Chapter 15

Chapter15

Morgana’s shucked her cape, exposing the beautiful glass skin of her back as we follow the Thistle Court to a small clearing near the waterfall. She is glassed and there’s Idalia’s moths, and everyone else is tailed or furred or horned or thorned, and I feel very conspicuous.

Not simply because I’m the only mortal here, but because I garbed myself like a pet back at the castle, imagining myself purring at the queen’s feet while she sliced some unwitting diplomat apart with her inscrutable eyes—but now I just feel cheap knowing I’m in front of her bride-to-be dressed like a slut. I’m wearing a gown of fluttery red chiffon, a strappy number made with some fairy clothing magic that holds it up even with a barely there bodice and no back to speak of. The dress sports a high slit and is thin enough that in the right light, you can make out the curves and dips of my body.

I’m very glad I grabbed my mortal coat at the castle to cover up with—not trusting some Tudor-esque cloak to do what good old-fashioned water-resistant polyester can. But then the Thistle Queen and the Queen of Stags sit on chairs carved to look like berry-laden brambles, and Idalia slips the coat from my shoulders, and I’m there in all my slutty glory. I take a deep breath to steady myself as the Thistle Court folks rake their eyes over me. I’ve been far sluttier in far more compromising positions, after all. I once spent twenty-four hours in Berlin wearing nothing but nipple pasties and a neon-green tutu.

The chairs the queens took are the only two chairs in the small clearing, each set at opposite ends of the space, so the queens will face each other when they sit. And when Idalia nudges me toward the queen, I understand I should sit at her feet. Both my pride and my sad, pulpy heart flail at this, but then I see the Thistle Queen watching me with eerie green eyes, and I remember the blood of her courtier spilling across the floor of Morgana’s castle. Blood that was meant to be Morgana’s.

The Court of Thistles will see you as a threat if they understand what you mean to me.

No, I can’t test Morgana’s patience here. If I succeed in provoking a reaction from her, they will see that I can affect her feelings. If she’s lenient with me and allows some display of defiance, they could interpret that lenience as affection. Both are dangerous for me and for her, and so I don’t fight Idalia when she nudges me again. I sit quietly at Morgana’s feet and lean my head against her knee, the way I would have before I knew she was getting married. And I hate that it feels so right. I hate that I never want to move.

“I see why you like her,” the Thistle Queen says, her voice carrying as she regards me with grasshopper-green eyes. “She’s pretty.”

Morgana drops a hand to curl into my hair. “Very pretty,” she replies, her voice cool. Yet I hear the tautness in it. “But I’m not here for compliments, Acanthia. Tell me your terms and I’ll decide if they’re worthy of consideration.”

The Thistle Queen tuts. “So direct, little doe.” Morgana’s hand in my hair tenses the tiniest bit at the endearment. “But you are young,” concedes Acanthia, “and you do not know how the game is played.”

“If you’d like to blame my youth, you may,” says Morgana, sounding very much as if she’d like to say more and is only barely holding herself back. For the first time since I’ve met her, I feel her youngness, her inexperience. She is uncertain here, in a way Acanthia is not. “You have offered marriage, and I am willing to listen to why I should accept it, but as you’ve noted, I have a very pretty pet to play with and would rather not spend the rest of my Samhain here.”

There’s no mistaking the irritation in Morgana’s tone, and I’m relieved to see she is no more in love with the Thistle Queen than I am…but I’m also a little worried now. At her display of emotion, at how she’s brought me back into the conversation unprovoked. I suddenly feel like more of a liability to her than her glassed back.

“You already know my terms, Morgana. I’ve made them plain enough in my letters. Let thistles crawl up the antlered throne, and reunite two courts that never should have been sundered in the first place. Let my child inherit and let their issue become the rulers of the Court of Thistles and Stags.”

“I’m still unable to see the benefit in it for me. For my folk.”

“Is peace not enough, Morgana? Knowing that if these talks fall through, you will have more war from us, and that eventually we will win?” A smile curls the Thistle Queen’s pink mouth. “Or perhaps you are worried you won’t have enough time for your mortal pet if you have a fae wife? But that won’t be a problem after tonight, will it?”

Morgana’s hand goes still in my hair, and even though I can’t see her face, I’m certain she’s angry. Or afraid?

But that can’t be right.

