Damsel

by Elana K. Arnold

Everything and everyone dies, of course, but dying while tied by the reins to an outcropping of rocks at the base of a cliff seemed like an undignified way to go, and Reynard was not an undignified animal, and Emory was not, he thought, a cruel master.

A brain will lie to the body, even when the body is the brain’s only hope.

For like all good hunters, Emory knew when he was being hunted.

“My king,” he said again, and then, angling his bow in Ama’s direction, “My queen-in-waiting.” Ama bowed her head in return, which seemed to flummox the gatekeeper, who bowed even lower, to which Ama nodded her head again, which prompted the gatekeeper to bow so low that Ama feared he may snap in half, so she raised her chin this time instead of lowering it, which seemed to please the gatekeeper, who returned to standing.

“And respect,” Pawlin said, “is the twin brother of fear. The two are a pair, you see. You cannot have one without the other.”

“And that is the way it has always been,” the queen mother said again. “And if something is the way it has always been, who are we to wish it otherwise? Who are we to want anything at all? Who are we to desire?”

What is three days? To a young beauty in the arms of her beloved, it is a moment. Nine months later, to the woman she becomes, and gripped in labor, it is a lifetime.

It was true, what Emory said: as long as there had been kings, there had been conquered dragons and damsels brought from their lair. Not rescued, though. Stolen.

“One should not make a pet out of a wild beast,” Ama said. She mounted Emory, knelt over him, and, ignoring his batting, bloodied hands, she reached into his chest, pulled open his mortal wound, and extracted his still-beating heart. It pulsed in her palm, and Ama bit into it like a ripe plum.