Chapter Four:
Unsettling Enthrallment
I have traveled to the very furthest reaches of the galaxy—and beyond. I have seen horrors and wonders so immense that the mortal mind cannot grasp the gravity of them. I have done so many things. I have heard so many things. I have seen beauty before…but never like this…
"Never like this."
Even as those words fell from his lips in a murmur—even as every fiber of his being screamed out warnings, telling him to stop, to turn around and flee the temptation that waited before him—Lucius found himself taking a step forward, into the innermost room of the darkened chamber-set. His eyes fixed themselves on the blissfully slumbering figure of the beauty, as both fascination and curiosity swirled in his mind.
She was enchanted.
The room in which she slept was a bedchamber resplendent with creamy satins and airy draperies: the bowl-shaped bed upon which she lay was enshrouded by gauzy white curtains that trailed onto the cold metal floor. She was almost hidden within them—the radiant center bloom of a slowly unfurling rose, colour amidst the ashen sheets. Carefully, he moved into the room—never once making a sound to betray his presence—and came closer, suddenly seized by the inexplicable urge to see her.
He stood beside the bed, looking down upon her.
In all his countless years of traveling, he had seen many beautiful women—of many different kinds. Beauty itself scarcely surprised him anymore.
He had seen everything.
But he had not seen this.
With the silent grace of the shadows moving with the moonlight, he stretched out one hand: brushing aside the curtain with one infinitely gentle, infinitely careful fingertip. Once the glowing white haze had been swept aside, he could see her more easily.
She was young; quite young, he could tell. The imprint of time had not yet been made upon her pale cheek, and shadows of experience and maturity had not yet crept onto the flesh below her eyes.
Her complexion appeared nearly bloodless in the cold starlight that flowed in through the room's lone window; but her lips were full and dark, parted slightly as she breathed softly in her sleep. Long lashes graced her closed eyelids. She had fine, delicate features, and her body—what he could see of it—was petite and curvaceous: the perfect combination of daintiness and winsomeness. Her hair was of a darkest shade of auburn, and lay about her in long, endlessly spiraling ringlets.
She was enchanted.
He leaned in closer, running his eyes over her face.
The air around her still form fairly burst with magic: the sense of enchantment here, around her, was so intense that his senses burned with it. Someone had placed a spell upon this beautiful child, and now here she slept, completely unknowing of anything that was happening beyond the four walls of her sanctuary…
She slept.
Someone had made her sleep—he did not know why this was so—and could not guess. She was on this ship; his cousin was protecting her, for some reason, and the ship was here, on this planet, returning to its port of berth. What was she here for?
"Who are you, little one?"
He directed his question half to her—though he knew that she could not answer, not within her enchanted sleep—and half to himself, daring to run a gloved fingertip through the air over her face, tracing the curve of her jaw line. Sparks of magic crackled in the space between his hand and her cheek as he did so, and Lucius pulled back, suddenly, eyes flaring ever so slightly as he considered that occurrence.
How very interesting…
Perhaps Aidan could answer his questions.
If he was so inclined…
Lucius turned his gaze down upon the sleeping beauty again. She looked so very alone, and quite lost, even in her haven of white gauze and coverlets: the bud of a ravishing black rose, cut from her stem and left carelessly by the wayside.
So alone…
Lucius felt a strange tugging in the space where he imagined his heart must have been—if it was still there at all—and a peculiar look twisted his elegant features, so that he was almost, very faintly scowling and grimacing, all at once. That is enough, he decided, and stood straight again: looming bat-like and imposing over the bed.
It was high time for him to go.
Then, on an unexplainable whim, he pressed two fingers to his lips—and placed them, briefly, upon the lips of the girl.
"Dream well, little one," he whispered.
He turned to go.
All at once, she sighed again—giving a tangible sign of her life for the first time since he had first become aware of her presence within the enchanted room—and moved.
Lucius whirled around, and stared.
Her eyes began to open.
…They were bright sapphire, flecked with sparkling emerald…
He knew those eyes…
Someone had disturbed the spell, brushing up against its walls and rankling it like a pebble dropping into the waters of a glassy pool. As the spell moved, she woke.
Who was here…?
A shadow spun away, in the corner of her mind, startling her.
Then Odette von Rothbart gasped, her eyes flying open, and she sat up, tangled within the sheets of her white bed. She stared into the darkness…
…But no one was there.
