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Love Cherish Obey: Chapter One

General Content Warnings

Domestic Violence, Threats of Sexual Violence, Blood, Death

Cyril’s estate was oddly still and quiet around her, the silence only broken by the crackle of the fire in the grate of her parlor. For a house of this size Rosalind would have expected a controlled chaos of preparations, especially given the expectation of a wedding the next day. She had been shown to a pretty little set of rooms to freshen up after the carriage ride that had delivered her. She hoped that smoothing her hair and fixing her dress would help steel her nerve.

“Lady Rosalind, are you quite ready?” the maid asked softly through a crack in the door. Rosalind started. She hadn’t heard any footsteps and the hinges were oiled to a whisper.

“Soon. I’ll be ready soon.” She attempted a firm nod.

“It’s just…Master Cyril is quite ready for you.” The maid seemed to weigh her words. “Things may be easier for you, if you try not to keep him waiting, he’s…” She trailed off.

“Go on, please? I know I’m new here…” She gave a pleading glance as she realized she didn’t know the maid’s name.

The maid—her maid, she supposed—opened the door a bit wider. “I’m Anna, ma’am. Master just…has expectations for how things should be. We’ve all found it easiest to make sure his expectations are met.” The maid was short, with dark hair neat under her cap, and big dark eyes. Her expression seemed strained, somehow. Was it just the pressure of the wedding tomorrow? Meeting a new mistress?

Rosalind tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Well then, I suppose we had better go.” 

“That would be best, ma’am.” Anna dipped a nervous curtsey, then her gaze sharpened and she reached up to adjust Rosalind’s collar and brush a bit of lint from the front of her traveling suit. “Master had his dinner earlier and is waiting for you in the arboretum. If you’ll follow me?”

It would be strange to have a maid again. All of the servants at home, apart from the cook and a little scullery girl, had been dismissed years ago. She and her sisters had helped each other dress since they had started wearing corsets. Strange to be in so grand a house again, too. The cold, old pile in the country was certainly historical, but every penny that didn’t go to the slowest ponies Father could pick went to fixing the roof. None was left for fashionable furniture, or even for rugs that weren’t worn nearly white with age and feet.

Perhaps all of that would change now that she’d been sold off.

No. She wrenched her mind away from that. Not sold. She had made an excellent match, later than anyone had expected she could, and now her family would have the comfort and funds that befitted their rank. And hopefully none of the servants here would gossip about anything that happened before the wedding and her sisters could still make good matches as well. All she had to do was what was expected of her, and she had been doing that as long as she could remember.

The house was bigger than she had expected and the carpets were a thick pile underfoot. No wonder she hadn’t heard the maid coming. There really should have been wedding preparations going on, and not just downstairs where it would be harder to hear.

“Is it always so…quiet, here?”

Anna made a soft noise of assent. “Yes, but this is quieter than usual. Most of the staff has been given tonight and tomorrow morning off. I think because you—” she blushed and stopped herself short.

“I know. It’s not proper. My father arranged it with Cyril. I don’t know why he wanted me here the day before the wedding, but he was very insistent.” She was blushing as well. “And the match was good enough that, well—” She snapped her teeth together to keep the words in.

“I won’t say anything, ma’am. It’s not right that you should bear the brunt of all of this, if…”

Rosalind’s hand reached out to grip Anna’s shoulder of its own volition. “Thank you,” she breathed. “I have been very afraid.”

Anna’s dark eyes were huge in her pale face. “I should tell you, ma’am, about the Master—”

A heavy door banged open at the end of the hall and the two women jumped apart.

“Roz! Darling, what’s been taking you so long?” Cyril sauntered down the hall, his cravat untied and his hands stuffed in his pockets. “Anna, dear, you run on to your rest. Thank you for helping get Miss Rosalind ready for me. I know she had a tiring drive here.”

Anna bobbed a curtsey and fled.

“Good evening, Cyril.” Rosalind swept a small curtsey herself.

“Oh, darling, no need to be so formal, we’re about to be wed!” He strode to her side. “I just couldn’t wait any longer to have you with me. Won’t you join me in the conservatory? The orange trees have just come into fruit. I think you’ll be charmed.”

She found herself swept away alongside him, his hand tucked under her elbow. “I was surprised to hear that you sent the staff off the day before the wedding. Aren’t there things yet to be done?”

