Chapter 14

Chapter14

When I wake, I’m in the queen’s arms with my pulse racing and her thigh between my legs. I’ve just come, I think, in my sleep. I blink my eyes open to see her watching me with an amused expression.

“I would tell you good morning, but I believe you’ve made sure your morning is good regardless,” she murmurs, and I press my lips to her collarbone.

“Let me lick your cunt before we go,” I say, sleepily batting my eyelashes, and she laughs. I love her laugh, rich and dark as it is, and I love it all the more for the sense that it’s a very rare thing.

“There will be time enough at the Sanctuary,” she says, unwinding her arms from me and sitting up. Her dark hair tumbles around her shoulders and back, mussed and intimate.

I look at the visible slivers of her glassed back through her hair as I sit up too. “And what is the Sanctuary again?”

“It’s a meeting place,” she says. “Anchored by fae magic, bound by fae treaties. It’s the one place by law where one cannot be attacked or killed.”

“And we’re doing your negotiations there?”

“We are,” she says, swinging her legs and climbing easily out of her bed. Even though this is a pavilion and not a castle, her bed is still fit for a royal, massive and piled with silk and soft wool.

“Then how will there be time for sex?”

She’s naked, and I admire the strong lines of her thighs, the taut curve of her backside as she searches out a robe. Her stomach is as flat as mine isn’t, her breasts slight and pert, and I sigh unhappily as it all gets covered up with a robe. How, in a world where time stretches and bends, is there always so much to do?

“The Sanctuary—and the Shadow Market as a whole—is a very carnal place,” Morgana says, belting the robe and finding a silver comb. “You will be there as my pet, and as my pet, it would be expected for you to attend to me the way a pet should. And you need to know this: the more obvious it is that you belong to me, the safer you will be.”

I can be a pet all day, and as I proved to the queen the other night, I have no issue fucking in public. But…

“Safer? Is the market unsafe?”

“As I mentioned, the Sanctuary itself is bound by a treaty, so no harm comes to anyone there. But what happens there can have ramifications outside its boundaries…as well as after the Shadow Market closes tonight.”

She explains a bit more as we dress to ride back to the castle. The Shadow Market is hosted by the fae—what the people of Faerie call themselves—every year, and it is a druid embodying the spirit of Cernunnos who lowers the veil between realms so the market is possible. And it is a different fae court’s task to raise the veil again once the festival of Samhain is over. Last year the Court of Harps closed the market; next year it will be another, because Faerie is made of hundreds of courts, large and small. I suppose that’s why something like the Sanctuary is necessary—a place outside the territorial wars and grudges all these courts seem to have with each other.

I’m also surprised to hear there are other realms besides my own and Faerie, but I’m not as surprised as I was two days ago when I learned fairies are real in the first place.

Never underestimate the human capacity for accepting weird shit, I guess.

“So what is the tithe?” I ask as our horses clatter up to the barbican.

The queen takes a minute to answer, and she doesn’t look at me as she does. “That word is rarely spoken aloud and considered to be the greatest secret Faerie keeps. Where did you hear it?”

“When Maynard and Idalia took me,” I say. “At the cairn. ‘If the tithe fails, we will all pay the price.’ Idalia said that.”

We’re coming through the barbican now and into the stone-and-grass courtyard. We bring our horses to a stop.

“It is a tax,” Morgana says finally. “A price the fae pay to renew themselves. Every seven years. Seven years ago, it was the Thistle Court’s turn to pay it. Now it is my own court’s turn.”

“It can’t be that much of a secret. There are human stories about it,” I say as we dismount and hand off our horses to the grooms. We will change into clothing worthy of the queen’s diplomacy and then ride fresh horses to the market. “The tithe. ‘At every seven years, they pay a tithe to Hell. And I’m so fair and full of flesh, I’m feared ’twill be myself.’ That’s from a poem about Tam Lin,” I add.

“Yes, I know it,” says the queen.

“It sounds kind of human sacrifice-y,” I point out, looking at her. “Does that mean when the Thistle Court paid the tithe…?”

“The mortal stories are missing some key details,” the queen replies. “And I should not be speaking of this to you as it is. We need to get ready for the market before we’re late, anyway.”

* * *

An hour later,and we’re back in the courtyard. Morgana wears a white gown without a back, its raw silk edges revealing the delicate glasswork of her body. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her wear something that exposes her glass, and I wonder if it’s to impress whoever will be at the negotiations. Or maybe it’s to show them she’s unafraid.

She mounts her horse and then accepts a fur-lined cloak from a servant with hair made of thorny yellow gorse. As Morgana clasps it at her neck, Morven comes into the courtyard, dressed all in black and glowering at his sister.