“Besides, you’ll find me as diverting as any mortal consort.” Acanthia looks at me again, dark green lashes dipping as she works her mouth to the side—an expression that would look coy on almost anyone else, but which on her looks dangerous. “But perhaps I underestimate this one. Maybe she should show me what it is about her that has you so interested?”

I can feel the tension coiling in Morgana’s thigh and calf, like she’s about to stand, and her hand has dropped from my hair to the back of my neck in a way that feels protective and possessive all at once.

And I see the trap Acanthia has laid here. I was right earlier: I am the liability, I am the weakness that can be exploited, and as hurt as I am by Morgana keeping this whole thing from me, I’m also not ready to be the reason she gets dicked over by her fairy rival. As stupid as it might be, she has my heart.

And if I’m leaving tonight anyway, maybe I can leave her a little better off than I found her—or not worse off diplomatically, at the very least.

I get to my knees. “I’d be happy to show you, Your Majesty,” I say to the Thistle Queen. I glance up at Morgana so she can see that I want to do this, that I’m more than happy to. Morgana looks down at me, and I see the question in her inky eyes.

I see the warning.

I nod my head the tiniest bit. And quickly, before I can react, Morgana takes my jaw and delivers a kiss on my mouth—hot and open and velvet soft. I know right away what she’s doing: she’s making sure the first fairy fruit I taste today is from her. It’s a claim on me and my body, a display of ownership for Acanthia’s benefit. And maybe also for my own.

I don’t care, I love it. And the minute the fruit hits my blood, I love it—and her—so much that I can barely breathe for it.

“I do not want you to do this,” she whispers against my mouth. “Only signal, and I will stop it. I will stop it all.”

I press my hand to hers where it still curls hard against my jaw. “Let me.”

She searches my gaze and then sighs. She releases my face. I stand and walk over to Acanthia before Morgana can change her mind, and then I sink to my knees.

“Your Majesty,” I say, ducking my head, and she leans forward to lift my chin with one long thorn-knuckled finger.

“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” she says. “I cannot hurt you here.”

Not incredibly reassuring, but I find I’m not that afraid anyway. Not with Morgana here. Her presence is as palpable and reassuring as a hill at my back. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Acanthia moves her hand to my hair and leans down to kiss me. I open my mouth obediently for her, allow her inside my mouth. I find her kiss floral and a little bitter too, but not in a bad way. More like fresh herbs, newly plucked, or maybe grass in the summer sun.

The fresh dose of fruit hits me hard, sending heat to the fast-slickening place between my legs.

The Thistle Queen doesn’t kiss me long, but I didn’t expect her to. This is about testing Morgana’s patience and evaluating whether her feelings for me would make her stupid, and with the lusty fae, there seems to be one surefire way to do that. Acanthia pushes my head down, her intention clear. She hasn’t raised her skirts for me, making me be the one to lift the heavy velvet enough to expose her need, and when I glance up to make sure I’ve pleased her, I find her staring at Morgana with an amused expression.

Her hand tightens in my hair, and I can’t see anymore as she pushes my mouth to her cunt, but I’m certain she’s still giving Morgana that same look. Daring Morgana to place her feelings for a temporary mortal pet over the future of her court.

Acanthia’s sex smells of honeysuckle and fairy fruit, and at the first lick, I am tumbling headlong into ecstasy. I lap eagerly at her furrow, parting her to get to the slickness inside, and once I get there, a slow-rolling orgasm detonates just behind my clit, making me tremble and clutch Acanthia’s pale green thighs to keep myself upright. I don’t stop giving head, though, unable to stop, unable to bear not having just one more hit.

“I forgot how wonderful mortals are,” Acanthia croons, not to me but to Morgana. “They thrill just to taste us, don’t they?”

Even through the fruit haze, I feel a little smug to hear that her voice is unsteady at the end, a little breathless, because yeah, I’m pretty fucking good at this.

I push a finger into the queen’s entrance, and then another. And then, with both hands in my hair, she pulls me tight to her and starts rocking against me. I give her the flat of my tongue to rub her clit against, and there’s velvet spilling over my head, and I wonder if Morgana’s watching, if she’s jealous, if she wants to come over here and haul me off to use me like she did in the forest, riding my face until every breath smells like her.

The thought wrings another cataclysm out of me, and I whimper against Acanthia as she also tumbles over the edge, fast and quick. Her inner muscles move around my fingers, and I taste the fresh fruit of her release. And though she doesn’t cry out or moan, her breath does hitch. Her body curls over mine the slightest bit.

