The Gargoyle Heart Part IV

Here are the previous bits: segments one, two and three.

The morning after the full moon, as Soria gasped and wheezed around the kitchen making breakfast, Lady Geraldine entered, looking haggard. Her neat bun of grey hair was slightly lopsided, and she folded and refolded her hands repeatedly.

“I am not feeling well. I must go and speak to my son today.” She said, abruptly. Soria looked up, surprised. Her son? Was that the mysterious stranger managing all the magic in the house?

“When I go to see him, he must take off all the protective enchantments on me and I will be in danger for a time.” She looked at Soira. “Please do not let anyone inside the castle.”

Soria blinked. “I suppose this means someone will try and get in, today.” She said, quietly.

“Yes.” Geraldine said, watching her carefully. “You will have to handle them on your own.”

Soria knew then, without any doubt that Lady Geraldine had somehow been helping her all this time. And Geraldine knew how incapable she was, yet she was abandoning her. Leaving her to her fate. From the look on Geraldine’s face, it would be a terrible one.

“I’ll just have toast and tea this morning,” Geraldine said. “Having enchantments removed always makes me queasy.”

After Geraldine had drank her tea and eaten her toast and left Soria sat for a long time in the kitchen staring miserably at her plate of cold eggs and wringing her hands in her apron. The cold weight of the stone in her heart seemed to pulse with a horrible life of its own. Wouldn’t it be better to simply leave? Why would she give up her life violently, to please a woman who deliberately threw her into dangerous situations? Why not run away and lie quietly down in the forest until the stone finally swallowed up her heart and she died? Wouldn’t that cold numbness be better than a bloody death? But if Geraldine was truly in danger…

When the doorbell rang, she hesitantly went to answer it. As the door opened she froze.

Standing on the doorstep was a dark elf; utterly beautiful and terrifying, his pale features sharp and cold, power both magical and physical in every movement he made. Even more terrifying than the elf himself was the unsheathed sword glinting in his left hand. Soria found herself unable to look away from it, her breathing short and panicked. It did more than threaten; its spoke to her in a voice so low it was almost inaudible, a sibilant hiss whispering of blood and death. Would this vile thing cut into Lady Geraldine and leave her lifeless?

He fixed a hunter’s gaze on her and she felt like a pinned rabbit.

“The lady of the house is in.” He said, smoothly. It was not a question.

“She said nobody was to come in.” Soria said, still clutching her apron awkwardly.

He looked her up and down and raised an eyebrow. “On your own you can’t stop me. Step aside and I will see that my sword gluts only on the blood it was promised.”

She wanted to run. She wanted to go die quietly by herself with her stone heart. Why should she do this for an old lady she barely knew? Her knees trembled. “No.” she whispered. “I won’t let you in.”

He snorted in disgust, and before she could even flinch, he had slapped her aside so hard that she fell to the floor, hitting her head with a crack on the tiles.

He strode into the atrium and headed for the stairs. Soria scrambled to her feet, disoriented, panicked. “No! Stop!”

At the top of the stairs she saw an unfamiliar young man run out of a room, his own sword drawn, and behind him, half hidden by the door, Lady Geraldine’s pale, frightened face. She looked so weak—for the first time truly elderly—and at the sight of her friend, vulnerable, Soria threw herself forward onto the elf.

For a brief moment she clutched at his armor, the hard edges slick on her palms, even his clothes hissing of dark magic and death and then he flung her off. The sword raised in the sunlight; she could almost imagine it smiling as it flashed down towards her.

The pain was intense. It seared through her entire body and then centered on her heart, burning and burning and burning. And then nothingness.

#fairygodmother #fairytale #magic