“Don’t do this,” he says as he approaches her horse.

“To which this do you refer, Brother?” Morgana asks as she finishes fastening her cloak. “You sulk and fume about everything I’ve done for the past two years, so forgive me if I struggle to identify what’s bothering you today.”

His jaw is tight as he looks up at her. “You may wear the crown, but that doesn’t save you from being a fool. You know she’ll eat this entire kingdom whole if given a chance. And when it comes to tonight…”

He doesn’t finish, but I guess he doesn’t need to, because the queen gives a slow nod, as if she knows what he wants to say. She almost looks…sad.

“I have more laid in my lap than where I should melodramatically prowl next, Morven,” she says tiredly. “I need to go make sure the gifts are packed and ready. Janneth, stay with Idalia, and I’ll rejoin you soon.”

“You wanted this!” Morven calls as she rides out of the courtyard to the stables. “You fought me for it!”

But she, of course, doesn’t answer.

He turns to me, his beautiful face a pale gold in the autumn sunlight. “Did she tell you whom she’s meeting? Whom she’s treating with?”

I shake my head silently.

“The Court of Thistles,” he says. He is angry, cold, spitting the words. “The same fae who killed our mother. The same fae who war on us, prey on us, pluck at our borders and send assassins into our halls.”

“Maybe she thinks a peace treaty will stop all that.”

I think I detect something like pity in his obsidian eyes. “A peace treaty? Is that what you think this is? The Queen of the Thistle Court wants marriage, Janneth, and she won’t settle for less. She wants to be wedded to my sister so the Thistle Court and the Stag Court will be reunited. Two queens, one court. A single crown of bone and thistle once again.”

I stare at him, a strange, urgent tearing in my chest, like all the vessels around my heart are spilling blood all at once.

Morgana is getting married.

Morgana is getting married, and she didn’t tell me.

Morgana is getting married, and now I am confronted with all the shameful, half-formed fantasies I’ve been harboring since I met her.

“Your precious queen is dragging you to her betrothal,” Morven says. “Her betrothal to her mother’s murderer. Not,” he adds darkly, “that any of it will matter after tonight.” He turns to leave.

“Wait, why won’t it ma—”

But he’s already striding away, fast and angry.

I look down at my hands, tight on my reins, and try to think. Try to reason past the pulpy, gashing hurt of it.

She’s getting married.

It’s one thing to be a pet, a consort, but a mistress? Do I think I’m made of stern enough stuff to watch Morgana sit next to someone else, converse with someone else, place trust in someone else?

Do I think I’m strong enough to watch her fall in love with someone else?

It could hardly be a love match, I try to reassure myself. The Thistle Court literally just tried to kill her.

But does it matter? When someone else would have first rights to her time, her bed, her thoughts? It might not be love, but it would mimic it, and it would kill me to watch.

I find Idalia by her cloud of moths, fluttering in the sunlight, and ride toward her, doing my best to look poised and cool and not on the verge of tears.

Not utterly humiliated.

But as we start on our ride to the market, all I can see is the queen’s head bent between my thighs last night, her eyes right before she kissed me with blood on her mouth.

Her voice as she said, I have wanted you for a very long time.

* * *

We catchup to Morgana and her small retinue, and she gestures for me to ride beside her. I fight the urge to ignore her, to storm off and ride back to the castle, because I don’t want her to know how devastated I am. I don’t want her to see the sprawling, grasping neediness I’ve allowed to bloom in just two days here.

Insatiable.

Insatiable enough to think I could have a queen of fairyland for my very own.

She seems preoccupied too, and I wonder if she’s thinking of the Thistle Queen. Of her future bride. I wonder if this was why my bargain was amenable to begin with—a willing mortal pet for a few days, packed off in time to start planning a nuptial feast.

That’s fine. It’s fine. I’m leaving anyway, I’m going home tonight, and I want to go home tonight, and so it’s all fine. Someday this will all be a joke to me. Remember that time I fell in love with a fairy queen, ha ha? Remember that time when I almost felt like I was exactly where I belonged? Hilarious. Now back to the student loan website that crashes every time I try to load it.

Everything in Faerie is larger, farther apart, but even so, I recognize the way we’re taking to the market. We ride past a massive loch, up a twisting road to the crest of a hill, and then down to a fielded plain. Just to the west, there’s a twisting grove of trees that leads all the way to the sea, cliffs of sheer stone pockmarked with caves, and the dun-gray teeth of some standing stones. There’s even a castle.

