DAMON RAVENSWOOD

The door opened up, allowing Damon to take his entrance just in time to see the swirling pair of maids about his mother cover up her nakedness with a deftly tuck of her breasts beneath the neckline of her gown’s bodice. It was a purple silken gown she was wearing—or that the maids were fitting to her body—one that had a trumpet-like skirt that fell hemline down to the floor, while her pale-yellow hair, which had been braided into a ponytail, was prettified at the edge by a ribbon of the same colour as her gown.

She did not smile when she saw him, he had not been expecting her to, he wasn’t Aria. She hardly gave a smile to anyone who wasn’t her little flower; well, at this moment she might not even have given a smile to her lovely daughter if she heard of her failure, a failure he was about to let her know of, one that he would let do nothing to hinder the progress of his plans at this moment.

“A lovely morning, Mother. I’m just returning from Aria’s room,” Damon began to say to his mother as she spread out her arms sideways, allowing the serving maids to iron out the bodice of her gown with their palms. “More like her door, she did not let me in.” He smiled as he took hold of a chair and dragged it to the console table near the large bed on the opposite side of the room. Dropping himself on the seat there, he leaned to the side with an elbow on the table and resumed his talk. “Aria says the grand savant told her nothing. It was too hard a task after all. The grand savant would say nothing to a child of course, that much should have been expected. And now I think Aria’s having her usual ‘I am not good enough’ breakdown. Maybe we should have never—”

“You’ve grown to talk a lot, Damon,” his mother cut him off, her voice butter-like harsh, threatening in a way that would make him not want to speak any more, but at the same time still bearing the tone of the woman that had nursed him up till now, a woman he had no fear speaking to. The maids seemed to be done now. “You may leave,” she told them as soon as she had finished verifying that everything on her body was how she wanted it to be. The maids bowed and were out the door in an instant, of course not without bowing to him too first. They had pretty faces and good enough bodies, but before his mother he had to keep his jewel in check. Stiffens were not allowed here.

“Maybe,” Damon peeled his eyes from the door as soon as it shut after the maids’ departure. “Or maybe I’m just filled with so much joy that I cannot seem to contain myself.” Apart from the smile that went about his lips without restraint, he did not behave like someone that was filled with so much of the joy he talked about. He just sat there with his cheeks on his palm, gazing at his mother as she fell down on her window cushion graciously.

“You’re filled with joy?” His mother scoffed at that with a soft shake of her head, all done with the ambience of a queen. “Joy for what, Damon? Not having the crown? You feel joy for having been the second fiddle of your father?” It was almost upon him, upon the chambers and the realm, his mother’s anger. He would not have that, not now.

“Joy that I shall have the crown soon, Mother.” He removed himself from the leaning position he had on the console table. “Aria’s failure did nothing to hinder my plans. I can see the crown.”

“I can see your stupidity hasn’t been cured,” she tsked, a little bit furiously, but not yet completely dipped in anger. “If you can see anything, then you should see that you have no way of becoming king without the grand savant…”

“A lie,” Damon put in immediately. “That is a lie.”

“What?” His mother downed a brow. She was not pleased with that. “What did you say?”

Damon harrumphed. “I will become king without the old man. The only thing I need him for is to crown me on that day, I do not see myself needing him for anything else.” Damon wore a look of complete seriousness at his own words that his mother just watched him in silence, the brow she had downed still remaining where she had left it. There were still queries written all over her face with pale, unseen ink. He needed to clean away those queries. Damon rose to his feet. “I meant to tell you but I’ve had no time. And you were also not there during the last moments of the feast.” He strode gently towards where she sat beneath the stool of the chamber’s window. “Did you know Dante was to wed Lady Eira’s daughter?” And with that he deepened his mother’s eyebrow, this time the two of them. “You did not, right?” Damon gathered from his mother’s expression. He fell to a seat beside her with a smack of his lips. “The bastard king meant to have Dante wed Lady Valora, Mother, and my sly brother said no word of it to us.” Her face remained unchanged, if anything it eased up. “It does not bother you that Dante kept such a thing a secret?” Damon fell into wonder, the same one his mother had just eased from.

“No,” she told him blatantly, her eyes unattending his presence. Damon’s face tightened at that. He knew, he always knew she loved Dante more than he, but still… why? When will he ever find out the reason? If it was he that had kept something of such importance a secret it would have no doubt ended badly for him. Just keeping his meeting with the late savant Arryn a while longer away from his mother had resulted in her feeding him with a slap and threats. Why was she always such way to him and not to Dante or Aria? Why? He would not have it.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“No?” Damon began. “You do not care? And what if it was I that had kept such a secret, would you have said—”

“And?” She gave him her eyes now, and it told him that she would hear none of his bickering. Green was the colour of peace and tranquillity, and he might even say sometimes love, but his mother’s had nothing of either for him. Her green eyes were glaring at him but within them not a single thing he wanted from her resided there. “Is that all you have come to speak to me of?” She resumed.

