Fairy Bride Ch12: Beneath the Laurel Tree (Patreon)

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“Tiring already?”

Daphne grunts, her legs wobbling as she struggles with the tent slung over her shoulders.  It’s been a few days of training, but even so it exhausts her.  A gust of wind shrieks over her head, taking her sun hat with it.  Daphne makes an awkward grab before sheer exhaustion sends her plummeting to her knees.

Lianna scowls down at her from where the trail crests a ridge, one hand on a cooler and the other clutching the handle of an enormous umbrella.  The vampire shifts under its protective shadow, arching an eyebrow.  “A Spartan does not permit vulnerability.”

“S…some of us need to breathe.”  Daphne puffs.

“Tell me, fraülein.”  Lianna’s eyes glitter.  “Would you allow Spencer to see you like this?”

It’s all the encouragement she needs.  Daphne tightens her grip, grits her teeth, and jogs her way to the vampire.  By the time she reaches the top, she’s ready to collapse - until Lianna steps aside, showing her the view.

It steals what’s left of Daphne’s breath away.

A massive peak towers into the cloudless sky.  The treeline reaches halfway to its summit before it’s overwhelmed by snow and rock.  The lower slopes blend seamlessly into a valley of long grass and wind-swept flowers, without a home or hiker in sight.

“See the mountain?  Learn it well.  That is Victoire.”  Lianna grins.  “It shall either be the pinnacle where you become Spartan… or the rock that becomes your grave.”

“URGH!”

Daphne slams the stake into the hard, frost-covered soil.  After an approving nod from Lianna, she sinks into the grass, exhausted.  The vampire casually lowers her cooler in the newly-made tent’s centre.  “That should keep the wind at bay.  Decent progress, fraülein, but a Spartan would finish in half that time.”

“You could help me,” Daphne mutters.

Lianna chuckles, withdrawing a small plastic bag and several steel instruments from her cooler.  “I could.  For about ten seconds.  Then the light would turn my heart to dust, the aether inside me would burst in holy flame, and you would watch my face rot as my body returned to its natural age.”

Thanks for the image, Lianna.  Daphne frowns.  “Then why are we hiking in the middle of morning?”

“I will never let the Sun rule over me.”  Lianna pierces the bag, holding it to her lips.  The thick scent of blood wafts through the air, sending Daphne’s antennae shying away.  She lifts an eyebrow when the vampire makes a face.

“What’s the matter?  Not your favourite type?”

“It’s bland.”  Lianna inspects it, pursing her lips.  “Bagged blood loses those little mortal complexities and passions that bring out the flavour.  Though a Spartan mustn’t complain for luxuries.”

Daphne pauses, eying the hungry look in Lianna’s eyes as she sips at the bag.  It’d be stupid to trust her answer to anything at face value, of course… but she can’t help but wonder.

“Is that why you’re trying to make a delicacy of me?”

Lianna sputters, her laughter surprisingly light.  “Where is that coming from?”

“I’ve read stories, Lianna.  Of monsters who loan their talents to men, so that they can farm the passion and creativity.  Art.  Wonder.  Hatred.”  Daphne walks into the tent, kneeling down.  “You’re a leannán sídhe, or something close to it.  I’ve met someone like you before… only she got her power from candies.”

Lianna squints.  “These are bold accusations,  fraülein.”

“You’d rather I be bold,” Daphne replies.  “And I can’t think of another reason why you’d help me.”

“You won’t believe this is altruism?”  Daphne snorts, and Lianna lowers the bag, laughing.  “There are similarities between the creature you describe and the dhaoine rosín.  But we are not wasteful parasites.  We collect.  We curate.”

“Curate what?”

“Everything.”  Lianna puts her bagged blood away.  “Humanity’s great failing is that it always forgets its culture, its history, its brilliance.  But as immortals, we can remember for them.  And so my people have pledged, long ago, to safeguard those pieces of human expression that may otherwise be lost to the sands.”

