All Circe's lovers had ended their lives with poison or sharp daggers. They lay like stiff statues with pained expressions on the purple mat. Her wife Cassandra opened a window. Tears flooded as Circe took farewell. Their hands clasped together as they kissed and whispered love confessions. Hands carressed gently before Cassandra climbed upon the window sill and simply jumped.
Circe stood frozen in place for a moment before rannsacking her belongings and had them inside treasure chests in full view. She knew what was coming as the battle cries ended and her tower was flooded by enemy soldiers covered in blood. It happened to all women during war regardless of status but knowing this didn't make her hammering heart slow down.
Before the chamber door burst open she took off her clothes and picked up a maze from the wall.
The mission was a success, the prince’s commands have been carried out, alive. That was the command, he wanted this woman brought to him alive. The ship’s hull groaned as it scraped against Dragonstone’s jagged docks, the sound like a beast waking from uneasy slumber. Circe, wrapped in a rough-spun cloak that did nothing to keep out the island’s biting wind, stood motionless on deck.
The guards flanking her, men with faces like chipped stone did not touch her, but their presence was a cage all the same. Behind her, the sea churned black and restless. Ahead, the castle loomed, its towers clawing at the sky like the bones of some long-dead dragon. The tide was out, leaving the wet sand glistening like a spill of molten silver under the moonlight.
He stood ankle-deep in the shallows, his boots sinking slightly with each shift of his weight. The wind tugged at his cloak, embroidered with thread-of-gold dragons that seemed to writhe in the flickering torchlight. He held a goblet of wine, Arbor gold, thick as blood and sipped it slowly, savoring the way it burned his throat. The taste was sweet. The wait was not.
The torchlight caught the edge of Circe’s collarbone first, a sharp, pale line that made his tongue press against his teeth. She moved like smoke between the guards, her bare feet leaving shallow prints in the damp sand. The cloak they’d thrown over her was too large, swallowing her frame, but it gaped where she clutched it closed, revealing flashes of thigh, the curve of a hip.
He exhaled through his nose, slow, deliberate. The wine in his goblet trembled.
"Little bird."
He said, voice dripping like honey from a knife. "Did you fly all this way just to sing for me?" His smirk widened when she didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, just lifted her chin higher, as if the wind whipping her dark hair back were a caress. Brave. Or stupid. He’d enjoy finding out which. As he had spent a lot of money, manpower and risks to have her brought to this rock he called his home now.
“I trust you were treated well, it took a lot of effort to find you, even more to bring you here to me alive.”
