22

When I wake the next morning, Feather is still sleeping. Unusual for her—she’s typically up and moving before I am.

Her brow is peacefully smooth, her sleep untroubled, her body entirely at rest. It gives me great joy to know I contributed to the sating of her body’s hunger and the expulsion of her guilt.

Easing myself out of the bed, I pull on a pair of loose pants. Then, after a moment’s contemplation, I gather up some clothes that I left strewn about yesterday, and I head into the hall barefoot. I nearly step on the Imp, and he starts to screech at me, but when I hiss “Hush! She’s sleeping!” he quiets instantly .

As I head for the kitchen, he bounds along at my side—something he has never done. He keeps sniffing me. Maybe he smells Feather’s scent on my body.

Once in the kitchen, the Imp scurries up the chimney out of sight, and I set about washing the clothes. I know how to do laundry—I simply don’t enjoy it. My entire role as Krampus is something I don’t enjoy, so I told myself I would do no other unpleasant tasks. I convinced myself I deserved to be as lazy, careless, and pleasure-hungry as I liked, as a recompense for the discomfort of my role.

But I have a new purpose. Someone else to please. Feather told me I must learn to clean up after myself, and I intend to do exactly that. It’s selfish of me to leave all the mundane tasks in her hands.

Washing the clothes is usually such a dull chore I can hardly stand it, but today I amuse myself with memories of last night—Feather’s saucy retorts, the fierce urgency with which she yielded to my kisses, the loveliness of her nude body on my torture table. I catch myself wearing an absurdly huge smile as I wring out each piece of clothing.

After weeks of tension between us, we sprang into this relationship headlong, whole, and unreserved—too quickly, perhaps. I worry about how the Wild Hunt might react to her presence in this house. But there’s been no message or appearance from them, other than my usual assignments. Perhaps, as Perchta said, things are changing, and they’re no longer interested in whether or not we follow the rules.

As if my thoughts summoned her, Perchta’s faint voice echoes through the kitchen. “I never thought I’d see you washing anything, Krampus.”

“It’s high time I did,” I admit, pinning a shirt to the laundry line Feather stretched across the room on the day she arrived .

“Times are shifting,” she says in a distant, singsong voice. “Times and torments and terrors. And who are you now, devil? Servant to a human girl with big beautiful eyes?”

“I’d rather be her servant than anyone else’s slave,” I retort.

“A delightful sentiment. I am also weary of being a slave. I’m done with it, for better or worse.”

I look toward her for the first time, and at the sight of her I drop the clothespins I’m holding. “Fuck, Perchta—what have you done?”

She’s wreathed in blood—ghostly spirals of it. It’s as if she sprang into a puddle of blood, and it splashed up around her, and then it froze there, in midair, twining around her body in slow-moving sprays of crimson.

“I’m forging a new path for myself.” Her tone carries a vague, unfocused fury threaded together with pleading notes. “I was hoping you might understand. That you might help me.”

“What did you do?” I repeat, moving toward her.

She darts backward and upward, floating near the ceiling with her blood-spirals writhing around her. Her translucent face tightens. “You’re so judgmental, Krampus. And you have no right to be.”

“Perchta, did you kill someone?”

“I only want to be like you ,” she says. “To make a difference. To end pain, to cut off lives that aren’t worthy of continuing.”

“I don’t make those judgments,” I tell her in the deepest, most commanding voice I can manage in this form. “I am directed by the god-stars. You know that. Tell me what happened, Perchta. Perhaps we can still salvage this—perhaps they will spare you.”

“The only thing that can help me is the Nexus,” she retorts.

“Which you cannot have. Especially since I may need to move the house soon.”

“Are you being hunted again? ”

“Yes. Two Fae-hunters. Well-supplied and full of hate.”

“The most dangerous kind,” she murmurs. “Yes, you will need the power of the Nexus. How fortunate that your little protégé has strengthened the soul of the house by her very presence. Why do you think she is so strongly connected to it? How is that possible for a mere human?”

“Some humans have gifts or sensitivities due to Fae blood in their ancestry,” I tell her. “For some it may be dormant for generations before resurfacing. I suspect that’s the case with her. There’s a hint of Faerie somewhere in her bloodline, and the trauma she experienced as a child brought it to the surface. Besides, this house is a powerful force in itself. By forming a bond with her, it heightened her ability even as she fortified its strength.”

“Still… I doubt it’s enough to sustain her when you transfer the house,” Perchta says. “So you’ll have to leave her behind when you move.”

“I’m well aware.” I plunge my hands into the sink again and seize a pair of pants to wring out. “If you’re not going to tell me what you’ve been up to, and whose blood that is, you may as well leave.”