When I pull back to look at her over the tumble of her velvet skirts, she looks a little stunned. And now I’m a lot smug. I mean, mostly horny and stoned, but smug too.

But she recovers quickly, pulling me up for a long kiss, which she trails to my jaw and to my ear.

“Little pet, you are quite something,” she murmurs. “I can see why she adores you. Not so much that she won’t pay the tithe, but it will hurt her to do it, be sure of that.”

I turn my head, and I don’t know if it’s to look at her or to taste her mouth again. “The tithe?” I ask, a little confused. “Hurt?” All I can think of is Tam Lin, of the little rhyme-y words. They dance in my fruit-soaked thoughts.

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.

“Oh, I thought you knew,” she says, voice hushed and full of sweet concern. “It’s up to the Court of Stags to pay it this time. Up to Morgana.”

The queen had said as much before we came here, but I must have missed the part where it would hurt her to pay the tithe.

If it’s a tax, then can’t taxes wait? Is there a fairy IRS she can complain to about this?

I want another kiss. I want to dive under Acanthia’s skirts again. Magic swirls in the air, pulses through me. But the magic pulls at my thoughts too, pulling them down to the earth beneath my knees, pulling them down to this very moment.

Think, a voice in my mind whispers. Ask.

“Can’t she just not…pay it this time?” I ask dazedly.

Acanthia laughs. It reminds me of wind on the hills, of days that look like they should be warm but are somehow cold as shit instead. “The tithe is what holds our entire world together,” she tells me, still too low for anyone but me to hear. “If the tithe isn’t paid, then Faerie unravels. And then all the realms that use fae magic to tether them together unravel too. If the tithe isn’t paid, the veil stays open, and it will be as it once was in times of old. Death, famine, war between all the realms, all within a year. Maybe sooner.”

I want to protest, I want to tell her that can’t be true, that all these worlds can’t just fall apart because of some unpaid fee…but Acanthia can’t lie. About anything.

“And you know how we pay the tithe, right?” She kisses my cheek, my jaw again. My neck. Her kisses feel so good, everything feels so good, even as my mind struggles against the fruit to think. Morgana watches us, her eyes dark, her shoulders tense, like she’s keeping herself from leaning forward to hear us, since Acanthia is speaking for my ears alone.

“I don’t know,” I mumble, my eyes fluttering at the pleasure of her mouth behind my ear.

“With the life of beloved things. Beloved ones. Consorts, lovers, kings and queens. Pets.”

When beloved things bleed, the land sings.

My eyes open. “What?”

She pulls back enough that I can see her eyes glittering like emeralds. “That’s right, little one. You’re to be the tithe tonight.”

Fear somehow finds its way into my blood, washed away quickly by the haze of the fruit, but its metallic tang lingers in my mouth. “No,” I say, turning to look at Morgana. “She promised I could leave Faerie.”

I see Morgana sitting across the little glen from us, her full mouth set in a regal, distant line. I know her well enough now to know that cool mask hides quite a bit, and sure enough, her chest is moving quickly with some deep feeling. Her obsidian eyes flash as they meet my gaze, and for a moment, I’m struck by how painfully beautiful she is. Those high cheekbones, those perfectly arched brows. The long neck and delicate clavicle and those slender but wicked hands.

“She promised,” I say again. “And she can’t lie.”

“Of course she can’t,” Acanthia soothes in my ear. “But think, pet—what did she actually promise you? Was it to let you leave? Or did she only make you think so?”

You shall be my pet, my everything, until the final night of Samhain, and you will not be harmed until you leave Faerie.

Leave Faerie—that had felt so unequivocal to me. I’d get to go home, right? Unless…unless leaving Faerie hadn’t meant going home at all. Unless leaving Faerie meant dying.

I let out a shaky breath. She’d been right the night of the feast. She’d tried to warn me herself. There are many, many ways to lie.

And she’d lied about this without having to do any work at all; I’d practically handed it to her with my own assumptions.

“You see now,” Acanthia says softly. “You are the obvious choice for the tithe. The alternative is chaos and madness for every fae, demigod, or creature in the realms. You mustn’t blame her, though,” she says sensibly. “It is the way things are and always have been. And I do promise you that it will hurt her. She will hate every moment of killing you.”

