Rated T for mild sexuality and possibly disturbing themes.
"Escape with me to anywhere, anywhere at all.
I will wait in the shadows of the southernmost tower when the moon is at its highest and the keep lies still."
Phaedra pushed the window open and thrust the note through it, letting the wind blow the ink dry. When she was sure it wouldn't smear she folded it twice, kissed it once, and let it fly to land where it willed. From this particular window this would likely be the rocks or the crashing sea, but it was the release of the missive and not hope of its fulfillment that lessened the restless tension at her core.
Still, she did not let her eyes follow the small square of parchment as it fell. There were rules to Phaedra's games, even if she was the only one to know or follow them.
Slaughtering day. The pigs were squealing, restless and frightened in their pens. Phaedra watched as the knife flashed, opening a piglet's throat; as hot dark blood escaped its body in a flood, pouring into the basin underneath, steaming in the snow-chilled air. As the piglet's body was lifted, still jerking, and hung from its bound ankles on an iron nail, her icy fingers slipped beneath her skirts and found the heat there.
The rush of blood into basin slowed, stopped. Phaedra's hips bucked and stilled. She looked at her fingers, slick and warm. Then she turned her head aside and vomited. Blank-eyed, she knelt and cleaned the taste of bile from her mouth with a handful of snow.
Another release. Another game.
She was fifteen when she first met the man who would one day murder her foster-father. He was hooded, a shadow only, but she would always remember the way his eyes seemed to glow by some trick of the moonlight. He came to her as she leaned against the cool stonework of the southernmost tower, watching the moths hurl themselves against the windows where lights were still burning. She did not recognize him, but she knew the folded paper he held between two fingers.
A warm thrill kindled in her belly. She folded her hands across it, suppressing, protecting. "Have you come to rescue me?"
His chuckle was low, more felt than heard. He did not halt his measured steps until he nearly touched her. "From what?"
"Tedium. Sameness." She met the golden eyes that burned like lamps in the darkness of his cowl. "You have been outside these walls. I have not. I dream of dying and being bricked up inside them."
"Is boredom truly your greatest burden?" He laughed again, contempt twisting the sound into something ugly. "You would find little pity from those with true troubles."
"I know." She dropped her gaze. "But I am not meant to be here." She saw blood gouting into a basin, felt the warmth spread outward, downward. "It is not safe for me to be here."
Rough fingers lifted her chin. Their eyes met once more. Phaedra thought she saw blood in the flame-bright depths. At once she was certain that he understood, somehow. That he had touched the same thrumming chord of life-in-death that had thrilled and tormented Phaedra as long as she could remember.
When he spoke again, there was no humor in it. "Not safe for you? Or is the danger to the other people here?"
She nodded once to answer both. With her chin in his hand, the movement seemed more a caress than an answer. He leaned in, touched his lips to her own. His hand slipped down, from chin to throat. Phaedra felt only a distant touch of fear. Some part of her found it perfectly correct that she should die at this stranger's hands, had been waiting for this day all along. She kissed him back, opening her mouth against his. Their teeth clicked together, tongues meeting, breath mixing. His hand tightened, and Phaedra closed her eyes.
A moment later he released her. She could not tell if the emotion that flooded her was relief or disappointment.
"No," he said, so quietly that she almost did not hear. "Not yet."
Phaedra pulled her cloak more tightly around herself, abruptly aware of the coolness of the night. He drew away, and she made no move to follow him with anything save words. "You'll come back for me?"
"I will." He turned, melting into the night. His last words seemed to float to her out of nothingness. "And you will not die within these walls."
Later, alone in the stern light of morning with Gorian's fresh-dug grave at her feet, Phaedra recalled those words with a wild hatred that knotted her guts and soured the spit in her mouth. But he had spoken true: she had not fallen inside the bounds of her book-lined prison. And she had not fallen just outside them, either, though an arrow had carved a white-hot channel across her left shoulder as she turned and fled the man she had kissed by the southernmost tower, the man who vowed to hunt her down and kill her.
Let him. She was smart, and quick, and alive with the cold burn of hate. She could play the hart to his hounds until she found her own fangs.
Phaedra put her torn and dirty fingers to her face and felt a strange smile beneath the slick of tears.
A new game had begun.
Notes: I actually wrote this years ago, and never put it up because it seemed fragmented or unfinished somehow. Tonight I couldn't sleep and decided to kill some time playing with this story. And then post it, because what the heck. My account hasn't exactly been a hive of activity lately. Hope someone finds and enjoys it.