Dinner was excruciating. The King seemed to only have two modes of being: lounging and leering. He made her sit at his right on one end of the long table. She wondered if that was better or worse than if she’d been made to sit alone at the other end.
The dining hall was just as large and empty as the throne room had been. Only a few candles had been lit on the long wooden table, making it difficult to see the details of the room. Autumn thought that she could discern benches lining the dark stone walls, paintings and curtains, and even a second level high up over her head, where guests could theoretically bend over the railing to peer down at them. Properly lit and furnished, this place could have been a grand dining room, or perhaps even a ballroom. It begged the question: who had even built this castle, and why? The Evil Wizard King was a king of none. She doubted that there ever had been anyone filling these halls.
The two constructs that served them dinner were more obviously inhuman than her knight. They both had sandy hair and rabbit ears as well as paws instead of feet. One of them looked profoundly unimpressed by everything, while the other one seemed as though he might bolt at the first loud noise. Neither of them met her eyes as they set steaming platters of venison on the table and retreated to stand with her knight at the edge of the room.
Autumn looked down at her plate and vibrated with indignation. Venison? She was to eat this right in front of a man who’d been grown from a deer? But then again, she didn’t know how her knight felt about this. The knight, she reminded herself sternly. She had to be careful about claiming things too hastily in this place where apparently claiming was powerful — and forever.
She glanced at his face, but he was impossible to read, seemingly content to stand passively in the gloom where the candle light barely touched.
The King was already eating, and Autumn glanced uncomfortably at her food once more. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind. Consumption is a powerful act — once you eat of his land, you will belong to it. She took a deep breath and decided that perhaps the time had come to commit her first small rebellion — if only in her mind. Autumn cut off a piece of deer meat, gathered it on her fork and then, trying to hold eye contact with the knight whose face she could barely see in the shadows of the room, consumed her first taste of this land and bound herself to it. To the deers of the Wizard King, and hopefully his (her!) knight.
She gloated internally in the heat of this small transgression for about a minute, before the King’s frustratingly deep and rumbling voice broke into her thoughts.
“Are all of our dinners to be this silent, then? I was given the assurance that you would be a — how did your mother put it? — a vivacious conversationalist.”
By which her mother had meant that Autumn was opinionated and not particularly embarrassed about it. Other women found her engaging; men tended to suggest that she see a medicine man for her obvious hysteria. She glared at the King.
“You’ll forgive me if I find it difficult to converse with someone I know nothing about, your majesty.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Oh please, none of that here. We are to be wed, lady Autumn. I implore you to use my name.”
She tilted her head to the side with a tight smile. “You see, this is exactly what I mean, future husband. I do not believe that I’ve been made aware of your name, yet.”
“Has my name been forgotten, then?” he asked with some surprise. “And here I thought that the legend of my… betrayal… still endured.”
He had put a strange emphasis on that word, and Autumn suspected that the actual story was longer and far more strange than what had been passed down to her. But while it would have surely been fascinating to hear it from his assuredly biased perspective, it was neither appropriate dinner conversation nor the sort of story one asked of their host upon first meeting. Besides, she was burning with a rather more mundane sort of curiosity.
“And what is that name, then?” And lest he made the mistake of thinking her pleasant or polite, she added: “Only where I come from, we know you as the Evil Wizard King.”
The man blinked, then tossed his head back and laughed.
“The Evil Wizard King!” he exclaimed. “Oh, I can just about hear the capitals. I suppose it is not so far off, lady Autumn, as I am both a wizard and a king. As for evil, well.”
He fingered the rim of his goblet thoughtfully, the smirk on his face fading into something soft and amused.
“Well, I suppose evil is a matter of perspective,” he murmured.
He grabbed his goblet and took a small sip from it, before meeting her eyes over the rim. As he pulled the glass away, a red drop of wine lingered on his lips, and he licked it away slowly.
“My name, dear lady, forgotten though it may be, is Eltanin. Eltanin Darkmore, of a long and ancient line of Darkmore wizards, who once ruled in the East over the mountains. But that was in a different time.”
“I see,” she murmured back, then looked down at her plate once more before their heavy eye contact could overwhelm her. “And why do you wish to marry, sir Darkmore?”
He sipped from his wine once more, rather than answering her question.
“Why does it matter?” he replied finally. “My business is my own.”
“Not once we’re married, it’s not. I will be the Queen of this land, won’t I?”
He smirked at her again. Stars above, she wanted to do violence to that smirk. No one decent ever smirked that much. It was the condescending, evil cousin of a smile, only related in that it also lived around the mouth, bracketed all around by his perfectly coiffed goatee.
“Then I will tell you my reasons once we’re married, my lady. As only then will they concern you. In the meantime, I am sure you have more pressing matters to occupy your attention.”
“Such as surviving, you mean.”
He seemed to be exasperated, once again, by her use of the term. “I suppose, if you insist on putting it like this.”
“How else should I put it?” she challenged. “None of your other dulcineas ever made it out of here alive, did they?”
He blinked at her slowly, the way a cat does when it wants to signal to you that it is entirely at ease and isn’t bothered by you in the least.
“Made it out of the castle, yes,” he drawled. “Made it out of the forest? Well. I wouldn’t know. Their fate was their own and I had long stopped paying attention.”
Her hands tightened around her cutlery in shock and anger. “So you just tossed them out? Into your accursed deadly forest?!”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “With a little care, there’s no reason to follow in their footsteps, lady Autumn. No harm will come to you in my castle.”
She grit her teeth and tried very hard not to attack him with her butter knife. “And what did they do to displease you? I’d like to know, so I don’t do the same.”
The Evil Wizard King — Eltanin — shrugged once again, and leaned back in his chair with his wine glass loosely held in one hand.
“Nothing,” he said. “I simply wasn’t ready to wed.” His lips quirked up in the shadow of a smile — thankfully not a smirk this time, as she could not be held responsible for her actions if he smirked at her one more goddamn time while talking about sending women to their death — and he subjected her to another lascivious once-over. “Given as I am ready now, there is very little that you can do to displease me, my lady.”
“Is that so,” she managed to grit out through the red haze of her fury.
“Mhm-mhm. Although I would advise you not to leave the palace grounds. I think you will find the spectres rather excitable past the walls. Your knight, also, has been instructed to protect you.” He made a vague gesture in the direction of the construct still waiting at the edge of the room. “Do make his job easier by staying in his line of sight, will you?”
Autumn felt a surge of protectiveness rise up within her. She wanted to grab the deer man and hide him from the King’s notice, even though she was well aware that it was a ridiculous impulse. She felt her fork start to bend under her thumb and forced herself to relax her grip.
“Certainly,” she said. “I’ll be good for him.”
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