Her faun must understand its situation, the Princess Florentina is quite sure. She has enunciated a dozen-fold on the matter, in-detail even; repeated it louder and slower each time, and is perplexed as to how that could have so worsened her faun’s demeanour.
“Take this one to be bathed,” she instructs a myth-stricken handmaiden, whose courage need summon itself afore she takes its proffered leash. “Mine-own quarters.”
All the-night it had tore at the tree-bound rein — so weak the infirm, rot-soaked bark had sloughed not a motes-length — contemptuous to its prior insistence on fastening its own collar, when she had rescued it; hand thrusted forth, impatient for the dungeon-foraged band, an ostensible recognition of the fair trade she offered — that it now seems resent.
And for a faun to be a licentious creature, that enough is well-travelled truth; but to be so devious, perhaps that was particular to this one — though it follows her timorous maiden without quarrel. Such ones handled Florentina as a babe, her faun will be no trouble.
She processes into the Great Hall — heralded in courtly squeals as she tramps dried cousin-blood into flaxen-thread dresses, whose tails demise an unobstructed view of the Dwarfish-import, mudstone tile — expectant, savourant even, of an aghast countenance upon her uncle and Regent, who can hells-wells blame himself for this entire affair. Her Faun, at its merest peasant-drummed rumour; at the pricked, auric senses of his Court Magician; saw him surround the whole, autumn-wet kingswood — trapping it afore it even stepped in the snare. His arse-to-throat puppet-of-a-Bishop soon proclamating:
Whoever shalt return the Promiscuous Beast, Gods hath blessed with the seed of an heir.
Not an unclever trick; somewhat more troublesome to refuse than the next irksome suitor her once-loyal, now rather exasperated, Regent has invited. But prophecy — false-or-no — is a thicket of such tricks — and this is her throne, her body, her faun.
“Fair Uncle,” she says, stuffed ripe with boastfulness. “It is wondrous to see one so—”
“Proud?” he smiles. She looks at the dais, the woodcut lesser of three thrones; her teeth shut as a portcullis in-siege. “Unsanctioned it might be, but a successful hunt nonetheless! I regret His Grace and Her Grace, mine sister, must see it from heaven-above.”
What dare he know, that she does not?
He steps down, lowered to his proper position — looms as a summer noon. Her cast-iron expression cracks brittle and false, as he beams, “When shall I see this beast? Gods-know how there was anything left to spare, as blood-drenched as you are.”
There are courtiers — distant, pressed between columns in sullied armament — recalled from the prophetic hunt to obvious dissatisfaction. “Oh. Oh!” she feigns, her cousin’s absence is noted more-so, her uncle hears his lack of choice words too.
“Lord Relbert has passed — I’m afraid,” she continues. She needn’t mention the footman, silenced in one lung-thrust. “He attempted to intervene and aid me; ever-so-noble to the end, as chewed-to-bits as it might be—” So spiteful, deliciously so, was her faun.
Courtiers beset the Hall with unkempt murmurs. Her lips part to finish as— Clang!
The Court Magician rattles his staff on the dais, and rounds it. “Perhaps our Princess might elucidate his Regent as to her liberation of one sacred potion? With which I must wonder how it was libated, on this faun, and not—”
The Regent turns, smiles thin, and he silences.
“I tried,” she lies, catches her smirk as he leans impatient. “It was— ineffective. I felt it imprudent to besmirch your toils with such admittance, devoted as you are to them.”
“How then does this faun fair—” her uncle asks, afore she bites him off.
“Fine!” The Princess steadies herself with one boot on the dais. “I’ve had it bathed. You needn’t see it in such a state — besides, I’d heard our dear Magician wishes to cut its horns and concoct some paste to daub on me while a suitor—” The Court Magician is set alight in the Hall’s choral, despondent flames, and he folds into a column’s shadow. “Ahh! Should I not have said that? Though it seems the court agree with me — most unfetching.”
“Suitors,” the regent intercedes. “Yes, rather the matter I wish to address.”
He’s much too pleased — and unconcerned with the dismally-concealed parricide, though she supposes no one will miss that one, other courtiers too unwise to realise it. She expects the Bishop to announce himself, reveal another twist in prophetic interpretation. Perhaps it’ll be her faun that should breed her, it has the lowers — and he’ll need to watch, no doubt.
No — she knows the means to address such rumours, she has an artisan to speak to.
“You have accepted none of twelve suitors now,” he speaks, her fake smile is buried next to the real one. Ahh, has it been that many? “Enough time has passed. As Her Grace’s brother the line cannot pass through me, though I would shoulder that burden—” And break your back upon it. “If the thirteenth does not ascend, then per ancient law—”
“Well then damn the law — give me the hells-damned throne!” she bursts out.
Not what she should’ve said either; there isn’t even a whisper to dance on the columns.
Her uncle looks to her with sorrow, “I understand your distress—” You do not. “But when the Prince arrives you must choose — and bear.” Then takes his place once more on the third, shrunken throne. “We all have our duties, that is the simple truth. I’m sorry this is yours.”
The Princess looks at her boots, at the mud-and-blood that has seeped into leathered cracks and dried and cracked itself. “It’s mine,” she sputters, so meek he cannot hear.
“I will not hand—” She swallows. Myself. Resolves. “—the crown to some—”
She chokes, and does not hear the Regent’s words. It does not matter how esteemed the fall of her dynasty is, how kind he is when he fills her, how close her grave is in-size to his.
“It’s—” Her throne.
Her body.
Her faun.
She tries to run.
