* * *

"Deidrick?"

He jumped in his seat, recognizing the low timbre of the unfamiliar voice... silky, smooth, and soothing to the ears, tuned like an oboe. Then, with both eyes slit, a tall hourglass-shaped apparition travelled deeper into the room—slender with midriff-length fiery hair cascading down (her) shoulders and snow-white, dewy skin, painted artistically by the windows' intimate radiance. It felt impossible to put a face to the voice, irrespective of his drunken stupor and impaired state of mind.

However...

"Princess..." his hands, heavy as cement, craned through the lustful pressure, emulating an impatient toddler beckoning for an enticing rotund pacifier. She was far away... idle at the threshold where escape happens too easily. "Come here..." he said, and she obeyed whilst taunting his slim patience. He wanted her fixed between his thighs, straddling and fucking him senseless. And he wanted it now.

She smelt different—presently in his embrace. And tasted different, too. Reeking of jitters and floral, woody musk instead of her regular concupiscent damask fragrance; kisses—slow, chaste, and controlled, ostensibly struggling to conform to his wanton, needy insistence.

Coy foreplay? he thought, allowing his stroking hands to play up and down, along the soft curves of her shoulders, impinging on the warden of a pair of long kid gloves. She wriggled in his lap, pulling their lips apart now and then, ashamed of her bare (plump) fingers, leading him to question if she truly was who he thought she was. Yet, being up-close, and her face fully into focus, amethyst eyes, heavy rouge lashes, rich lips, and tomato-red blush could definitely only belong to one voluptuous person.

"My love?" she asked, red locks mutating into short auburn for some blunt moments.

"You're..." he pushed her off himself. "What the fuck are you? You're fucking changing!"

"My love! My love, please wait!"

Only because he was heavy-headed, tipsy, and under vague conjurations had she caught up to him, binding her arms around his chest and pressing firmly into the space between his spine. "You're mine because I've chosen you—you're mine! You told me you liked me, Deidrick! You're mine!" Supercilious and unapologetic when she'd said it suffused betrayal thicker than blood remoter into his thinning arteries because Lilith Barret Houghton, an outwardly docile and oppressed damsel, proved to be otherwise.

"Hands," he sputtered hazily. "Hands... off."

Using a spell-binding hex, this wolf dressed in sheep's skin, who he'd once thought of as a younger sister, lured him into a drawing-room that would soon be receiving guests; and he needed to escape now.

"I love you!"

"I'm not fond of repeating myself, Lilith."

"I can't." Her eyes finally returned to their blue and hazel tints, arms clenching firmer into his oblique muscles. "I won't, because I adore you, your highness!—I love you!"

"Good God... well, I do not!"

Remaining recalcitrant, he hustled her onto the floor with intemperate strength. Then, just when he made contact with the doorknob, she began to scream—crazed, devilish and outlandish, as if permissibly possessed.

The walls shook. Pictures fell, crashing onto the floor with ear-splitting reverberations. Blood trickled out of her sockets as her pupils rolled back into the depths of her skull. He acted quick, disorientedly moving settees and ottomans to form a towering blockage at the door, so limited persons—or, with any luck, none at all—could come in and draw catastrophic assumptions.

Lilith's muted skin discharged an army blue cloud that wrung the room's cool neutrality dry, from behind. Her body—crippled, caught in a contorted position where the arms craned deep into its scapulars, twitching. Her legs, similarly sunk past their hunches, buckled beneath a sheet of periwinkle fabric.

Possession, he deducted.

"It's either that or she's harnessing external manna?"—an illegal form of magic where energy derives from the external environment and not within... ultimately meaning that this entire scenario was an elaborate setup.

"People will flood here if you don't stop, Lilith!"

Bang!

"Lilith!"

BANG! BANG!

Was this a duplicate? A changeling, maybe? Or, again, a more plausible reason—demonic possession; a classic case of weak-minded individuals binding themselves to untrustworthy and nefarious creatures via life-and-death contracts, he thought, lingering by the door.

