A Ruin of Roses (Deliciously Dark Fairytales – B&tB Book 1)
A Ruin of Roses: Chapter 5

I didn’t have the breath to scream. The dull points of well-worn teeth pinched me between them as he ran, crashing through the trees. Branches thwapped my face, hard enough to sting but not to do lasting damage. If he let go, I’d have a long way to fall before I went splat. That was the only reason I didn’t try to swing my dagger around and stick him in the eye or nostril.

We smashed through yet another wall of foliage, and his clawed feet crunched on the brittle grass beyond it, probably long since dead. Vines and thorns twisted through a gazebo off to the left, the paint peeling and the skillful woodwork splintered and broken. Arching, I could just see a grand entrance to what must be the royal castle.

He stopped before the grungy and cracked marble staircase and let me go.

I screamed as I plummeted toward the ground.

Before I hit, the large shape of the beast quickly reduced down to the man, and his arms snatched me from the air. My dagger clanged against the ground, now out of reach, and he crowded me to his chest as he climbed the steps.

I had expected the smell of sweat and dirt and body odor but was instead surprised by a fresh, light, almost balmy smell of pine and lilac with a hint of honeysuckle. It was the same scent from the wood earlier, when all my senses had gone on high alert for a moment, and it was absolutely divine. It called up an image of a windswept mountain top overlooking a crystalline lake with a mirrored surface. It spoke of comfort and peace and familiarity, feelings so at odds with the moment and this horrible place that I froze as he barged through the doors into an empty foyer. Marble columns rose around us, and the ground had been cleaned to a glossy shine.

“Put me down,” I ground out, trying to wriggle out of his arms.

He didn’t budge, his hold too strong for me to break. Two staircases on either side of the cavernous space curved up to a landing above. He took a left, bypassing the stairs, and walked deeper into the castle, toward a set of closed double doors painted white. A dull thump vibrated through the air, pierced with occasional screams of mirth.

He kicked in the doors. Light was the first thing to hit me, glaring from what must’ve been hundreds of candles spread around the room and stuck in the crystal chandelier where light bulbs should go. I threw up my hand to cover my face as my captor walked forward. Next came the cacophony. Bawdy laughter and loud music filled the space. Frenzied movement accompanied a plethora of colors, none of them subdued. Feathers waved, and a string of what looked like beads flew across the air. Bodies gyrated to the music that must be powered by magic in some way.

Pulling my arm away, I took in more detail.

It was some kind of masquerade party. One woman wore nothing but a black feathered mask and robe. Her lips were scarlet, and her body was painted in elaborate designs, curling around her bare nipples and smeared on the inside of her thighs.

A man on the other side of the room wore a large headdress in bright fuchsia and yellow, jewels dotting the forehead and across the bridge of his nose. A large red robe draped down his front, the tie loosely knotted around his lower chest and the rest completely open. A metal ring surrounded his cock and balls, and red lines had been painted on each side of his erect penis.

Directly in front of us, two women writhed as they danced, each completely naked except for their masks, one with her fingers in the other’s mouth, and the other with her fingers in the first’s pussy.

My gaze darted to an orgy of all men in the back. It was some sort of train, with four men attached with cocks in asses and in perfect sync, ramming forward and pulling back in opposites so they all had friction. Their timing was impeccable. One premature thrust and the whole party would disentangle.

I stared in complete and utter shock. I was no prude, but…

Fuck, maybe I was a prude. The pub in my village was nothing like this. This level of debauchery was beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

“What sort of outfit are you running here?” I asked.

A man trotted across the black checkered floor, wearing cloth hooves on his hands, which he kept tight to his chest, slippers fashioned to look like hooves on his feet, and a sort of horse mask with a bridle on his head. A leather-clad woman sat in the saddle on his back, custom-designed to be worn when he was upright, giving him slaps with a riding crop. He was enjoying it, if his hard-on was any judge.

One by one, the partygoers saw us, their large smiles slipping and their movements slowing and then stopping.

