CHAPTER FOUR: Cassez Son Silence Convenu.

To A Failing Sea.

Woe to the darling with her skirts gathered ‘round her waist

The cold water does not lick your toes

Not like it is supposed to

Failing, longer, laboring breathes

Come back out, sea, the hope for our pleasure

Without the water, without the key to her heart

The sea has taken its concluding inhalation

She remembers a cold body on the banks of the river, his blue skin not altering in colour. He was alone in the grass, shivering - the rising light supplying no warmth to his skin. The bone woman had not reached him, he had been a great distance back, seen her mind drawn down, he could not yell for her. One of the guards in the water had cursed him, and the boy held his lips shut in unfathomable consternation. Abandoned, he hated himself for jumping out of the water, leaving her behind. She remembers his left forearm bled onto the gorgeous grass, he watched it with wide eyes as it ran over small scuttling ants, washing them away and he cried out in anger for the cult had left him in his tracks. She remembers the boy is a murderer now. All in hopes of a better way to live, without fear for a day or a second or a breath in time, not in this terror of a life, his parents long gone, a protector of words and lives he was supposed to be. Struggling to his feet, she remembers him trashing his way into the circle of tents, trying to see his through his nonplussed eyes they were closing unhurriedly as he found the box. It lay on its side, a crack down the top of the beautiful box. Tears of pain stung his eyes as he embraced the box in his thick hands.

He picked through it carefully, the first time it’s contents were shown to his eyes. The tips of his fingers ran over an inscription on the underside of the lid, a poem, one of the last his father had shown him it was palpable to his eyes immediately, pain was coming to his senses and he tumbled over. Lion remembers nothing more as she lives her death, hands paddling through the dark water, moving onward and being hard-pressed back. She falls only when she is allowed, as the bone woman moves her prey just as she chooses, her followers behind her in misery. They watch the gorgeous princess as her eyelids press together and mouth swallows the murky water, it is a terrible sight, her hair thin as eyelashes that are blown away to grant a wish. As she falls, she hears his scream, but he is gone.

He is fighting the men with glinting swords but the water has weakened him. He sees dead bodies down below, coating the damp floor like a carpet and his scream dies in his throat, wanting to kill, the need is in him. He is pressed out of the water, his back aching as he collapses onto the hard bank and the men go back to their mistress, leaving traces of blood floating on the top of the water, not knowing what to do with itself. He watches the blood with weary eyes that cry silently, he makes no noise in the vacant forest. What is there to call? He has let down his pride, his cult, he closes his sobbing eyes and sees her face, full of terror he could not protect. She was taken from him and now left to the bone woman’s desperate hands, those that will kill for anything, those that will eat her alive. He fades off to sleep.

Lion sat at the crossed feet of her new majesty, watching the ballroom before her with dull, blank eyes. It was the fourth day of Leon's death. He had not completed the passage to the castle, and the bone woman had only lethally curved the corners of her mouth upwards when Lion asked of him. She did not believe this story, nor did she believe in what she saw when she looked past the bone woman's face, pure of wrinkles or blemishes when days before she could not stand without the leech of another. Lion's brown eyes watched the dirt floor of the illustrious ballroom, where nothing matched. Not her washed out yellow dress and orange shoes that were latched to the golden feet of the woman's towering throne. Lifting her eyes, she say the poor creatures the woman called her slaves, as they watched the dancing couples, just like her. The pointed stick at the nape of her neck forced her to watch. Lion's eyes saw nothing more than what was there, but she knew what was missing, the sustenance to the scene, why she was chained to a chair when all the doors were locked until the woman had her full of fun.

"Have I told you my name child?" The woman asked, letting the twig run down Lion's hollow back, encircling her thin spine, much like a dragon's. Her tone was of thoughtless bolt from the blue, as Lion shifted uncomfortably in the hot room. The lady was almost nude, she loved the heat, and the unfaltering swelter she forced her subjects to endure so that she could live in it. "Turn to me bitch," the woman sputtered, spit clinging to Lion's greasy hair. Lion's crown stumbled in the nest of her hair as she produced a cheek to the bone woman. It was pleasing, and the woman poked Lion's caving cheeks with her branch. "Lean back into me, there you go my pet." Her back against the woman's legs, the female threw her stiff hands into Lion's thinning tresses. "Breathe, my much-loved, how of a newborn you act. There are men in my rule I must hasten you against, which is why you are with me, so there will be no chance of escape, not for you my favourite toy. So sorry your friend was in the way, he was in so much pain my sweetest that we had to save him. I thought it would be the same decision you would make, I did it for you, so you could think of him bravely." Her voice was delighted in telling news, as a quick breeze passed through the hall, dying down quickly as the guards hastened to stomp it out.