The spell reclaimed her, and she fell, unhappily and unwillingly, into an enchanted oblivion, once again.
Bamph!
With that loudly rushing noise and a burst of inky black smoke that smelled very much like incense, a towering black-cloaked figure materialized on the command deck of the Hyperion Ascendant. It remained where it was for a moment, head bowed and hands working in and out of tightly-clenched fists at its sides.
Aidan swiveled in the helmsman's chair, and turned a coolly sardonic smirk on his clearly nettled cousin.
"Find anything you liked?" he bit off: the words cutting as shards of ice.
Lucius seemed to shudder, deep within, at the question, and he did not look at Aidan for a moment. Instead, he took a single, distracted step to the side—going to look out the window nearby, white-blue eyes reflecting the cold starlight—and was completely, strangely motionless.
"Who…who is she?"
The dark mage's voice was a low and almost breathless murmur, as if he feared that his very words might shatter the delicate balance of the air. Aidan felt his own eyebrows etch into the beginnings of a perplexed frown.
Surely, Lucius knew…
Why was he asking about the girl?
He cleared his throat, and sat up, leaning forward so that his elbows were resting on his knees: his hands draping idly. Even his most scrutinizing glance towards his cousin could not tell him any more than that Lucius was severely disturbed…by something…
"She is a princess, from the von Rothbart House of Llyria. We've been charged with the task of seeing her safely to Corensar City...but that itself is more than you need to know, Lucius."
Aidan leaned back in his chair again, moving his elbows to rest them on the arms of the seat. He pointedly raised one eyebrow, one corner of his mouth etching into a bit of an acerbic smirk.
"Are you satisfied?"
Once again, Lucius seemed to have chosen to disregard the scathing contempt in his cousin's words: his back was still turned on Aidan, and it was quite impossible to discern his thoughts or emotions from the set of his shoulders. A long beat passed, as he ran his fingers over the computer console that stood before him, tapping an erratic, syncopated rhythm onto the metal surface every so often.
Then he turned around, quite suddenly.
Aidan didn't react.
"Am I satisfied?" Lucius echoed, in a disturbingly detached tone of voice. His pale eyes were now gleaming with a light that would have greatly alarmed anyone else in its incomprehensible blankness. He was thinking of something...
What was it?
But, as quickly as the spark had shown itself in his eyes, it was gone: replaced by the flash of a bright smile that seemed only a trifle forced. Vaguely theatrical.
"Am I satisfied."
The second time, it was more of a statement than a question, though Aidan couldn't decide what kind of a statement it was.
"Oh, I should think so. If it rains tomorrow, I'll know for sure...and then
I shall tell you. But as for now...yes, I should definitely think so. I am satisfied."
Aidan suddenly felt very, very tired. He shook his head, and put up one hand to massage his temples again, willing the dull ache within his cranium to kill itself.
"You are insane."
Lucius gave him a mildly sympathetic—but mostly maniacally amused—look, before quirking his head to one side and making a widely expansive, dramatically fluttering gesture with both his black-gloved hands.
"Ever and ever, we blunder masterfully upon the arrayed beauty of the obvious: catching Serendipity unawares while Chance reproaches our great and impossible folly, and Fortune herself laughs unseen in the gloaming above us!"
A glare was all he got for his poetry.
"We'll speak again, Consulate Lysander. Likely enough, it will be soon."
"Is that a promise."
Silence met Aidan's sarcasm-laced words—and he started. His eyes shooting open, his hand leaving his face, he jerked back into awareness.
Lucius was nowhere to be seen.
"Lucius, not again!"
"Until we next meet, cousin..."
The words seemed to drift out of thin air, but Aidan knew better.
Racing out of the command bridge, he reached the exit ramp just in time to see an absolute leviathan of a ship materialize out of the dark night sky: engines roaring so loud that he felt his head would burst with the noise.
The giant shot over his head, blasting white-hot ion exhaust into the cooling air, and Aidan thought—for a single instant—that he had seen a dark figure, silhouetted by eerie pale blue light from within the ship itself, framed in one of its wide view port window, with its hand lifted in a gesture of farewell.
In spite of himself, he smiled, albeit grimly—
And nodded in acceptance.
"Until then, cousin."
Then he turned, and went to direct his crew in the journey back to Tyrellia. It seemed that he would be able to fulfill his mission after all.