The lead guy in the dick train popped himself off his caboose and turned our way. I knew instantly that it was an incubus just by his posture and the sensuous way he moved. The crowd parted before him as he made his way toward us. He took the crop off the horse rider with a knowing little smirk on his face.

“Nyfain, how good of you to join us.” His obsidian eyes sparkled with mischief and haughtiness. He stopped in front of us. “What have we here?”

He reached that crop toward my cheek. The goddess only knew where that thing had been. Whose sweaty ass it had spanked. No fucking thank you.

Before I could swat it away, the man who held me—Nyfain—kicked forward. His foot connected solidly with the middle of the incubus’s chest. The incubus flew backward with an expression of surprise mingled with pain. He hit the ground and slid across the marble, his greasy backside not allowing him the traction to stop. He bowled over the previously dancing women and into a mixed group that had stopped to watch.

“Hadriel, step forward,” Nyfain barked.

“Now, now, Nyfain.” A woman strode toward us from the side, wearing a crimson lace bustier halter with garters and no underwear. Succubus. Of course they were behind this debauchery. They fed off lust and misdeeds. “The sun has set. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“I don’t need jurisdiction, I need Hadriel. Step forward!”

“Hadriel is otherwise occup—”

“Here!” A slim man in the center right inched out of a throng of people. It was a wonder that I hadn’t noticed him earlier.

He wore a furry purple sort of…costume thing that made him look like a silly mock-up of the beast. His shaggy pants ended in black shoes that resembled hooves, kinda like the man posing as a horse. A black vee covered his pecker region, but then the costume opened up to bare the torso, exposing a couple of hairy nipples. His arms were covered with the same material as his legs, cinched up around the neck. Two stuffed horns curled up from his head.

“Oh goddess, that is a sight,” I said with a small giggle. It was just the thing to slice through my terror.

“Here, sir.” Hadriel inched a little farther forward and then wobbled. He clearly wasn’t sober.

“Compose yourself and then report to the tower room,” Nyfain barked.

“You don’t have to go, Hadriel,” the succubus said. “There is nothing he can do to you if you stay.”

“There’s plenty he can do to me,” Hadriel murmured as he all but staggered in our direction.

I pulled away from Nyfain a little and tried to look down his body.

“What are you doing?” he growled, squeezing me to his chest so I’d stay put.

“Trying to see if you have an erection.”

He huffed, heading back out to the stairs and up. At the third floor, he turned into a lovely, picturesque hall with arched windows along the left and stone on the right. Oil paintings lined the way, some with mustaches drawn on the subjects’ faces and occasionally a few dongs. Clearly a few partygoers had gotten out of control.

At the end, he ascended a small staircase that wound up to a single heavy door. The tower, most likely. He planned to stick me there.

“I thought you were going to kill me,” I said in a small voice as he put me down.

“Picking a weed is not really stealing, but your persistent trespassing warrants detention. Your sentence is for an eternity. Here is your cell.”

He twisted the key before pushing open the door. Darkness waited within. He gestured me through.

“But…” I fidgeted with my collar as I stared into the inky depths. “You’re going to keep me in a tower?” My voice kept rising. “In a room that locks from the outside?”

“Would you rather I throw you in the dungeon?”

“Is there a third option? Like a slap on the wrist and public humiliation?”

He grabbed me by the arm and shoved me into the room. I staggered, fear rising to choke me. He took residence in the doorway, his massive shoulders nearly filling the frame. His body was built for power, and he’d honed it with strength.

“Welcome to hell, princess.”

The door slammed and the lock clicked. I pounded on the door, jiggling the handle and yanking. Nothing.

“That rotten-faced weasel fucker,” I spat, turning and pushing my back against the door.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Thank the goddess for the nearly full moon. Weak light filtered in around heavy curtains. I started forward, waving my hands in front of me to feel what I couldn’t see. My foot hit something solid and then the side of my arm did. Wood of some kind. A little farther, and I kicked and then practically fell onto a little table. Farther still, I finally reached the window.

I grabbed velvet and yanked. The metal curtain hooks scraped against the curtain rod. Light gushed in, and I got a first look at the view.

