Chapter 3, Monsters Under Mistletoe

Chapter 3

S cene change. Music continues.

Eryri stood at the stage door, waving his team off. As they vanished into the crisp blackness, he stayed in the brush of cold. He stepped into the courtyard. Sparse snowflakes turned in the air like silver coins falling through the water of a wishing well. The air sneaked under his shirt and raised the scales on his arms, teasing under his glamour.

No one was around.

It had been so long.

He unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it off, and dropped it on the ground. His skin met winter, smoothed lovingly over his bare chest, running icy fingers through his hair. He withdrew the glamour slowly, only from his back. Moonbeams refracted on the diamond facets of his scales. The streaks and fractures formed feathers fanning into vast, white wings. His body hummed with draconic magic, electric and earthy. He rose into the air, coming face to face with the golden statue of Eros crowning the theatre's doorway. He smiled at the love god, drifting in the quiet liberty of winter.

Until a princess cried out.

“Oh my God!”

Eryri’s wings vanished in a burst of hailstones. He plummeted with a bark and landed with a hard thud on the stone.

Renée’s pulse thumped with him. She gasped and hurried over, taking his arm - ice cold. “Are you alright?”

He pulled away and stood. His bare torso was spotlit in the darkness, round biceps, broad chest and the subtle dips of his padded abs. He rushed to put on his shirt, redoing the buttons misaligned.

“Sorry.”

“No, I'm…”

They stopped.

“I left my bag,” Renée said dumbly.

“Right.”

A long, dragging silence.

“Please don't tell anyone,” Eryri blurted.

“Sure.” She scrunched her mouth. His bulky body went concave. It wasn't embarrassment on his face but something deeper, raw and reactive. She recognised it. The horror of your ugliness being found out.

God, am I really going to do this?

She steeled herself. “Eryri?”

He looked at her anxiously.

“Come with me.”

She led him back into the theatre, dropping her coat and retrieving her bag in the green room, then turning on some chandeliers on the way to the stage. The painted palace glistened over the treasure of bright fruit at its centre. Candles still ringed it with clumped wax and crozzled wicks. She turned back to beckon Eryri from the shadow of the wings. When she faced the stage again, the candles were lit.

“Huh,” Eryri said gruffly behind her, “thought I’d put those out.”

“Strange.” The pool of light glimmered like syrup on the fruit, sweet and inviting, homey. It soothed her. She tossed a grin over her shoulder. “Sit with me.” She picked her way into the ring of flames. Kneeling, the glow formed a warm orb around her, a forcefield against the darkness and the nerves. Carolina shimmered overhead through the veil, golden mask in hand. Eryri hesitated and followed her in. The floorboards creaked under his heavy, battered boots. She tingled as he lowered himself opposite her, beside the mound of oranges. On a quiet, measured breath, she unzipped her bag, withdrew a packet of cleansing wipes, and began to clean off her make-up.

Layers and layers came away. The pristine surface eroded like plasterwork on an old palace. She stripped the mask away to show her natural face. Fierce acne covered nearly every inch. Her magazine prettiness crumbled into angry splotches and bumps, uneven redness, bubbling scarring, puss-yellow swellings and dry flakes. Her skin prickled sore. She fiddled with her lustrous ponytail, unclipping the extensions and tugging them out to reveal shapeless, shoulder-length locks. She rummaged down her sweater and retrieved the pads stuffing her bra and tossed them aside.

“Everyone always said what a pretty girl I was.” A cannonball weighed down her gut. “Then I got acne at fourteen and it ate my prettiness alive. All the other ways of being pretty never really grew in. I’m flat as a pancake and can’t do a thing with my crap hair. I’ve been covering this all up since school. But I saw you, so it’s only fair you see me. We’re even and you have nothing to worry about.”

He just kept looking at her. She felt like her mugshot was being taken.

“I’m sorry, you think this makes us even?” He sounded nonplussed.

She drew herself up indignantly. “Hey, this took me a lot!”

“Why?”

“Um, because I look like patient zero in the zombie apocalypse?”

He snorted and rubbed his arm. “You don’t look any worse, you just look different.”

She pursed her lips.

He smiled at his paint-streaked knee, voice quiet, “It’s like a tree in different seasons. One isn’t prettier than the other. I’ve seen you with your leaves, and now I’ve seen you when they fall. But trees in winter are something else, they captivate another way.” He gruffed in his throat. “And your hair is fine.”

She stared at him. The harsh prickle in her skin calmed. “Well, I don’t think wings make you look bad.”

