The Sparrow King #7
The final iron stake drove itself into her heart: her time had never been hers, not even the stolen moments drawing the trees, the brief moments of happiness she’d shared with Sparrow.
They had all belonged to Ansel in some way or another.
He had taken everything from her. She rose to watch the forest swallow his figure, her heart breaking and mending, all at the same time.
All she had ever known was corrupted knowledge.
Even her mind would never be hers until she left this all behind.
When the man she’d once considered her only family disappeared into the forest, she refilled the bath, dumping the last of their precious salt into it and washed quickly. The salt would not be enough to purge Ansel’s poison from her body, that would take time and effort, but it was a start.
Naked, skin shining in the candlelight, she found her mother’s wedding gown at the back of the wardrobe, the finest dress she’d ever seen.
Her father had not purchased it, as her mother had arrived in the village in it.
It was one thing that did not belong to this microcosm of small-mindedness.
She put the gown of dark green spider silk on.
It was fashioned in a rather old style, with a bodice that laced, and a hem that touched the ground.
She left her golden tresses unbound, flowing to her waist and she crowned herself with a wreath of aconite, never fearing its wrath.
Like the flowers she was named for, no poisonous bloom could harm her.
She had never wondered about that before, but now she understood it was strange.
She was strange, and that was perfectly fine.
Tonight she would say her own kind of goodbye to the village and Ansel.
She walked through the forest to the border of the village where the Equinox fires burned.
In the shadowed edges of the forest they feared, couples met at the flame and drifted off to seek pleasure in one another.
Most would marry, come spring, when bellies swelled with the fruits of the night’s encounter.
Those that did not swell… well, they would find ruin in the village brothel.
This was a cruel place, and for all the hope in the eyes of this night’s lovers, Damiana found fear as well.
Her mother had helped as many as she could, brewing fertility tinctures and tisanes in abundance, come harvest season.
She had never asked for coin, only extra food for Damiana and Ansel.
It struck Damiana that her mother had been as afraid to leave the garden as she had been these last weeks.
She had never gone to the village. Why had Damiana never remembered that before this night?
Her heart grew heavier, but she’d come here for a purpose, and she would fulfill it.
If Sparrow came, she would go with them.
If not, the chicken-footed hut still waited for her.
She searched the faces by the fires until she found Ansel.
He sat with a group of young men his own age, but none were the boys he’d played with as a child.
They were from some of the wealthiest families in the village.
None had a partner, all wore heavy lines of embittered rage that radiated outward, a burden for everyone else to shoulder.
Damiana shook her head, but stayed in the trees.
She did not want to be seen until it was time.
The minutes wore on, turning to hours, and the fires burned low.
Still Ansel and his friends sat alone by the fire, drinking ale, and growing more dangerous to the lone women left at the fires closer to the village.
Damiana had no friends here, but she had the wisdom to know that the men Ansel associated with now were the real threat.
She only had to wait a little longer. And still she hoped that Sparrow might come.
Not because she wanted their help, but because she wanted them to know what she had become during their separation.
Damiana had nearly given up on them coming, when she saw a figure materialize in front of the remaining villagers, including Ansel and his friends.
She would know the curve of their buttock, the gleam of that silver hair anywhere.
But this night, Sparrow was not as they had appeared to her in the forest. Tonight, a pair of snow white wings, flecked with brown feathers spread out behind them, a crown of thorned branches atop their silver head.
Damiana’s heart raced as she understood, her dear Sparrow was the Passer Regulus, the Sparrow King.
“Sparrow!” she called, stepping out from the woods.
“Damiana,” she heard Sparrow breathe, their words floating to her on the wind.
The villagers shrank back in fear at the sight of Sparrow, and then again at Damiana as she emerged from the forest, crowned in poisonous flowers, dressed in arcane garb that struck fear in their hearts.
Sparrow’s hand stretched towards her, their clever fingers now taloned and lethal. Their smile was pure malice, shimmering with threats. “So you know who you are, my lady.”
Damiana lifted her chin, a whistle on her lips.
From deep within the village, dogs began to howl.
The villagers huddled together, but not Ansel’s group of friends.
They went for their knives, only to find bouquets from Damiana’s poison garden in their sheaths.
When they saw what they touched, all ran for the village.
“I know who I am,” Damiana said. “I am your sweet Damiana.”
Sparrow’s taloned hand shot out, grabbing her dress by the laces. Damiana gasped, the fires within her springing to life. “That you are, my love. Are you ready to let me worship you?”
“Yes,” she hissed in return, forgetting as Sparrow’s wings flexed around them that they were not alone.
In her mind’s eye, the village had disappeared, and she lay on the ground at the center of a ring of fire, Sparrow’s face buried between her thighs, their talons drawing beads of jeweled blood from her skin as she chanted their name into the night.
It was not the love of the Passer Regulus that had saved her, nor their exquisite talent for bringing her pleasure, but she finally understood that she deserved this all the same.
Damiana blinked, smiling at Sparrow in the real firelight. “You shall worship me, and I shall pay homage to you for the rest of my days.”
