Amaryllis lounged on the bed, unendingly pleased with herself. She felt as though she were floating. She watched as her knight worked at the hearth across the room, enjoying the flex of her attendant’s muscular ass. 

“May I ask a question, Your Grace?” Bridget asked tentatively. 

Amaryllis’ heart skipped a beat. She braced herself for questions about the village, about Kettenbach. She forced down the anxiety. “As long as you mind your tongue, you may,” The Princess responded. 

Bridget paused, opening and closing her mouth a time or two, “Last night.” The knight searched the stone mantle of the hearth above her for words. “You were glowing, and standing over that woman. You called her Dearg Due?” 

“That is her name, in truth.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but it looked like you were working magic.” Bridget turned, peering behind her to search Amaryllis’ face for anger. 

The Princess’ heart ached. Bridget so often looked fierce and untamable–ready to fight and spit in the face of any foe. Now she looked like a beaten puppy, desperate not to upset her master. The Princess felt a pang of guilt as her thighs clenched at the thought. She tried to ignore the heat low in her belly. “It was a binding ritual. That was no mortal woman. Dearg Due is a Sidhe, a barrow-folk. She was pretending to be a mortal woman. Perhaps she murdered the real Heidrun and stole this home. I know not.” The Princess rolled her eyes and flipped her hand dismissively. 

“A binding ritual? You can work magic, Your Grace?” Bridget asked, awe in her voice. 

The Princess felt a strange mix of pity, guilt, and amusement. Moments ago, she had been worried that Bridget might wriggle free from the binds on her memory and mind, but either The Princess was too skilled, or the knight too helpless, for that to be possible. The poor dolt did not even know she could work magic. 

Her earlier anxiety had settled now, slowly chewing at her gut, at the periphery of her awareness. She flipped her hair back and pushed the worry further away. “I am heir to Sinnachtal. My education is without equal. She had drugged you before attacking me, and transformed into a monster while you slept. I put to use what I was taught.” 

Bridget nodded. “And you knew this creature and how to bind it from your studies?”

“No, it is written there. More or less,” The Princess replied, pointing to the altar against the wall. It was more complex than that, but she needn’t burden the knight with the intricacies. 

Bridget nodded again, turning back to stir the pot of porridge before her. Bridget thought for a long while. She had underestimated Her Grace. She could remember seeing Princess Amaryllis as a spoiled child once. Unable to defend herself–foolish, and vulnerable. She had difficulty imagining now how she could have ever seen Her Grace that way. She was so radiant and imposing. A sorceress–and so voluptuous… Bridget’s heart was pounding, and her cheeks were red. She needed to think of something else. 

“I grew up in a place much like this, Your Grace. There were always stories of Sidhe in the woods. My mother used to scare me half to death with tales of blood-sucking dwarves and seal-women.” Bridget chuckled as she filled a pair of wooden bowls with porridge. “I never saw one myself, but I did see their work once.” Bridget’s smile faded. 

As Bridget turned and walked back to The Princess. Amaryllis could make out a deep sadness welling in the knight’s eyes. Amaryllis watched her carefully as the knight sat down on the bed next to her and passed her a bowl of porridge. Their eyes met as The Princess gripped the bowl. Her heart skipped and her stomach lurched as she saw bright-eyed devotion sweep over her knight’s face the instant their gazes met. 

This is what she wanted, she reminded herself. This is what she deserved: an unfailingly obedient attendant.  

Bridget mercifully turned away, cheeks blushing. Amaryllis noticed her expression darkening again as she did. 

“One day, my friend, Ago, his father…” Bridget started before shifting on the bed and poking her porridge for a moment. “Ago came to me. It was barely dawn. Frost over everything. I was hiding under a half dozen pelts.” She stirred lazily, thinking for a long moment. “My parents were poor farmers. His mother had passed, but his father was a hunter. He–his father–would leave for many days at a time. Ago would stay with us most of those days. We’d play at being knights together, practice with sticks–wrestle,” Bridget looked up at Amaryllis, a tight grin on her face. “He never could beat me.” Her smile widened then. 