There was no point, Damon noticed. To her he was nothing but the son that failed to get the crown. Every time she reminded him of that. She never failed to jog his memory of his loss of the crown with her actions. Rarely would she put it in words, and rarely would he not understand that she saw him as nothing but a failure. So maybe, just maybe if he finally took the crown she would give him the same love she used to bless him with when he used to be a child. He would do anything to just lie on her laps one more time and be a boy all over again. He would bring war and he would kill just for that. “I am to wed her instead. That is what I have come to say to you.” Damon told her.

His mother inhaled sharply but softly, words not coming out until a few moments later. “What is it you said?”

“I have made Lady Valora my betrothed. I will wed her and have the Blackwoods on my side.” Damon was sullen, a different mood than the one he had waddled into his mother’s chambers with, and it had been her nonchalant attitude towards Dante’s secret that had triggered this tidal change of his, but he had to manage a smile now, at least. “Don’t you know what that means, Mother? Can’t you feel it? With them on my side I will bring the winds of war and take back my crown. It’s what you’ve always wanted. I will have the crown.” He was no longer managing to keep the smile he had on his face now, he had begun to grow genuinely happy at the prospect he was relishing in. The crown! He would really have it. But, his mother did not still seem to share his happiness. On her face there was only curiosity. It soured his mood all over again.

“And Lady Eira just somehow agreed to this?” She asked incredulously, then Damon took away from where he sat beside her and fell back to the chair had taken himself from previously. He was angry, he could not look at her eyes any longer, it would only make him more angry and spiteful. He shut it and let himself sway in the serenity of darkness.

“I told her my plans,” Damon said. “I told her I plan to become king, and that her daughter would be queen if she let me take her hand.” He would have opened his eyes to see what expression his mother had on her face now, but it might only make his anger grow further. He let them remain shut, his eyes.

“Keep going,” she voiced from where she sat on the cushion, and Damon clenched his chin, but he continued nonetheless.

“There was no reason to join my fool’s dream, she had told me. Zephyr had promised to make Dante the crown prince,” Damon heard a scoff from his mother, one as soft as a gasp, “and she then said she could just take my words of treason to the king and have me dealt with for bringing such a proposition to her. She could have, but I knew she wouldn’t. The Blackwood house is a prestigious house, Lady Eira could never be satisfied with her daughter being the betrothed of a crown prince, I knew that, so I made her an offer. She could either live out her days waiting for her daughter to become the queen she would never be, or she could take a gamble with me. That as well failed to convince her, a laugh was all I got. I knew I had to hit her harder then, and that’s when I said it.”

“Said what?” His mother asked.

“That Lady Valora was most likely carrying my child.”

He heard his mother jump to her feet, and his heart began to thump, but no, his eyes would not come open. There was no way he could bear to see her face now, he could not.

“What sort of a fool are you?” she raged, her voice taking on a fiery tone. “You slept with Lady Eira’s daughter? You should have kept your cock to yourself, Damon. You—”

“If I didn’t,” he shouted, cutting her off abruptly. There was no way he would let her say it, not her, he would not hear his own mother despise him. Not now, not ever. His eyes still remained shut. “If I didn’t,” he began all over again, more relaxedly this time, “then I would have never found myself becoming betrothed to her. Lady Eira also acted the way you are acting now. Granted, I laid with her daughter, but as you can see it all worked out. I have no surety if she actually carries my child, it’s only been a day after all, but Valora seemed to be glad at the likelihood, and it was she who convinced her mother to join ties with me. So this is not about my cock, Mother, what I did, I did for the crown, and all I do…” he finally pried his eyes open, muttering the rest of the words softly and distinctively, “is for you.”

Queen Ophelia was not even looking at him anymore, she had begun to gaze out her window. “Leave me,” she said to him, and with a sigh he began to adhere, but just as he was about to leave the room he heard her speak once more, “I need my quiet to write to your grandfather.” The words had Damon’s mood swirl sharply as though it was a squirrel that had found the scent of a nut behind it and turned around to make it its meal. He had no words to say, he just stood facing the door in a daze, a long one that tired his mother out. “Well leave, will you?” And then he snapped back, turning around to give her a bow she did not see before he took his leave.

When he got to his quarters, he found company at his door, a guest unexpected, and he came with words that filled Damon with bafflement and… revitalised spite. “M’Grace summons you, M’lord,” the Kingsknight, Ser Aaron, had said to him, and with the arrival of those words came the departure of Damon’s previous joyful demeanour. What did Zephyr want with him? Damon began to wonder. What could that hateful bastard want with him?