The Owl Prince

by Alex Faure

  “Fear me,” the witch murmured. She began to fuck Darius, drawing her enormous cock almost entirely free of his body and then slamming it inside him again.

  Part of Darius knew that he shouldn’t feel aroused, given his terror, but the witch had done something to him—made it feel as if he’d taken nightfire again, an even larger dose than before. Darius dug his fingers into the earth to keep himself from moving his hips in time to the witch’s thrusts. He would not lose himself again. He would not. Too much had been ruined the last time he had done so. Too many men had died.

  “They died because of you,” the witch murmured in his ear, even as she fucked him. “You weren’t strong enough. You let your lust take over you. You’re doing it again.”

  Darius tried to block out her voice, but his grip on reality was weakening. Was he back in Sylvanum, that night the fort burned? Was it Atticus behind him, or Marcus, thrusting faster and faster into his body?

  He heard screams, and the awful, quiet sound of a sword as it slides into flesh. The nothingness around him was lit with a lurid glow. Darius turned his head. Sylvanum burned beside them. He and the witch lay in the grass beside the fort, surrounded by Romans fucking in pairs or groups while pale-skinned Celts moved among them like fish among rocks. They lifted their swords and drove them into men who didn’t move to defend themselves.

  “No,” Darius breathed. He had to help his men. He tried to shove the witch off him, but he felt his lust rise inside him again, and his hands fell back.

  The witch drew Darius into her lap so that his hips were elevated and his legs wrapped around the witch’s torso. Then she entered him again in one long thrust. Darius cried out from the intensity of the pleasure. The witch’s hands squeezed his thighs, then moved to his cock.

  No. He clamped down on the pleasure as it rose, forced it back. He wouldn’t be taken like this.

  “Mmm.” The witch’s voice changed subtly, assuming a familiar lilt, and Darius felt the hairs rise on his neck. “I see your fear. I see your desire. What a curious man you are, that they should take the same form.”

  He opened his eyes, and found himself gazing into Fionn’s silver eyes. The witch bent down, and Fionn’s voice spoke into his ear. “You want me, Darius. Let me take you.”

  “Fionn,” Darius said. The last remnant of his self-control crumbled at the sensation of Fionn’s chest brushing his. The rush of desire that overwhelmed him was stronger than nightfire—it was lightning. He tried to press himself even closer, to feel Fionn’s cock plunge even deeper inside him. The witch kept thrusting, silver eyes locked on Darius, Fionn’s beautiful moonlight hair spilling over her forehead. Darius drew Fionn’s head down and pressed their mouths together, moaning as he felt the brush of his tongue.

  “Fionn,” he murmured again. Then it crashed over him, and Darius felt his body clench and release. The witch let out a laugh and thrust once more, and Darius felt her spurt deep inside his body, a warmth like liquid fire.

  The witch lay down on top of him. Darius’s body was still spasming with pleasure, and he felt only a deep satisfaction at the sensation of Fionn against him. The witch’s hands caressed him with fingers tipped with claws.

  “There, there,” the witch murmured, and it seemed she was speaking through more teeth than before. She no longer sounded like Fionn, and a part of Darius started back to himself. She wasn’t above Darius anymore, but somewhere nearby in the darkness.

  Suddenly, the fort was gone. Darius stood outside a house, gazing in through a window. The smell of olives was everywhere, warm and heady. Vines wreathed up the house’s stone façade and coiled around the terracotta tiles of the roof. Beyond the window was a large room, simply but richly furnished, and an old man lying in a bed. He was heavily draped in blankets despite the warmth of the day.

  “Father,” Darius cried. But Cassius gave no sign of hearing. Another man entered the room, and Darius started as he recognized himself. He watched himself sit by his father’s bedside and take his hand. His father’s face was a twist of pain, but it smoothed as his gaze met Darius’s, his eyes full of love.

