The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 01

He nodded.

They moved to their seats in unison, Sparrow a little angular and awkward, Vestalia flowing like smoke, arriving in a half lounge in her chair. One of her elbows propped on the arm of the chair, the spiked tips of her long fingers playing on the corner of her mouth. Sparrow watched her. She gave him a delicate, welcoming gesture. He faltered, then served a modest amount of food onto his plate, his empty stomach protesting. He glanced back up to Vestalia. She was smirking.

"You're hungry," she chuckled, the sound like a cello being strummed underwater, "Eat."

Sparrow's hand moved for him. He filled his plate eagerly, colouring at the childlike show. But Vestalia kept smiling. She seemed to want him to satisfy his appetite. She waited for him to finish serving himself, then moved with her mesmerising fluidity and filled her own plate, seemingly in a single stroke.

Sparrow was suddenly stricken with a fierce curiosity about what she looked like when she ate. She had such incredible, ethereal grace, but her mouth was restless and prominent. She looked like she could swallow her meal whole. Images flashed through his mind of the red juices from the rare beef streaking down her white chin and neck. He blinked rapidly and glared down at his food. He scooped a bite of beef and carrot into his mouth. It was richer than anything he had ever tasted. It melted on his tongue and flooded his senses with the flavour. As he swallowed, it poured like honey down his throat, the warmth pooling in his stomach and permeating through his body. He let out a sigh.

He heard another thrumming chuckle. He looked up, startled, the food having momentarily made him forget he was in company. Vestalia continued to watch him, the tines of her fork resting on her lower lip. The pleasant heat of the food mingled with the prickling heat of his shyness.

"You seem nervous," she said.

Sparrow swallowed. His fork trailed around a cluster of black beans beside his slab of beef. "More confused," he said after a moment's thought.

Vestalia frowned, the furrow in her brow barely more than a pencil line. "What about?"

Sparrow pressed his lips together, his voice faltered. "You're showing such kindness to me."

Vestalia scoffed with surprising coarseness. She fluttered her fingers, almost dismissively, catching the pale moonlight. "A little food, a little shelter. The mountains are treacherous, what defence do we have against them but our kindness?"

Something plucked a string in Sparrow's chest. His eyes met hers. It was like looking at an eclipse. "Thank you. Truly."

Vestalia stilled, like clockwork winding down. Then she poked towards him with her fork. "Eat up."

A smile whisked from Sparrow's lips. He began to eat more comfortably. Vestalia joined him, the clink and scrape of their cutlery harmonising and pinging off the vast pane of glass beside them. Sparrow carefully raised his eyes to her mouth, praying she wouldn't see. Her gaze was on her plate. His tongue tied around a strip of meat, as his eyes widened on her mouth. She took small bites - neat, clipped squares of food perched like garden birds on the end of her fork. But she indulged in them with heady gluttony. Her wide, blooming lips contorted and writhed. The points of her long canines glinted, as they peeked under the satisfied curl of her upper lip. Her tongue moved behind them, serpentining, sculpting her cheeks and jaw. He stared hard, as if he might see through her lips to the twisting, glistening muscle. He caught himself wondering what it would be like to be a slice of beef in that mouth, bound in her tongue, clamped and severed by her teeth, sucked and submerged. The steam from his mouthful trickled through his senses. He thought about eating the same food as her, their mouths mirroring, like a kiss.

She looked up.

Sparrow felt hit by a crossbow bolt. He looked quickly away, his cheeks burning.

She smiled and reached for the decanter. The sound of the crystal top being plucked away sang between them. The wine whispered, as she filled their glasses. Sparrow took a sip. It was dark and tangy, it tingled behind his eyes and ears and lay in a syrup film on his tongue.

His eyes wandered out across the mountains, moonlight spilling over the snowcaps, stars reflected in the crystal lace of frost. Mist rimmed the window from the cold. The room was so warm from the roaring hearth, it was surreal to have this great well of freezing darkness in arm's reach. Sparrow pulled his eyes from it. Vestalia watched him still. Why? He felt like a mouse peeking up at a descending owl. He thought of the demonic woman on the bedroom ceiling. But a smile still lingered on his host's face, disturbing the eerie alabaster of her skin, bringing an uncanny sweetness to it.

"I worry I don't have anything to offer as repayment," Sparrow murmured.

She popped a blueberry between her keen teeth and slit it open. Juice winked on her lip. She sucked the berry down. "How about your name?"

