Dora Reads: Nerd Church - Short Story: The Lady Klara, The Prince Matteo

This is a fantasy short story that first appeared in the 'Promptly Written' publication on Medium, in response to the following prompt by Ravyne Hawke:

Conceptual theme — Villain
Twosome — Dreadful and Deadly

I'm actually quite proud of this one, so I hope you like it! 😅

Warning: general violence (mostly of the stabby kind,) blood, injury, murder, implied war, loss of autonomy

The Lady Klara, The Prince Matteo

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

Villain.

Murderer.

She hears their murmurs, as she walks by.

Normally she would either laugh, or threaten the gossip-mongers with a long, slow, death… But not today.

…She’s so tired.

Her limbs are not her own. She moves behind her own face, watching herself running around, trying to keep things going — trying to hold the fraying strands of this little army together.

She tries…

…to keep…

…going.

But it just keeps getting harder.

She can’t brush it off, as she has so many times before.

When her legs almost give out on her way to the mess, she knows something is wrong — he’s taken things too far, this time. Idiot! Princes have porridge for brains.

She can’t keep going any longer. Desperate, she makes for the tent.

She halts before the guards. There are two of them, but her eyes see four — two sets of identical twins, blurring over each other at the edges. She keeps her face as blank as possible.

One of them — the fair-skinned one — she doesn’t think she’s seen before; but the other — the one with the deep brown skin, Liam — is one of the Prince’s most trusted men.

“Mistress Klara?” he asks, “are you alright?”

“Lady Klara,” she mumbles. Lady, not mistress — she’s told these fools a thousand times, Mistresses are sorceresses and she’s a fucking seer: it shouldn’t be this hard for them to remember.

“OK, Lady Klara — ” he’s talking as one would to a spooked horse.

…She missed having horses — she’d had had her own, before she’d gone to the temple. She’d always liked riding. Maybe she’d have some ponies again one day, if she ever got away from Prince What’s-His-Face and his merry band of fools —

Wait.

…Was Liam still talking?

“Mm’wha?” she says. Kind of.

“Nico” Liam says, voice conspiracy-low, “this is bad.”

“What’s wrong with her?” his companion —Nico — asks; he sounds almost disgusted and she’s going to make him pay for that when she can… y’know… plan vengeance, or whatever.

And if Nico doesn’t know then it means that, unlike his colleague, he is not one of Prince Thingy-Face’s most trusted guys. Figures she’d get the newbie today, of all days.

“Lady Klara,” Liam says — and he’s noted the mistress thing, it seems, and oh, look, he’s crouched down to her level to make eye-contact, that’s nice, “what happened?”

“Y-” she stops, tries to get her thoughts working enough to form words, “You… him…”

“Is Prince Matteo alright?” he asks, deadly-serious.

“…He’s fine,” she manages, slurred and clouded though it must be, “but he won’t be. Soon. Drag his ass back from the… wherever he is… OK? I can’t hold on, and when I drop…”

“Shit,” Liam says, eyes wide.

Oh good, he’s got the picture. Knew she liked him.

The world goes black.

***

“Who was watching her?” OK, Prince Matteo is pissed.

“No-one,” Liam answers, “because we all assumed you wouldn’t be off trying to get yourself killed.”

Shit, if Nico talked to the prince like that he’d be whipped. Pays to be Liam, it seems.

“Doesn’t matter,” Matteo mutters, pushing back the flap of the tent, brisk, and heading towards where they’d put her, “if something happens to her…”

“I know, your highness,” Liam says.

Nico bites his lip to stifle his questions; he does the smart thing and stays quiet.

“My prince…” Liam says, as Matteo just stands there, staring down at where they’d layed her on a cot.

(Nico didn’t like moving her — wasn’t sure if you can catch spellwork from touching a witch without her permission. But Liam pointed out that they couldn’t leave her on the floor. Which was true — Matteo would’ve had them flayed.)

“Don’t,” the Prince snips, “I know. I was reckless,” a sigh, “Fell off my horse mid-ride when it happened. — Thank you, by the way, for sending men out to find me.”

“You should be thanking her for that.”

“Yes, well…” Matteo’s face scrunches up, “why hasn’t she come around yet? It wasn’t that bad a wound.”

Wound? Was the witch hurt? If Nico had missed some injury that he should have tended — or (fuck!) had made it worse when they moved her — he’d be in the shit for sure…

“Well maybe,” Liam says, teeth slightly gritted but tone careful-calm, “if you were the one who had to heal your own wounds, your highness, you would be a better judge of how bad they were.”

