by P. Mattern
“Now you know how humans feel. Never having been human it is good that you experience some of the same things humans endure from time to time. It will cause you to be a more compassionate ruler,” I remarked.
At first I thought I might have offended him with my blunt observation, but he laughed.
“Well perhaps you are right,” he told me, ”But I am not thinking about politics now…
“Lift your skirt up for me, and do it slowly.” He finished.
I was smiling as I lifted my gown as slowly as I dared, my heart beating faster.
After a few long seconds, when I had pulled it up enough to show my sex, he suddenly made a growling noise deep in his throat and pounced forward to capture my mons in his mouth. Of course I squealed, which only egged him on .He then pulled my panties to my knees with his teeth, then tore them away with his hands.
“You are so curious Tristina,” I heard him say from between my legs, ”Why do you wear panties at all? No other female in the kingdom of the Cliff dwelling Arctic Vampires ever does.
They laugh over it at the laundry you know. Doesn’t it embarrass you to ask the Purser to order them for you online?”
“No,” I told him staunchly, ”They can laugh if they like I am NOT a barbarian—I WILL wear panties if I like!”
“Anyway,” I purred seductively, reaching down to wear I could fondle the helmeted tip of his penis, ”Don’t you want what is yours to be protected Prince? Don’t you?”
“Hmmmmmm,” he said. By then his mouth was planted firmly on my muff, and he was circling my clit with his tongue, ”Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
He at last trailed his tongue up my body to my breast, favoring each in turn with his tongue and teeth, nipping gently at the tips before entering me. Uncharacteristically he was taking his time with lovemaking, possibly because he didn’t want to aggravate his injury.
Whatever the reason it felt different in a wonderful way. I could feel our ‘coupleness’ in a way I hadn’t been able to before he was injured. The sessions in his other chamber were raw, primal and in some ways impersonal. It was what I had grown used to, and because he was an expert cocksman he always satisfied my body…
But not always my heart.
Afterwards, as he watched me dress, he asked,” And what are you about today?”
“I hope to see Theda for lunch,” I said happily, as I slipped on my shoes,” I am hoping that she has some happy new to share. She and her Guardsman husband have been trying to start a family.”
The Prince seemed to digest this bit of information quietly for a moment. Then he said ,
“Tristina if you like I can promote her husband to Vice Commander of the Royal Guard. He is loyal and fierce in battle. I would have no problem conferring that honor on him.”
I was elated, and I started to tell him so.
“That would be wonderful,” I gushed, ”I promise …”
I was going to finish that I would keep the promotion secret until the Prince made it official, but a knock at the door caused me to look up and toward the doorway.
It was Oliver. He was looking resplendent in grey velvets, including a cloak trimmed with silver embroidery and epaulets.
“Hail my Prince!” he announced heartily. But as he came closer I could see that his eyes were searching mine strangely, as if he were trying to determine something.
I dropped my gaze. I knew he was wondering if I had just had sex with the Prince. I could feel him silently probing my mind.
For the first time ever his presence made me feel uncomfortable. What did he expect me to do? As the Vampire Princess I officially belonged to the Prince. If I would refuse to have sex with the Prince , which was an entirely laughable idea to begin with, he would get suspicious and had any number of females that he could turn to for his pleasure.
I knew it was in my best interest to keep him occupied, to make myself accessible. Oliver should have known all of that, and maybe he did, but though he had arranged his facial expression in pleasant lines the sparks fairly shooting out of his eyes told me he was angry.
“Well Oliver take the Princess for a walk, won’t you? And make sure she has a lovely time with Theda and watch after both of them in my stead.
“Tristina has become my favorite possession, and I could not bear to lose her now.”
Oliver bowed to the Prince, more deeply than usual I thought. Then to me also. He waited as I kissed the Prince. Inwardly I was soaring—what the Prince had just said was the closest profession to declaring his love for me that he had ever uttered. I was amazed and relieved at the same time.