He blinked. "Sparrow."

"Unusual."

Sparrow's pulse flickered.

Her face flickered too, as if she'd felt it. "You just pulled a face that suggests there's a story behind it."

Sparrow could suddenly feel the cold stealing to his left side from the window. He twisted the cuffs of his shirt in his small hands. The mouse-like feeling intensified.

Vestalia waited, patient as a tree.

Sparrow looked back up into her face, serene as moonlight, sharp as ice. She was unreadable, but not in the sense of a closed book, full of potential, concealed complexity. More in the sense of a blank page, open and clean, waiting to inscribe her thoughts and feelings as he spoke. She didn't seem to be coming to him with any preconceptions. He was simply a young man at her dinner table and she was simply curious.

He flexed his fingers and let his shirt go. He replied to a clump of oozing wax on a candlestick between them. "You're the second person to find me in the snow close to death."

Vestalia's arching eyebrows rose. She tilted forward, resting her pointed chin on her curled fingers.

Sparrow twizzled the ivory handle of his knife in his fingers, the night sky reflected in the blade. "When I was a small child, I was found by a goatherd, much the same as you found me, except I was holding a sparrow in my hand."

Vestalia's fingers unfurled slightly. She leaned infinitesimally towards him. "Was it dead?"

"He thought so. Like he thought I was." Sparrow's gaze slipped between the night and the fire, and her, somewhere in between. He continued quietly. "He carried me home and nursed me. Apparently, I wouldn't let go of the sparrow. When I woke, I opened my hand and the sparrow flew off." He gave a small smile to the edge of the table. "He said it must have been guarding my soul until it was safely back in my body."

Vestalia's knuckles trailed under her chin. A coil of her hair slithered down her temple, the red tip kissing her cheek, casting her face into further shadow. "What an extraordinary thing. And this goatherd, he named you?"

Sparrow nodded. "He raised me."

"Kindly?"

Sparrow looked at her. Her gaze was wide and severe. He felt a tingle on the back of his neck and ran his hand through his tangle of long, fair hair to quell it. "Yes."

She watched him. She knew there was something else on the tip of his tongue. Even he hadn't realised it was there, but another tilt of her chin drew it out of him.

"People normally ask about my parents, when they hear that."

Vestalia's fingertips brushed the loose lock on her cheekbone. "Would you like me to?"

Sparrow rubbed his elbow. "Not really."

Vestalia shrugged, a gesture of almost intimidating apathy, her dress gathering and sighing around her breasts. "I supposed either they abandoned you in the mountains or they let you wander off and simply didn't find you. Either way, they aren't the interesting players in this story."

Sparrow looked up, eased by her reply, allowing himself a little, crooked grin. "I'm not sure there are any interesting players in my story. Or even much story after that."

She flashed her teeth. "Ah, one of those plays where all the good action is in the first act?"

"I think so."

"Then again, who knows? You might have a box office hit on your hands."

Sparrow wasn't really sure what that meant.

Vestalia's face ducked into a jasper streak of candlelight. "Yours could be a story for the ages." She sounded more serious this time, as much as he could tell the difference between seriousness and levity with the perpetual hint at mockery in her tone.

But either way, it sounded absurd to him. He laughed thoughtlessly, loudly, the sound trotting around the room, like a foal.

Vestalia beamed. Her lips furled back and showed the full array of her dazzling teeth. Hot light leaped in her pupils. Sparrow's laughter spluttered, his heart stopped. He hiccupped and nudged his hair from behind his ear to fall over the side of his face.

"You have a very charming laugh," Vestalia said warmly.

He glanced at her, feeling like a loaf in the oven under her belladonna gaze. He cleared his throat. "What about your story?"

Vestalia knocked back a mouthful of wine and waved her glass at him, the garnet liquid swilling. "Oh, too long to play in theatres."

Sparrow frowned. She didn't look so old. Older than him, sure, but not old. Maybe. "Still." He shuffled forward an inch on the firm cushion of his chair. He pressed the hesitation out of his body by massaging the base of his wine glass. "I told you a story, won't you tell me one?"

She jabbed her finger at him over the rim of her glass. "I thought you told me a story for the meal. We'll get out of balance again."

Sparrow bit his lip, his voice sugaring before he could stop himself. "I'm sure we can right that."