  “No.” It came out as a moan. The vision was wrong. Darius hadn’t been there. He had been away when his father died, fighting one of the Emperor’s wars in Gaul. His father had been ill for some time, but had hidden it from Darius, being proud of his son’s rise in the ranks of the army and not wanting to burden him with worry. Cassius had been a poor man in his youth, born to a merchant who frittered his wife’s money away. Through shrewd investing and the right political bets, Cassius had risen to become a prosperous landowner. He had respected Darius’s desire to see the world, though Darius knew it had wrenched him to watch his only son march off to war again and again. Darius’s mother, Cassius’s sun and stars, had died when Darius was a child, and his father had never been able to bring himself to remarry. So, Cassius had died alone. Darius had ever after been haunted by visions of his death, though he hadn’t been there—or, more likely, because he hadn’t.

  He watched in helpless anxiety as his doppelganger brushed the old man’s forehead with his lips. The other Darius lifted his head, and grinned at him.

  Darius let out a wordless cry. The false Darius’s eyes were the witch’s, huge and dark. He made to leap through the window, but the vines upon the house snaked over his arms and held him in place like a iron shackles.

  “Father!” Darius shouted. The witch laughed, while Cassius continued to gaze at her lovingly. A blade glinted in the witch’s hand.

  Terror took over him, inhabiting him as completely as his lust had, and Darius fought wildly. The vines tightened their grip in response, cutting him, but he took no notice.

  The witch raised the dagger, and Cassius’s eyes clouded with confusion. He held a hand out, his eyes registering a total inability to comprehend. Even as the witch stabbed him once, twice, the love in his eyes never faded.

  Darius screamed. But before the witch could land the killing thrust, she gave a start. She lifted her nose as if scenting the air. Her eyes fixed on something Darius couldn’t see, and she let out a deep scream that chilled Darius’s blood.

  Darius’s father vanished, along with the bed, the vines, the house. Darius landed hard on a bed of straw, feeling as if he had been spun in a dozen circles. He blinked, frantically trying to rise, to work out where he was, but a surge of nausea rocked him back.

  The witch was crouched over his bed, returned to her former guise as a lovely maiden. He was in the cabin again, his body wracked with shivering. The witch was turned away from him, facing a pale figure who seemed to weave in and out of Darius’s swimming vision. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl so fearsome it didn’t even sound animal.

  “A fair point,” a familiar voice said. “But he isn’t exactly from here, so holding him to the old laws is a mite unfair.”

  The witch snarled again.

  “True,” Fionn said, his tone mild. “But not every fool belongs to you, Od Marasceape.”

  She made no reply to that. She drew back a step, and Darius thought she was giving way. But then she rushed at Fionn, her comely form melting into something huge and beastly, a creature covered in dark hair that was only vaguely female in shape, with eyes the size of hands and nothing else in her face but a maw of glittering teeth.

  Fionn’s dagger slashed at her before Darius even realized he had unsheathed it. He leapt past her as the witch hissed. She spun to face him, grinning—there was no evidence of injury upon her body, not a drop of blood. And now Fionn was inside her house, and the door he had stood in had vanished.

  “Yes, I know,” Fionn said, as if she had spoken. “You have neither flesh nor bone, nothing that I can fight. But the same is not true of these four walls, is it?”

  A rumble sounded outside the cabin. The witch let out a shriek. Something slammed against the wall, and a ceiling beam came crashing to the floor. Fionn seized Darius by the arm and dragged him to his feet.

  “What—I don’t—what have you don
e, you lunatic?” Darius finally sputtered.

  “You go striding into a spider’s web, and I’m the lunatic?” Fionn laughed in Darius’s face. That was when the wall of the cabin burst apart.

  A torrent of water rushed into the room. The witch screamed, but even that was subsumed by the great roar of the river. Somehow, Fionn had weakened the dam, and the river had burst through it, eagerly laying claim to its former course. Fionn dragged Darius out of the way as half the attic came crashing down upon them, wood splintering. Darius turned, thinking that they might flee through one of the windows before they were drowned or skewered, but Fionn wrenched him back around.

  “Not that way,” he said with exasperation. “Can you swim, insect?”

  Before Darius could even open his mouth, Fionn dragged him into the rushing torrent.

