Chastity and Lust
Lilya walked slowly through the halls of Castle Ah, with the darkness of night pulsing around her and the faint light of sconces illuminating the castle walls and ruby floor. Something was off about this night. She could feel it in the air. Her arms pricked with goose bumps as a cold shiver went down her spine.
She walked quicker through the dimly lit space, peering through the darkness before her, expecting to find something but not knowing what. A rat scampered across her path, startling her.
A noise came from the hall across from her, a slow breathing sound. Soft footfalls followed.
Thomas burst from the darkness, pinning her against the cold wall. His eyes were crazed and bloodshot and his breath smelled of fig. His hands groped down her sides.
“What are you doing?” She elbowed him in the chest and then pushed him away.
“Please share my bed,” he said almost desperately, his breath rushed.
He came for her again, and with a crack she punched him in the jaw, sending him tumbling to the ruby floor and sending his crown twirling on the floor’s eerie reflection. “Do not touch me again!” she spoke sternly and walked away from him toward her quarters, her heart racing.
“Lilya!” Thomas called as he slowly rose. “Be with me!”
His stumbling footsteps echoed through the hall behind her as he ran for her now.
Lilya’s heart pounded. She ran as fast as her feet would carry her. “Help!” she screamed. The torch lights marking the dark hall blurred as she ran past. The light danced and jumped across the stone. Thomas was nearing her. She could hear him getting close. “Help!”
A door creaked open as she passed, a hulking man stepping through it into the hall. “Thomas?” she heard Cypress questioning. “What are you…” Cypress reached out and stopped the boy, knocking the breath from Thomas’s lungs. “Come with me,” Cypress said and led Thomas into his rooms. The king was mumbling now.
Lilya didn’t look back, didn’t slow down. The torch flames licked the darkness. She was finally at her door and opened it quickly, closing it and locking three locks down the door’s side.
Lilya, Alexander’s voice spoke to her through her thoughts, come to your balcony. I am here.
She ran through her quarters and out on the balcony. Alexander rose from beneath the balcony and into her view, his crimson scales shimmering in the moonlight. “Are you alright?” he asked in his deep, caring voice.
“I need to go somewhere,” Lilya said nervously. “I can’t stay here tonight. I don’t know what is happening to Thomas. I can’t stay here tonight.” Cool winds whipped around her but she couldn’t feel them through her fear of what had just happened.
“Then climb into my paw,” Alexander said and opened his palm for her to step into. “Stay in my cave tonight. I will light a flame to keep you warm.”
She climbed onto the balcony’s ledge and into his paw, lying down against his hand’s embrace and holding tight to its form. “Thank you,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like you are the only one I can fully trust. I need time to think. Thomas is changing, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay here any longer.”
Alexander’s lungs breathed a full breath and his wings beat steadily as he lifted them above Castle Ah. “I will be by your side wherever you go,” he said. “Always know that you have a steadfast friend in me.”
They flew through the moonlit night, barely visible to the villagers milling and reveling below. Lilya watched their torch lights marking the earth like stars. The stars in the sky watch over us, she thought. And what are these stars of flame doing?
Soon the torches were out of view and Alexander was swooping up the side of one of Havilah’s great mountains. He held Lilya safe, next to his chest. The world was dark but she was warm in his embrace. With a dive he flew back off of the mountain’s face and plunged into the mouth of a cavern below. Alexander slowed, landing gently on the cavern floor.
Lilya waited until she was sure his paw was down and then felt with her hand on the cold stone below his embrace. It was sturdy and smooth and she stepped out into the darkness. Something soft rubbed against her and she jumped with a start.
“Wrap yourself in this,” Alexander told her. “It’s a blanket I was given by a sheep herder for driving wolves away from his flock.”
“Thank you,” Lilya said, wrapping the cloth over her form and sitting on the cool floor. She could feel the air around her warming as Alexander moved something with his jaws. A gusting sound blew from his mouth as flames leapt from it and ignited a pile of logs, causing the wood to crackle and pop.
She looked into his eyes as he turned to her. “The fire will give you light to see,” he said, “and my body naturally puts off heat, so you will not go without warmth. Can I do anything else to make this night comfortable?”