“Ah, things are still in motion, and I wanted a bit of privacy with you before the whirl of the day itself.” He flashed a smile at her, straightening the heavy ring on his right hand. “I know it’s not quite the done thing, but darling, do we have to be so hidebound by tradition?”

Rosalind flushed and cast her eyes down. “If I’m being honest, Cyril, I was shocked that you asked for this and shocked that my father agreed.” She took a steadying breath and met his eyes. “If people were to find out that I had been here before the wedding…Why not just wait one more day? What could you possibly want that couldn’t wait until after we’re wed?”

He smiled at her, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “A reasonable set of questions, darling. Come into the glasshouse and let me explain. You’ll see why I wanted a bit more privacy.”

They arrived at the glass doors of the conservatory. He swung one open and eased her in with a hand on the small of her back. It was a lovely little jungle, hot and humid, air thick with the scent of flowers. A little wrought iron table was set with a pair of glasses and a decanter of an amber liquid. Cyril refilled his own glass and took a drink.

“Scotch, my dear?” He didn’t wait for her answer, but poured with a heavy hand.

Rosalind picked up the glass but didn’t drink. “So what is it that’s so private that you’ve dismissed the servants for the evening and so urgent that you brought me here before the wedding?”

“Sit, darling, sit! There’s no need to be so dour.” He pulled a chair out for her and sat himself once she had settled. “I’ve let the staff have some time so that I could introduce you to my real business. Yes, yes, the mills take up much of my time, but they are in service to a greater Art.” He took another drink, then set his glass down.

“My mentor—my adoptive father—didn’t scoop me up out of the gutter just to pass his cotton mills to me. He found me because he could see that I, like he, had an innate skill that most do not. He adopted me in order to train me in sorcery.” He smiled and made a seated bow with a theatrical flourish. “I know it sounds ridiculous, my dear, but it is true. I am a modern Prospero: summoning spirits and binding them to work my will, both in gross material matters and more subtle affairs.”

Rosalind was frozen in shock as he swept up her hand and brushed a kiss over her knuckles.

“And you, my dear, are an invaluable tool in my workings, a precious prize that I have won. Here, come with me and you’ll see for yourself.”

He stood and drew her up with a tug on her numbed hand. He led her over to a corner of the greenhouse and shoved aside a potted fern. A trap door was concealed in the flagstones. Somehow, the absurdity of it all broke through her shock.

“Cyril, you can’t be serious! This is a very funny game to play with other boys, but you’re a grown man! Why on earth are you doing this to me?”

His mouth thinned into a harsh line for a moment before he put back on the mask of jollity, and he paused before stepping on to the ladder. 

“Madam, you are a font of pure, noble, virginal blood—and what’s more, did you know that old pile you called home sits at the nexus of several strong leylines? A child conceived there, born there, raised there...for the purpose of my arts, you are worth your weight in gold. Perhaps, though, it would be best to complete our work this evening before showing you the workroom.”

Rosalind goggled at him. “What…work do we have this evening?”

Cyril stepped over and took her hand again, leading her towards the door. “A turn in the garden, my dear? I have something set up for us.”

Habit and politeness moved her feet over the slate tile of the conservatory and onto the damp grass of the lawn. Cyril took her arm with easy familiarity. They crossed the grass by the conservatory and he steered her towards a small hedge maze that she hadn’t previously explored with him. A few turns in the dark and they came to the center of the maze, a larger space than any hedge maze she had been in before.

“What on earth is this?” She tried to keep the rising panic out of her voice. A heavy stone table—no, an altar—was set up on one end of the open space. In some sort of hideous mockery of a Christian altar, there seemed to be a number of pieces of altar furniture lit by a brace of candles. Her stomach twisted. Was that a coil of rope? And a long knife?

“The implements of my art, dearest. And you the newest prize in my collection! But before the wedding tomorrow, we just need to prepare your body and mind a bit. I know it’s a bit outre, but the ceremony tomorrow isn’t quite enough to wed us as I need us to be wed. Step over the stones, now.” He was still leading her forward, her arm trapped in his.

She looked down at his command. A circle had been marked out on the grass in large white pebbles, with slate tiles set into the grass at regular intervals, chalked with strange symbols.

“It wouldn’t do for you to muss the circle now, would it? All this is why I needed you here a bit early, so good of your father to oblige. And of course once we’re done, you’ll find that any wedding nerves you have are quite soothed.” 