  Chapter Eleven

  They sailed through the cabin, striking the opposite wall, which was also splintering. It broke beneath their weight, and they were pulled out of the cabin and into the froth and foam of the river.

  Darius was a poor swimmer, and would have drowned within moments had Fionn not looped his arm around his chest and held him upright. Fionn, it seemed, was as buoyant as a duck, and while the waves struck Darius in the face, he was able to keep his head mostly above water. The greater danger was the rocks. Though Darius sensed that Fionn was twisting them this way and that, keeping them away from the sharpest obstacles, the rushing water made it impossible to avoid them entirely. Darius gasped as his knee struck stone forcefully enough to make him see stars. Fionn yanked him away from a fallen tree trunk before it could do similar damage to his head. Then they were rushing on, and on, whipping past steep-sided riverbanks and endless walls of greenery.

  After what seemed like an age—and several hundred bruises—the river began to slow, broadening into something gentle. Fionn pulled Darius into the shallows. He tried to stand, but fell over as soon as he put weight on his injured leg. Fionn murmured something in an uncharacteristically worried tone and helped Darius to his feet again.

  “I’m fine,” Darius said, but his teeth were chattering so loudly he could barely get the words out. Fionn said nothing, just led him onto the riverbank and into the shelter of a grassy clearing. They could still see the river through a row of trees.

  Fionn set about building a fire with his characteristic unaffected grace. To Darius’s surprise, the sky was darkening. Had he spent an entire day in the witch’s hut? He shuddered. Were it not for Fionn, he would still be there.

  Fionn had the fire going, and Darius drew close to it gratefully. He felt as if he would never stop shivering.

  “Whatever visions you experienced in that house, they weren’t real,” Fionn said. He was watching Darius closely. “Od Marasceape is an ancient darkness. But she is no seer.”

  Darius stared at him. To his surprise, he felt Fionn’s words lift some of the heaviness that had settled inside him. Yet he doubted he would soon forget the image of his father, helpless and alone.

  “What is she?” he said. “A witch?”

  Fionn shrugged slightly. “Close enough, I suppose. In some of our tales, she is said to be a goddess my people long stopped worshipping, who grew bitter and resentful. In others, she is a woman the gods cursed. It makes little difference.”

  He set to cleaning the fish he had caught from the river in the time it had taken Darius to relieve himself behind a bush. He put the fish over the fire and retreated into the forest, returning moments later with a handful of berries, pale mushrooms, and some needle-shaped leaves, which he rubbed into the cooked fish. He handed Darius a bowl of the odd dish. He took a hesitant bite, and then another. It was astonishingly good.

  Darius had been watching Fionn as he moved, noting how he kept to the shadows. The moon shone bright in a clear, starry sky.

  Darius swallowed a mouthful of fish. “Is it only moonlight that brings about the—er, transformation?”

  Fionn stilled. He gave Darius a long look.

  “What? Surely you didn’t expect me to refrain from mentioning it.” Darius let out a sound that was almost a laugh. He was tired, so tired. He was in a strange land far from home, not a mile from a witch’s hut, conversing with a silver-eyed demon. He forced the laughter back, fearing he would be unable to stop.

  “Yes,” Fionn said finally. He placed another stick on the fire. “I can sometimes resist it, particularly if the moon is waning. But you caught me off guard.”

  Not a common occurrence, I’d wager, Darius thought. “Do your people know?”

  A shake of his head. “My sister only, and my best friend. My mother knew, of course, but she’s dead. I avoid the moonlight when I can.”

  Darius drank his tea. “Are you like the witch? Odd marash…marasha…”

  Fionn’s voice was scornful. “Od Marasceape is a spider who feeds off fear and lust. If I was like her, we would not be sitting here making such pleasant conversation. What horrors did she show you?”

  Darius looked at his feet, hoping the darkness would conceal his flush. He was more than a little disturbed by the vision of Fionn—or, more accurately, how his body had reacted to it.

  “You’re changing the subject,” he finally managed.

  “I told you before,” Fionn said. “I don’t know what I am.”

