The sound of the door was less of a knocking and more of a slapping, like an open palm hitting the solid wooden door. Slap, slap, slap.

The prince raised his head from his meal, reluctantly, as the sound would not stop. Demanding his attention. The confection of pink and red beneath him no longer moved or made noise. Pink. Red. Pink. Red. Stillness. Silence.

So he supposed it wasn’t going anywhere. And he could safely attend to this intruder.

He licked the blood and bits of flesh from his lips. Clearing his throat and schooling his voice to sweet clarity.

“Who’s there?” The prince asked.

“It’s only me.” The voice on the other side of the door said. The interloper.

“Oh?” The prince’s meat was getting cold. He clicked his tongue against sharp teeth impatiently.

“Valor.” The voice clarified.

“Oh!” The prince scanned his memories for Valor, and found him quickly. Friend, little brother, obligation, a complicated morass of pity, annoyance, and affection. Cursed. Blind. Blind? Oh, really. Finding the last bit of information interesting he stopped looking for more. “What are you doing here Valor?”

He stepped closer to the other side of the door, carpet squelching rudely under his feet, now only inches away from the boy, who’s image was clarifying in his mind, as though rising up from the bottom of a murky pool.

“I came to find you.” Valor said. “I was worried.”

“How sweet.” The prince licked his lips again.

“Are you in there alone?” Valor asked, his voice puzzled.

The prince looked around himself. The room was in disarray. The table full of broken and toppled items, shards of glass. The rug saturated in blood and other fluids. But, other than himself and the dead meat, he was alone. He laughed, a pretty sound, to his own ears anyway.

“In a manner of speaking.” He said. “Do come in.” He turned the lock and opened the door.

Valor looked like a dessert. A sugar sculpture on top of a cake. Delicious.

His pale rusty blond hair was disheveled, pink glasses that gave his eyes a lavender hue, askew. Cheeks flushed. As though he had been running or in distress.

“Is everything alright?” The prince asked.

Valor stepped into the room, nose twitching. Tilting his head this way and that, as though forgetting he couldn’t see, or catching the smell from different angles. The scars on his face, like claw marks from a vicious animal stood out red against his pale skin.

It made the prince curious.

“I should ask you the same thing.” Valor said.

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The prince looked behind himself at the cooling corpse in its rapidly spreading, carpet ruining pool. “Of course it is. Never better.”

“It smells like death in here.” Valor said. “Please tell me you aren’t injured.”

“Not at all.” The prince stood close to Valor, breathing in the scent of champagne, flowers, clean sweat, and just plain refreshing youth he exuded.

Valor suddenly reached out until his hand made contact with Prin’s arm and pulled him close. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

The transference was instant, and Valor’s moon-colored suit became sullied with blood.

He didn’t let go. “My father can dispose of a body. He’s done it before.”

*

When Prin came to he was laying on the floor, his head aching ferociously. It took him a while to figure out where, what, or who he was.

He squinted his eyes painfully open, and sat up. The world threatened to tip over upside down and nausea like a crushing wave came and then receded. Was he back on the boat?

No, it was a small sitting room full of antiques and rich wood. The witch, Freya. He had come here to see her.

The memory of him knocking, coming in, her reaction, began to come back to him, but it was jumbled and all out of order like shuffled playing cards.

And he could swear . . . Valor was here. Supposed to be here. No one was here now anyway. One of the chairs was knocked over and the items on a small table were half on the floor and half knocked over or broken on the table. There was some broken glass. There was a large red stain on the floor.

Prin felt so tired. He recognized this feeling, post meal feeling. His mouth felt sticky and metallic tangy. What had he done? Or, more like, who had he eaten?

His hands were clean. His clothes, also clean, from what he could see. Prin needed to get to a mirror. And what if . . . where was Valor?

He stumbled to his feet and went to the table. His reflection in what remained of a broken jar seemed clean. Strange.

“Valor?” Prin called. “Valor?” He went around the room and searched, not that it was hard to do. There was really no where to hide. “Miss Freya?” He knew somehow that this one was futile. If he had eaten her, where were the remains? The bones, the clothes, the hair?

Only the stain of spilled blood. He must have moved the body. But where on earth to? There was nowhere. He didn’t think he had left this room. He must have though, right?

Prin tripped over nothing and forced himself to sit down, since his feet weren’t cooperating. His eyes clogged with tears. Little Valor, cursed boy, with his whole life ahead of him but, in a sense, who had never even had a chance to start living it. What had he done? Was this Valor’s own curse finally finishing him off in the form of the prince? Prin wasn’t sure if he could live with himself if he had harmed Valor.

There was a knock at the door, and Prin jumped to his feet. Could this be Valor now? Luckily, before he had a chance to say anything, the doorknob rattled and the person on the other side spoke.

“Freya? What’s taking so long? Why is this door locked?” The woman, Maevis, he suddenly remembered, spoke. “Freya? Everything okay?” She rattled the doorknob.

Prin held perfectly still. Even his breath he held.

After a few moments she went away. She might come back at any moment. Only, this time with a spare key, or more people.

Prin had to get out of there.

He went to the door and unlocked it, opening it carefully at first, before stepping out into the once again deserted hallway. He locked the door from the outside, leaving the key in the lock the way he had originally found it.

Halfway down the hall he turned and ran back, taking the key out of the lock. He considered what would be best. Not much time. And, unlocked the door, leaving the implication that Freya had left on her own taking the key with her? He returned the key to his pocket for safe keeping.

As he went back towards the party, the sounds of which were getting louder, he remembered Valor saying something about his father getting rid of bodies.

Prin sighed, a knot loosening in his chest that had been squeezing his heart and lungs like a python. Did this mean Valor was fine after all? That him and his father had taken the body away somewhere? Was he supposed to have been waiting for them to return? He shuddered at the thought of more people knowing his secret, but still . . . Still. It was such a relief to realize he hadn’t eaten Valor that at the moment it didn’t seem to matter what consequences he was about to face.

He couldn’t shake that something wasn’t adding up. No matter how hard he tried to make it.