Amaryllis’ shoulders relaxed. She enjoyed seeing that arrogant grin again. 

“Anyway, Ago comes to me that morn, rapping against the shutters of my room. I remember his face, white and wild. He told me he’d heard screaming in the woods. His father was out there, he said–left the evening prior.” Bridget gestured as she talked, extending a finger to indicate the length of the evening prior. Her lop-sided grin widened a little and her eyes narrowed. “I vaulted out the window. Didn’t think much on it. Grabbed the wood-cutting axe; Ago had a bow. We went out into the woods.” 

“It was foolish, but I knew what my mother’d say if I asked.” Her smile began to fade again. 

It was odd. Amaryllis could hear the change in Bridget’s accent. The practiced, clear cadence of the voice Amaryllis was used to hearing from Bridget had shifted into something more sing-songy and smooth. 

“My mother would’ve insisted the woods were cursed and refused to let her only daughter go. The whole village was like that,” Bridget spat, disgust clear in her voice. “Living in terror. Sometimes it was Sidhe. Sometimes the High King’s Fion. Sometimes our own druids. They hid mostly. It’s what they were good at.” 

Bridget’s face contorted in an emotion Amaryllis had not seen there before. It was deeper than annoyance. Bridget’s lips were taut and her eyes bore into the floor. The knight’s eyes, Amaryllis noted, glistened with incipient tears. Bridget looked oddly impotent in her anger. 

“So I didn’t ask for their help. I didn’t bother to be disappointed in them. We just left. Went out into the thick of the God’s Wood. Thank the Lords, Ago knew how to track. He was able to find his father’s trail–found where he had doubled back and diverted–crashed through the brambles.” She was back to gesturing, illustrating directions and motions, but it was all muted. That cold, subdued anger still on her face. “By then I could have followed the trail by myself.”

Bridget stopped then. Looking down at her uneaten porridge, she grabbed her spoon with disinterest and clicked it against the bottom of the bowl. The muffled clack barely escaped the gruel surrounding it. 

“We found him. He had been torn apart. Not bitten and mauled. I saw a hunter once that had been attacked by a bear.” Bridget shook her head, setting down the bowl. “Ago’s father had been split open,” she gestured cupping her hands and opening them like a clam. “And his insides…” Bridget looked pale.

Amaryllis reached out a hand and ran it along her knight’s shoulder, feeling the tense muscles there. 

“It looked like some awful spiderweb hung up in the tree behind him,” Bridget choked a little then. 

Bridget turned to Amaryllis, her eyes were wide with puppy-like admiration. “You defeated one of those things. I could never…” The knight’s voice caught in her throat again. Unable to continue, she stared into Amaryllis’ eyes. Bridget tightened her lips, blinking back tears.

The same gnawing returned low in Amaryllis’ gut, as The Princess spoke again, “Banished it, only.”

“Worked magic, Your Grace!” Bridget whispered with reverence. “Bent her to your will. Overcame a Sidhe. I could never do that, Your Grace.” Bridget scooped up Her Grace’s hand and knelt before her, looking into her eyes with admiration. “Your Grace, I owe you everything. I would gladly put your life before mine. Now and forever.”

Amaryllis blushed and turned her gaze to the floor. The anxiety was climbing out of her stomach. 

“I do not please you, Your Grace. I apologize,” Bridget said defeat in her voice. 

Amaryllis turned quickly to meet her knight’s gaze again, “You please me very much, Syr Knight. I am merely… thinking.” Amaryllis fought to keep the knight’s gaze. She reminded herself again, this was the devotion she deserved.  

“If only we could have had a protector like you in Kettenbach.”

Amaryllis’ heart froze. She prayed she had misheard. “Where, Syr Knight?” Her head was buzzing and blood was pounding in her ears. 

“Kettenbach,” Bridget repeated innocently, “the village I grew up in.” 

Amaryllis had to fight back a wave of nausea.