Margarethe pressed close, her face in his shoulder, hiding the initial pulse of revulsion that moved through her at those words. She would deny it, if she dared–she wanted to deny it–but–

          –he made her. Was she not, after all, his creature?

          If anything else had ever laid a claim to her, it was gone now. Her daughters. Her husbands. Her parents and brother. Who was there to remember? Where else would she belong? Life in his castle was intolerable, but the world outside it was worse: an empty landscape, devoid of meaning, absent of desire.

          But to belong to him! To the fiend!

          (What choice did she have?)

          Her voice failed her. To tell him no would satisfy her disgust, her instinct to rebel–but perhaps (God!) it would be a lie, and she couldn’t stand to realize the falsehood in telling it. But to tell him yes…

          Her position was intolerable. The other women didn’t like her--well, what could you expect; they were women, and would always be jealous of a newer and finer addition to their numbers. Margarethe was accustomed to that. The trouble was that they felt free to show their jealousy, and to make her a target amongst them, the youngest and weakest of their number. They pushed her away from meals with hisses and upraised hands, letting her take the smallest share only after they had fed; cuffed her if she intruded anywhere she was unwelcome, utterly uncivilized as they were; slept through the days all together, leaving her to slumber alone. Not that Margarethe would care to sleep in the midst of that inelegant huddle, but she would have preferred a chance to refuse.

          Perhaps he’d add another woman to their ranks? Margarethe, expert in the ways that victims were made, knew that fresh meat would be more enticing than old. Surely the others would be bored of their game by then, and would leave Margarethe be, in favor of a new young thing to hurt. Or if she curried favor with him... Well, it would do nothing for jealousy, but at least she would be sure of eating well.

Jess stumbled back from the rapidly cooling corpse, swallowing down the bile that rose to his mouth. He looked down and yanked his shirt off with trembling hands, unable to stand the sight or feeling of the blood-soaked fabric.

Looking up from picking flowers and berries mixed in 

with animal bones, moving the cloth in the basket to hide the bones, at last, doing a little bow to the other.

         Margarethe’s hands closed into fists. For a moment, hot anger rising in her chest, jaw clenched in mulish defiance, looking up at him with hard blue eyes, she felt like a child--even knowing, with utter certainty, that she was right.

         What did he expect? That she would let him decide whether she thirsted or not, whether she would stay or go, what she needed and what was best, and thank him for every pronouncement? He couldn’t tell her what to do. He wasn’t her husband, after all!

Having a peasant or two go missing on the outskirts of her Kingdom did not usually bother the Queen. She was used to the presence of monsters of all kinds and varieties, familiar with the darkness lingering at the borders of her lands, and so long as they did not invade the heart of her Kingdom and slaughter in the masses she usually let them be. But it was only when some of her guards started to disappear and become lunch for savage creatures that Regina was forced to act for the sake of preserving her army.

Though she had never met this King of the bloodsucking community, she was not blind to the legends and had read and heard enough about him to know that she should be wary. She had been a tolerant Queen, had allowed cold-blooded fledgelings (for she hardly knew who was dwindling the numbers of her population, so she assumed that they must be immature beings) to take their fill so long as they did not disrupt her or cause too much damage, but her patience only extended so far. She would not allow her army to be decimated by those who she had not cared to bother.