I was high off the ground. The stairs indicated I was four levels up, but the castle was perched on a rise. The land on this side dropped away, and it felt like I could see forever. The tops of trees spread out in the distance with various gaps, some quite large. I wondered if those openings marked other villages or homesteads. It occurred to me how little I knew about the kingdom. I’d never been away from home. I had no idea what other places looked like and how they were set up. No idea what the castle was like beyond what I’d seen tonight.

As a young girl, I’d dreamed of such things. I’d make believe I was a queen walking out onto her dais, waving to the adoring crowds gathered below and adjusting my long red velvet cape. I’d travel to distant kingdoms and meet their leaders, smiling serenely and drinking tea with my pinky up, as befitted royalty. Other times I’d play the jester, doing handstands and juggling for the simpering royalty, then making jokes at their expense, which they were certainly too slow to grasp.

But then I grew up. My grandiose make-believe downsized into my habit of addressing an invisible audience whenever I got into trouble or took risks to put food on the table. My dreams had dried up. All of our dreams had, I guessed. I wasn’t alone in any of this.

Well. I was alone in a tower in a castle, kept prisoner by the last surviving noble—

I sucked in a breath as I pulled back the rest of the curtains and looked out over the grounds. I did some quick math: the last surviving noble + in charge of protecting the land = dragon. Dragon!

I searched my memory for what dragons looked like. First came that glittering golden masterpiece in the sky from my youth. The dragon prince. But I’d never seen him—or any of them—close up, only from down below as they cut through the air with massive wings. There was no way I could compare the beast to what I’d seen.

There were pictures, though, drawn or painted by hand. In fact, I’d just seen some in the history book from the library. Nyfain did share some qualities with the dragons. The armored and horned head, the long tail ending in spikes, the clawed feet, the slope to his back.

But what had happened to his wings?

And why had only one noble been spared? A noble that apparently had jurisdiction here only in the daytime.

And why—

There was no point in tallying all of my questions. Throwing them out in the air would just crowd the space. I had no answers. Not yet, anyway.

A soft knock sounded at the door. My stomach rolled over, but not that weird thing in my chest. My animal, Nyfain had called it.

A whole bunch more questions tried to shove their way to the surface.

“Hello?” called a muffled voice.

I turned. Was this the way it was going to be? I’d have to communicate through the door?

“Hello?” the voice called again.

Sighing, I crossed the room and leaned against the frame. “What?” I said, folding my arms.

“Oh. You’re there. Fan-fuckin’-tastic. Can I come in?”

The slurring was evident. It must be the purple mock-up beast from the party. Hadriel.

I couldn’t help a small laugh at the costume and his sheepishness in coming forward. He’d totally been making fun of Nyfain and not expected to get caught.

That didn’t mean I would take it easy on him, though. For all intents and purposes, he was a guard. By rights, the prisoners were supposed to be at odds with their guards. For me, that meant lots of snarky put-downs. I hoped he was ready for it.

“You have the key, dipshit,” I called.

“I do?” His voice trailed away. “Oh. I see. It’s in the door. Wait…are you a prisoner? Why are you locked in?”

I raised my eyebrows and readied for a bandy of words, but…blank. His utter cluelessness made my mind go blank. He didn’t seem any more enlightened about the situation than I was.

“Are you dangerous?” he called. “Should I be worried? The master didn’t mention that I should be worried.”

Again, I wasn’t sure what to say.

“No?” I finally managed.

“You don’t sound sure. Look, I’m not good at fighting. That’s why I’m still alive. I’m a butler, for goddess’s sake! I look after people—kinda. I’m not much good at it. That’s also why I’m still alive, I think. There is safety in mediocrity. So if you’re all ragey, I’m just going to have to ask you to simmer down for a while. I’m not the bad guy here.”

A grin was pulling at my lips. Was this guy for real?

“I won’t hurt you,” I called.

“Are you sure? Now that I think of it, the master had a fresh wound. Did you give him that?”

“Yes, but he grabbed my throat. What was I supposed to do? And honestly, I don’t even remember doing it.”

