The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 01

Chapter One: Lost Boy

Full work summary: Cast out of his village and freezing to death in the snow, Sparrow finds himself rescued by a mysterious and beautiful woman, living in a grand house in the mountains. As he falls under the spell of his strange host, he finds himself brought into a dark world that presents a destiny he never could have imagined. Submission to a vampire is only the beginning.

For my cub.

[Please note, this story is a D/s fantasy multi-chapter work centring on vampirism, so it will sometimes play in a dubcon space. I've tagged femdom, as that's the main theme of the full work, but this chapter is an opener, so it is less explicit at this point. Enjoy, spooky people!]

Chapter summary: Sparrow wakes up in a strange place and is invited to dine with his host, but she isn't only hungry for the meal.

"Are there vampires in the mountains?"

"There are vampires everywhere, my little bird. Get into bed, and I'll tell you about them. There, are you settled? Good. Hold your cross now, that's right, keep it over your heart. I don't know if it will save you. Truthfully, I don't know if anything will. But in the face of monsters, idle superstition can be the difference between life and death. Life and death. That is what a vampire is. It is the embodiment of theinbetween. We humans like to know what we are and where we are. We like rules. We like boxes. We like to be alive and to know that one day we will be dead. The vampire makes us ask, what if it isn't that clean? What if there is a version of existence that is allpossibility andimpossibility at once? That is the horror of them. Not their flesh-ripping fangs, not their vile thirst for our blood. That's just danger. Danger is part of life. No one is frightened that if they meet a vampire, they will be wounded, or killed. Or else we'd have more stories about mountain lions. No. We are frightened that meeting vampires leaves us lost."

*

Cold. Terrible cold. Pervading and penetrating and punishing. Frost creeps through the furrows and fissures of his flesh, like cobwebs through stone. His prone body is bedded in snow, its icy embrace soaking through his flimsy clothing and drenching his skin, sinking through to his bones and encasing them in biting crystals. The ground is softer than down beneath him, but it turns his body stiff as glass. He can't move. He can't see. His failing breath grates his lungs. He can hear his pulse, drowning out the whistle of wind and skitter of rock. It's slow. Too slow. Slowing, slowing, slowing...

"What's that over there?" A voice, almost the same tone as the flute song of wind.

"Carrion, Mistress. Please, don't go near." Another voice, like a boulder dislodging.

The rattle of reins. The shuffling noise of hooves in a deep dune of snow. The wet crunch of boots hitting the sludge.

He thinks there might be someone near him. His eyes sting, as he eases them a slit open.

A pair of eyes meet his, searingly bright in the shadow of a hood. They are the colour of flame trapped inside a ruby, flashing and flickering in the greyness. The irises are twin hewn gems, the fiery colours in them fracturing and reforming, prismatic and enchanting. The pupils yawn wide, the deep, viscous jet of liquorice.

His pulse thumps once.

And stops.

*

The scent of wood smoke seeped into Sparrow's half-consciousness, familiar and hearty. He took a deep breath. The smell flowed into his sinuses, prickling the rest of his senses awake. The sound of the teeth of a large, boisterous fire snacking on thick logs crackled into his ears. A resounding ache hummed in his body. He let out a thin groan through his teeth. The exhalation smarted in his throat.

He steeled himself and opened his eyes.

It was mercifully dark. The muscles around his face relaxed, he allowed his eyes to fall fully open. His mind filled with the hours trudging through white snow under white sun, the agony of light charging around him in hails of arrows that pierced his pupils and lanced his skin. Darkness was a balm. He felt it kiss the soreness.

His eyes came into focus, and with them his curiosity.

Where am I?

He was looking up at a plush swirl of midnight blue fabric. He blinked and shifted his weight. He was lying in a large, canopied bed, the mattress shaping to the subtle contours of his frame. He rolled over gingerly. Silk snaked over his bare skin in a long, sensuous stroke. He was naked.

The curtains around him, in heavy, blue drapery, mostly hid the room from view, but they were open a sliver, showing the leaping flames in a vast, marble hearth. Sparrow had never touched silk like this. Never seen stone worked like that. The traders that passed through his mountain village sold fabric raw, folded in a flat rainbow and fraying at the edges. The great, cragged, soaring granite that surrounded his home could not be tamed into these soft, sparkling, stone plumes. Sparrow was somewhere... Else.