He sneaked his eyes up. “No?”

“No.” She sucked her lip. “I mean, I’m curious as Hell.”

He chewed his cheek. He rolled his sleeve up and held out his inner wrist. Drawn in eyeliner pen on his skin was a symbol Renée hadn’t seen before, a medley of slashes and circles. “It’s a glamour. It makes me look human and it makes me look warm.” He rolled his jaw tentatively. “You… you can take it off, if you want to see.”

Renée’s pulse drummed. She gently took hold of his wrist and cleaned the sigil from his skin.

She gazed stunned as his colour began to drain, like a cut flower. His tan leaked away and left him white as moonbeams. His fiery hair turned like white smoke, iridescent wisps of green and blue. His freckles hardened into tiny scales, a soft glisten lacing his cheekbones and brow as they raised and ridged, hollowing his cheeks and carving his grey lake eyes into deep caverns. His ears lengthened to a point and tipped with pale teal feathers. His soft nose turned to a white flint arrowhead. The hand still cradled in hers gnarled like a hawthorn branch, the knuckles broad, fingers even longer and curving into thick claws with the same sheen as his hair. The candlelight glided over them like a whetstone down swords. Her mouth fell open. He folded in his hand and cleared his throat.

“I’m a gwiber.” His voice was the same, hoarse with shyness, but rich.

“A…”

“It’s a kind of Welsh dragon.”

“Like the one on the flag?”

“No, that guy has stuff on his plate I’m not touching with a barge pole.”

She suppressed a giggle, giddy and magnetised. He was extraordinary, a sparkling ice sculpture, a snowfall of gentle unstillness. Candlelight caught around him, bees to sugar.

“You’re right, we’re not even,” she said. “Eryri, you’re amazing, and I’m a gross mess!”

“No, come on.” He flashed a white fang and pointed a claw at her. “Common skin condition.” He pointed at himself. “Rare, horrifying monster.”

She rolled her eyes and jabbed her thumb at herself. “Surrounded by ads saying I’m unclean.” She pointed at him. “The whole world believes to be cool as fuck.”

He smiled thinly but folded his shoulders in. “Yeah, but I came out sort of wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

He frowned at his white hand. “I’m an ice dragon. That’s not normal. Dragons are fire creatures, that’s their whole point really, to be hot and colourful, daring, passionate. They’re the spirit of Cymru, its beating blood. I’m something haunting, a bleakness.”

Renée pictured the first snow of winter, running out into the street and tasting pure pieces of the sky on her tongue. She lifted his gaze to hers. “I love this time of year, Eryri. I can’t think of anything more miraculous than meeting winter come to life.”

His eyes widened and shone. He looked at her guardedly, but with such vulnerability her chest felt split open. He mumbled, “It's only you that thinks the acne is an issue. You're, you know, really, really beautiful.”

“Really, really beautiful?”

His face darted up, light blue swished across his cheekbones. “I... Well… I mean, would you rather I said you weren't?”

“No! I'm just saying you could've said, like, cute.”

“Well, you're the Mistletoe Princess, not the Easter Bunny.”

She laughed, grateful her red cheeks hid her blush. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. The feathers on his ears twitched.

She shuffled to sit, hugging her knees. The candles flickered around them, amber shadows curling in their laps like cats. “My mum wouldn’t agree.”

He frowned, his brow ridges casting a shadow over his eyes.

She pushed herself to complete the thought. “She’s always been obsessed with fixing my skin.” Her face stung with the memory of standing under the bathroom light with her mother. “There was this ointment that felt corrosive. And a pill that causes miscarriages, so I had to get pregnancy tests at the hospital and walk my pee stick through the crowded waiting room getting judgy looks.” She clucked her tongue.

Eryri growled. “That’s your health, your comfort. How is that less important than clear pores?”

“A girl is supposed to be pretty.”

He glowered.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I get it, honestly. Mum pressures me because she adores me. The world doesn’t give beautiful lives to ‘ugly’ women. She wants perfection of me because she wants perfection for me. I’m her princess, and I love being a princess. I do everything I can to be beautiful so I can make my life, everyone’s life, beautiful.” She glanced up at Carolina, her promise glowing inside her. “Being a princess should mean I get this magical love story. But if my flaws need so much concealing, if they’d be so hard to see past, what chance at love do I have?”