From all other directions, fog creeps, fluttering like a veil in the wind, and in the middle of it all sits the market. A sprawling village of stalls, tents, pavilions, forges, kitchens, jousting lists, and stores that sell mortal wares like peanut butter and cell phone chargers and T-shirts that say Eat the Rude.

And it’s packed. Packed like Walt Disney World in July. Packed like a grocery store before a snowstorm—or a pub on Tuesday nights when you can get half off drinks with your student ID. Crimson demons with black horns and claws, piratical centaurs, and foxes with many tails crowd the spaces between the stalls, jostling horned fae, tailed fae, courtly fae in magnificent dresses, and many others. As we dismount our horses and hand them off to Morgana’s servants, I hear an unearthly wail and wonder if it’s a banshee. We pass a bird-headed creature pulling a tank of water on a rickety wagon; a slender merperson waves from inside. There are people who don’t have any nonhuman appendages or features but who are nonetheless dressed in clothes so strange that I think they must be magical too. Chitons and long black robes and armor that seems to shimmer and move even when the wearer is standing stock-still.

“How do mortals not notice this is here?” I wonder aloud. It’s beyond noisy, with music, shouting, haggling, cheering, and it’s a huge place. Already I feel lost, and we’ve only just begun wending our way through its alleys.

The queen doesn’t answer, but Idalia does. “They see a glamoured version,” she tells me as her moths bob around us. “Or rather, a special section of the market, just for them. A human carnival.”

The carnival! No wonder it gave my fellow grad students weird vibes.

“So there aren’t any mortals in this part of the market?”

“In theory, that’s how it’s supposed to work,” Idalia says. “But some mortals come to trade or to buy. Others are lured in.” She gives a toothy smile. “It’s technically not supposed to happen, but the market is full of hungry folk…”

Something tells me she’s not talking about french fries.

The Sanctuary is in the heart of the market, a tent the size of a circus big top, made of flapping white silk with foxgloves carpeting the space around it. I feel something charged and air-crackling—the wards enforcing the treaty, Idalia tells me—and then we’re inside. Except it doesn’t look like inside, it looks like a Highland glen: a high, rocky waterfall spilling into a pool and then a small burn, trees and ferns and fog. Birds and breeze and afternoon sunlight from…somewhere.

Fae and other folk mill about, some sitting, some standing, and I quickly note that it wouldn’t take long for me to disappear in this fake wilderness.

I should try to leave now.

The thought comes quickly and then lingers, like the ring of a bell. This would be the perfect time, the perfect chance. And why would I stay? To play the queen’s pet while she plans a royal wedding? To service her needs while she plans her honeymoon with someone else?

I have a masochistic streak a mile wide, but even I have my limits.

I just wish it didn’t hurt so much. I wish I hadn’t fallen in love or hoped for—well, even now, I don’t want to admit what I’d hoped for. The plan had always been for me to leave Faerie tonight anyway. The plan is unchanged.

No harm, no foul.

“You’re upset,” the queen says as we walk toward the waterfall. Idalia and the others in the retinue have fallen back, so I’m the only one who can hear her.

I want to be petulant as fuck and not answer her at all, but I also want so badly to be the kind of person who bears heartbreak stoically and with great dignity. “I’m not,” I say, chasing that dignity so hard that I forget Felipe’s advice. I’ve lied.

The queen stops, her eyes flashing. The retinue stops too, well enough behind us that there’s at least the pretense of privacy.

“Do not lie to me,” she says. “You’ve been upset since the castle, and I will discover why, although I cannot do it here. In the meantime, I will remind you that you need to play the part of pet now and play it well.”

Well, now my pride is wounded on multiple fronts. “I’ve already proved I’m a great pet, haven’t I?”

Her long lashes block most of the light from getting to her eyes, and they’re like wells of night. “This is not a game, Janneth. I do not wish to be separated from you, and so I’ve brought you with me, but there are those in the market who will not hesitate to snatch you away once you’re outside the Sanctuary, and the Court of Thistles will see you as a threat if they understand what you mean to me.”

“And we wouldn’t want your future bride knowing what I mean to you,” I put in, unable to resist, but I want to fling myself into the magical tent-river the minute I say it. It shows my hand too much. My neediness.

Those dark eyes soften. “Is that what this is about? Janneth—”

“Morgana, do you plan to keep me waiting all day?” comes a high, musical voice. I look over to see a woman with light-green skin, pink hair, and thorns growing from the ridges of her ears and along her cheekbones. She wears a pale green gown made of velvet, heavily boned and embroidered. “My time might be infinite, but your mortal pet’s is not, so perhaps we should get started?”