  “How can you not know?” Darius knew that he should have been terrified by the memory of what lurked behind Fionn’s beautiful face, but instead he felt only an odd irritation. “Surely your people have a name for creatures like you.”

  Fionn let out a long breath. He looked tired and wan, more human than Darius had ever seen him. “There are many creatures who haunt our forests. Most keep away from humans. Not even my mother knows what manner of being took her that night when—” He bit off the rest of the sentence, his expression dark.

  Darius was quiet for a long moment. “Your mother was taken against her will.”

  Fionn’s gaze was fixed on the fire. “It was Spirits’ Eve—the longest night of the year, when the dead walk and dark things rise from their slumbers to plague the living. He bewitched her, led her from her bed into the deepest part of the forest, playing sweet songs on his lute. She has no memory of his appearance, only of silver eyes catching the moonlight.”

  Darius didn’t know what to say. He felt an unexpected sympathy for the strange, pale creature before him. “And yet your mother chose to bring you into the world.”

  “She tried to end the pregnancy more than once. Then when I was born, she found that she loved me regardless. She told no one but her own mother, who convinced her to keep my identity secret. Her husband, the man who raised me, believes to this day that I am his son. My mother loved him with her entire being, and he never suspected her of disloyalty.”

  Darius eyed him. “But you are so—well. How could no one suspect anything?”

  The ghost of a smile touched Fionn’s lips. “I am so, indeed. But my mother had fairy blood in her veins—distant, it’s true, but fairy blood sometimes manifests in strange ways that can echo through the generations. Her family is both feared and respected for this. It was enough of an explanation to mollify all but the most suspicious, and my mother’s devotion to her husband took care of the rest. I of course attempt to conceal my…abilities as much as possible. My mother taught me to do so from a young age.”

  “Fairy blood,” Darius said faintly. Stories of fairies were widespread in Britannia. They were a sort of nature spirit, he understood, lovely but amoral. He could think of no more fitting description for the man before him. “Could that be your father’s race as well?”

  “Perhaps.” Fionn’s gaze was distant. He let out a soft, unexpected laugh. “I can count on one hand the people I have spoken of these things with.”

  Darius looked away. The strangeness of the situation struck him at the same moment.

  “I still don’t understand why you saved my life,” he said quietly. “Why you keep saving it again and again.”

  “You woul
dn’t understand even if I explained it to you,” Fionn said. He gave Darius a strange look that seemed woven with sadness.

  “That’s not good enough,” Darius protested.

  “I’m sorry that you Romans lack patience for mysteries.”

  Darius opened his mouth to retort, but his negotiator’s instincts, honed by long hours communing with ferocious barbarians, made him bite the words back. He said after a moment’s thought, “You don’t trust me. I respect that. I’ve given you little reason to—we’re enemies, you and I. You saved my life, and I rewarded you by fleeing.”

  Fionn watched him with a furrowed brow. “This has nothing to do with trust.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Darius let the words hang in the air a moment. “I’ve given you little reason to have faith in me, and now I sit here badgering you with questions. Given what you’ve done for me, you owe me nothing—it is I who owe you.” He paused. “These events have not put me in the best temper. All I can do is apologize. I won’t importune you further.”

  “You have no need to apologize.”

  “I have every need,” Darius said. “A man—a great chieftain in Southern Gaul, past Britannia, where the sun falls on rocky soil—once told me that trust cannot be earned—it can only be rented with coin, and lost just as easily. I fear I’ve squandered even the opportunity to negotiate for your faith in me.”

  Fionn rolled his eyes. “I have met men like that. Idiots, all.”

  “Is there something I can offer you in return for your answers?” Darius said. “I have, as you see, nothing but the clothes you’ve given me…But perhaps I could offer information of a strategic nature, if that would interest you. An exchange of trust, if you will.”

  He had, of course, no intention of providing Fionn with the Empire’s military secrets, at least not any of importance. He was pleased to see Fionn’s attention catch at the word strategic, but then his interest was replaced by annoyance. “Darius, must I repeat myself? I don’t ignore your questions out of pique. If I knew how to answer in a way you would understand…If you would only—”