Despite several verbal attempts that should've placated her distress—coaxing, negotiations, and threats. Everything but actually approaching and giving in by default—Lilith roared on, drawing a constant rush of murmurs outside the door, consisting mostly of servants howling words of unease and concern.

No one could come in. No one dared enter except their immediate families, else he would kiss his rakish, carefree days goodbye, and end up having an external-manna-wielding witch for a wife!

"Come undone... I exchange... come undone." Forced to her side, he crouched, planted a hard kiss on her icy forehead, hugging as resolutely as he could. He dug his fingers into the flesh of his palms till his knuckles stained white, expelling drips of golden liquid onto the magic circle summoned beneath them, and silence fell over.

Subsequently, she lulled her tired head into his chest... fatigued. Every laboured breath stunk with hiccups, pain writhing beneath her typically reticent features as they both rested in each other's embrace, silent until Nolan eventually broke through the barred door.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"Your highness! Your highness, is everything alright?"

Following the valet were both their mothers: Lady Barret Houghton and her royal majesty, the queen, who witnessed his pathetic act of capitulation.

His vision doubled, blurred, and he bit on his tongue, embarrassed. Blood on Lilith's cheeks smudged across his livid waistcoat, which was further wrinkled by her tenacious grip. Lilith's lady's maid, aided by 2 displaced maids, pried her away to a comfortable settee where they began making her presentable. Footmen did the exact thing for Deidrick.

Still in shock, however, the queen forbade anyone to come near her, despite several deserved concerns about her bleeding out. She miraculously stood through the anguish in her nerves, the hurt in her soul, and the large gash on her wrist, ordering two footmen to shut the door—who bowed and did as so.

"She's..." a pause. "She's possessed."

"She has been compromised, is what!" The queen yelled—unnaturally loud—making everyone in the room flinch. "Nothing more was asked of you! Just that you attend the royal wedding!" Gooseflesh sprouted atop the depths of their skins. "Instead, you stink up wherever you traverse with muck, carrying only disgrace with you!"

"Mother..."

"You're drunk. You're drunk, aren't you?"

"I..."

"You what?" She drew near, pulling her arm back to land a bitter slap on his perfectly dishevelled visage. "You're what, Deidrick?"

"I'm... I'm sorry."

Her hands froze. The room stilled. Eyes morphed into saucers and gasps echoed sans restraint from every person—class, gender, and differences notwithstanding.

"I'm sorry that I did absolutely nothing wrong." A smile spread across his lips, then laughter spilled over. "I'm sorry for dissolving this situation adroitly. I'm sorry she's such a bitch! And—oh! Oh, I whole-heartedly apologize that you believe the daughter of a witch in plain sight over your own flesh and blood!"

"You dissolved nothing!" A hard slam accompanied her words, and another stampede of shock sped through the room. "I called upon Brother's Counsel! That's what happened, you ungrateful brat!"

"You... hit me."

"You hit him!" Lilith sprang from her seat and raced to his side. "How dare you harm him!"

"Lilith, dear," Lady Barret Houghton coolly interceded, and the two words seemed to instantaneously quench her temperament—like refreshing cold baths taken on the hottest summer days, or the opposite during chilly winter nights. Then, turning to the hostile lioness in a stand-off with its juvenile cub, "Forgive her impertinence, your majesty," Lady Houghton (barely) curtsied, her hallow eyes speaking for themselves.

"Your father will do worse than this," Eleanor continued, mentally reproving external trite interruptions. "But for my sanctity, more than yours, I'll personally petition your hourglass closely touches his just verdict."

Deidrick sneered in return, watching how she routinely graced her head into her left clavicle, placing a hand over its collapse where she fiddled with strung up diamonds, taking comfort in something... intangible, yet intimate.

"I hoped only the best for you, child."

"You hoped I'd die?"

"Do not feign denying how you so relish making it difficult!" she commanded more than said.