Lion leaned deeper into the lady, as the woman's fingers wound their way around her neck in haste. The woman wanted Lion to believe her so desperately, that her thoughts were leaking like smoke, around the floor of the throne, giving away their secrets deafeningly. "My name is Emmanuella. I have the prettiest hair in the land, the words of a empress, and all fall to my feet, do you know why that is?" The words were spoken with no time of thought and the golden chain, laced around the chair snapped with the sound of bone and Lion charged, her bruised legs from vigorous swimming to the castle throwing her down the steps of the throne, before she was lifted and placed on her feet. "Now, now. My story is not finished and until then you cannot leave. You love me my dear, I know that and you know it twice as well as you live it so do not pretend I am false. Sit back down pet." Lion sat down and allowed the chain to place her back, the dirt warm on the back of her clammy legs as the short yellow dress soaked up her sweat in the hot castle. She stared straight ahead, her weary temples causing a painful headache, and the woman continued to play with her hair. She straightened Lion's feather crown and patted her shoulders with the forced kindness of a new playmate.

"You are my new life. How funny that is, you in a position of nothing yet all those eyes trained upon you would take your seat in a second. They wouldn't even think twice about it. But I don't want any of them. You are mine." The chain tightened around Lion's red ankles and she was pulled backwards like a mule to the lady's seat. Lion's weak back arched against the bottom of the throne, the stick drawing invisible circles on her neck. Lion closed her lips together silently, dry as they were, they were nothing compared to the bone woman's voice or her movements. She was in a different body, found blood that suited her taste, a playpen for her wild ideas. Wild blue eyes looked down at Lion even though she could not see them. Outside the large windows was blue water, the bottom of a powerful wave that had tossed Lion and Leon's corpse down to the bone woman's blithe being. "I will have you," the lady pulled Lion's hair back, stroking the strands into a ponytail until at once she seized Lion's neck upwards, so that Lion's eyes were looking at her own upside down.

The guards sprung to attention around the woman, a sword tip pressing into her soft skin where her chin met neck and Lion bleated in an ignorant complaint. She could see one guard over the lady's shoulder, his brows creased as he looked down uncomfortably, but his sword steady in his hand as it touched the middle of Lion's forehead. Mercy was vacant in his look; hers was full of anger towards the lady. It did her no good, as Lion felt the drops of blood trickle down her throat to settle in the dip of her collarbone. The every present wind under the water picked up and blew Lion's hair out of the woman's hands, across her face as Lion looked down in dolefulness. She had accepted her future in the stars days before as she looked down at her hands, grasping her small knees, forgetting about the sword and cutting herself further. Only a little bit more and there might be an end to this nonexistence, she ached for it but the woman was too fast. She kicked Lion out from her curled position, and Lion rolled in detest onto the steps of the platform. Rising onto her hands and knees, she spat on the lady's shoes and the bone woman screamed in abomination.

Lion watched the woman’s face contract into easy anger as she struck out, hand swinging downwards onto Lio’s waiting cheek. She crumpled to the ground, the woman’s shoe on her neck as she struggled with the realization of breathing. It came to her in choked measurements when the woman used the heel of her tall shoes to finish the work the sword had done earlier. “Little girl, little girl.” Lion squirmed with comfortless hope; the blood finding it’s way down the side of her neck. “Little girl will never learn. What a shame, how much we pity her. But sadness is her blanket.” The bone woman sang this song, her voice a sharp melody that made it’s own beauty. Sadness enveloped Lion as she was picked up by the neck of her dress, and swung away, her feet colliding into the stone wall. They lay out in front of her, head bent down at the neck, as she looked forever how a broken toy would feel one day. Like a dressmaker's dummy she did not move, as the bone lady left the room and the guards took up their positions once more.

She was approached by one, a man with a smile that would never look kind, as he grabbed as much of her dead hair as he could and slammed her skull into the wall, the pain cascading down her face as she sobbed, arms held out to the sides by invisible strings. As if she could ward him off, as if there was some difference between the two lost ones. He was not aged more than she, but he held himself so that age was a shattered number, his beautiful face a stone confusion of perfect features and anger. His sword bounced around at his hip, hitting Lion’s back once as it struggled to find its place. Disgust slid down the sides of her head, joining the leftover drops of blood at her neck and sliding down her chest, finding its way to stain the dress she wore with helplessness.

“Are you alive my new playmate?” The man kicked her side and Lion could not hold her head up any longer, and she spoke Leon’s name to the man. She spoke it with dread, and heard the man’s hollow throat contract as he swallowed and pushed her down with a flex of his hand. She screamed the lost boy’s name, and the man gripped her chin with the force of steel. Lion waited in vain as he shifted feet, letting the whole room know that his prisoner was hurting him, not the other way around. It should have made him feel wicked, this untamed power of such a little creature. The breaking light poured into the ballroom, echoing the pains of trees and skeletons alike until he drew Lion to her feet and pushed her in front of him. The command on his lips need not to be spoken she raced out of the room, feet slipping on the smooth marble. He raced after her, into the darker corridors, smile playing on both of their lips. He would not leave her, or love her, but it was a feeling close to it. It was something of extravagance, and feeling brave.

