The Raven King

II

It is a peculiarity of my family, that we are never very good at disappearing. Despite that we are, in main, built smally, with light bones and meagre flesh, despite our truly unremarkable, if rather pleasant features, and despite our desire to fade and blend, there will always be those who declare us to be enigmas. We do not like it, or at least, I do not. When I was quite young, it was a thing of ephemeral interest and amusement, and I used it to draw people to me, to transfix them without their knowledge or consent, but I quickly grew tired of the game. I wished, naïvely, to earn friends on my own wit and merit. It was not till perhaps three years ago that I realised my unique magnetization was the blessing of Faerie, a puckish Otherworld out of which my family hails.

I suppose I must explain. I am not of Faerie, and neither are my parents, but it seems that quite far up both paternal and matriarchal lines, pairs of Changelings, by the grace of Fate or Design, met and fell in love, producing a single child from each union. Thus was my blood endowed with the grace of Faerie, and thus came I to become myself.

My siblings, all, have betimes taken advantage of our peculiarity, securing for themselves love, fame, gold, entertainment--but they have not remarked, as I have, that our power does not only extend to humans, and neither does it snare every one positively. Oh, yes, they all notice us, and the magnetization is compleat, but if we do not lack for devoted friends, who are enchanted utterly by us, there is still no shortage of equally bitter enemies.

My association with the Raven King is, I have been told, an anomaly in itself. He is a human, a child taken from his cradle to serve the beautiful King Auberon of the Fae. He was taught magick, given deep secrets of nature, and, indeed, fawned upon so by King Auberon that he has ended up being as much Fae as human. I have been informed that, until now, he has avoided Changelings and their offspring as the plague, and in the three kingdoms of his reign, he has cast a taboo on Fae and human intermarriage. I do not say that my powers are great, only unavoidable, and that he underestimated them when first he sought me out.

Perhaps you recall a certain count, and the words he spoke to a young lawyer's clerk upon the threshold of his gloomy castle? So it is with me, and the uncontrolled pall of attraction I cast upon those who make my acquaintance. I do not force them to enter upon association with me; I do not first greet anyone until they have decided of their own accord to submit to my company. However, once engaged, they are not easily extricated, even by their own will.

So it was with Jonothan Duskglass, the Raven King.

When I met him, he was a proud man, beautiful and ageless, and he is still all these things. He appeared before me as any man might, at a gathering of bodies a polite soirée.

I have said I own land; it is the legacy of my gift. My family has had many generations to come into our own since Faerie blood introduced and interrupted all former bloodlines. It has been a simple matter for us to gain influence and gold, friends in high places, and all that such things generally entail. The result of our influence is that we have become one of the first families in Europe, indeed, in the world, famed for our uncanny charm and cleverness. We have been the delegates of royalty, the advisors of emperors. Kings have been our mouthpieces. All this did the Raven King know when first he set himself to meet me.

It was not his fault that he has fallen prey to an enchantment that has overcome even the Fae. No, that blame was lain entirely at the feet of my unwitting ancestors, who gave all their charm and glamour to me and my family.

It was not long after we met that we became lovers. The Raven King is not himself without charm, without magick. He is beautiful, as well, and I admit, I knew he was no ordinary man the moment I saw him.

I recall it well--the cool, misty evening as perfumed music wafted round me. I was drinking, rather unfashionably, a snifter of brandy, attracting comments from many of my friends. Ironically enough, it was one of those evenings that I cursed the gift of fascination that had been given to me, wishing I could blend into the congregation of charming, superficial young nobles that swarmed round me. My host was a particularly effusive woman, one of your friends, I believe, and utterly taken with the both of us. I believe you were trying your luck against the virtue of a girl you fancied, and though you did escort me to the soirée, I hardly expected you to help me home. I was only just beginning to wonder whether I might need a fiacre called, when he made his opening gambit.