“Is that why you’re so frantic about the ‘end of civilisation?’”  Daphne asks.

“In part.”

“And the other dhaoine rosín, are they all a bunch of raving racists?”

“Not in the slightest,” Lianna replies.  “But I’ll gladly fulfil their mission for them.”

Daphne doesn’t relax.  “But… your help still doesn’t make sense.  Spencer keeps your Court safe.  There has to be some bigger reason.”

“Of course there is.  But that does not make you privy to my thoughts.”  Lianna never looks up from her cooler.  “If my teachings free you from Spencer… do my motives really matter?”

Daphne frowns.  If anything, the vampire's words put her less at ease, but-

‘Bloop bloop.’  ‘Bloop bloop.’

Daphne sighs, pulling her phone from the tracksuit’s pocket.  Several more messages light up the screen; she already knows the sender.

‘Bloop bloop.’

‘IMG_2014.’  Another picture of an old Gothic cathedral, because the twentieth will catch her eye where the last nineteen failed.  ‘IMG_2015,’ a picture of the same stone bridge over the Rhine he passes every morning, with the same view of the Old Town he’s begging her to reply to.  ‘IMG_2016,’ a butterfly with blue wings and black spots.  A caption spells out what was already obvious: ‘it’s little daph! :D’

‘Bloop bloop.’

‘10:33: Spence <3: I wub yuuuuuuuuu :3’

Daphne tightens her grip around the phone.  “Do I really have to read all of these?  He’s sending them three times an hour now.”

“Each is kindling for the flame,” Lianna replies.  “And yours is still weak.”

“It’s getting stronger.”  Daphne mutters, lowering the phone.

“Not strong enough for the time we have.”  Lianna reaches in and withdraws several long, bronze rods.  “That flare in Monaco?  A promising start, but you cannot wait for such anger to strike you.  A Spartan summons his spirit on command.”

“I can’t hate people like you do.”  Daphne says, her jaw tightening.  “I’m not a bigot.  So if that’s what you’re hoping for, then we - ”

“I’m aware of the deficiency.  But you do not need race consciousness to free yourself.  Only a constant, ever-burning rage.”  Lianna begins to twist the rods into each other, staring at the mountain’s summit.  “For most, it proves the climb’s greatest hurdle.  That is why we are here today.  Why I have made a plan.”

Daphne rises to join her, clenching her teeth as she feels her phone go off again.  “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing.”  Lianna grins at Daphne’s clear confusion.  “The stage is yours, with no restrictions.  Chains, Glamours, white dresses… today, they are all gone.”

She lifts the object she’d been making, pointing it through the past the tarp.  It’s a makeshift spear, levelled at the mountain as if in challenge.  Daphne looks out into the sunlight, a chill running up her back.  “What if somebody sees?”

“Let them see.  A Spartan can always fight, but they are at their best when they know why they are fighting.  You have forgotten yours.”

Daphne gasps.  The vampire moves imperceptibly quickly, placing her hand and digging claw-like nails deep into her shoulder.  Her touch is frigid.  Her eyes are flaring.

“Daphne Harcourt.  For three years, you’ve been a slave.  But not today.  Today, you will remember freedom.”

She dives through a copse of trees, stray twigs clinging to her clothes and the smell of sap humming in her antennae.  The air is crisp and chill, sending the steaming ghosts of her breath to the margins of her goggles, but from high above the sun shines brilliantly on her wings.  Daphne remembers feeling the exhilaration of flight on her honeymoon…

… but she can’t remember the last time she felt free.

She rises, slowly, looking back at her dyed wings.  She remembers days of her frightened childhood, shoving them into a binder.  Of her time in London, hovering over a couch, terrified of making sounds.  Even in the Market, she recalls the shame she felt showing them, in the very back of her head.  A dull and constant pull after years of hearing, ‘safety first.’

Even when she sang, she’d sing in fear of Lyra.