“You don’t remember doing it?” Now his voice was rising. “What kind of a nutcase stabs a person and doesn’t remember doing it?”

“The kind who thinks they are going to die?”

A pause. Then, “Yes, okay. That makes sense, I guess. Fine, I’m coming in. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t stab or hurt me in any way. I was having a very nice time a moment ago and don’t want to ruin the buzz.”

I shuffled away from the door and resumed my stance against the far window. There I waited. Nothing happened.

“Are you coming?” I yelled.

“I was waiting for a confirmation!”

Metal tinkled, the key working within the lock. The oval knob turned slowly. Just as slowly, the door opened a crack, and a fuzzy purple head topped with two stuffed horns peered in. His eyes darted around until his gaze came to rest on me. He looked me up and down for a moment, settling on my empty hands. The door continued to open until the fuzzy purple monster stepped in.

I tried to hide more giggles and failed. I’d gone from real life and nightmares to a nightmare life lacking any sort of reality.

“Hello…” He stepped in a little farther, his hands up. “I’m not sober. Just so we’re clear.”

“I wish I weren’t sober. It’s nearly the same thing.”

He nodded and sidestepped to the little nightstand by the bed. Light flared from a match that he put to a candle in a silver holder. Only then did I really take in the room.

A huge four-poster bed with a canopy pushed against the wall, the curtains collected to the posters with tasseled ropes. Intricately carved wooden nightstands bracketed the bed, and a large double-door wardrobe across the room bore the same design. The overstuffed chair in the corner, nestled between the floor-to-ceiling windows covering the east and south side walls, looked worn in and incredibly comfortable for reading. It was clear the little table at its side was for holding books.

A beige rug spanned most of the floor, but the design was lost to the dim light. The walls were mostly bare except for one oil painting depicting a misshapen goat and a sliver of a moon. It was either a modern take on art or done by an amateur.

Hadriel picked up the candleholder, the candle half burned from previous use with dried wax dripping down the sides.

“So. Here we are.” He hiccupped and patted his chest then felt around a little. He dropped his head to look down. “Ah fuck.”

“What?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“I forgot I wore this tonight. Do you think the master noticed?”

“How…” I contained a laugh. “How could you possibly forget you wore that?”

He staggered back a couple of paces and braced his fingers on the nightstand. “Once that demon magic kicks in, you stop caring what you look like. All you want is to…”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

I put up my hands. “I’m not judging. I know the effect it has.”

He sagged. “Yeah. It’s a good time. A real good time. But then you wake up, and you just feel dirty, know what I mean? I’m wearing a furry demon costume, hoping to bang any wet hole I come across. I don’t even care who it belongs to or what body part it is, I just want to stick my dick in it. What am I, eighteen?”

I placed him in his mid-twenties, a bit older than me. He had tanned skin and a thin mustache above thin lips. He was somewhat toned but clearly didn’t work out or fight for his dinner. He’d said as much.

“But it gets so fucking boring here,” he went on, “that I keep venturing down to the party. Booze and sex were really fun for, like, five years. Then it was a pleasant distraction. Now…I’m just shame-fucking, you know? And if I’m not shame-fucking, I’m shame-eating. I used to do hobbies and shit. And, I don’t know, make use of myself. Now I just do whatever that hot incubus tells me. He’s got me banging ladies. I don’t even like banging ladies! But I do it. Why not? It’s not like I have any self-respect anymore.”

I grimaced. “That’s dark. How old are you exactly?”

“When the curse first started, I was twenty-six. And since we’re frozen in time…I guess I’m still twenty-six? There are different schools of thought on that subject, but we’re pretty sure we’ll emerge from the curse how we went in, just with a lot of terrible sexual experiences under our belt. I’m going to be so vanilla after all this, I am not shitting you. Zero kinks after this. I’ll be a new man.”

“Wait…what do you mean, frozen in time?”

