Bedtime Story for Sister Starling

A Bedtime Story For My Sister Starling

When the hood was pulled off her she found herself flanked by two guards in a large stone room, windowless, lit by flickering candlelight, red and gold shadows running molten across the walls and domed brick ceiling. There was a sweet, dank musk to the heavy air, which sank upon her naked body with the heavy handed touch of damp. A cellar, she thought. No, a dungeon... "Kneel, girl, Kneel in the presence of the Prince," one of the guards ordered, his garlic-breath and malodorous sweat filling her nostrils with distaste. She did not move, until two meaty hands pressed down on her slender shoulders and forced her to assume the humbling position.

She looked up at the face of the Prince for the first time. Instinctively, to her shame, she felt herself attracted to him. The way he stood, perfectly still, like a supremely confidant predator observing its selected prey, his eyes roving slowly, indolently up and down her body, skimming over her small breasts, travelling down her belly, lingering upon her cunt, and then up once again, sharply, to fasten on her own. She fought with herself to keep the challenge of the stare. She would never, ever, bow down to this man.

"Why did you trespass upon the palace grounds?" he demanded of her. "Did you not know they were out of bounds? Of course you did, for there is no one in the land who does not know they are forbidden to set eyes upon their Prince! Well? What errand were you on, or what lies have you prepared to tell me? Make your confession girl, and I may be lenient with you yet!"

She felt herself flinch under his icy words not with shame or fear but indignation. How dare he speak to her in that manner! As if he already knew all the answers and merely waited for her to confirm them. As if he could read her thoughts and see into her heart. Damn him, with his arrogance and assumed superiority! Royal Blood! He was a man like any other, full of weaknesses and doubts behind the mask of masculinity, the pose, the strut. He had looked at her body and she knew he had wanted it. There lay Woman's power, in knowledge, not brute strength. Know your enemy, the old wise woman had said...Learn the weaknesses he keeps hidden, while he believes all he sees...

"Assassin or spy, which are you?" the Prince had brought his face down close to hers to ask this -- close enough for her to smell the oiled sleek leather of his jerkin, and something else, which caught in the back of her throat, a scent that became almost a taste, a new taste, that enflamed and excited every inch of her body. And suddenly she wanted, hungrily, thirstily, to bend her head forward and kiss his neck, press her lips hard against his skin, her tongue flick out and dab up the nectar of his sweat. She fought the impulse back, disgusted at herself.

"I am neither, my Lord, I came at the bidding of my mother, who sent me here with a letter for you on this most important day. The guards have possession of it now. The letter is sealed, I do not know its contents. I knew to enter the palace is forbidden, but what choice had I but to obey my mother?"

The prince gave a quick, searching look to the guards, and one produced the crumpled letter from his pocket. The Prince tore it open and read it quickly, a disdainful sneer slowly spreading across his lower face. His eyes, when he next looked down upon her, remained as cold and calculating as ever. "You're mother has sent me a gift, it seems...and you are the gift. Do you like the jest in that? It appeals to me, it appeals to me greatly." And with this he laughed, softly amused. "I appreciate irony most of all."

"My Lord, I do not understand..."

"The correct address is 'your Highness'. What is your name, girl?"

"My name...is Starling...your...your Highness." Even as she said the word she felt her mind rebel at it. What right had he to give himself such a title? By what right had he elevated himself to this 'highness'. Just a man, like any other, not even proven in battle, cosseted here in your palace, growing up caged! Her thoughts raged.

"It is prophesised that on this most auspicious of days, the day I am crowned King, I shall also meet my True Love. You are sent to me to be tested for that honour. And test you I will!" said the Prince.

With quick decisive movements, a practiced efficiency, the Prince took ropes down from where they hung on the wall and began to tie her up. "I cannot, of course, dismiss my guards until you are completely bound and helpless. And For what comes next I wish to be alone with you."

He guided her arms back and down, tying them together at the wrists, then linked wrists to ankles so that any attempt to struggle would tighten the bonds cruelly.

"You can't do this to me," she protested.

"You know that isn't true," he said coldly and matter-of-factly.