She arched an eyebrow. She raised her chin imperiously and looked at him down her strong nose. He held her gaze, his pulse quickening. A whirl of snow-strewn wind rapped the window and huffed down the chimney, making the fire snarl and flare across her broad, round shoulders.

She snicked a grape from a twig sticking out of a shallow dish. "Ask me another question." She flicked the grape into her cheek and crunched.

Sparrow felt an excited bubble in his stomach. He put his hands on the edge of the chair and leaned forward. "Do you live alone here? Aside from that gargoyle. Gargoyles? Are there more? Is it alive? How does it...?"

Vestalia held up her hand, a fine, gold ring catching the glimmer. "I said one." Her eyes sparkled and the corner of her mouth lifted. "I live alone in the main house, but I have a groundskeeper in a cottage nearby. The gargoyles are merely automatons, useful furniture."

"But how..."

She tutted and her eyes slitted in cunning. "A cleverness." She rolled her shoulders with a brash sigh, drawing his eye down her shapely torso. "Anyway, yes, alone. But I do like to entertain."

Sparrow prickled at her evasion, but there was a push to her gaze that was impossible to resist. He leaned his elbows on the table and looked at her softly through a haze of candle glow. "It can't be easy to get people to come here, with the journey."

She grinned, crinkling the top of her nose mischievously. "I must be very good company."

Sparrow grinned back. He took a deeper drink. The wine was strong, it numbed him to the brush of cool from the window, it blurred the edges of his brain. "Were you born here?" he asked, sinking a little on his elbows, relaxing.

"No."

"So, how did you come to it?"

"Same as you, wandering lost."

He perked back up. "So, someone found you? You're... Widowed?"

She caught the reference to marriage, smirking. He drew his shoulders up. The smirk leaked into her voice. "No. I was better at wandering than you, Sparrow."

It was the first time she'd said his name. It pulsed through his body. His mouth went dry. He shifted and wet his lip and glanced out to the jagged outlines of the mountains. "Everyone's better at wandering than me. Seems every time I do it, I almost freeze to death."

He felt a stroke on his hand, as if she was reaching out to touch him. He looked down at his folded forearms, then at her. She hadn't moved. But her mouth and brow had puckered.

"It's no bad thing to need warmth," she said.

As if responding to her saying the word, the flames swelled in the hearth. The copper light tumbled over her, staining her white skin like gold leaf. Shadow welled in her throat and the cup of her hand around her glass. She sipped. Her lips turned darker.

Sparrow felt his intrigue grow, as if she was a magnet and he was a dish full of iron filings. "I feel I gave you my story very blunt, yours is coming in puzzle pieces."

She laughed into her wine. "You don't think yours was a puzzle piece?"

He looked at her questioningly.

Her eyebrows flattened. "What were you doing out alone in the snow, half-dressed?"

Sparrow faltered. He shrank back a little. Of course she was going to ask, he should really have prepared something to say.

"Didn't learn your lesson about wandering?" she prompted.

He fidgeted. "About something."

She put her glass down. "There, see? Puzzle pieces."

"I..." Sparrow knotted and unknotted words around his tongue. What he ended up saying made him wince. "I did something. And the people of my village feared it. I was driven away."

Her ears pricked up, they were owl and mouse again. "What did you do?"

He sealed his lips.

She mock-gasped, her hand flying theatrically to her heart. "Are you a criminal, Sparrow? Am I at the mercy of a dangerous man?"

His hackles spiked. "No!"

Her hand touched her cheek delicately. "A scandal then? Did you ruin some poor admirer?"

His stomach boiled. "No!"

She noticed his agitation. Her face lifted away from her fingers and her stark, black eyebrows slinked down into a V. "Then what could it possibly have been?"

Sparrow's gut lurched. His vision fogged in the smudges of golden shadow on the round swell of a plum. The hearth light flickered on the dark flesh. He thought of burning torches, of bonfires, of stories and songs over the twang of guitars and the whistle of flutes. He thought of fresh mountain air and the bleat of goats and knowing everyone's name. He thought of drinking milk in the mornings and churning butter in the afternoons. He thought of laundry being beaten against river rocks and waving to the women on the stony paths. He thought about losing it all. About blood in water. About being driven barefoot into the snow.

He blinked his pricking eyes fiercely. "It's... It's nothing. It's a trick I can do, barely even stage magic." He thought about empty eyes and wails of horror. "But people in my village are very superstitious. It all got completely out of hand." He thought about talismans and curses being hurled against the door of his hut, thudding on the wood. He thought about the sun screaming into his eyes, as the door was wrenched open. About being dragged by his collar. "Before I knew it, they were crying devil." He looked down. His fingers tightened around his knife.

