Blood & Cinders- Choose your Own Adventure Story

Chapter 24

Isabelle barely stopped in time, the blade pressing gently into her breast.

"That was a close one," the beast chuckled. Its fox-like ears swiveling atop its head. Short red hair tousled at all angles and calculating green eyes twinkled with a quiet amusement. "I thought I heard a rat scurrying about." The creature's keen gaze shifted from her white dress to the clanking shackles that bound her wrists.

"Ah, you must be the blood maid that pissed off the king. Quite the scene you caused, everyone was talking about it." He noticed the sword still pointed at her chest.

"Shall I escort you to the festival?" He sneered with a wide muzzled grin." Wouldn't want you to miss all the fun would we?"

Isabelle gave in to her captor. It was better to find a way out later then try and fight with the sharp end of a sword. The fox-like creature, whose name she did not care to learn, picked up the short chain that bound her wrists and led her down the hall past the throne room and down the hall stopping at a back door she had never been to before. Double arched wooden doors covered in carvings of vines and flowers that snaked across its planks, from top to bottom. The gardens.

It turned before opening the door, "Short cut," he smiled and dragged her through into the frigid night.

The garden was alight with candles in vases. Illuminating every stone path like captured fireflies flickering about in their glass prisons.

The hedges were taller then she remembered seeing them as they towered over her like green monsters swallowing her in as they marched down the high hedged path. She could hear panting and sighing from inside the twisted maze as if the thing itself were alive under the glow of the blood red moon. Full and foreboding it hung like a luminous red eye watching over all that would come to pass tonight from its lofty seat in the heavens.

The fox guard made quick work of winding through the maze of paths that peeled off in multiple directions; all with a flickering glow to light their way. Under different circumstances she may have thought it pretty. Romantic. Now it was simply light that she was grateful for. A glow to illuminate her escape, if she could ever wiggle out of this guard's grasp.

A moan caught her attention to her left and she saw a ball of fur and flesh moving, thrusting against the hedges. Isabelle flushed, turning away when she realized just what actions were taking place.

She saw several more off to the side and then the path opened up into a circle. A beautiful fountain in the middle displayed a naked mermaid holding a jug of water that spilled into the round stone bowl beneath her. There were stone benches and vines archways that weaved into more paths. But in the center of it all a display of lust she had never laid eyes on before.

Creatures thrusting against creatures, creatures with humans who clung to horn and fur their cries rising on the cold breeze and humans with humans bent over benches, in the grass twisted into all sorts of positions.

Isabelle gasped. "Dear Lord!" her face turned an even deeper shade of red.

"I don't think you'll find the Lord here, " the fox chuckled, shifting a glance back to her shocked face.

She knew what this was, this act of coupling. Her body still ached with the feeling of it. A tickle running hot through her lower belly and pooling at her core. Though the act she shared with Adam seemed more delicate, romantic. This was carnal. Wild. And seemed to have no regard for the proper ways of keeping such acts behind closed doors. No, these were beasts.

"Would you like to stay and play for a bit?" the fox man's green eyes darkened with lust.

A horn cried low and long through the night grabbing the attention of all those in the clearing, whose head shot up, listening to the low sad bleat as it carried through the grounds.