“No, this should be good,” she said. “Thank you so much for all you do.”
“Tomorrow we can talk,” the dragon said as he closed his eyes. “Have sweet dreams, princess.”
It’s odd that I feel as relaxed as I do when I’m with Alexander, Lilya thought. What would I have done tonight if he hadn’t come to me? How would I have found peace?
She thought of Thomas’s advances and shivered. Something is wrong with him. Something is changing him. I wish that I could stay to help him fight whatever has him in its grasp, but I’m not sure that I can stand being in his presence any longer.
Light leaped from the fire to the cavern walls and shadows danced across Alexander’s form.
In the distance, a wolf howled.
Lilya closed her eyes and let the night take her, comforted by having Alexander near.
҉
Lilya opened her eyes to sunlight shimmering through the cavern’s entrance a distance before her. She lifted herself from the cool stone floor, wrapped the cloth over her shoulders and walked toward the light, where Alexander lay watching the sunrise.
“Good morning,” he spoke as she approached. “Did you sleep well?”
“I have never slept better,” she said as she reached the edge of the cavern’s mouth.
Alexander looked to her and smiled. “Would you like some breakfast?”
“I’m not sure that I would like what you eat,” Lilya said, not meaning any offense. She placed her hand on his warm crimson arm.
Alexander let out a low laugh. “You might be surprised and like what I eat, but I had something else in mind, maybe food from the marketplace to enjoy on a relaxing picnic out on Havilah’s plains.”
“Now that sounds delicious,” she said and climbed into Alexander’s crimson palm before he lifted them into the air.
In the market Lilya picked up eggs, fruit, a fresh loaf of bread, strawberry jam and dried meats for later in the day before meeting Alexander beyond the city’s outskirts and soaring into the sky once more.
They had their picnic on grassy plains at the foot of Havilah’s greatest mountain. Lilya stretched out a sheet she had purchased in the marketplace on a flat stone standing up from the grasses about them, and then broke a few chunks of bread from their loaf. The rich smell of fresh bread wafted into her senses.
“Place the eggs on the end of the stone,” Alexander said and Lilya set them there, taking a step back. The dragon’s feet fell heavily on the ground as he came close to her and the eggs. He opened his mouth just the slightest bit and a warm, concentrated steam flowed from his scaly lips across the shell spheres.
Their light brown hue grew slightly darker and Lilya could feel the edges of the steam curling about her. As Alexander closed his mouth she came to him. “What did you do?” She looked down at the eggs.
“I cooked them.” Alexander grinned. “Let them cool, and when you peel off their shells you’ll see that the insides are like a boiled egg.”
“What will you eat?” she asked, somewhat afraid that he would drag one of the wolves he had spoken of earlier back and devour it in front of her.
Alexander let out a lo
w laugh. “I don’t actually eat much but my favorite thing is fruit, so a few of the melons you brought from the market will be perfect for me.”
“Melons?” she questioned.
“I said that you might actually like what I eat. Could you toss one to me?” he asked, opening his mouth wide.
Lilya took a cantaloupe and launched it through the air, into his mouth, and with a quick gulp from Alexander it was gone. The eggs were delicious and warm. The sweet crispness of the cantaloupe went with them perfectly. She spread some of the strawberry jam on the fresh bread to finish off her meal.
When she had finished, Lilya lay back, just watching the clouds move in the sky, deep in thought about what to do about Thomas. She didn’t want to stay near him any longer, but couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the people of Havilah, knowing that Thomas was changing and not knowing what would come next.
“You are thinking about him, about what he has become.” Alexander broke her train of thought.
“Yes,” she said. “But more than that, I am worried for Havilah’s people. I don’t know what to do.”
Alexander was silent for a moment. “Take some time today, relax, and let the answer come to you. You are safe here with me. I’ve even got something close by that you might enjoy.”
Lilya looked to him inquisitively and the dragon pointed a claw over to a hidden spot, in the base of the rock she was lying on. She leapt from the rock down to the earth below and jogged to the spot he had pointed to. There, hidden by foliage growing around it, were vibrant colors, blue, red and orange. She moved the grass and weeds aside to find containers of paint. Two horse hair brushes leaned beside the paints against the rock.