Sparrow’s hand slid down her back, pressing her body to theirs. A low rumble of desire shuddered through their body. “Then let us finish our business here.”
Movement kept Damiana from speaking, but she nodded once to Sparrow. Ansel stalked towards them, anger in his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he screamed. “How did you get out?”
Sparrow stepped back to allow her room to work, fading into the shadows of the forest, a thick mist creeping out around their feet.
Still, from the village, the dogs howled.
And now, from deeper in the woods a pack of wolves cried out in return, their song stranger than any Damiana had ever heard.
Those wolves were not the packs she was used to.
Her newly emerging power had called them forth, and she could not be more pleased.
“So you admit you trapped me,” she snarled as her brother approached.
“So what if I did?” he answered, fists banging against his thighs, his pasty face twisted with fury. “It was for your own good. You’re in that creature’s thrall—fucking it on the forest floor like some kind of fiend. It was my duty to protect you.”
Sparrow laughed from the shadow. The sound was cruel and a thrill traveled through Damiana’s body through the tips of her fingers and toes to stoke the now-roaring fire in her core. The fire that was lit long ago in her mother’s womb now blazed brightly, crackling at her fingertips.
“You’ve never protected Damiana one day in your life,” Sparrow said in that low, cold voice.
“She’s a thing, a barely human half-breed,” Ansel screeched. “A wretched forest monster, like you. Like our mother. I did my best.”
Sparrow was at her back in an instant. She reached backwards for their hand and was gratified when they took it. “Can we leave?” she asked, no longer wanting revenge or retribution.
All she wanted was to go, to be left in peace. She glanced back at her feathered King. The stars burned in Sparrow’s dark eyes, shining just for her. “I will take you anywhere you want to go, if you will vow that I am yours and you are mine.”
“I do,” Damiana promised, with her entire heart. “I am yours and you are mine. Forevermore.”
“I like the sound of that,” Sparrow said, squeezing Damiana’s hand. “Forevermore.”
Ansel shook his fists at them, and it occurred to Damiana just how ridiculous he looked.
Once she had been frightened of him, but now?
Now he was nothing but a sad man, playing dress-up for a life that would never be his.
“If you leave with the Sparrow King, you’ll never be allowed back here. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Damiana said with a smile. “Just as you shall never be allowed into the forest again. I suggest you find a home in the village.”
Ansel sprang at her, trying, she assumed, to separate her from Sparrow. Instead, a lick of flame flowed from the fingertips of her free hand, surrounding Ansel, flaring around him until he could not cross. “Do not test my generosity, brother.”
He shouted, calling her all manner of names as the villagers looked on, aghast at what she’d done.
Some looked as though they might act on the empty threats he now issued.
Others looked as though they might follow her into the forest. They reached for their hunting knives, their only weapons.
Damiana shook her head as Sparrow laughed.
“Think before you act in haste,” Damiana warned.
“You saw what I did to the other weapons your leaders’ sons thought to use against me.
” Most dropped their hands, but some appeared even angrier than before.
She could not understand their rage. All this because she wanted to leave Ansel?
They did not even like him. She spoke again, warning them for the last time.
“I am all the things you fear, and the forest is full of my kind, just waiting to snap you up, devour you whole.”
Most stepped back as the flames around Ansel burned higher.
“They’ll go down when he resolves to leave me alone,” Damiana said. “Stay here in the village where you’re safe.”
The villagers stepped back then, back into the village and the hollow reaches of their narrow minds.
Back from Ansel and back from Damiana and Sparrow.
Galin jumped into her arms, then curled around her shoulders, baring her teeth to the villagers as Damiana turned to go.
She took up a lantern as she walked away, then thought better of leaving in anger.
She turned to look back at the village. The few villagers who were left by the fires wore lost, desperate expressions.
Some clutched their hearts, as though they ached at her leaving.
Many were the young women who had not been chosen this night.
They feared for their futures. Sparrow’s hand closed tighter around hers as they pressed a kiss to her wrist in comfort.
The flame kindled deep within Damiana warmed every part of her now.
“They envy you,” Sparrow murmured. “They wish they were as brave as you.”
Damiana returned the kiss, pressing her lips to Sparrow’s cool wrist. Soon they would be alone, these kisses mere promises of what was to come.
Her path was wide open in front of her, but those lost souls— their way was unclear, and they were troubled by it.
She could help them, if they wanted it. Sparrow nodded once, seeming to intuit her heart’s desire to leave the lost ones with a spark of hope.
Damiana held up the lantern she held in her free hand, so that it showed her face.
“Should you want a way out of this place, you’ll find me at the crossroads in the path, deep in the heart of the forest. You’ll know the place when you find it.
I will help you if I can. Call my name and I will appear. ”
None of them made eye contact with her except Ansel who glared from his cage of flames. “No one will come,” he growled.
Damiana smiled as she walked into the dark night with her Sparrow King. “We shall see,” the villagers heard her say as she went. “We shall see.”