Her breath hitches.  Tears leak through the edges of her goggles, stinging in the cold mountain air.  The scent of lavender tickles at her nose.  Daphne feels her body tremble, her wings slowing, about to fall out of rhythm.  Her vision blurs as she looks down at the fields below, an indistinct jumble of green and yellow and purple.  She’s so high up.  She needs to be higher.  Somewhere away from it all.  Somewhere where nobody can touch -

Purple?

Daphne looks again.  Lavender.  Actual lavender fields, stretching out below her.  And for once, her nose does not recoil from their scent.  For once, she realises that the memories can’t find her here.

That this is a place that she alone can reach, and Spencer can never own.

Daphne breathes, and stills her wings, just long enough for her to begin to fall.  Then they blur again, beating as fast as they can, steering her into a dive.  The air rushes into her lungs, the wind pulls at her hair.

‘Let them see,’ she was told, and let them, Daphne will.  They can hide them. They can dye them.  They can pierce the cartilage and bind them in chains.  But they can never take the sky from her, because they will never take her wings.

The ground rushes up to meet her, and Daphne clenches her fists.  It isn’t fair. She should have been able to do this long ago.  She should have been able to do this every day.  But now, she can.  As long as this feeling burns within her, this power, this control, she feels the need to sing.  Not with Lyra, or a magic machine, but for the very first time, with a voice all her own.

“I’M NOT DAPHNE!”

Her words echo across the slopes, piercing and crystalline.  Daphne skims above the lavender stalks before driving herself back into the sky.

“I WILL FIGHT!  I WILL BE FREE!  AND I WILL NEVER BE DAPHNEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!”

She flies to prove it, looping and twisting to the ground.  And just for that instant, laughing with abandon, she forgets all the rest. She flies free of everything.

L Morgan was always at her best soaring.

Far below, the canvas tent flutters in the wind, fluttering from Daphne’s echoes.  A gust steals its way inside, sending crazed zigzags of sunlight dancing across the earth.  Lianna watches, her eyes blazing, as the patterns approach her hand.

Her fingers briefly sear and smoke before the Sun shies back away.

She steps back, as the tarp flaps back into place, plunging her spear into the ground where she left.  A high-tide line.  “That is the length of your flame.  And now…”

She reaches back into the cooler, this time removing a book.  Battered and dog-eared, with an orange, creased cover.  Lianna smiles triumphantly at the faded title.

“... fuel is all you need.”

“Lianna!”  Daphne bursts through the door, bounding across the cold stones.  “I think I’m ready for another flight.  Can I do that here, or do we need another hike… to… Lianna?”

The vampire never registers her presence, focused entirely on the photograph lying on her desk.  Her face is bent into a fierce scowl, and her hands hover by the frame without actually touching it.

Slowly, Daphne shuffles in, circling behind her for a look over her shoulder.  The photo is black and white, faded and seared by age.  It shows a pale woman in a revealing bodice and flapper hat, her finger curling through long, brown hair.  The woman’s eyes almost seem to glow with life.

Lianna’s have gone dim and dull.

“Apologies.”  Lianna finally mutters, never looking back.  “I’m still… practising.”

Daphne bites her lip, balancing her caution.  “... Who is she?”

“Her people were called filí.  They lived in the far north.  They were the first Curators, our inspirations, memorising the traditions of the clans to which they once belonged.  For generations, this one kept her people’s stories alive, even after the tribe was condemned to death.  But now…”   Lianna’s voice sounds raw, nervous.  “She is merely a challenge to my discipline.  The filí are all gone.  Their histories long forgotten.  And whatever she knew... I alone remember.”

Daphne takes a careful step closer.  “Were you close?”

Finally, the vampire turns around.  Her expression is entirely blank, her face white as a sheet, but the pain is clear in her eyes.  It takes seconds for her lips to move.

“Never.”

Lianna leans back into the desk, her eyes closed.  “My master heard rumours.  When I resisted, she was made a target.  He thought he could use her life to keep me in place, but he failed to realise how strong my flame had truly grown.  It cost him his existence.”