A tall, imposing figure, that is the Raven King for you, his long black hair caught up in an ivory-clasped braid, his eyes, hot coals beneath their sooty lashes. And then, his voice, a silken shroud to the dangerous seductiveness of his nature, crept gently down my spine.

'Your name, my darling?' he whispered. I turned, and found that he was standing a little closer, perhaps, than propriety dictated.

'Perhaps you know it already.' I replied, aware, already, of a sensation not unlike that which I experienced upon coming home, or meeting one of my brothers or sisters, and yet, entirely different. Never before had anyone properly woken such a singular response in me. I longed to lean forward, to close the distance between us, and melt into him, but also to take his hand and lead him away to a dark corner, where he could reveal all the secrets fevering his brain. I dropped a curtsey, I do not know why. Perhaps it was the instinct of blood, which recognized the favourite of King Auberon.

'Perhaps it is not your name that is so important. It is, however, the fame of your singular talents which brought me tonight in search of you.' I was astonished. Indeed, it was often repeated that I had no particular charms--I was not beautiful, nor witty, and neither did I sing or paint to any extraordinary extent. That is precisely how I knew that my attractions were more than exactly human.

'My lord, I do not like your boldness.' I thought, for a moment, in my childish vanity, that he was attempting to seduce me, as so many others had.

'I do not like the way you hold my eyes, with the unconscious silk of your blood. I do not like your ancestors, who dallied with your fate, and mine. I do not like the way you move, how you know, with every muscle, that all minds return their fixation to you. In short, my dear,' he drew yet closer, and our knees brushed, 'I should very much like to dance with you.' I was, at least, intrigued, for it was the first time I had ever experienced the attraction others feel for me. In the next moment, he had me round the waist, and was drawing me toward the centre of the room, where six or ten other bodies stepped intricately round one another.

I looked for you, recalled that I had seen you in the next room, the billiard-hall, with a girl on your arm, prettier by far than I ever pretended to be. The briefest pang touched me, and was rejected by my well trained heart. The Raven King took me in his arms.

We danced for hours, and as he danced, he spoke to me in parables, told me stories of lands beyond my imagination--of lands in England, in Faerie, and of a kingdom beyond hell that most believed could be leased from Lucifer for a price of souls. I asked him whether such a place existed, for I have known stranger things. He laughed. 'My little darling,' he murmured, a thorn of love already hooked into his core, 'if there were, Lucifer would not be the man to apply for lease from.'

There were moments when you emerged from the billiard-room, sometimes alone, sometimes with the girl, and cast hasty, guilt-stained glances at me, as though you wished to speak to me. But I had not a care for anything, when he held me, and told such magickal stories. There was an echo of him deep within me, and I knew, somehow, that the paltry word 'love' could never amount to the possibilities between him and I.

I could not have said what o'clock it was when finally, he stepped with me off the dance floor. He said nothing more, only kissed my forehead, and, with a sound like the rustle of wings, he was gone. I took a glacée from a passing waiter, and sat on a fainting couch in the antechamber. You were at my side in a moment, inquiring after my health.

'I am tired,' I managed, and, indeed, my brain ached with all the thoughts the Raven King had put there.

'You will come home with me tonight?' it was the first time you had ever asked me.

'Of course.' I took your hand, and we retired.

That night, we lay chastely in your bed, swathed in silk sheets, naked, skin pressed sweetly to skin, and my heart felt heavily the burden of loving you, as your eyes glimmered in the moonlight, your hands absently running across my shoulders, stroking me like a favoured cat. Your scent, a calm hint of sweat and earth, of moss and acorns, has always soothed me, even today, when I scarcely can face you. I looked away then, too, away from your unspoken question as you made observations about the company we had left. I waited for you to ask about him, if only because I had spent so long a time in his arms, but you seemed to avoid the subject, and your subtlety was overturned by a desire to seem unhindered by emotion. I knew, then, that you did care for me, whether you hid it from yourself, I knew it, and fell asleep with your love in my heart and your taste on my tongue.