She was being borne forward against her will, towards the altar and the knife. “What is all this for? What are you planning to do to me?” Her heart felt like a trapped bird in the cage of her chest.

“Just a little binding, just like a marriage!” He laughed. “Honestly it’s a bit romantic, isn’t it? A secret vow, here in the garden, under the moon. Fully untainted by the desires of the flesh.” He flashed her what he seemed to think was a reassuring smile. “Now come along, it’ll go much smoother if you cooperate, and you’ll feel much better once we’re done.”

He continued drawing her forward towards the altar. A small book, pocket-sized, lay open, a small, smooth stone placed on the page to keep it from ruffling in the wind. Cyril held her arm in one hard grip and calmly began to review whatever was written there. He took the long, decorated knife from the table and anointed it with oil from a little, silver pitcher, and finally Rosalind realized that this wasn’t a silly game or a harmless delusion. If she didn’t act, Cyril was going to hurt her.

She screamed and stamped as hard as she could on his instep and he snarled in pain, dropping her arm and raising his hand to strike her. She fled, boots scrabbling on the damp grass for purchase, out of the lit center of the hedge maze and into the dark garden. 

A breath. What now? She was alone on his country estate. The servants were dismissed for the evening and she was in nothing but her traveling dress. Her wedding was in the morning and she was destined to be bound to a madman. To be bled like an animal in service of his delusions. To consider that he might be telling the truth was even worse.

It wasn’t freezing, but it was cool, and her boots sank into the well-manicured sod of the lawn. The only light was streaming out from the windows of the house and the shadows disoriented her. From here she wasn’t even sure where the road was. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she could taste blood in her mouth. She ran for a large topiary and tried to crush herself into it.

“Darling, darling, why the fuss?” He projected his voice out over the garden. “Stop and think about it. You’re a very lucky girl! Why would you run?” 

He started striding out into the sod. “Come back and all will be forgiven. You’ll have luxury and privacy and I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Surely that’s better than having a lustful beast invading your bed and sullying your flesh!”

She remembered the rope and the knife and shuddered. Maybe if a little blood was all he really wanted, but there seemed to be more to it than that. She’d prepared herself for what other men wanted, but not a madman or…a sorcerous horror.

He stopped, head tracking from side to side like a dog. “Too damn dark; can’t see a blasted thing.” He had brought the long knife from the altar. He used it to slash himself across the back of the hand, then muttered something unintelligible. He flicked a few drops of blood from his hand into the air where they hung, impossibly. The floating droplets grew and started glowing with a white light until the garden was as bright as a drawing room.

At this display of bare sorcery Rosalind’s thoughts fled her mind. Cyril straightened, cast his glance around, and smiled as he spotted her. “There’s my pretty bride! Come here, pet, or I’ll be forced to get angry. There’s a lot I can do to you and keep your virgin blood intact, you know.”

Suddenly Rosalind felt she was no more than a hunted bird and, having been flushed, she flew. She darted from the topiary around the side of the house. Cyril jogged after her, doggish grin on his face, dagger clutched loosely in his left hand. It was no good; his legs were longer and he quickly gained on her. She ran up the stairs to the stone terrace outside the ballroom, taking the steps two at a time. Perhaps inside she could find something to defend herself with.

It was not to be. He caught her at the top of the steps and seized her wrist. “You’re making a poor choice, darling,” he purred. The reek of whisky was thick on his breath. “I think we might be past the point of a contrite heart saving you.”

“Go to hell, Cyril.” Rosalind didn’t have extensive experience spitting, but she did her damndest to spit in his face.

He took a deep breath, grin barely flickering, then calmly backhanded her across the face with the hand holding the naked knife. His heavy ring split her lip open and her ears rang.

“Would you care to try that again?” he asked with poisonous sweetness in his voice. 

Rosalind found herself fixated on her blood oozing over the red stone of his ring, then licked her split lip and spat again, spraying his face with her blood. Cyril’s calm broke, and his face was suddenly a mask of fury.

“You stupid fucking cunt! I wanted to keep your face pretty for the wedding tomorrow, but…” He shifted his grip to her upper arm, fingers squeezing with bruising force.

“Monster! Let me go!”

She didn’t know what to do, she was at the end of herself. She started screaming and flailing and kicking, wrenching her body from side to side to try and break out of that iron grip. Suddenly she was beating against empty air. He stumbled at the top of the stairs, his evening dress shoes losing purchase on the wet stone. He began to recover and Rosalind saw her opportunity. She swung at him, barely hard enough to call a push, but it was enough. He overbalanced and fell back. He curled to protect himself as he tumbled down the stairs, and landed badly on his left side with a sickening noise.

