by M. D. Laird
“That is quite a list. I should perhaps have thought more carefully before marrying a spoilt princess.”
This time she was offended. “I’m not spoilt,” she replied. “My father did not treat me well.”
“I see. This is just your no-nonsense attitude, is it? Are you starting as you mean to go on?”
“Just forget it,” she said dejectedly before turning away from him to gaze out of the window.
He smiled slyly. “Why should I give you a life of luxury? What do I get in return? Now perhaps if you were a little more…accommodating, I might be as well.”
“I said forget it, Prince,” she said without turning to look at him.
“I’m just toying with you, Princess.” He chuckled. “I will agree to your demands.”
She turned to face him. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“I too shall start as I mean to go on,” he said sternly. “I am a prince of the first order and the master of my guild. I have tolerated these little lapses in respect so far as you’re a little upset, but do not make the mistake of thinking you can continue to speak to me like this. I demand respect, and I will not tolerate anything less. You may be a princess, but I outrank you—do not forget that. I hope that’s clear, Princess.”
She swallowed and nodded slowly.
Princess Eleanor felt her stomach turn as the carriage finally arrived at the Guild of Sonneillon. Her muscles felt stiff and sore from the long journey, and the carriage had not been comfortable to sleep in. They had travelled all night and most of the day, and after their argument yesterday, she had barely said a word to her husband who had spent most of the trip huffing in frustration at the slowness of their progress. Prince Thomas offered his hand to help her from the carriage. She looked at his face, and he gave her a lecherous grin. She wanted to be sick.
“Welcome home, Princess.” He smirked at her as she refused his hand and climbed from the carriage unaided. “Shall I carry you over the threshold?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
How could Father do this to me?
Her father did not care about her happiness or her safety, she was little more than a commodity to him, but she never imagined he would marry her to a demon. The demon was greeted by another demon.
“Arakiel, this is Princess Eleanor. She is my wife, and she’ll be living at the guild. Have someone prepare her the room in the east corridor.”
“Very good, Your Highness,” replied Arakiel. Eleanor watched the demon who had driven the carriage begin to unload her belongings ready for her new life at the demon guild. She forced back her tears as she turned away to follow Prince Thomas into the guild.
“I’ll show you around whilst your room is prepared,” he said.
There was not much to see: the ground floor consisted of a meeting room, Prince Thomas’ office, a laundry, a kitchen, a dining hall and, surprisingly, a large parlour with luxurious chairs, a large open fireplace—which she assumed was for decorative purposes as demons did not feel the cold—and doors that opened onto a simple but well-tended garden. There was a sizeable amount of land with the guild including an orchard and woodlands. The other floors of the guild held the demons’ bedrooms. The prince led her down the east corridor towards her room.
“These are my quarters,” he told her, indicating to a solid oak door. “You know, in case you get lonely and you want to visit me.” He gave her that lecherous smile again before indicating to the door next to his. “Here you go,” he said, opening the door.
Eleanor was surprised to find her room was rather beautiful. It was spacious, had large shuttered windows, and a small balcony overlooking the woodlands. She was relieved to find that she had her own bathroom and a fireplace. Her belongings had already been brought to her room and had been placed upon the exquisitely carved four-poster bed.
“What am I to do each day?” she asked the prince.
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do what you like.”
“Am I allowed to go where I please?” she asked. “You have agreed I can visit town, though I did not specify a frequency.”
“You want me to impose rules on you, Princess?”
“Not really,” she said, “but I assume you will beat me harder than my father if I upset you and I want to avoid that.”
The prince laughed. “No one will be beating anyone, Princess,” he said. “You can do as you please as long as you come back.”
Eleanor nodded and felt a wash of relief. “I like to paint,” she said, “and read, I haven’t brought anything with me.”
“I’ll arrange for the attendant you demanded—give him a list, and he will get you anything you want.”
“Thank you.”
“We have no lady’s maids,” the prince said, giving her that horrid smile once more, “but I’m happy to help you get dressed and…undressed.”
“I can manage.”
He chuckled. “Remember we’re leaving for Arkazatinia tomorrow, so you might want to pack. We’re flying there so don’t pack a lot.”
Eleanor nodded. “How long are we going for?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Pack for a few days—we can get things there if we stay longer.”
“Can I write to James? I need to explain things to him.”
“Please yourself, Princess,” replied the prince. “I’m going to go, but before I do, are you sure you wouldn’t like a proper wedding night to consummate our nuptials?” She nodded. “In that case, I shall see you tomorrow.” He smirked. “If you change your mind I am just next door.”
Prince Thomas left Eleanor alone in her room, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She left her belongings and stepped out onto the balcony. The sun had set, but Eleanor’s thorian vision could still pick out details of the landscape. The nights were beginning to get cold as winter approached. She felt her life had never been summer. Her father was a foul man, and she only enjoyed any peace when she was out of his way. He treated her differently from her siblings. He had treated her terribly. He had resented her all her life because her mother had died whilst giving birth to her. He still blamed her.