She bristled at the right he had totally assumed over her. But she was aware of another feeling blooming inside her too, bearing strange fruits of yearnings, desires she had long ago forbidden herself, she felt the two contrary feelings sight each other and declare instant war on one another, and the battle commence for her soul. She shivered, and shivered again. And shivered once more, realising it was an uncontrollable, involuntary action - she trembled like a victim of prey about to be devoured, almost with gratitude for the certainty of the coming sensation. He bound her tighter, going beyond merely ensuring she was secure, enacting an ancient, precise art upon her, forcing her limbs into ever more complex pattern, entwining her completely. The ropes were now beginning to bite, to burn, if she attempted to move even in the slightest. His face, often leaning in so close to hers, was illuminated by an inner passion, a fire burned behind his eyes.

The Prince dismissed the guards. Once they were gone, he squatted down beside her so that their eyes were at the same intimate level. A smile not sneering or malign softened the egocentric sharpness of his face. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, in that moment. "Ask me one question," he said. "I will allow you that."

"Why are you so cruel to those who come near to you? What is it you fear from us, is it love?"

"I fear assassination! Do you also not know of the rumours? Of the wicked Queen who looks upon my lands with such envy? She plots. She plans. I can feel her desire to overwhelm me like a vibration strumming the air. Her spies are everywhere. Her intentions are clear. A prophecy also tells of an attempt to steal my crown on this very day I inherit it. I fear no woman, accept her!"

As if to confirm this, he rose and reached down to cup her chin, squeezing his fingers above her jaw, hurting her, forcing her lips to part and keeping them helplessly agape. In the next instance he had released his cock and rammed it into her mouth. For a second she fought him with her tongue, the only weapon she had, using its tensile strength to try to push it out. With slow deliberate thrusts he fucked her mouth, until she sensed him coming. Unexpectedly he withdrew, jetting his semen into her hair with a sharp gasp.

She felt ridiculously grateful to him, for withdrawing before he came. Looking up into his momentarily closed eyes, at the relaxed smoothness of his brow, released and absolved from worry, she felt, in that one act of pulling out...of not using her mouth for a repository...she felt...she sensed...love?

He opened his eyes. "I have to do this. It is a compulsion. I fear the Queen of that far country every waking moment of every day. I expect her touch upon me at any moment, in the next food I taste, the next drink I put to my lips, in a dagger flashing in the crowd -- it is why I lock myself away inside this palace and let no stranger enter."

He smiled with genuine warmth at her, and spoke in self mockery: "And so I amuse myself by humiliating the innocent, and in so doing proving to myself that I have power over all or any who stray into my domain."

He untied her. But he did not call the guards back. She stood, with his aid, feeling the reliable hardness of his body beside hers, feeling the blood begin to flow back painfully into the starved extremities of her body. Feeling it flow quicker, transmuted into quicksilver.

"And that is how the Prince met his bride," the old crone declared, laughing toothlessly. She looked around her at the rapt faces of those listening to her story, gleeful in her knowledge that her tale had one last surprise in store. She let her laughter subside slowly, until it was just a comfortable vibration in the pit of her belly, and continued...

"Starling and the Prince spent the rest of the day together, falling deeper and deeper and deeper in love, as one falls into the comforting arms of sleep, unknowingly. There were no threats on the Prince's life that day or any other. That evening, at the end of a ball held in their honour, they were married, and at midnight the crown of the King was placed on the young Prince's head and he was a Prince no longer. And the King and his chosen Queen ruled side by side wisely, and nothing more was ever to be heard of the Queen from a far country, for the Queen by his side and the Queen from a far country were one in the same. So it was that the wicked Queen stole his crown and his lands and his people she so yearned for, not by force of strength but by the power of love, the power to be loved, and to return back love, to trust and be trusted, that is the power inherent in all women, and what all men fear the most...But," - the old crone smiled and nodded to each and everyone, "Take warning from this tale...in so doing, the wicked Queen lost all desire to be wicked. So...be careful what you wish for. "

And with that, the old crone threw back her grey haired head and cackled mirthfully up at the stars, her story over.