Rosalind turned to flee, but the sudden silence stopped her. She spared another glance down the stairs. He wasn’t moving. Horror rose in her and she suddenly considered that the worst possible outcome to this chase may have been one that had never occurred to her.

Another moment and he still hadn’t moved. Oh, God, is he…? She stumbled down the steps toward him, got down beside him, rolled him over.

He trembled and wheezed, spraying pink blood into her face. Rosalind saw the faint gleam of the hilt of the knife, the blade buried in his chest, blood bubbling up around it as he struggled to breath. His eyes rolled and locked onto her face, then he looked down at the knife in his chest.

“Killed me—” he whispered. She was frozen with shock. His eyes were glassy with liquor and blood loss as he looked back at her. “Killed me—you—bitch—”

He painfully brought his hand to the hilt of the dagger—“Take you—with…”—then yanked it out of his chest, swinging it at Rosalind. She closed her eyes and braced for the cut, but the swing was feeble and barely grazed her. A gout of blood began to pour from the wound the moment he drew the knife from his chest, and his hand dropped, nerveless, eyes wide and staring up at the moon. Rosalind sat back on her heels, covered in blood and dew, panting.

He was dead, and she wasn’t married. She’d be ruined—not to mention probably executed for murder—and her whole family would starve, and, and, and…She put her head in her hands and allowed herself a sob. She was shaking all over.

She snuck another glimpse at the body. His dead eyes, not yet clouded over, reflected the strange magical lights he had tossed into the air.

Magic. He was a magician; he had done magic in front of her. All his supplies were just over there in the center of the maze. There’s even a little…how-to book? What if she could still fix this?

She felt like she was going to shake apart, or be sick, as she slowly stood and she heard a giggle escape her cracked lips. This was no way for a fine young lady to spend an evening!

She dragged herself back through the hedge maze to the strange altar and its rings of white pebbles. The book was still open on the table, to a page headed “The Mage’s Bryde”. She shuddered. That wasn’t what she needed. She began to page through it, looking at the headings. Surely there must be something for healing, something that would bring him back.

Not that she really wanted him back all that much, but the marriage had to go through. And she didn’t want to be tried for murder.

“To Fashion a Dogge or Beaft from Clay”, “To Walk Unseen”, “To Wear the Face of Another”…“For a Lych to Walk After Death”.

Would that work? She seemed to remember lych being an old word for a body. She read through the strange instructions. The description of the rite was surprisingly brief, but from what she could understand it promised to bring someone back to life under the command of the sorcerer.

She glanced around the…workspace. It looked like most of what she would need was already here.

The diagram showed the dead body in the center of the circle, anointed with oil—that silver pitcher—cut with a few symbols with an “athame.” That fancy knife Cyril had? Her stomach turned at the idea of cutting into dead flesh.

“Needs must when the devil drives…” she muttered darkly. 

Then there was wine poured into a “libation hole.” Which must be that stone thing over there. Whisky would probably be fine. She could grab the decanter from the conservatory. And then an incantation.

He had thrown lights from his hand, she could still see them hovering in the air. This was real. This would work. She would make it work, God damn him and her and this whole situation.

Body first, she supposed. While she still had the energy to move him. And before she lost her nerve.

It was horrible. He was heavy, and sticky all over with blood. His bowels had voided when he died and he stank of piss. She dragged him across the lawn, leaving a bloody smear on the dark grass, then through the hedge maze. Dragging through him scattered the white stones outlining the circle. Once she had him positioned roughly in the center of the space, she kicked the stones back into position. He’d said something about not mussing them.

Whisky next; into the conservatory for the decanter. There was enough in the crystal that she helped herself to a small belt. For courage. And to try and stop the shaking in all her limbs. The lights felt blindingly bright and she realized just how much blood was all over her. Maybe, she thought giddily, there is a tidying-up spell in the little book and I can try that next. If she was writing a book of spells, there would certainly be a tidying-up spell. How useful that would be after killing a pig or a chicken, after all.

She brought the decanter back to the hedge maze and set it down heavily on the altar.

She turned to face the body. Time to carve those symbols into him. The shaking wasn’t getting any better, but she had already started so she might as well keep going. She sat down heavily by the body and started to unbutton his shirt, then paused, stood, and threw up delicately outside of the circle. Throwing up in the magic circle was probably a bad idea.