“And what about hers?”

A pause.  “I told you, fraülein.  We must all make sacrifices to be Spartan.  Lorna was not my last.”

A chill runs down Daphne’s spine.  She looks at the photograph again.  How long ago was it taken?

“Sometimes, when my flame is weak, I think of her.  There’s… temptation in the memories.”  Lianna exhales, for the first time in a long while.  “In those moments, I must steel myself.  A Spartan cannot know want.  A Spartan cannot know love.  Leave joy for those who have not seen the world as we see.  The path they walk is water, and nothing will faster douse your flames.”

“Why?” Daphne asks, in a quiet voice.  “Why can’t you know love?”

Lianna finally touches the woman’s smile, gently lowering the frame until it’s hidden by the table.

“Once the fire sets us free, it will never stop burning.”

Daphne clears her throat, about to excuse herself, when something catches her eye.  The orange cover of Ovid’s Metamorphoses lays on its pages, opened partway.  She grabs it.  “Is this my copy?”

“Have you read it since we last spoke?”  Lianna’s eyes flicker, her melancholy gone like smoke.  She smiles as Daphne shakes her head.

“I’ve barely touched it.  We’ve been training.”

“The training ends now.  Harcourt returns tomorrow.  You need to become Spartan tonight.  And to do that…”

Lianna plucks the book from Daphne’s fingers, turning the cover around.  Her finger taps on a small drawing.  A long, upturned laurel tree.

“... you need to learn about Daphne.”

Daphne settles into her bed, staring out through the window again.  The sun is just starting to set, reds and magentas painting a clouded, starless sky.  Her cell phone buzzes incessantly, even under the blankets she’s piled on it.  She leans back, her wings flicking nervously.

The laurel tree drawing beckons.  Daphne had never thought about where this name had come from, or why it was chosen.  Honestly, she thought he’d done it on a whim.  But…maybe it was something more.

‘Bloop bloop.’  A gust of wind.  Daphne pulls the book close, and begins to read.  The verses are unfamiliar and dry at first, but there’s poetry to them.  Imagery she hadn’t expected.

The words take hold of her, never releasing.

The nymph wrings her hair into the water, little droplets trickling down to rejoin the river.  She stands, toes digging into the soil, and breathes in the heavy, humid air with a lazy sigh.

Wait.  Her ears prick.  The twang of a bow, wood hurtling through the field.  She barely has time to leap into the river before an arrow pierces the spot where she stood.

She pushes up, gasping for air, terrified of leaving her father’s waters.  The arrow is unlike anything she’s ever seen.  Impossibly fine fletching, a perfectly straightened shaft.  On the face are eight letters, each carefully carved.  She reads the name just as its bearer starts to run down the hill.

Terror floods her insides when she sees his gilded, naked feet.

She pushes her wet robe over her shoulders, blushing at his harsh, sharp laughter.  His massive chest huffs for air, strong legs flex and stretch, and the wind sweeps through his long, light hair.  His smile shines like sunlight, and his eyes spark with a blue to match the sky.

He studies her pale, thin body, just as she studies his.  His shoulders relax, his grin grows, and he casually withdraws an arrow from the quiver at his waist.

It’s the only thing he’s wearing.

“A…”  Fear stalls her tongue, as she struggles to name the god.  “... Apollo?”

He smiles and nocks the bow.  She starts paddling back, terrified.  The gleaming point is lifted towards her, as the Olympian licks his lips, and allows the fletching to graze his cheek.

“Greetings, Daphne.”  His voice seems filled with warmth and love, his eyes a fire she cannot name.  “What a grace this shall be.”

She trips over a root, twigs and mud scraping her hands and knees.  In an instant, she’s up again, crawling over the ground.  If she could just find some cave, a hole, anything to hide behind, he might-

Daphne yelps back.  An arrow whizzes past her face, sinking into a tree trunk.  Apollo skips through the grass behind, laughing.