“You remembered,” she said, thinking of how she had told him that she loved to paint.
“The things you like are important to me,” he said.
Lilya thought it was amazing that when she looked at him he didn’t look like a beast. His features moved like those of a person, but in a much more caring way. “Can I paint you?” she asked.
He smiled. “How would you like me, princess?”
“Just lay in the grasses however is comfortable for you.”
With a swift thrust of his wings Alexander lifted into the air, made a wide loop in the sky and came back to land close to their rock plateau, his wings rested handsomely in the grasses about him. His deep eyes looked to Lilya’s own.
She used the flat space on the stone as her canvas, sometimes making wide strokes with her brushes for effect and sometimes spending an hour on the smallest of details. She studied him, as the sun shone and radiated against his crimson form.
He is the perfect man, she found herself thinking. He’s kind, loving, interesting, honest, appreciates the little things and remembers the things that are important to me. There was something else that was on her mind. And he is a dragon, so there is no way that he could ever try and lie with me. That’s the thing, she thought. He’s a dragon. If he was a man and was all those things I could love him. But would I?
Lilya looked into Alexander’s emerald eyes, eyes of knowing that she trusted. How do you capture that with paint? You can’t. Why can’t Thomas be like him? There was the answer to her question of if she should stay in Havilah. Thomas would never be like Alexander. She needed to get away from him.
She worked throughout the day, stopping to eat the leftovers from breakfast, painting Alexander’s form on the stone plateau. As the sun began to set she called Alexander to her side. “What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “Is that what I look like?”
“Haven’t you seen yourself before?”
“Only in the reflective surfaces of lakes and rivers as I fly above,” he said as he admired the painting. “You make such beautiful art. I love how you captured the sun in the sky behind me and the beautiful flow of the grass.”
“It’s you that makes this painting special,” she told him as she admired his painted form. “And it’s not just the color of your scales that I’m talking about, it’s the expression in your face and your eyes. You shine through.”
“Whatever the reason, and I think you compliment me more than I am due, your painting is an amazing work. You have such talent.” Alexander looked deep in thought as Lilya lifted her last piece of bread and spread strawberry jam on it. “Did painting help you come to a decision?”
Lilya took a bite, savoring the richness of the strawberry jam on her tongue. “I’ll stay in my quarters in Castle Ah tonight, and tomorrow I’ll tell Thomas that I’m leaving. Whatever is wrong with him, he won’t change, and I’m not helping anyone by staying. I can do more good from the safety of some other place. I’d leave now without returning but I want to invite Clare and Amari along with us.”
“Be careful,” Alexander warned as the sun descended behind him. “I will listen through the castle’s walls and come to you if you need me.”
Lilya gathered the paints and brushes and climbed in Alexander’s paw.
The dragon lifted them into the sky, his strong wings beating and reflecting the rays of the sunset, catching the night’s breeze and soaring through the sky towards Lilya’s balcony in Castle Ah.
҉
Lilya sat on her bed in the center of her room, the light of candles flickering in the corners of her chamber, and her reflection looking back to her from a mirror. Calm down, she told herself. Your door is locked. You’re safe. The silence was getting to her though, the eerie unknowing of where Thomas was in the castle and the thought that he was coming for her. A cold draft blew in beneath the doors to her balcony.
She blew out her candles one by one, watching the smoke from each flame waft through the air until she had extinguished the final flame. As she lay back, her pillow was soft against her head, lulling her to sleep.
What was that in the silence? The faint sound of a scream whispered through her door from the hall.
Lilya stood from her bed and walked to her chamber door, placing her hands and an ear against the smooth wood. She barely heard something, distant and muffled. She knew she’d regret it, but she had to go into the hall. What if someone needed her help? She had to go.
As she entered the ruby-floored hall, candlelight and silence greeted her. She walked slowly, toward Thomas and his guards’ quarters, and shivers raced down her body. Each step seemed to take hours. Her feet echoed in the silence with the crackling flames in the sconces. Then suddenly she heard a girl’s voice scream from Thomas’s chambers. It was a painful, horror-filled scream.