His brow pinched, and then cleared with a smile. “My apologies. I completely forgot your whole deal. Yeah, you guys age and get sick with the curse, right? We don’t get sick, but we’re stuck in time. Everything here just stopped. No idea why it’s different between the castle and the villages, but there you go. I’ve been twenty-six for sixteen years.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Anyway, yeah. Super dark.” He pulled open the nightstand drawer before closing it again. “We need to get you some vibrators. You’re not allowed to go to the parties—I wish I hadn’t been allowed to go to the parties. Anyway, you’ll probably want something to take the edge off. They’re these little demon-magic-powered fuck sticks. They’re awesome. I have one that, like, sucks my cock while spinning around, and—it’s the stuff of legends. Or…it would be if I wasn’t mired in a puddle of boredom turned self-loathing.” He paused, pointing at me. “Are you into butt stuff?”

I made a sound like “Whuh” and envisioned myself clutching a strand of pearls in an iron fist. Now I knew what Hannon always felt like.

He nodded like that was an answer. “I’ll make sure and get you one to try out. They’re all clean, don’t worry. We don’t reuse or anything. The demons keep us in stock. What else?”

“Am I to be kept in this room…all the time?”

“She’s going to need a fuck-ton of candles…” He headed over to the far wall and started poking around in a chest of drawers. “I don’t know, are you?” He looked around. “I should hope not. Nah, I don’t think so. He wouldn’t confine you here. Not when…” His eyes widened, and he went back to poking in the chest.

“Not when what?” I edged forward.

He shook his head. “We have a magical gag. If we talk about…some things, the gag locks up and we suffocate to death. Do you know how many people have died from activating the magical gag? A lot, let me assure you. For a while, we would try to get others drunk and talk about…things they weren’t supposed to talk about, just to see if they’d fuck up and die.”

“So you tried to trick them into killing themselves?”

He lowered the lid of the trunk. “It sounds like a real shit thing to do when you say it like that. But at the time… Well, that was right about when I started shame-fucking. We’d all kinda lost touch with reality by that point.”

“This place is…”

“It’s a nightmare. Cheers!” He smiled and looked around. “Damn it. I don’t have a drink.”

It was clear that was a common theme around this place. In a way they were living a life of luxury, but the curse hadn’t spared them. Whereas our people were physically suffering, these people were mentally suffering.

Sadness overcame me at the thought of my village, and tears welled up. Best not think about home right now. I’d end up in a darker hole than Hadriel, and it seemed that path led to shame-fucking.

“Goddess spread on a cracker, what is this…” Hadriel had the doors to the wardrobe open and was pulling out dresses like they were covered in chicken poop.

A frilly pink dress was thrown aside, puddled on the ground like frosting. A blue number with ruffles and lace went on top of it.

“Whose dresses were these?” He threw a bright orange frock onto the pile. “Whoever made them should be stabbed.”

“Was this…was this someone’s room before mine?” A dangerous question for my mental wellbeing.

He shrugged. “Maybe before the curse? Not since the curse, though. Or at least not since Butler One was killed gruesomely and Butler Two was thrown from a window. Since I have been in this post, no, there has been no one new in this castle.”

He scrunched up his face and slammed the wardrobe doors.

“Tower!” he shouted at me. “No one new has been in this tower!”

I put up my hands again, trying to digest this cascade of crazy. “Got it.”

He gave me a dirty look before glancing at the overstuffed chair in the corner. Then the table beside it. “Are you a reader?”

I came to attention. “You have a library?”

He rolled his eyes. “Only the best library in the whole magical world. Well, until the curse. We haven’t had anything new since then, obviously, since the rest of the world thinks we just faded away. Fucking demon magic.” He held the candle out, better illuminating me. His eyes widened. “Holy fuck, you’re pretty.” His expression turned grave. “You’re not allowed out after dark anyway, but don’t go out after dark. No one here will force you—the punishment is death if anyone does that—but they’ll be like flies on shit, mark my words. You’re new and you’re pretty and everyone will want to shame-fuck you. Boys who like boys, girls who like girls, boys who like girls, girls who like boys—they’ll all want to shame-fuck the new hot girl. They will want to do things that you will need another decade at least to be comfortable even talking about. So just stick to your room. Read your books, fuck yourself with those vibrators, and pretend life is normal.”