Wait, if Nico didn’t know any better, he’d say that sounded like… no. No way. He must be mistaken. This was the Prince, and she was just some witch-whore he’d picked up… and given her own tent and command of the camp management…

No. What was he thinking? The Prince would never do something like that. Something so corrupt, so foul. The whole camp knew that she was a bad influence — must be, she was a witch, wasn’t she? So it was beyond thinking that he was the one to… the one to…

(It was her who’d collapsed though. It was Lady Klara lying in a sick-bed, looking surprisingly small and weak, for a witch. And it was Prince Matteo who, fresh from falling from his horse, looked hale-and-hearty as ever — not a scratch on him…)

Matteo raises an eyebrow but does not look away from the prone woman on the cot, “Are you challenging me, Liam?” he asks.

“Someone has to tell you when you’re acting like a prick.”

“…So it seems.”

***

Seers are not sorceresses. Seers are not gods.

Seers have spellwork in their blood, but they are not immortal.

Seers do not see all. That isn’t how it works.

If Lady Klara had seen all, she never would have let Prince Matteo enter the temple that night.

He was dressed as a beggar, but still carried himself as a lord. She let him in— (sanctuary)— because she knew any lords caught out-and-about in the city tonight would damn well need the shelter.

The King was out for blood. As were any number of warring nobles. As nobles tended to be, in her experience.

The temple was sanctuary to all. And so she did not ask questions. And when he asked for entry, she let him in.

If Klara had seen all, she would have turned him away.

Things would have been… so different.

The priestess would never have entered the hall to see who their unexpected guest was.

And the priestess would never have pulled out a dagger —

Murderer.

— And with the body of the priestess still cooling on the floor —

Murderer.

— the man lying beside the corpse, bleeding out beneath her hand-press on his wounds… she had seen.

She knew, now. Oh, she saw, now.

She knew that this was the Prince.

This was Prince Matteo.

The son of the King — the King whose men were, even now, painting the streets in blood.

The same King she had come here to escape.

…Prince Matteo had not come to this temple, her temple, by accident.

Her trembling hands slipped in the slick-ooze-stagger of his blood. Her stomach swooped with dread as his eyes met hers.

“You — ” she said —

Villain.

— his trembling hands drew a blade, shallow-snick-slick-cut —

Villain.

— he sliced a wavering stream of blood down her arm.

His lips were moving.

(The king’s blood line, it seems, had a few spellworkers in it; how very scandalous.)

Power sent static sizzling around the room —

Villain.

— The world went black.

***

She woke in semi-darkness.

Her body hurt. Her soul hurt.

The world seemed distant. Her eyes kept dropping closed…

…She wakes in pale morning light.

Her limbs are heavy, and her mind is muddy.

“Klara?”

She groans.

“…You’re awake then,” the Prince says.

“Your powers of observation are truly outstanding.”

“You sent them to find me,” he says.

She sighs, weary, “You die, I die.”

“I thought you might take your chances.”

She opens one eye, surveying his hunched silhouette where he sits, slumped, on the floor next to her cot. A laugh escapes her, and oh — That hurt, don’t do that, Klara.

“Something funny?” he asks.

“Just,” she wheezes, “the Prince at my feet — seemed like poetic justice.”

He makes a vague noise, but he isn’t yelling or throwing things, so she takes it as a win. In some ways he is far superior to the King.

“I will free you,” he says, Hero Voice — all chest and peacock-preening, “when — ”

“When you take the throne, I know,” she interrupts, “you’ve said. Repeatedly.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Excuse me for not taking the word of someone who would use a blood spell,” she’s pleased to see he looks guilty, though not nearly as much as he should, “and,” she says, and she’s going to scream one of these days, “I’m a fucking seer.”

“…But you don’t see everything.”

“No, genius. I do not,” give her fucking strength, “But I see enough to know that you are never going to release me from the spellwork you’ve created.”

“But I — ”

“Oh you might intend to, but you’re not going to. No matter what happens, Matteo, win or lose, you will always have another urgent reason to keep me on the leash you’ve forged. There will never be a ‘good time’ to free me from the binding.”

“That’s… it’s not true. I will free you,” he turns to her, clasps her arm, just a little too tight, “I… I had to do this — you know I did, I had no choice! But I will free you, Klara; your energy, your life-force, will be your own — and only your own — again. I promise.”

She’s so tired. And he’s so earnest.

She almost pities him.

“Alright,” she says — may as well let him have this, it wouldn’t change anything.

His grip on her gentles, “You believe me?”

“Against my better judgement, and the evidence of multiple futures.”

“…I will prove it to you, sister, I promise it.”