He carefully pushed himself up on his palm to sit. His brutalised body clicked and creaked and twanged back into use. The air around him was warm, massaging his aches and lubricating his joints, like oil on tin. But cold had gnawed his fingers and feet, scarred his insides, beaten and burned him. He felt tight, tender. He moved like a wounded deer.

He slipped his legs over the edge of the bed and poked his face through the gap in the drapes. The room was lit only by the flickering fire, but the hearth was so huge, so dominant in the compact space, that it was enough to reveal Sparrow's surroundings. Orange light danced and dripped on mahogany and blue velvet. A large, woven rug covered most of the dark floorboards, barely visible under a crowding of squat armchairs and tables and footstools. The walls were covered in navy, damask paper, its pattern like flourishing ink. Everything seemed designed for softness, as if the occupant was expected to be made of glass and needed to be snugly nestled in a trinket box. Long windows either side of the hearth were hidden by thick curtains that stretched floor to ceiling. Sparrow's eyes wandered up.

The ceiling was iced with ornate plaster, encasing a central oval painting, the likes of which he had never seen. A naked woman, her flesh lightning white, swooped out of crashing storm clouds, a pair of demonic wings and a mass of black hair flaring behind her, her mouth red and wide and lined with needle teeth, her eyes glinting, ravenous. Sparrow recoiled. The painting's exquisite detail was caught and brought to startling life by the writhing shadows from the fire, making her appear to rush down towards him. Sparrow almost toppled back behind the bed's curtains. He tutted at himself and pulled his face away from it, ignoring the foreboding trickling over his shoulders.

He focused on seeing how well he could stand. Quite well, as it turned out, though his feet smouldered under his weight. His bones groaned, as he drew himself up, but no new pains hit him. He padded out into the room, still a little hesitant, as he checked again that he was alone. He couldn't see anyone, but he couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. Perhaps it was that painting.

He spied his clothes, only a shirt and britches, stretched out on a wooden frame near the fire. Seeing them hanging limp made it even more incredible he was still alive after having no other defence against the snow. His gut tightened.

Beside them was a stand with a mirror, wash basin and towel. He went over to them. He tentatively looked over his body in the dark, glimmering mirror. His tawny skin was dry and taut from hours in the cold, cracking on his elbows and knees. He was a small, young man, a little short, like a lot of the mountain folk, but lacking their typical stockiness. He was narrow and springy, he hadn't quite grown into his limbs, and his shoulders and hips and jaw were angular, giving him a slightly clumsy look, even though he could pick his way over stones and streams with the lightness of a dandelion seed. His cheeks and chest and fingertips were flushed, as if stained with beetroot. There was a large, spreading bruise on his upper arm, dense purple at the heart and smudged sickly green at the edges.

He remembered hitting the ground. He remembered being thrown.

He dipped his hands into the basin and splashed tepid water on his face. It cleared his mind again. He chipped pale soap into the bowl, clouding it and releasing a curl of sweet citrus. He rubbed the water around his body. It blended with the wash of fire to ease the tightness from his skin. He prickled all over. He touched the bruise, flexing his bicep a little to feel it move. Pain thumped in the deep stain. He shook out his arms to rid himself of it. He knelt and washed his feet. They stung, as he massaged them.

He remembered trudging through the snow, cold sanding his flesh, the enraged voices of everyone he'd ever known howling at him in a gale at his back, pushing him away from his home.

He looked into the mirror. He didn't fully recognise himself. It was like looking someone in the eye right after they tell you a secret. His mane of flaxen hair was ragged. His nut brown eyes were bloodshot and hollow.

He remembered thin threads of blood on the girl's brow. Her mousey hair gumming to it. Her mouth hanging open, her jaw cracked at an unnatural angle.

"He's a demon! He's possessed!"

Stop thinking about it. Focus on the present. You need to know where you are.

He splashed his face again and ran his fingers through his hair, taming it back off his face. He looked back at himself, droplets glistening on his cheeks, like tears.

He pushed the mirror to tilt away from him.

He went to his clothes and ran his hands on them. They were perfectly dry and temptingly warm. He pulled them on delicately. The heated cotton cuddled his sore body, the familiarity of his own garments grounding him.

