form, so I scrambled awkwardly to clamber into the large chair. Eventually seated, I pulled the hem of my gown as low as I could, willing it to cover my knees. We sat together in stubborn silence. Until he could no longer stand it.

"I am at a loss!" he growled, "How can you sit there scowling as if you have reasonable grounds to be angry with me?"

"I do have reasonable grounds to be angry with you!" I snapped back, "Or did you not notice that you abducted me?"

"I brought you here because I thought that this was where you wanted to be!"

"Wanted! Whatever gave you such a delusional notion?"

"Oh, I suppose that entire episode where you re-summoned me was a figment of my fevered imagination then," he spat.

"The part where I agreed to be whisked away to live in your Hell palace certainly was," I said crossly.

He let out an exasperated roar, balled his hands into fists and raised them -- but let the action go with a hopeless sigh.

"I will not proclaim love for you or the existence of some supernatural destiny to yet be manifested. But I will insist upon its potential within us. You summoned me a second time. We had a rare connection did we not?"

These words were startling. Too grand. Too truthful. A moment passed before I found the nerve to speak.

"I love another," I confessed, "And you... have torn me from them."

Far from the disappointment to him that I expected these words to be, Lazuren was jubilant.

"Oh! Darling Little Witch, now I understand your reluctance. But your mortal romance will soon pale to nothing. Another night with me, and you'll forget whatever flaccid, shabby man has diverted you."

"Woman. Witch. No mortal romance at all."

He laughed his huge rumbling laugh.

"Then why did you summon me Little Witch? If your lady is so important to you?"

"I made a mistake." I insisted.

The Prince's smile slowly slipped from his face and finally he became serious.

"You did not. It seems that I did, that I saw in you only what I wanted to see."

"So you'll take me home?"

He opened his mouth then closed it again before speaking. He looked sheepish and it did not lend itself to his countenance.

"There is no way to return you home. As Prince, I am bonded to the land of Azure no matter how far I may stray, I can always return here. To visit other realms however, that requires a summoning. I can leave this place only when called."

I shook my head back and fourth, refusing to accept his words.

"There must be another way back, there has to be." I felt frantic, there simply had to be another means, another spell, another power. My panic squeezed my lungs, my heart beat like that of a chased rabbit.

Lazuren looked at the floor.

"I brought you here because I thought that this was where you wanted to be." He repeated sadly. "I thought you would want to stay."

"Could you not have asked?" I cut back, unwilling to indulge his regret. "You only had to ask and you would have known."

"Did you ask me when I was summoned to your realm?" He gripped the arms of his chair tightly. "Or did you pluck me from my life, my duties and my family to satisfy your thirst for power and sex?"

His eyes burnt wildly. The air felt charged with the energy of his constrained temper.

"Your people like to tell their stories as if there are only depraved monsters and innocent maids... But we know different, don't we?" He stood up and I shifted uncomfortably. "You and I know that little maidens with long blonde hair are just as full of dark desires as any big, scary demon. Just as hungry. Just as animal."

I said nothing in return. He came closer to me now. I felt his breath in my hair and the heat of his body. He lowered his head to my ear.

"No one summons an incubus twice. No one becomes so intoxicated with lust as to take such a risk. Your body wept for me. Burnt for me. Convulsed and shivered and screamed for me. And here you are, marooned in my castle with no means of leaving. Do you really think that you won't learn to be glad of it?" My flesh felt hotter still. I closed my eyes and tried only to breathe. "Each night alone in your chamber, your little hands in your cunny, just wishing you weren't so stubborn, wishing you'd dropped your gown for me the moment you'd entered this room. I can put fire on your skin and diamonds in your eyes. You need me, Little Witch Whore."

"You are forgetting your own nature, Incubus! Whatever doubtful desire I might stumble across in the early hours of the morning is but a spoonful of the torment that will rattle you r very bones. How your body will ache and sob for me. Where will your hands be at night? No succubus or servant will sate you; or you would not have bothered to bring me here."

He moved to stand in front of me now, his head stooped low so that our eyes were level.

"You accept it then?" he hissed, "Our need is shared. We are inevitable." I looked away from his yellow eyes and their rays of penetrating light.

"I accept nothing," I said darkly, "Now, if you are quite done, I wish to return to my chamber."

He opened the door, gesturing to it with a mocking flourish as if I would not dare to leave.

But I left.

***

That night I slept on that indulgently soft bed, beneath those fresh silk sheets. Muted light from the fires out on the desert sands patterned the curtain and sparkled in the stained glass. My body could not have wished for greater comfort, but my mind was restless.

Our need is shared. We are inevitable. The Prince's words swam through my head.

I saw the strange logic. If I was trapped here for all time, then it wouldn't matter how many years or decades or centuries I denied myself the taste of him; there would come a night when I would offer myself to him eventually.

So why resist at all, if it was inescapable?

I drifted, indecisive, between wakefulness and sleep. I rested my eyelids.

I dreamt of Kasita. Scarlet with anguish as she discovered our home empty but for salt and smoke. Her hypocritical, heartbroken, howl cracking like a whip through the centre of my chest.

I lay awake terrified that she might come looking for me, vexed and vengeful. And I lay awake just as long terrified that she might never look for me at all, and that I was already forgotten.

I dreamt of Mildred. Her hatred for me red-hot even within a soul that could forgive the man who beat her senseless. And I lay awake wondering how I had never learnt not to miss my eldest sister in all my time in the forest, and that I would never learn not to miss her here.

I dreamt of Lazuren. His hot breath on my neck and his anger brewing like thunder in the air. Then falling as soft mournful rain on blue sands.

Now awake, arms outstretched from my body, hands safe from any contact that might see his words vindicated.

I dreamt of my father. Maggots festering in his skull. Ever unseeing. Finally blindly sleeping.

All of their bitter voices whispering one word over and over.

WHORE.