His breath was on the back of her neck, winding it’s ways through the curtain of her hair as he picked it up and brushed it aside, pressing the hilt of his sword into the small of her back so she knew where he stood. It was power that feel between them, the knowing of who would have it and who would crave it. But he could not control the muse, as she charged the winding corridors and her fingers kissed the sides of doors, and he started to labor in breath, as they danced around each other, threading their way through wide rooms of no use, and from first to last wide spread rooms that had no purpose at all, but to ease their terrifying confusion.

His fading body caught up to her as she feinted towards the left, and he grabbed her, no more force, it had been torn from his body by some invisible strength, and he held her between his hands like a doll being stroked by it’s owner, and they burst into his chambers with endless confusion and growing lust. Could she tell the difference, she spoke that she could not. And he would not either, not until he forced his lips upon hers and she struggled away, so far that his heaving chest watched her fearful stance shrink as she was cut down to size. His sword reflected his upside down figure as he advanced upon her, trees behind him showing how much disguise could not help her as her back arched from the view, he terrified her.

Good enough would have been dying because her well of words had dried up to the bone, past her prime of speaking words of meaning, ones that could only be described as loosing. She looked down between her knees and saw so much. Blood was tracing down her stomach and falling, pooling around her feet. But the depth of where she was standing and the mirrored floor was beyond her belief. She could see through the glass to the floor below, the bone lady screaming for evil to return as her savior. Her hands beat bloody holes through her walls, knuckles cracking as she gave them away to hurt and deceit. The woman never dropped a tear, but she watched herself, a look of envious beauty that would bring all others to a halt.

“My beautiful girl, your tears bring down the whole world.” He sat on the bed; his knees level with Lion’s head, the sword gently massaging her right shoulder as he moved back and forth in anticipation of her next move. He crouched over her like a tiger and stood still, and he flashed his beautiful fangs in a smile as he lay back on his bed and Lion’s eyes never left the woman.

She paced the floor below Lion, grasping at her stomach, before hitting the floor, and Lion pressed her nose to the glass, hearing footsteps behind her. The woman yelled for her guards, but the words evaporated into the air before they could reach any other pair of ears and she lay, dead. But only until a soul could be brought to her, already the guards were pounding on the door upon hearing her silence; it wouldn’t be long until the broke the surface of the river and killed a fey. One of her own. One of the people that she used to love. It could be Leon, ruthless Caroline. Lion stretched on the floor, her back aching, the blood still running and she watched the scene carefully, the guards opening the bone woman’s wardrobe in haste and grabbing a beating heart from a thick iron box. They stabbed it quickly, and tilted the woman’s head back, the blood dripping slowly into her mouth until it overflowed and they carried her to the bed, and her chest started to arise.

“Come here, Lion girl look at me.” The tone of the nameless man gave her tingles of fear, as he brushed his black hair back from his white face, his matching features making Lion’s childish cheeks flush and he took her quivering hands in his own, placing them on his chest, but she spun away from him, retreating to the cold corner of his cavernous bedroom, where the light flooded in from the bottom of the river. Day was here, and she could only hope for a release. There was no way to open the window, and he did not seem to care, as she walked out of the room, only to pin her to the floor. His knee pinned her down on the chest, as her weakening powers made her turn her head away from his as he tried to place a kiss on her ruby lips. Her hands unfolded from their semi-permanent fists, reaching for something to grab a hold on.

His eyes were wide as she turned away from him, eyebrows down in sadness and he let her up, a firm grip on her upper arms as he shook her. “I can help you survive or I can kill you with my bare hands.” A soft, barely audible sigh escaped his lips as she looked over his left shoulder at two guards approaching. They jostled her as they walked past, but nothing more, as the man had drawn his sword, and held Lion against his chest. Her head was bleeding again, as he led her into his chambers, hilt of the sword poking her until she sat down on his bed, her eyes withdrawn from the situation, the wide carpet covering her view of the bone woman. His lips attacked the back of her neck and she did not move, the rubies embedded in his walls catching her attention as she spotted a hastily covered up circlet, just like the one she had when she was a child. She kept her eyes open as he pinned her down among his fur blankets and she let a single tear escape the curve of her bottom eyelid. His fangs only stung as he kept them away from her skin, letting her explore their feminine curve with her tongue as he held himself above her.

Lion looked at him for so long his facial features started to shift, and they moved, leaving and coming until it was Leon she kissed with ferocious desire, his hands that ran up her naked sides, his heart that beat in time with hers.