Eryri paused for a long, heavy moment. “I don't think many parents can see their whole child, they’re too much a mirror to them, like how we look at ourselves in these up-close fragments.” There was a hiss to his voice, a soprano note over his baritone. “But for everyone else, there's nothing to look past with you. Who you are – kind, brave, imaginative – it’s a halo around you. The first visible thing. When someone falls in love with you, they’ll take all of you in at once, and they’ll just want you, all of you, the full experience of you.” He cleared his rasp and pulled his face back into shadow.

Her lips parted. A shimmer hung around him, an aura mixing pearl and gold. “Thank you. Again.”

The candles crackled.

Eryri flexed his claws, watching them glimmer. Something unlocked in his chest, the hinges creaking. “I know how you feel, I think.”

Renée perked up.

“My family has a saying, ‘Everything is ours to hoard or burn.’ And I could never really tell which was happening to me.”

She frowned.

He took a breath, tasting citrus and her perfume. “I came out wrong. And gwibers are never, ever wrong. Gwibers are the most beautiful, the most bold. I have two parents and eleven siblings and they’re all perfect. I was supposed to be their little prince. Instead, I was…” His arms opened, displaying his body, colourless as a corpse.

She watched him patiently.

“Winter is always odd. It makes me feel more like myself, in tune. But that means I’m worse, less like my bold, beautiful family.” His voice faded as his gaze trailed over the plaster inhabitants of the theatre. “I left last winter. I needed to find out what this season really felt like without being surrounded by their fire.”

She took a slow breath. “I admire you.”

His eyebrows drew up.

“You gave up trying to be the prince. I can’t seem to give up being the princess.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What is it about being a princess that’s so important?”

Her smile broke out like a meadow as she shot to her feet. “Wait there!” She hurried backstage.

His pulse thudded. What is this?

A floorboard creaked.

Her shadow trickled over the candlelight like spilled coffee until there she stood, costumed as the Mistletoe Princess. An emerald-green gown cascaded around her, billowing dark, luscious velvet across the floor. It moved with her slow, graceful gait, like the treetops of a dense pine forest in the wind. A tight, long-sleeved bodice glittered with silver embroidered mistletoe and berries of false pearls. She crossed the golden veil into the circle on bare, callused feet, looking like an angel.

No, more heathen than that. Sensual.

She twirled, spraying shadows over the walls. The palace scenery framed her as if she was stepping straight from a storybook, the roses blooming fuller, the dozen kissing silhouettes half-alive.

Eryri’s jaw dropped.

She paced around him, swishing her skirt, voice effervescent. “When I was eight, Mum took me to see Sleeping Beauty. We moved a lot. I was nervous and lonely, bad dreams every night, but when I came into the theatre, I felt completely safe.” She whispered dramatically. “It was the land of stories, of happily ever afters.” She picked up her pace, and Eryri twisted to keep sight of her. “I sat in my seat with my little ice cream and my favourite dress, and Aurora came onstage - a rose with diamond-studded petals. She was alone in the dark, trapped, frightened, powerless. But her spirit and her heart never gave up. She stayed true to herself and no one could take away her happily ever after.” The way Renée toyed with the skirt was jarringly adorable, like a vixen rolling in dandelions. Romance adorned her, the twinkling candlelight a spectral chorus of ballerinas. “I clutched my little tub of ice cream and was absolutely certain that everything was going to be okay.” She paused and hugged herself on the cusp of a twirl. “I went to sleep with the soundtrack every night and the nightmares went away. I devoured fairy tales. Cinderella escaped her drudgery to nights full of celebration. Belle remade a monster. And Snow-Rose - I read The Wild Swans over and over as a teenager, about a princess who was still beautiful, even as nettles destroyed her skin.” She sighed musically. “The princess is unstoppable. Despite the most terrible trouble, she always stays true to her heart, and she always wins. The princess is the ultimate symbol of hope in the darkness.”

Light emanated from her. Eryri knelt frozen in the echo of her golden voice, enraptured by this shining, unyielding creature and all her wondrous will. He lifted his hideous hand up to her, and she took it.

“But don’t you hear it, Renée?” he husked, breathless. “Terrible trouble. None had the perfect life granted perfect women. Their stories are about their hearts, the beauty inside. A princess doesn’t throw her happily ever after away to serve other people’s expectations. She breaks the rules to fight for her own. Be yourself and that is more than enough. You are a princess.”

Her hand clung to his. “I don’t know when I stopped believing that.”

His heart squeezed. “Everyone likes themselves until someone else teaches them not to.”

Her pulse tripped against him as her eyes sparkled, pupils blooming and bottomless. “When did that happen for you?”