“You have lovely hair, my trembling doe!”  He shouts in a singsong voice.  “Now stand still, so I can hold it!”

“Apollo, stop!”  She screams back, leaping to her feet.  “You’re going to kill me!”

“Only if you make me miss,” he calls back, nocking the next arrow.  “I could never stop a hunt, or my sister would be ashamed!”

Daphne dives into a bush, thorns tearing at her skin.  It feels like she ditched her robe an eternity ago.  She looks to the side.  A hill.  If she’s faster, she can lose him, call her father, call for anyone-

Another launched arrow sends Daphne out screaming.  Apollo stops for a moment, his smile frozen.  “What’s that for?  Don’t you nymphs enjoy the chase?”

She barely registers his words, scrambling up the hill.  Her heart and lungs feel like they’re burning, but somehow her feet keep moving.  One, the other.  One, the other.

“Why are you doing this!?” she screams, looking back in fear.

“Because I’m SMITTEN!”  He bounces around, spinning in some joy-filled dance.  “Your face, your skin, your breasts, your feet!  It’s all so perfect, it has to be mine!”

“I DON’T WANT TO MARRY!”  She shouts back, tears in her eyes.  “I never have, I never will!  How many times must I tell you all!?”

“That’s what they ALWAYS say!”  Apollo bursts into another fit of giggles.  “Precious nymph, you’re simply too great for chastity!  On my honour in Olympus, I won’t let that beauty go to waste!  Now stop this madness, before you wound that perfect skin!”

She runs with all her might, but for each of her steps, his grow louder.  Arrows hiss around her, guiding her flight, forcing her to twist and turn as she runs.  His laughter drones like thunder, the glow of his skin a blinding threat behind her.  She stops speaking, stops thinking.  Just heaving for air and running, running, running-

“Fantastic, Daphne!”  Apollo barely sounds winded.  “You’re even more beautiful like this!”

The tears trail down like streams.  Breathing gets harder and harder.  But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.  Just keep running and running and running and

She stumbles.  Her hair twists in the open wind.  She flails desperately as she crashes and rolls down the hill, Apollo’s horrified voice chasing after her.

“Daphne?  DAPHNE!?”

Far below, she slowly rises to her knees.  Pebbles from the beach cling to her skin, and she sobs into the water she recognises as her father’s river.  Her hair is a matted mess, her body sweaty and convulsing.  Between exhaustion and her choking cries, it’s impossible to breathe.

“Father, father,” she gasps, looking at her reflection in the water.  “Please, HELP ME!”

“I’m coming, precious!”  Apollo’s happy words fill her with dread.  “Are we tired of these little games?”

Her face pales and she crawls forward, her hair trailing in the river’s edge.  “FATHER!  PLEASE!  YOU’RE A GOD, YOU HAVE TO STOP HIM!”

He bounds down the hill, leaving his bow behind.  Dozens of loose arrows fly from his quiver, shining in the sun.

“Change my form!  Separate my soul!  I don’t care what, just DO IT!”

His smile widens, betraying glowing teeth.

“DON’T LET HIM TAKE ME!”

It’s too late.  The Olympian is already here.  With a mighty pounce, he crashes into the nymph, knocking them back to the pebbles and layering her body with kisses.  Daphne kicks and claws and shouts with all her might, helpless as he starts to climb on top of her.  Apollo takes clumps of her hair in hand and rubs his face against them, laughing with mad abandon, drowning out her tears.

“My love, my love,” Apollo coos, his eyes closing.  Daphne stiffens against something hard on her back.  “How so desperately I-”

“No!  NOOOO!!!”  Desperately, she shoves on him, reaching for the sun.  “Somebody please!  HELP MEEEEEeeeeeee-ee-eh-”

Her voice slowly dims.  Daphne’s twisting expression settles.  Time moves slower, the world feels heavier, and everything is filled with the sounds of large, creaking branches.  Still she reaches forward, her feet grazing the river, her fingers curling around the sun.  Higher, and higher, and higher…

… until she can reach no more.