He had no idea what sort of place this was, who had brought him here, whether he was in danger, whether he was even definitely awake, definitely alive. He held his numbed fingertips up to the hearth, the feeling returning in uncomfortable tingles. He let the heat cleanse the first hints of frostbite. He breathed in the wood smoke again. He realised he felt safe. Perhaps he shouldn't. But after the cruel, freezing, blinding, deafening mountainside, this oasis of warmth and quiet was Heaven.

He rubbed his hands together, curling and flexing his fingers to ease them. He looked into the fire. His vision filled with it, the intense brightness somehow gentler than the snow, bathing more than bleaching him. The flames licked the mantle, leaving soot stains around the rim. They fell on the stoic face of a small gargoyle carved under the mantle corner. Its stubby horns flicked up like fox ears, its jaw jutted out into a grim underbite crowned with thick, pointed teeth, its face wrinkled to conceal its eyes.

Sparrow peered at the gargoyle.

The gargoyle peered back. Its screwed-up face unfurled, revealing a pair of beady, milky eyes.

"Can I help you, Sir?" The gargoyle said.

Sparrow gulped and stumbled back. He shook his head violently, rubbing his eyes. He stared at the gargoyle. It stayed stone still. He let his breath go. Daft. Must have been addled by the cold.

The chink and creak of stone.

Sparrow jumped and stared back at the carving. With a series of stiff, twisting movements, it dislodged itself from where it was set into the marble and broke free to hover in the air. A pair of small, bat-like, white wings impossibly hoisted up its bulbous, pot-bellied body and large, clawed feet and hands. The gargoyle stretched out in the air, about the size of a kitten, and bobbed to Sparrow's dumbstruck face.

"You are invited to dine," the gargoyle said in a monotonous croak.

Sparrow gaped. He almost ran shrieking from the little creature, but he steadied himself. He leaned on the words his guardian used to pack him off with in the morning.

The best thing you can do when you're lost is put one foot in front of the other, until you're not anymore.

Sparrow was very, very lost. So there was nothing else to do.

He nodded.

The gargoyle didn't react. It floated past him, like a bored bee, and flew slowly off towards the bedroom door.

Sparrow blinked once and picked up his feet.

He followed the stone beast along a complex of dark, arching corridors, all coated with more damask, wine coloured in the soft light of bracketed candles spreading singed stains over the paper. He climbed wide, curving staircases and rounded sharp corners. He kept imagining more bizarre creatures jumping out at him from the shadows. He kept imagining dinner. What sort of person lived in this huge, labyrinthine house, keeping gargoyles as servants? Were they a person at all? His feet were still bare, brushing along crimson carpets. He wasn't properly dressed to dine with someone who lived in this sort of grandeur. His nerves prickled hotter. His palms itched and his stomach wriggled.

The gargoyle floated a few feet in front of him, moving silent and steady through the dips and rises of amber candlelight and red shadow, looking pearly and ghostly by turns. It led Sparrow to a modest, mahogany door.

"Within, Sir," the gargoyle said.

Sparrow nodded again. The gargoyle hovered a moment, then bobbed away, pocketed by shadow.

Sparrow faced the door. It seemed to grow before him, the way forests and caves do when children see them in nightmares. He shook a shiver out of his hand, clenched his stomach, and turned the handle.

Warmth flooded him, as he stepped inside, emanating from another roaring, immense hearth. Filling the centre of the cosy room was an oval table, laid with a cream tablecloth and brass candlesticks, the firelight running like wax over the glimmering metal. The candles sprouted from an eruption of food. The sweet-savoury scent hit Sparrow immediately, knocking the fear out of his belly and replacing it with gurgling hunger. Rare, roast beef was cut into thick slices on a central platter, surrounded by bowls of fat, glowing vegetables and bubbling berries, like clusters of gems on a market stall. The crusts of golden loaves, the size of fists, were splitting open and steaming. Garnet wine glistened in a crystal decanter. Vines and small white flowers dressed the table, giving the feast the look of having been uncovered in some enchanted wood. Behind it, a vast window was frosted with stars, pouring for endless miles over a seafoam expanse of midnight mountains. How long had he been asleep?

The door clicked shut behind him.

He started and wheeled around. He was still alone. He frowned.

He went tentatively to the table, the rich scent building and enveloping him, as he drew close. His mouth watered, his stomach rumbled loudly, hideously empty. He pressed his lips together. High backed chairs were placed all around the table, but only two places were set, one on either side of the oval end looking out to the hurtle of night. Sparrow stepped hesitantly to the nearest china plate. He trailed his finger over the carved, ivory handle of a knife.