After leaving the Prince’s chambers Oliver waited until we were well into the passageway and along before he jerked me by the arm.
It hurt.
“Tristina! You’ve been with him haven’t you?” he demanded, staring down and gripping my arm above the elbow painfully.
It was with great effort that I pulled my arm back from his grasp. It was my turn to get angry.
“Are you insane? I am practically his WIFE! Of COURSE I was with him! What is WRONG with you Oliver? Don’t you care about him anymore? Aren’t you sworn to love and serve him?”
“OF COURSE I AM,’ he hissed, though his tone was so harsh he might as well have been shouting at me, ”But Tristina, did last night mean nothing to you? Last night, last night..” he stuttered, his voice breaking uncharacteristically.
”Last night was the greatest night of my LIFE! How could you stand for him to touch you much less FUCK you? Did you not think of me…of US…at ALL? Or did you lay there letting him fuck you like a little insatiable WHORE?”
He had barely finished when I struck him. It was an automatic reaction and I was trembling with fury and hurt.
“I am the Vampire PRINCESS, Oliver!” I cried ,”You would do well to remember that! We can’t help who we are and what we are! If I had known you would act like this I NEVER would have slept with you!”
My slap seemed to jerk Oliver back to reality. He took in a deep breath, shaking his head.
“ I am fully human Tristina,” he said finally looking at me again, ”Maybe you have forgotten what that means. Maybe I have forgotten what cruelty and immorality vampires enact on humans. Maybe I didn’t realize how much he is changing you.
“I lost sight of my place, both in the Kingdom and in your affections. I apologize. It won’t happen again, though it may kill me to resume our friendship on its former level, I will do so. I didn’t mean to make you angry enough to strike me. I lost my head.”
I leaned in, searching his dampened eyes, feeling his keen disappointment in me and the tears he was struggling to hold back. I could tell that I had hurt him just as much as his stinging remark had hurt me.
Also I had never heard him curse much less use the F word.
“You WILL lose your head, literally, if you dwell on what happened last night. And I must be honest with you because I really value our friendship, and dammit, I NEED you in my life Oliver! I love you! But I love the Prince also, so this is not a case of he is coming between us—
“The terrible truth is that I love you BOTH!”
As I finished my diatribe I watch the tears in his eyes spill over. Just once. And then he wiped his grey velvet sleeve across his eyes and I could see that his reason had returned.
“GOD you are a hard one,” he remarked,” You are right of course. We are who we are. And my loving you not only as a friend but also as a lover has no place in our world. The Prince loves me, but he would kill me on sight if he knew about last night. Then grieve for his lost friend…probably for the rest of his immortal life…
“I won’t let that happen , nor any consequence to you Princess. It shall be as before. It will be hard for me for a few days and you must understand I can’t erase the memory of last night. I don’t even desire to, especially if I must live on it for the rest of my life.
“I have to make sure we don’t touch. For myself I might happily die for want of loving you as a man loves a woman, but to PROTE
CT YOU I will make sure to keep my distance. I can’t stop for my sake, but I can for yours…does that make sense?”
“Thank you,” I told him. I wanted to give him a hug, but I knew any physical connection would be torture, especially for him. And I loved him even more for wanting to protect me, even if it meant we could never touch each other again.
I did take both his hands for a moment, though I noticed when I did he dropped his gaze and was immediately fixed on the swell of my bosom, clearly visible above the bejeweled half circle neckline of my gown.
He quickly dropped my hands, giving me a wry smile.
“The body remembers,” he said, by way of explanation, “What the mind tries to forget!”
“Sorry not sorry,” I told him ”You are still my friend. I’m not trying to make it difficult or be a tease Oliver!”
“I know,” he said, as we finally turned to continue our walk, ”It’s okay. I’ll just go back to what I was doing before,” he finished in a lighter tone.
“Oh? What was that?” I wondered.