Eleanor had avoided her father as far as possible and tried to spend most of her days in solitude hidden amongst the pages of a book or losing herself in her world imagined in paint.
It had been hard to avoid her educator’s beady eye watching over everything she read and painted, but it had not been too hard to avoid her father; he had much preferred the company of her siblings to her. Her brothers and sisters were copies of her father; they all had the same sneering countenance, the same inflated sense of entitlement, the same regard for the aristocratic privilege and the same disregard for everyone else. Eleanor was a freak in their eyes, an embarrassment who brought shame upon her father. He no longer allowed her to converse with his friends as she could not hold her tongue and could not pretend that she was not sickened by their greed and their narcissism. Still, she never imagined he would marry her to a demon. She hated that man.
He’ll get his comeuppance one day; I just hope I’m around to see it.
A knock sounded at her door, and Eleanor opened it to find another demon standing there with a tea tray.
“Good evening, Princess,” he said. “I am Ramiel, your personal attendant.” She let him enter, and he placed the tray on the small dining table. “His Highness said you have a list of items you require?”
“I haven’t prepared it yet,” she replied. “I can have it ready for the morning.”
“Very good, Your Highness. Would you like your evening meal here or in the dining hall?” She informed him she would prefer to eat in her room and gave him her preference from the list of options. “Is it cold, Your Highness? Should I light the fire?”
“It is cold,” she answered. “Yes, thank you.”
“Very well. I shall fetch some wood. You will need to inform me when you would like me to stop lighting the fire as the weather gets warmer a
s I don’t feel the heat or the cold very well.”
“I will. Thank you.”
He nodded and left the room. Eleanor sat at the table, poured herself some tea, and helped herself to a biscuit from the small plate. She rarely had biscuits, cakes, or any sweet treats. Her father withheld them, giving her only what food was necessary until she began to behave more like her siblings. Here, in a demon guild, she was given biscuits for no reason—just because they go with tea. She began to feel a little warmer and feel that her life with the prince may not be so bad.
Listen to yourself. You can’t go soft over a nice room and a few biscuits. Prince Thomas still forced you to marry him, he is as bad as your father.
After cold sandwiches during her trip from her father’s guild, her delicious evening meal, complete with pudding and wine, was welcomed. Afterwards, Eleanor settled onto her bed to begin her letter to James.
My beloved James,
I write to you with terrible news. My father has married me, without notice, to Sonneillon Prince Thomas. I should have anticipated Father would move quickly on marriage, though I expected to have, at least, a few days’ notice. I was summoned to his throne room yesterday, and the ceremony was performed immediately, against my will, and I am now to reside in the demon guild.
Perhaps I am fortunate, as Prince Thomas has been quite kind amidst his rudeness and arrogance. He has told me he will not force himself upon me and he will not beat me, so I am perhaps safer here than with my father or married to one of his friends.
I am truly going to miss you, James. I will love you always. The prince has not given me permission to see you, but he is allowing me to write to you. I am leaving to travel to Arkazatinia with the prince in the morning, but I shall contact you again on my return.
I love you always
Elea
The next morning, Eleanor met Prince Thomas in the hall. “Can you arrange for my letter to be sent, Prince?” she asked. “James and I did not converse with lolites.”
“May I see it?”
“It’s private.”
The prince held out his hand for the letter, and she reluctantly gave it to him. “As I suspected,” he said, folding the paper and giving it back to her. “Princess, you cannot put all that in the letter, if it falls into the wrong hands I will be very unhappy. Write him another letter explaining that you are married to me and end it at that. Do not mention that I know of this…relationship.”
He waited until she had rewritten the letter, read it and then handed it to her attendant with explicit instructions that it should be given directly to James. “You need to be more careful,” he warned before picking her up, and taking to the air.
Eleanor held his neck tightly as her stomach somersaulted. “Are we going to take a boat across the ocean?” she asked as she stared at his chest to avoid looking at the ground far below them.
“No, we’re flying the whole way.”
“Across the water?” she asked in horror. “What if you get tired or fall asleep? We could drown.”
“I am perfectly capable of completing the distance.”
“No!” she cried in panic. “I don’t want to go. Take me back.”
“Enough,” he snapped. “I am perfectly capable of flying that distance in a day, but, if it makes you feel better, we will stop at the islands on the way.”
Eleanor calmed down, and he stuck to his word and stopped at an island after two hours’ flight. The island was uninhabited and was being battered by the wind from the sea. Prince Thomas sat beside her on the beach and looked out over the ocean.
“What island is this?” she asked.
“I don’t remember. It has a name, but I’m not sure if it belongs to anyone. I don’t think it belongs to Axandria.”
“Can I claim it?”
