One Century to Marriage. Prisoners of the Magic Kingdom. Natalie Yacobson

someone wrapped in purple silks. His helmet, elaborately carved in the shape of a black dragon’s head, covered his neck and face. The leader of the alien armies seemed to have a dragon’s head growing out of his shoulders instead of his normal head. Nothing surprising when you look at his ugly troops! The leader of the monsters can be nothing but a monster himself. But here, hands in scaly gloves rose gracefully to remove his helmet. These are not the hands of a knight. They were too fragile. And why remove the helmet before battle? Why leave your head unprotected?

      Such a foolish commander would be easy to deal with. Conrad gripped the bloody sword tighter. And the enemy warlord had just freed his head from his helmet and turned out to be a beautiful black-haired girl with eyes so lingering that it was impossible not to submit to her gaze. Conrad felt himself drowning in those eyes.

      «The gaze of the fairies’ queen is more powerful than any weapon,» someone whispered to him.

      Above the battlefield hovered an unusual black bird with a red stone in its forehead. Not long ago a dragon had flown there.

      The rider who led the monster troops also had a red stone on her forehead.

      «And is it so?» She smiled as she unsheathed her sword, strapped to her saddle. Behind her two dark wings fluttered open. A fairy indeed! Conrad was taken aback.

      «If you want my kingdom and my dragon, you will have to fight me!»

      Her sword hissed like a living thing. The metal begged for blood. Its whispers reached his ears. Conrad had heard of such swords. They start cutting indiscriminately as soon as you take them out of their sheaths. But somehow the mistress of the sword knew how to control it. The grip was in the shape of a salamander wrapped around her palm.

      «I am Medea Shai», queen of the black fairies,» she said.

      More like queen of the black beasts. There were no fairies behind her, but the monsters multiplied like locusts.

      «I am King Conrad of Aluar,» he introduced himself, knowing he would not be able to fight her.

      She shouldn’t have to remove her helmet if she wanted to keep fighting him. No one would fight a woman so beautiful.

      But the blackbird thought otherwise. It was still hovering over the battlefield, screaming with malice, and the red stone in its forehead was like a living flame.

      Castle of the Queen of the Black Fairies

      And just like that, the war was over! Who would have thought? In most cases, after the leaders have agreed to negotiate, there is no smell of truce, but in the case of a male leader and a female leader. And such a seductive one, too!

      Conrad swallowed hard. No one said it was the end of the war. Medea Shai had merely invited him to spend the night in her castle. Her army of black monsters parted, letting the king’s small detachment through. Perhaps she wished to show him some hidden weaponry, which, upon seeing it, he would immediately decide to pay off rather than fight.

      Conrad felt himself already surrendered. To follow the beautiful queen into her fortress was the same as surrendering at the mercy of the victor.

      The fairies’ queen’s face was as pretty as an adorable child, but her body, with its high breasts and slim waist, looked inexpressibly seductive. She’d dropped her robe for nothing, leaving her in a deep-cut purple gown. Conrad felt the heat in his loins. He had to avert his eyes from her, lest he attack her in the presence of his own knights. He had never been a rapist. His good looks allowed him to get women for nothing.

      The sand around the fortress was as black as ash. Probably a dragon had scorched all the land around it. But then why hadn’t the fortress itself been burned?

      The ghastly gargoyles and harpies that propped up the vaults of the gate were alive. They grinned angrily at their guest and winked at him. Their snide laughter echoed in his ears even after Conrad had entered the castle.

      Why were they so triumphant? Do they think they are winners already? The same creatures were nesting inside the castle. Some of them propped up the vault, some crawled up the columns and played the role of caryatids. They could hang or stand motionless for quite a long time, pretending to be statues, and then they came to life and laughed so hard that it made your blood run cold.

      Once in Medea Shai’s castle, you’d better not believe that any objects here can be motionless and soulless. Any pillar or arch can come to life at any moment and attack you with a real monster. There’s no way to feel safe here.

      Monsters dangled from the terra-cotta ceilings like giant bats. The doors were shaped like the mouths and heads of monsters. They looked as if they were about to come to life and speak to you.

      And these were all the servants of the Fairies’ Queen! How can you call even the most beautiful woman in the world, to whom only monsters obey, the queen of fairies?

      There was also luxury in the castle. Purple curtains fluttered over niches. Large floor amphorae of red and black roses exuded a wondrous fragrance. In the middle of one room was a tiered fountain, in which clumps of dark red roses also grew instead of water. Their color was so reminiscent of blood.

      It seemed to Conrad that the petals of each rose were opening, repeating the shape of hungry mouths.

      «Make yourself at home,» Medea Shai walked forward, rustling the gorgeous silks. Her layered skirts also resembled a rose. A train stretched across the carpet in a blood-red wave. Some keys in the shape of sickles, months, and hearts hung from her belt tinkled melodiously.

      There were fairies in the castle besides the monsters. They were all black-winged, black-haired, black-robed, and with gray ashy skin as if they had just climbed out of their graves. Conrad had heard legends of grave fairies, but always thought they were fiction.

      The black fairies silently brought various dishes of viands, furnishing the round quartz table with them. Even kings did not have dishes made entirely of gold, but Medea Shai did.

      In her abode, Conrad felt not like a guest, but like a temple, where some ancient and bloodthirsty deity was about to crawl from the altar.

      «Do you like me?» Medea Shai placed her sword on the table between the trays of figs and grapes. It was good that Conrad did not immediately engage her in a duel. Her sword snapped open, unleashing several even longer, sharper steel-tongue-like blades from a single blade. What if she had pulled such a trick in combat? He would have been dead or maimed by now, in spite of his sturdy armor.

      Conrad took a closer look. Is there a hidden spring in the hilt to release the blades? More like a cunning mechanism than magic. But the manticore handle, which instantly came to life and mangled its face, dissuaded Conrad in an instant. The blades could indeed be mistaken for her tongues.

      «I like you,» the queen of the fairies said first, before he could answer. «That’s why you’re still alive. But for how long is it?»

      «We’re not going to fight at the feast table, are we?» Conrad thought belatedly that the treats might be poisoned. However, he was in for an even worse surprise. Among the vases and trays of fruit and sweets, one dish drenched in blood stood out too sharply. It is not customary to serve fresh meat to guests unless the guests are monsters. The ghastly warriors of Medea Shae certainly don’t eat meat when it’s roasted. And he just didn’t eat fresh. For it is against human nature. A man should not become entangled with fairies, and he became entangled, enchanted by the beauty of a magical woman.

      Blood dripped from the platter onto the table. There was a head of a man on the plate. Conrad could scarcely recognize it as the head of one of his generals.

      «Ah, pardon!» The hostess made a quick sign to her maids, and they hurriedly removed the dish with the mutilated head. One of the black fairies deliberately or accidentally whipped the king in the face with her wing.

      «This dish got here by mistake,» Medea Shai apologized with a charming