“Masturbating… a lot. Thinking of you,” he said, winking and almost laughing,
”…Only now it will be more often since I have this Technicolor film in my head.
Sorry not sorry back at you!”
I laughed then too, and our shared though weird sense of humor seemed to dispel the tension between us.
As it turned out Theda WAS pregnant…the military physician had confirmed it. She had only a month to go in the service of the Kingdom before we could visit and play to our hearts content.
I asked the Royal Burser for a lot of yarn and knitting needles and crochet hooks. My granny Bea in my old life had taught me how to knit and crochet when I was about seven or eight years old, and I really wanted to make an afghan and some baby things.
I imagined it might be a cozy and fun thing to do as she got further along, so I got as ton of yarn in beautiful colors.
If by chance Theda didn’t already know how to knit and crochet I would teach her.
On the rare occasions that I got to see her with her handsome husband, when the Prince gave an address or there was a dance or dinner, it was a pleasure seeing them together. Theda had been a volleyball player in high school and was very tall, but her Royal Guard husband was a giant at 6”8”. The Prince , who was 6’3” was dwarfed by comparison when they stood together.
Everything should have been perfect. The impossible had happened—I had finally adjusted to life in Antarctica at the Silo. In truth the views from my chambers were beautiful, and when the weather was milder we had awesome sleigh rides in state of the art modern toboggan type snowmobiles. It was almost a dream life.
On the rare occasion that the Prince joined us I noticed that he refused to even go near the ice palace and it made me feel sad. The structure was phenomenally beautiful, like a carved ice palace from a Disney movie.
I wanted to see it again. I felt like I was drawn to it, even though it had been the scene of a massacre and the blood of the victims was sealed within the icy walls of the ballroom like a macabre display of splatter art.
I knew that the abandoned portal that I had traveled through had been demolished by order of the Prince, but I wondered if they had repaired the flooring where I had fallen through.
More than anything I wondered about the dark hair woman I had encountered there…the one that had introduced herself as the Caretaker. When I had mentioned her to the Prince he acted as if he didn’t know who I was talking about…
But I knew him well enough to know that he was keeping something from me.
“If you have any more of that hot chocolate and whipped cream you will get fat!” I teased Theda a few days later. She was starting to show, and her formerly shredded body was taking on softer curves all around.
She just laughed at me and popped a pastel colored macaroon into her mouth.
“My man loves the weight I’ve put on and the way my body is changing,” she quipped, lounging back on the pillow covered divan and munching on the dessert,” And I feel so very content Tristina. I have all but forgotten the other world that we both came from, haven’t you?”
I thought for a moment. I was integrated enough to my new life that I knew that I had no desire to return to what the inhabitants of the Arctic circle referred to as the ‘Earth’s Belly’. They usually shortened it to the ‘Belly’ and meant all the places that were in the middle of the planet.
We were considered the ‘Endwellers’ because we lived on the poles, the outer reaches of the planet where we experienced days and nights differently and where the growing season was short. Svalbard Norway is amazing though. From about April 19th to August 23 there is no sunrise. Oh don’t get me wrong—it’s not high noon or anything, but the peaceful azure sky at night that is reminiscent of the hours just before Twilight is refreshingly peaceful. It is a rare nocturnal shade of the color that encourages peaceful, dreamless sleep.
It is a sky color not seen anywhere else in the world. That is what I believe anyway.
It is the mysterious land of the Midnight Sun, where the June sun, visible on the outer edge of the horizon like a floating star rests there, giving the landscape an otherworldly feeling. It moves around you and never sets, and there is enough light to fish or bathe or anything else those that live in the outlying villages do.
Surrounded by all of this beauty, I have never missed the flat terrain of the American Midwest. Not even the dunes, which used to be my favorite.
All in all I had to agree with Theda. I was growing comfortable here. I was intrigued by the history and eager to know everything about the new breed of vampires I was now a part of.