“You’re going to begin colonising?” the prince asked. “Your father would be proud.”
“Ha ha,” she said sarcastically. “No one lives here. I could have it and stay here in the summer.”
“I suggest you learn to sail and navigate then because I won’t be spending the summer here.”
She sighed. “I’m ready to go.” They were soon in the air over the ocean once more.
Maol and the other slaves scurried around the bottom of the pit for the stale bread the pit master had thrown. The slaves fought each other for the pitiful offerings, though none dared challenge Maol. The last to try received a broken jaw and a fractured femur before, after diminishing significantly in value, being swiftly executed by the pit masters. The slaves were not even desperate enough in their hunger to take on Maol after that.
Maol sat against the walls of the pit to eat his bread. The wall offered little shelter from the blistering midday sun. He had been in the pits for two weeks after receiving a sentence for murder.
That’s a joke! How can they call what I did murder?
Three months ago he was the Captain of the King’s Guard, and now he was scraping the bottom of a pit looking for stray crumbs.
He glared at the other slaves who eyed his bread jealously. The others ate theirs as quick as they could before it was stolen, but Maol was afforded the luxury of savouring his. It tasted awful, but eating it slowly helped to convince him that he had taken a meal.
They’re a pathetic lot. What good will these hominem be to anyone?
Maol had worked with slaves as Captain of the Guard, and he never felt anything but disdain for them.
Filthy criminals and traitors every one of them.
The king had a contingent of slaves who Maol had overseen, and he generally put them to work doing the jobs no one else wanted, which meant they spent much of their time tackling the town’s sewerage problem. And now here he was. He was one of them.
I’ll never be one of them. Low born scum!
Maol should never have been sent to the slavers’ pits no matter what he had done. He was the son of a lord. He deserved better, but the king had agreed. It was the only way to placate his victim’s father and save arms trade routes, so Maol had to go. He had been taken to the pits in shackles in a caged wagon of his own after breaking the nose of a former colleague.
Before he joined the King’s Guard, he had served as a prison guard, and his old comrades delighted in holding their former superior on the wrong side of the keys.
The bastards!
He had rarely gotten along with anyone he worked with—his only concern was reaching the highest rank—and now it seemed he was to suffer their humiliation. Maol half expected the king’s men to buy him and send him to work in the sewers.
The pits were a holding pen for the slavers’ markets that were held each day. Maol had yet to be presented to the market, and he imagined that the pit masters had been bribed to save him for the king’s men. Was he to be subjected to everything he had put those under him through? It certainly seemed that way.
I don’t deserve it.
They had been travelling for twelve hours before Eleanor and Prince Thomas arrived at the home of Mr Calab Hallward. Eleanor had learned that he was the former Asmodeus prince and was marrying the Queen of Impærielas and Crown of Arkazatinia after regaining his feelings and falling in love. Prince Thomas had sent a message overnight to inform the queen of their intention to visit.
With the time difference, it was around four o’clock when the queen had met them at the Guild of the Crown and informed them that they had a room prepared in Mr Hallward’s home.
“How long have you been married?” the queen asked Thomas and the princess as they ate supper around the disgraced demon’s dining table that evening.
“Since yesterday,” the princess replied. Thomas smirked.
“Wow,” said the queen. “How long have you been together?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Oh.”
“Her father, the king of Axandria, gave Princess Eleanor to me as part of his political strategy,” said Thomas. “Deals are cemented with m
arriage in Axandria.” The queen narrowed her eyes, she was clearly bristling with disapproval, but she kept her thoughts to herself. “It is because of this practice of cementing allegiances with marriage that he offered you his aetheling Prince Henry.
“Normally he would ask for your heir to be betrothed to one his heirs, but, as you are infertile, he has propositioned you directly. He was disappointed that you refused and is anxious about your allegiance.”
The disgraced demon was starting to shift in his seat.
Let him try something. The rest of these Arkazatine demons might tolerate this nonsense, but I won’t—they’re all pathetic. They’re all a disgrace to the word demon.
“I don’t see how marrying his son will make me more allied to him than pledging my allegiance,” the queen said. “I have said I will offer him an alliance, I can make it official if necessary, but there is not a great deal more I can do.”
“It would reassure him if you could just marry his son.”
“She is not going to marry the prince,” the disgraced demon snapped. “Arkazatinia no longer has political marriages; his marital allegiance is as meaningless here as Her Majesty’s word is there. If he is not happy, then we should try to reach a compromise, but I shall be marrying Queen Genevieve and no one else.”
“I shall pass on that message,” said Thomas curtly. “Tell me, Mr Hallward, I’m curious about these feelings of yours. Are you feigning emotion?”
“No,” he replied, “I can assure you my feelings are very real, as attested by High Prince Asmodeus.”
“Is it true you died, and he sent you back?”
“Yes, he sent me back without my position in the guild and without affiliations with Hell.”