She couldn’t stand to remove it like that, like she was his valet. Or…his wife. Ugh. She cut it open with the knife instead. Feeling absurdly like she was tracing out an embroidery pattern from a lady’s magazine onto cloth, she cut the symbols marked in the little book onto the flesh of his chest. He didn’t bleed.

She realized she had skipped the oil, and splashed a little from the pitcher on the altar onto his face and the cut surface of his chest. Hopefully the order of preparation wouldn’t matter that much.

The rest of the whisky in the crystal decanter splashed into the hole in the stone and Rosalind tossed the crystal onto the turf outside the circle. Reading through the book again, it looked like now she had to read through the incantation (she blessed her father for letting her learn some Latin, though she didn’t recognize many of the words) and cut herself. And then…if this was real he would get up again. And if she was commanding him, she could tell him to just go to bed and rest before tomorrow. Being able to command your husband with magic seemed not so bad, after everything that had happened tonight. He probably wouldn’t be moving very fast after having been dead. She giggled—the quick and the dead.

She looked over her arms and decided on a spot to cut, then started reading, sitting cross legged on the ground just inside the circle. Her lips were cracked and bleeding and her mouth tasted of whisky and bile. Incantation spoken, and feeling a bit silly, she cut herself in a long thin line down the top of her left arm.

Her blood dripped to the ground, sparsely at first, then more and more as the bleeding worsened at an unnatural rate, until soon a sheet of blood was pouring from the narrow cut in her arm. Shocked, she stood up and unconsciously tucked the little book into her pocket. Her head swam as a puddle formed beneath her, brighter red than any blood she’d seen before. It stayed inside the border formed by the white stones, widening to the full diameter of the circle. The bleeding slowed to an ooze but the puddle seemed to deepen. Waves formed on the surface, sloshing over the tops of her shoes. It was too much. She tried to step back but found herself stuck; sinking as though into deep mud. The corpse lay there, unmoving.

A hand broke from the pool, grasped her ankle, and pulled her deeper as a head emerged: solid black eyes and a sharp-toothed maw crowned by a pair of curled black horns. Rosalind’s mind froze in horror. This…this isn’t what the spell is supposed to do!

“I am called”—it gasped and spat blood from its mouth—“and I come!”

It reached another hand up, grasped her dress, and hauled itself up higher, blood cascading off of a muscular pair of shoulders. At the same time, she was pulled deeper into the muck. The nauseating, coppery scent of blood filled her nose and seemed to stick thickly in her throat.

“Get off me!” she shrieked, her voice weirdly flat in the night air, and slashed at the creature with the knife still clutched in her hand. Quick as a snake it caught her wrist in a powerful grip. The other hand clawed onto the back of her blouse and she was pulled down as the thing rose in equal measure until they were eye-to-eye, shoulder deep in blood, pressed up against the creature’s furnace-hot body.

“Sweet thing—” it hissed. She cut it off, spitting in its face. It grinned at her, then opened its jaws wide and licked her from jaw to brow with a long black tongue. “Playtime later,” it whispered in her ear, “for now I am called.”

Putting its hands on her shoulders, the beast pushed Rosalind down into the blood and levered itself out. She took a panicked breath of air before she submerged, flailing fruitlessly for a handhold. She clawed at the…the demon as its body slid past her, but her nails found no purchase before she felt a foot push off her head, kicking her deeper.

Rosalind clawed upward, refusing to give in, but before long the strength went out of her limbs. Something grabbed her trailing braid and she was painfully yanked upward. She broke the surface, unable even to thrash, and was dragged gasping onto solid ground. Her vision faded in and out.

Standing above her was a creature both like and unlike the devil with which she was familiar. An imposing figure over six feet tall, slim but broad-shouldered and muscular. Rosalind’s blood came off it in rivulets, revealing cherry-red skin. Between the curled horns was a shock of black hair. Sharp black claws decorated the tips of its fingers. Its broad chest was graced with a pair of full breasts capped with dark nipples. And from between its legs hung something that Rosalind had never seen before, something that she’d known she’d need to confront soon enough, but…oh God, not like this. The last of the candles went out, and the demon loomed over her in the moonlight like a nightmare carved from scarlet jasper.

Beautiful, she thought deliriously.

No, she corrected herself, monstrous.