Lilya raced down the corridor, and as she neared Thomas’s chamber a girl ran into her, tumbling to her knees. Around her legs blood stained the girl’s dress. Her fingers were bruised and gashed. Stunned, Lilya knelt beside the girl. To her horror, Clare’s bloodshot eyes turned to look back into hers. “What has he done?” Lilya asked.
“He… he…” Then Clare screamed as Thomas burst out of his chamber and ran after her.
“Don’t move! Don’t you dare come closer!” Lilya yelled at him. “What have you done to her?” Lilya was outraged now and Thomas kept coming. She lifted Clare back up to stand and began pulling her in a direction away from Thomas. Clare was limping as tears flowed down her face.
“This is none of your business,” Thomas spoke coldly to Lilya. “You wouldn’t be with me, so I’ve found someone else to fulfill my needs.”
Clare’s knees buckled beneath her and she collapsed to the ground.
“Leave us!” Thomas spat at Lilya, lust boiling in his eyes, sweat seeping through his pores.
He was near them now, only a few steps away, and Lilya would defend Clare with her life. No man would harm a woman in her presence ever again.
Thomas thrust his arm out to grab Lilya’s own and suddenly the wall behind them exploded inward, blasting stones in all directions. A crimson dragon paw burst toward them, clutching Thomas’s body in its fist and lifting him into the air.
Run, Lilya! Alexander’s voice came into Lilya’s th
oughts. She didn’t hesitate; lifted Clare over her shoulders, and ran down the hall toward the stairs.
“Let me go, beast!” Thomas yelled at Alexander.
“Who’s the beast, boy? You’d better calm down or else I might just squeeze you harder than you’d like.”
“I’ll have you killed for this!” Thomas shouted, enraged.
Alexander let out a low laugh, muzzled the boy king’s mouth with his large scaled finger, and waited for Lilya to be safely away.
Lilya ran heavily through Castle Ah, down halls and corridors, breathing deep as she hauled Clare in her arms. Clare was awake, but in a stunned state. As she reached the keep Lilya kneeled down and rolled Clare off of her back. Exhaustion was coming for her and she could no longer support the girl’s weight.
“Can you walk?” she asked as she looked down into her young maid’s tear-filled eyes.
“I… I…” the girl began as someone pounded down the stairwell behind them.
Pine emerged from the doorway, his massive form coming quickly for them. Lilya stepped between him and Clare. “Go away,” she said, fear slipping through in her voice.
“No,” Pine said as he halted before her. “Thomas is mad. I won’t leave him, but we need to get you away from here. I’ll carry her to the stables and you can take a cart and supplies to the river from there. Juniper and Cypress are already locating Amari so that he can go with you. We heard you fighting, from our chambers.”
“Thank you.” Lilya breathed a sigh of relief. She stepped out of the way as Pine lifted Clare in his arms, the girl quivering in fear, blood dripping from her dress to the ruby floor.
They went through another series of halls before entering a tunnel that led beneath Castle Ah to the stables. As they entered the stables they saw Juniper, Cypress and Amari loading straw and supplies into a cart. Thomas’s two best horses were at its lead.
“Clare!” Amari called, running toward them. He knew they would be leaving but had not known about what had happened. He embraced her as Pine laid her in the cart, blood staining his arms as he pulled away. “What happened to you?” he asked her, panic in his eyes.
“Thomas, he…” Clare’s words trailed off.
“I’ll kill him!” Amari yelled, charging toward the tunnels leading into Ah.
“You can do no good by attacking the king,” Pine said as he lifted Amari by his shirt into the air, dragging the struggling boy back to the cart. “I can’t approve of what he has done but I won’t allow you to harm him. Clare needs you. Do what you can here and don’t waste your life in blind rage.”
“I’ll come for him,” Amari raved. “He won’t get away with this!”
“And I will be here waiting for you,” Pine spoke coldly as the boy gave him a hateful stare. “Juniper and Cypress will go with you to assure you leave Havilah safely and arrive well wherever you are going.”
Cypress, who was half holding the boy back, looked Amari in the eyes. “Clare will be alright,” he said. “We won’t leave your side until she is.”
Lilya threw a bag of grain into the cart and pulled herself inside. “There is a difference between being physically alright and mentally alright, Cypress,” she said. “I’ve been where Clare is. There is no coming back from this.”