Quiet engulfed the space between them. He glared into the swirl of glimmering wine.

"What was this trick?" Vestalia's gentle murmur came to him muffled through the recalled clang of bells warding against evil.

He raised his eyes to her. Her face was smooth, open, the chiselled angles of it tempered by the velvet dimness. He felt a sudden urge to tell her. Everything. The truth of why he was here. Every single detail of his life, every memory and secret and thought he'd ever had. He wanted to rest his head on the pillow of her breasts and just talk, until he was empty. But she was so beautiful, and she was being so kind, and what if he told her and it made her hate him? And he couldn't be close to her like this anymore? Weren't they close? Somehow? After just half a dinner?

"You understand that it might be difficult for me to say, given what it made my village do."

She sat back in her seat, moonlight draping over the rise of her breasts. She gave him an elegant, acquiescent gesture. "Of course. I'll curb my curiosity." She flicked twin fiery rubies to him, with a scheming smile. "At least, in part. I'm wondering what other abilities you have."

Sparrow's heart thumped. He stared at her and realised she was brazenly appraising him. Her large eyes roved unabashedly around his body, as if she was inspecting fine cloth for purchase. Her full lower lip vanished behind her fine teeth. She sucked on it and cocked an eyebrow.

Sparrow turned to melting mercury. He blushed, the blood pounding between his thighs. He caught his breath and shifted in his seat, tensing against the sudden, shocking wakefulness in his groin. He had been so numbed by the strangeness of this place and this host, he'd only registered her beauty as an additional, otherworldly element. Now she looked at him with an all too human hunger, it struck him deep and instantly.

He tore his eyes from her gaze, leaving him stripped and smouldering. His vision alighted on a vase on a small table near the window. Bursting from it was a volcanic bouquet of startling red flowers, their long, crinkled petals like tendrils of flame, rimmed with merry yellow. His eyes widened, they were the most vibrant flowers he'd ever seen. They blazed in the darkness.

Sparrow's attempt at nonchalance came hoarse and a little high. "What are those?"

Vestalia's penetrating gaze broke, flooding him with relief and then a hard ache. She clucked her tongue. "Have you never seen them before?"

Sparrow went an even deeper ruddy hue. He was suddenly so painfully aware of how sophisticated this woman was. She seemed like she'd been everywhere, seen so many things, learned so many things. There was a weight to her. He felt lighter than the skeleton of a leaf. He had never been more than a couple of miles from his tiny, tucked away village. "They don't grow in the mountain," he said sheepishly.

"They don't grow on this continent," Vestalia explained. "I cultivate them in a hot house. They're flame lilies."

His mouth went a little slack. "They're beautiful."

"They're extremely poisonous."

"Oh."

She trailed her fingers down her neck, her voice turning wistful, emphasising its haunting echo. "I think I like them better for that."

He looked back at her, the flowers fading under her eerie radiance. He took a sip of wine to wet his mouth and it bubbled inside his skull. "Oh?"

She smiled. Entrancing. "Beautiful, bold, bringing warmth and brightness. But deadly. Dangerous." She turned to him, that loose coil of hair bouncing rakishly near her large, almond eye. "Poetic, no?"

Sparrow avoided her eye, in the way you don't look directly at a sunset. "Aren't roses usually the symbol for that sort of thing?"

Vestalia shunted a laugh through her nose. "Well, an effort to not be cliche, I suppose."

They smiled at each other. It was the first time their smiles had truly met. The heat of the fire stole over the cold glass of the window, mist bloomed and veiled the night in gossamer.

"But also," Vestalia went on, "flame lilies are only dangerous if you try to consume them. Roses won't even let you touch them." She didn't move, but she was somehow leaning forward, levelling her gaze on him, through him, the owl finally diving for the mouse. Her voice dropped quieter than smoke. "It's a great sadness, don't you think? Not to be touched."

Sparrow stiffened. The air thickened in his throat, heavy with warmth and the scents of wine and fruit and meat. He froze like a hunted hare. His heart hammered in his chest. He could feel it beating in his whole body; his palms, his toes, his gut, his temples, his cock.

He nodded.

He seemed to be doing a lot of wordless nodding tonight.

Come here.