Apollo stops.  The nymph’s body is rough and scratchy, no longer soft and warm.  Her hair feels…wrong.  He opens his eyes.

A gust of wind blows the leaves right through his fingers.

He stares at the tree before him, its slender trunk and winding branches.  The leaves still bend towards the sun, attached by tiny, frozen fingers.  His heart stops in his chest at the sight, his love beyond love something cold and still and lifeless.

“No.  No, stop.  Wake up, end this, no.”  Apollo clutches his arms around the tree trunk.  His throat shakes as he screams, rattling the thinnest branches.  “DAPHNE!”

A mark in the wood forms the face of the laurel tree, beads of sap trailing down and mixing with her tears.

“NO!”  Longing already fills him, an overwhelming itch impossible to scratch. “DAPHNE!  NOOOO - ”

“-AAHHHH!”

The sound of ripping paper brings Daphne snapping back to the world.

What’s left of Spencer’s schoolbook is scattered over the floor.  She’s torn it into so many pieces that it’s hardly recognizable.  Even the photograph has been split in two, showing only a jubilant Shravya.  The illustration of the laurel tree is clutched tight in her hand.

Night has fallen.  The birds have been replaced by crickets, the sun by a bright, full moon.  Wind trails up through the castle window, frigidly cold, but still her body is layered in sweat.  Her entire world feels like heather and ash, thunder and rain.

‘Bloop bloop.’

Her gaze turns instantly to her phone.  Daphne snatches it out from under the covers, reads the notification.  She can feel a growl rising the longer she stares at the false innocence in her husband’s smiling selfie.

‘20:42: Spence <3: Getting drinks.  Miss you!’

Her fist squeezes the phone’s edges.  Daphne grimaces as she presses it, tighter and tighter, hoping to make his stupid face snap and -

“I didn’t give you permission to destroy it.”  The vampire’s voice cuts through the fog.  Lianna steps casually through the door.

“He knew,” Daphne hisses at her, not looking up from the phone.  “He always knew.”

“He did.”

“From the moment he saw me, he p-planned to…”  Daphne can’t finish.  There’s a roar of thunder.  Whether it’s from her head or the real sky, she no longer cares.  “... I’m ready.  I want to be Spartan.“

“Soon, fraülein.  But you have not eaten,” Lianna nods to the door, the mess tent.  “We have a long night ahead of us - ”

“I want him fucking DEAD!”  Her shout is so fierce, that even Lianna winces.  Daphne whirls, tears blazing in her eyes.  “He hurt me.  He ruined me.  And he named me after all of it!  I want to hear him screaming - ”

She wails, a scream that fans out through the Château before she smothers it into her pillows.  She can’t stop the tears anymore, the trembling.

A loud clattering on the floor draws her back.  The bronze spear, shining back her reflection.  Daphne makes no move to grab it.  “L-Lianna-”

Another roar, and a flash of lightning.  Daphne gasps when she sees the vampire’s face.  Against the pale skin, blue dye splashes across her cheeks and forehead.  Three fierce bars, like animal claws.  Her fangs extend as her eyes darken to red and her veins begin to glow.  She doesn’t look like anything that could pass for human.

“Take the spear, fraülein.  It’s time you held a weapon.”  Lianna beckons, turning on her heel.  “You’ve passed all my tests.  You’ve crossed every threshold.  If you are not ready now, you never will be.  So tonight, the mountain awaits.  It’s time to earn your freedom.”

continue reading ->

Howdy everyone!  Lianna swinging by!  It was really fun getting the chance to incorporate some Greek (or Latin) mythology into the story.  Can’t be a HeartWorks title without it!

It looks like Daphne’s ready to become Spartan, but what are your thoughts?  What will Lianna ask of her?  How will her relationship change?  And what hidden motive might be compelling our despicable Nazi?