“Then we will stay by your side for as long as you need us,” Juniper responded.
Donning cloaks, Cypress, Juniper, Clare, Amari and Lilya rode in their cart out of the royal stables, beneath an intricate golden archway above. Pine watched them darkly from the shadowed stables.
Lilya comforted Clare, the cart shaking on the cobblestones as they rode toward the Pishon’s bank. There were few people in the streets this dark night, and the ones they did see eyed them with suspicion.
“That’s one of the royal carts,” she heard someone say from the shadows cast by the moonlight. “Who knows what he’s up to now?”
The person they were speaking to hushed them and lowered their head.
As they neared the riverbank Cypress directed the horses and their cart up a plank that Juniper had lowered, and on to a small vessel. Lilya helped hoist the sails and lift anchor, then watched as the ship pulled away from the docks.
Where is Alexander? she thought. Why hasn’t he joined us? She watched Castle Ah in the distance, looking for his form gliding in the moonlight or igniting a flame into the sky, but saw nothing unusual there. In the river beside the boat a school of fish leapt in the vessel’s rippling wake as Juniper joined her side.
“Where do we go from here, princess?” he asked as he also looked to Castle Ah, his massive hands bracing the rail.
“There is only one place that I know of, to go,” she said as she shivered in cold winds as they whipped her hair in their chill. “We head for Cush, make camp in the forest, and devise a plan from there. If you have any suggestions I’m open to hear them.”
“Cush sounds as safe as any place.” Juniper turned from her, walking back toward the boat’s tin-roof shelter. “Make no mistake though, Thomas will come after us no matter where we are. And who knows what man Thomas will be when he arrives.”
The wind gusted in Lilya’s ears as she watched the river’s currents curling in the moonlight behind the boat. Hours passed in the silence of the night as Lilya sat on the back deck of the vessel in a wooden chair she had discovered onboard. The stars faded above as her mind drifted into the world of dreams.
She awoke with a jolt as the boat shifted beneath her, its boards creaking as the horizon seemed to lower before her in the distance. Then, above, she saw Alexander’s massive body, his wings thrusting in the air as his claws clasped into the vessel’s sides. He was lifting them up, out of the river and into the sky.
We can travel much faster in the air, his voice spoke in her mind.
“I was worried for you,” she said, rising to check on the others and tell them not to be alarmed.
They are all asleep except for Amari, who watches over Clare with such a heavy heart.
“Where were you?” She walked to the back rail, watching the river drop away beneath her, water running off their vessel’s hull. “I looked for you by the castle, but couldn’t see you there.”
I wanted to give you time to escape, so I took Thomas for a little flight around his realm. Lilya could hear humor in his words. I’ll have to say, he didn’t enjoy it. When I saw that your ship was well away I set him down in his gardens and came to join you on the river.
Lilya watched the moon as the boat soared in Alexander’s grasp. “What happened to the boy I met in Cush?”
There is more going on with him than we could understand.
“You say that, but I have this feeling that you know more about what’s changed him than you say,” she spoke as she watched the sky. “You read thoughts and feel people’s emotions. Surely you have discovered what is doing this to him. That knowledge could help us save him.”
Alexander was silent as they soared above the land and winding river in the darkness.
“Say something,” she said.
Footsteps sounded on the deck behind her, startling her. “Lilya,” Amari’s voice came. “I don’t know what to do.”
Don’t think I’m done asking about what you know, she thought in her mind to Alexander. I know there’s something you’re not saying. And I know you’re listening to my thoughts. She looked in Amari’s worried eyes. “You are doing all that you can, standing by Clare’s side and wanting to help her heal. She will need that in days to come. Even if she tries to push you out of her life, stay strong by her side. Together we will make it through whatever is to come.”
They made their way to the boat’s front deck and watched as they soared in the clouds, Alexander’s wings beating above them. Hours would pass as Havilah was left behind and they flew above Cush’s lands.
After Lilya and Amari had made their way beneath the vessel’s tin shelter, to find sleep on the boat’s hard wooden floor, Alexander found a heavily wooded forest and gently set the boat down in
the boughs of its trees.
He would rest beneath the vessel, guarding them through the night.
17