“When gwibers dance, it casts rainbows into the sky. My family took me to the lake near our cavern to dance for the first time, excited to see their little prince’s rainbows. Instead, snow poured out of me like diamonds in the air, freezing the lake in an instant. I thought it was a miracle, but then I saw my parents were horrified.”

Renée’s chest welled, stomach tight and hot. She took his hand and bent close. Every scale’s centre was a pinprick snowflake, unique and captivating. “You are really, really beautiful,” she said with all her heart. The ridges around his eyes crinkled. She pulled him up. “Show me your dance.”

His ears flicked back. “What? No-no-no.” That bluebell blush was too much.

“Yes!” She hopped on one foot and pouted up at him. “Pretty please?”

His severe mouth sloped into a reluctant smile. They stumbled laughing into the middle of the candle flames, the oranges like an exotic bouquet at a grand ball.

“There’s no music,” Eryri protested.

Renée put his hand to her waist and started to hum the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. His claws on her back sent a shudder through her. She held his other hand up, interlacing their fingers. His palm was like very fine chainmail. She steered him into step. “Trust your instincts, from before you were taught wrong.”

His throat shimmered. The waltz took them. Humming again, her body filled with music and cool air. He whipped her around with a burst of stunning strength, then twirled her until the flickering lights were a solar flare. She laughed wildly. He tugged her back into his arms with a chuckle as she stumbled dizzily. “Sorry, you OK?”

“I'm wonderful,” she sighed.

“Yes, you are.”

They whirled around and around in interlocking circles, her skirt flaring like a Catherine wheel, feet hardly touching the floor. Her steps slipped as if on cloud, then a shiver went up her legs. Her mouth fell open. The stage was covered in a beautiful pattern painted in ice, an intricate lace in the kaleidoscope geometry of snowflakes.

He slowed, brightness dimming. “Your feet, I'm so sorry.”

She tossed her head back up. “I don't want to stop.”

His arms slid around her as he stooped. “Well, um…”

“Oh!”

In one fluid motion, he scooped her into the cradle of his arms. “I can dance like this.”

She looped her arms around his neck and beamed. He began to spin again, and she whirled with him like an ash key. His grin was boyish graffiti on his stony face.

Snow drifted from the ceiling, as if from the gossamer clouds that wreathed Carolina in her garden of constellations. The air sparkled. Renée gasped as ice formed over the balconies, the wings, the rafters, the chandeliers. It knit and trickled, capping the palace turrets and frosting its windows, dressing everything in crystal tipped gold by the lights. Her breath clouded on a sigh. The colder it became, the hotter her blood rushed.

Eryri danced unchained, no boundaries between him and the snow and the princess in his arms. Her delight brought him to life, magic soaring free inside him. The whole theatre gleamed, as if a great glass coffin had been shattered.

“Sometimes a prince and a princess meet,” she murmured. “Perhaps one was trapped in a slumber, and the other braved a thicket of thorns to get near, wanting the beating heart more than the serene surface.” She cupped his cheek. “And you wake up.”

His chest swelled as he scooped her closer and stopped dancing.

The ice on the floor disappeared in splashes of sparkle. Renée wet her lip and trailed her fingertips over the embroidered mistletoe on her bodice. “You know the rule.”

Eryri tried and failed not to fixate on her hand wandering over her breast. “The rule?”

She teased the silver leaves and pearl berries. “If there's mistletoe, you have to kiss under it. Or by it.”

His heart thumped still. “There's another rule. The dragon doesn't kiss the princess.”

She arched an eyebrow. “If it makes the princess happy to be kissed by a dragon, then that is his duty to the story.”

Eryri’s tongue felt thick, his stomach in rapid somersaults. He stared at where her snow-white fingers plucked thread. She smelled of jasmine, of sweet, surrendering nights. The blade of Taniad drove through him, splitting his resolve apart.

With a slow, shaking breath, he ducked and pressed closed lips to the shallow softness of her breast.

“Speaking of stories, do you know the one about mistletoe?” he said quietly. “A mistletoe dart killed the prince of the gods. It’s like the bow of Eros, inescapable. They used to call him all-vanquishing. Even the strongest, most beautiful man can take a mortal wound if it strikes his heart.”

She tucked her knuckle under his chin to tilt his face to hers. “Do you like that idea? Being vanquished?”

He hesitated, then nodded. She ran her thumb along the quill stroke of his mouth. “If mistletoe can fell a beautiful man, I'd like to be in that story tonight.”

He went down on one knee, lowering them until she was curled in his lap. His cheek leaned into her hand. “And if this is a princess story, I want to serve.”

VOTE

Prev Next