The whisper of fabric threaded into the crackling of the fire.

Sparrow's head snapped up. He squinted into the sweep of shadow around the hearth.

"You have good ears." A figure emerged from beside the fire, moving seamlessly, more like the darkness was solidifying into a body.

Sparrow froze.

The figure stepped forward. Firelight painted the details of it. As it came into relief, Sparrow's breath spectred away.

It was a woman, anywhere between 20 and 50, tall and full-figured, cupped by the shadows, and shrouded in a long, black gown that wreathed her breasts and shoulders and pooled like blood at her feet. Her hair was the same charcoal black of her dress, but ombre, fading to bright, sunflower red. It was piled on her head in a series of python coils, so the different colours interlaced - embers in knotted, burnt firewood. Her skin was smooth and eerily unblemished, the flames slipping over her, like liquid on porcelain. Her eyes glimmered ruby and carnelian, refracting, kaleidoscopic.

Sparrow bit his tongue.

"You must have some questions," the woman said. Her voice was low and melodic. For a moment he couldn't tell if he was hearing her speak, or feeling it under his skin.

He swallowed. His fingers curled over the back of the chair in front of him. He gripped the wood to ground himself.

"Ask," she said.

"Where am I?" The words left Sparrow unbidden, as if she was drawing them out of him, like dirt from a wound.

The woman's lips were large and dark, a silken gash in her pristine face. "In my house. Just over the Skarpo Valley."

The Skarpo Valley wasn't far from Sparrow's village. Far enough that he had never travelled there - these mountains did not invite casual journeys - but near enough that he knew of it. He had never imagined such a house so close to home.

"Your house?" he repeated.

"Yes."

"And... And who..." He couldn't push the question past his lips. It felt disrespectful to question her. The way one shouldn't question a god.

The woman's mouth twisted at the corner and a new sparkle lit in the rim of her pupils. "I am the lady of this house."

Sparrow's awestruck expression crinkled quizzical.

The twist turned into a full smile, an unstill, taunting expression that warmed Sparrow's face more than the fire. "My name is Vestalia." Her voice had a slight echo to it, as if she was speaking in a cavern or a crypt, even in the close room. As she said her name, it chimed on the windowpane.

Sparrow let the word sieve through his mind. He hesitated, then said, "I've never heard that name before."

Vestalia laughed softly through her proud nose. "It's rather old fashioned."

Old fashioned? She looked ancient. She looked newborn. He gazed into her glittering eyes.

"Did you save my life?" He heard himself ask, far too abruptly.

That smile again. "It was a collective effort."

"But it was you, on the mountainside."

Vestalia cocked her head, like a raven.

"I recognise your eyes," Sparrow explained, his shoulders drawing up meekly.

Vestalia nodded. She took a step forward, firelight and starlight falling on her, like sighing suitors. "You were somewhat conscious then," she said in a tone between gentleness and amusement, "That bodes well for your recovery."

With a thud of his heart, Sparrow realised he hadn't felt a single twinge or sting since she had appeared. "I feel quite well, thank you," he said, more out of surprise than assurance.

She smiled broader, revealing a set of fine, pearl white teeth. "That bodes even better."

Her glinting grin sent a shiver across the small of Sparrow's back. He couldn't tell if it was chilling or pleasurable.

"Even so," Vestalia's voice turned buttery, "I imagine there's still some cold in you, poor lamb."

Sparrow heated in his cheeks and behind his sternum. "Maybe a little," he mumbled.

Vestalia moved forward again. She walked to the table with slow, fluid steps that made her look as if she was gliding, her skirts rippling over the carpet, like cloud. She stopped in front of the other laid place, opposite him, a dim puddle of black and red reflecting in the china plate. "Are those all your questions?"

Sparrow answered cautiously. "I don't know."

"May I ask one?"

His pulse skipped. "O- Of course."

She slipped around the side of the chair in front of her and ran her hand along it's top, extending a long, elegant arm. Her eyes brightened, gilding in the candles. "Will you have supper with me?"

It was a gracious invitation, but something about it was laughing, goading, as if she could sense his nervousness and was daring him to take her on. She glanced at the feast. The scent wended its way back into Sparrow's senses. She glanced back at him, the piercing intensity of her gaze hitting him afresh.