Several days later, all of us were seated at the long emerald table in the banquet hall. It was carved of one massively hewn tourmaline crystal, the kind only found in the arctic regions. The table carved from the huge crystal was over 18 feet long and four feet wide, oval shaped and sanded to be perfectly flat on top.
It was the color of a Brazilian emerald, and its core glowed with a frosty blue luster. Along the sides it had been painstakingly carved in an ancient tongue that was not Norwegian. It was never covered with a table cloth of any sort, because of its rare beauty.
I was sure it was a hidden ‘wonder of the world’, and it was my favorite place to dine.
That evening I was wearing a light green velvet gown with matching slippers, and Theda, dressed in a pink silk gown with her hair piled on her head. She was sitting beside her husband across from the Prince and I by request. Again and again our dishes were filled by servants as we ate the rich bounty of the land including wild birds and elk steaks. And plenty of fresh salmon prepared dozens of ways.
We were feeling silly and wonderful and made toast after toast to celebrate Theda’s pregnancy. Al though we were eating, my Prince, looking devastatingly handsome in red and black velvets with a crystal trimmed black leather mask held my hand under the table during most of the meal.
On the third finger of my left hand was a new bauble he had given me. It was a huge creamy pearl mounted in a circle of rubies that had been mined in a new mine he had opened up just a few miles from here and set in platinum. I kept staring at it from time to time as it sparkled in the light from the overhanging chandeliers.
On my other side was Oliver, sitting closely with a female I recognized as one of the Svalbard Silo’s Bloodmaidens. She was part of an elite corps of women dedicated to keeping their blood pure and healthy so that members of the royal family could consume the best quality of blood. She had beautiful light blonde hair, braided in a thick braid and wound in a chignon around her head. She was very pretty, and I noticed quite a few of the Bloodmaidens were seated next to eligible members of the royal guard.
It was just as servants had cleared away the remains of the feast we had just consumed and were bringing in rum cakes and rice pudding that the Prince abruptly stood up and tapped his crystal wine glass with a spoon to get the attention of the gathering.
&nbs
p; When the room became quiet with all conversation dying down, he spoke at last, his deep voice resonating throughout the hall.
“I would like to make a joyous announcement on this auspicious occasion,” he told the couples gathered around us, ”And it concerns someone who has been a brother to me—the brother I always wanted and never had…
“My First Counselor and Whipping Boy to Princess Tristina has found his mate at last! I am pleased to introduce to you at this moment…
“My First Royal Counsellor Oliver Winston Barrett ,and his betrothed, Lady Deborah Carrolton!”
The room erupted around me in cheers and heartfelt applause. Everyone loved Oliver and eventually the entire room was on its feet, applauding amid shouts of “congratulations”.
Everyone except for me. I was still sitting, frozen in place, disbelieving what I had heard.
Out of my peripheral vision I could see that Oliver, standing on the other side of my Prince with his arm around Deborah’s waist, was looking in my direction. I couldn’t fathom why. Was he looking to make sure that the announcement had caused me some pain, because it certainly had. Was this his way of getting back at me for my confession that I loved both him and the Prince?
Or was this just his way of moving on and making sure that our tryst was never repeated or discovered?
Finally everyone settled back down into their seats, still beaming, and the Prince seemed to notice for the first time that I was staring at my hands as they lay in my lap.
He leaned over to whisper, ”Tristina—are you not well my love?”
“I’m sorry,” I said looking up to meet his inquiring gaze, ”I don’t feel very well suddenly. I think that something I ate disagreed with me. Would you mind terribly if I retired my Prince?”
“No, of course not,” he said, standing again so that he could pull out my chair and help me to my feet, ”I think you should rest in your chambers and I will be up later to check on you my love. You are flushed Tristina. Perhaps you have a fever…I will make excuses to our guests. Candice!” he called to one of the maidservants, ”Please make certain the Vampire Princess is put to bed properly so that she can rest!”