This is my consort, a mortal worthy of a stag’s heart and a stag’s kiss. So too shall she be worthy of a stag’s fate.

I think of Morgana’s hands on the crossbow, of the thick wooden bolt sinking into the stag’s chest. Of how we ate its raw heart, blood dripping down our chins.

A stag’s fate.

I swallow, staring across the glen at the queen I fell in love with, at the queen I trusted. The fruit is making me dizzy, making my hurt blurry, my fear fleeting.

“But you could leave before the tithe is due,” Acanthia says thoughtfully, as if this has just now occurred to her. “You could go back to your mortal lands before midnight and get far away from her before she can pay the debt.”

“What happens then?” I ask. We’re quiet enough that I know Morgana can’t hear, but the longer we speak, the more and more displeased she looks. “Will someone else have to be the tithe?”

“Perhaps, but perhaps not—the tithe must be beloved of the ruler, and how many do you think in the Court of Stags are beloved of the crown? Morgana’s courtiers? Her dour little Spaniard? The brother who curses her every footfall? Doubtful. So maybe she will not find someone else.”

“But then the tithe will fail,” I say slowly. “Isn’t that also a problem?”

“But you will be alive,” Acanthia says. “That’s what matters.” And then she adds, “This is not your problem to solve, Janneth. You were chosen for this without your knowledge; you were brought here against your will. You have no duty to Faerie or its woes. Flee and live, and let Faerie pay for its own sins for once.”

“But how can I leave?” I ask. “Without her noticing?”

“Oh, little pet,” Acanthia says quietly, with a quick kiss to my head. “Let me worry about that. Take your chance when you see it—and don’t stop running until you reach the Castle Docherty. There’s a doorway to the mortal world there.”

She stands up behind me, and I feel her skirts fall to the grass as she does. She steps around me toward Morgana with her hand outstretched.

“You have excellent taste in pets, Morgana,” she says loudly. “And I’m well pleased with your gift of her. But we must, as you intimated earlier, focus on the matter at hand. Take a turn with me, away from the ears of our courts, and allow me to make my case one last time.”

Morgana looks at me. “She needs salt.”

Salt. My mind drifts to my ugly polyester coat. To its pocket.

“She’ll be fine,” Acanthia croons. “Won’t you, pet?”

This is the play. Acanthia will lead Morgana off, and I’ll run the minute I can. I will run home, and it won’t matter that I’m running away from the one person who’s chosen me, who’s wanted me, because that person is also probably going to kill me for a magical fairy tax, according to someone who literally can’t lie about these things.

And maybe I’m in love with Morgana, but I’ve also watched her torture a servant and eat a heart raw. I’ve also heard about how she magic-stalked me for a year.

I’m not sticking around to find out exactly how safe I am.

“Yes,” I say softly, ducking my eyes so I don’t have to see Morgana’s cold beauty as I speak. The fairy fruit is still pounding in my blood, swirling in my gut, demanding more, demanding pleasure, hedonism, sex. Good. I want them to think I’m drunk, stoned, too dazed to escape. That I’ll stay exactly where I’m left, bound by the need for more fruit. “I’ll be fine.”

Morgana’s lips press briefly together; she lifts her chin. “I won’t be long,” she tells me, as if she still has the right to make me feel safe. “I’ll be right back.”

And then she stands, refusing Acanthia’s hand but walking with her toward the waterfall all the same. Most of the courtiers, including Idalia, follow, keeping a respectful distance from the monarchs and seeming to forget about my very existence. Because why would they care about a mortal panting after more fairy fruit? How much trouble could I possibly make?

Coat, my mind whispers. The coat.

I stand slowly and then creep to where Idalia draped my coat over a log. And then, with a few short steps, I’m around a grove of trees, walking quickly toward the exit of the sanctuary. My body burns against the cool air as I do, keening for more fairy fruit, the same way my heart keens for Morgana.

Salt, I remind myself. I need salt to break the spell. I reach for the little cutlery set in my coat pocket, the paper packet with a disposable bamboo knife and fork. I pull it out of my coat pocket as I walk out of the Sanctuary and tear it open.

Sure enough, at the very bottom are two tiny packets—one is pepper. The other is salt.

It only takes the first few grains for my mind to clear and my body to cool. And once it does, I slip on my coat, hike up my skirts, and run.