Perchta flits around the edges of the kitchen for a while, trailing misty blood spray behind her. Fortunately, in her ghostly form, the blood can’t stain the plaster. Feather might have a fit if she saw her neat, clean kitchen befouled by bloodstains.

I wait, fully expecting Perchta to break down and confess. My gut twists with apprehension, though I try to appear calm. Whatever she did was terrible enough to saturate her ghost form and alter it dramatically. Her crimes could draw the attention of the Hunt, and that in turn could affect Feather and me.

Perchta usually confesses her thoughts to me eventually. We are not exactly friends, but we’ve been acquaintances for a long time, and I’m the only confidant she has. But this time, though I wait in silence, she doesn’t speak. Eventually she drifts back through the wall and vanishes from my sight.

“Shit,” I say under my breath.

She killed someone, that much is clear. Who was it? A parent? A child? God-stars, it can’t have been a child. She isn’t that heartless. She has dealt with stubborn, obnoxious young humans for years without doing them permanent harm—surely she wouldn’t start now.

Or perhaps she is desperate enough to do just that.

Briefly I consider contacting the Wild Hunt myself to warn them about her. They will find out about whatever she’s done at some point, and they might go easier on me if I come to them first, if I stand before the Void and blow the horn I was given, my sole means of calling my overseer. But what if they take Feather away? I can’t bear the thought of her memories being erased, or worse. The god-stars might decide she no longer has a place in Fate’s tapestry of life. They might end her, annihilate her, and then I would perish. I would destroy everyone and everything I could lay my hands on. I would wreak such havoc in this world that they would be forced to annihilate me too, because I can’t bear the thought of existing without her.

Those dark thoughts carry me through the rest of the laundry and into the clumsy preparation of a partly edible breakfast. The eggs overcook before I realize it, and the sausage ends up burnt black on the outside and pink in the middle. I’m not sure how that happened. When I taste the sausage, my long tongue accidentally flicks against the side of the hot pan, and I swear loudly in trollish.

Feather enters the kitchen at that moment. She surveys the dripping laundry, the eggshells on the floor, the grease-splattered flagstones, and me, slurring swears around my burnt tongue.

The grin that spreads over her face is brighter than any smile I’ve seen from her. I can tell she’s about to laugh, but she’s stifling it for my sake .

“Come here.” She takes me gently by my injured tongue, and I follow her to the sink amid garbled protests. She fills a cup with cold water and makes me immerse my tongue in the liquid. To my surprise, it helps.

“You’ll heal in a few minutes, won’t you?” she asks.

I nod.

“Then stop being such a baby.”

I growl, and she laughs. “I see you did laundry. And made breakfast.”

“Don’t patronize me,” I mumble.

Feather lays her hand on my arm. “I appreciate the effort.”

I half-expect her to say that since I messed it up, she’ll do everything from now on. But instead she says, “Next time, you’ll try harder, and I’ll help you. Eventually you’ll be able to do it right by yourself.”

I square my shoulders, strengthened by a determination I’m not used to, a hope I never expected to have. “I will.”

“Good boy.” She leans over the burnt sausage, which lies in a spider skillet among the coals, and I realize she’s wearing one of her absurdly short maid’s dresses, with a pair of delicate silk panties beneath it.

My whole body tightens with sudden heat and fierce need. Blood rushes to my cock, and it lifts, hard and erect, tenting my pants.

She’s still bent over the spider skillet, inspecting the sausages. I can’t very well fuck her right there—she might fall into the fireplace. I’ll have to wait.

I’ve always had the rampant sexual appetite common to the Fae, but I’ve never craved someone this fiercely and this often. It’s a ravenous obsession I did not expect. The mere sight of those panties sent all thoughts of Fae-hunters and bloody ghosts straight out of my head, and all I can think about is holding her again, feeling her silken pussy around my cock again .

I can barely sit through breakfast without propositioning her, and I manage only a few bites of the salvaged food.

“I’ll be cleaning that tiled hallway outside the library today,” Feather announces primly.

“And I need to set the concealment wards around the house,” I reply.

She hasn’t mentioned sex. She’s probably sore from yesterday. I should give her time to recover. But now that I’ve experienced the silken suction of her cunt, restraining myself is more difficult than when I could only imagine what she felt like. I’ve got to leave this kitchen quickly and get on with setting the wards, or I’m going to throw her over a table and fuck her senseless.

“Are you feeling alright?” Feather asks me, narrowing her brown eyes.

“Of course,” I choke out. “Never better. Have a fine time… mopping.”

And I flee the room.