“I don’t know how I can possibly pretend that.”

“Man, I wish I were you.” He shook his head sadly.

“You wish you were a prisoner in a castle, kept away from your family who needs you, all because you went in the Forbidden Wood to keep your father from dying?”

“But did you?”

“What?”

“Did you keep your father from dying?”

I blinked at him. “Short term…yes.”

“Then at least your family is safe. Mine is dead. I came here at, like…” He put his hand out near his thigh, then raised it a little higher. “Little. My parents were nobles in the Red Lupine kingdom”—that was one of the wolf kingdoms still going, last I’d heard—“but they were exiled and then killed as they tried to leave. I was sent here. It was the only kingdom that would take me in. The former queen…” He put his hand to his heart. “She was a good, kind woman. She held this kingdom together. You know, I am a prisoner, too, just as much as you. I can go to the villages, but I’ll get deathly sick if I stay too long. Or that’s what I heard, anyway. I’m too much of a chickenshit to try it.”

“That’s why you’re still alive.”

He jabbed a finger through the air at me. “Exactly! Yes. That is why I am still alive. That and mediocrity. We’re all prisoners in this kingdom, though, in one way or another. At least you get a change of scenery. And don’t worry, the master is a royal cunt, but he won’t let your family starve. He has these, like, principles. He stole you, and you clearly did stuff they needed, so he will make amends for that. He will. I know he will. It’s his duty.”

“As the last remaining noble?”

“As the last remaining anyone who gives a shit, yeah. And as the only guy who can stand up to that ol’ demon king, may his dick rot off and fall into a grinder.”

“Tell me about that—”

“No.” He groaned and leaned to the side, like he was wilting on the vine. “No! I have to go get my nut off, then go to bed and sleep this off. I need there to be a point to dressing like this, otherwise it’s straight to shame-eating and then necessary dieting and— It’s a whole cycle. I just can’t handle any more dark situations in my life.”

He went to hand me the candle, thought better of it, and put it on the nightstand. He pointed at me. “Get a good night’s sleep, what’s left of it. We all get up a bit late here, for obvious reasons”—he spread out his hands to indicate his getup—“so you can have a lie-in. After that, we need to get your wardrobe sorted. The master will probably want to dine with you—”

“Fat chance. I’m his prisoner, not his escort.”

Hadriel let his hands flop over. “O-kay. You have troubled seas ahead. Fine. More power to you. Please leave me out of your struggles. You’ll still need clothes, though. I can see your tits through that top, and you’re dirty as hell. We are a civilized fucking outfit here.” He stared at me for a moment. “I realize that comment would’ve gone over a lot better had I not been wearing a purple beast costume with my cock hanging out.”

“Your cock isn’t hanging out.”

“Well, that’s a miracle. You have a washroom adjoining through that heavy drape thing there. We obviously don’t have running water anymore—fucking curse—but there is a chamber pot, and tomorrow we can get you a bath and everything. It’s a bit late tonight for all that. The lady’s maid is a bit tied up. Literally. Anyway, fuck off. I’m going to go shame-come. Then either pass out or cry myself to sleep.”

“Why choose? Do both.”

He opened the door and nodded. “Yes, good point. Why not? Oh!” He placed his hand on the empty keyhole inside the door. Then looked on the other side. He plucked the key from the lock and held it up. “I’d keep this, if I were you. Demons are wily fuckers. They sneak into all the crevices.” He raised his voice to yelling. “Ask me how I know!”

He rolled his shoulders, like he was shaking it off.

“It’s fine to leave your door open during the day; just make sure you or your lady’s maid has the key. Keep your door locked at night, though, even when you’re not here. You don’t want to return to one of those fuckers lying in your bed. Their magic… Well. It’s hard to resist, and they like to push limits. There is one skeleton key in this whole castle, and that is guarded by the master. As long as you keep your door locked, you’re safe.”

Safe from the demons, maybe, but it was already clear I wasn’t at all safe from the beast.