Chapter 16

Chapter16

The market is too crowded, too busy, and I have no idea where Castle Docherty is, but I shove my way through the fray regardless, my head down and the hood of my coat up over my blonde hair. Not that it helps any—in a place of horns, headdresses, and hair in every hue, my plain polyester hood is as much of a giveaway as anything else.

Castle Docherty. Castle Docherty.

It sounds familiar—one of the castles Dr. Siska investigated when she was looking for the site of de Segovia’s castle, I think. Fourteenth century, with an outer fortress wall. Sandstone, maybe.

I scan above the stalls as I walk, looking for battlements and conical roofs emerging against the slow-fading sky. There’s no way a castle can hide, not among tents and wide-open jousting lists, but it still takes me a good fifteen minutes of shoving my way through the crowd to see it at the very edge of the market, hulking in the twilight. Fog swirls at its base, and the weathered stone looks…worm-eaten somehow.

I can’t say I particularly want to go there, because it looks haunted as fuck, but I’m also a little low on choices right now.

I squeeze through the crush—vendors calling out bargains and sales, buyers desperate to get what they need before the market closes—and finally see a grassy path between two pavilions that will take me to the castle. It looks very untrod and bedecked with spiderwebs, like no one else has wanted to go to the castle either, and maybe it’s not a good idea to go off on my own—

A hand seizes my upper arm, yanking me back before I can get to the path. Choking back a yell, I spin and twist, trying to get away, but my assailant holds fast, their fingers digging into my arm through my coat. When I twist all the way around, I don’t see the queen or one of her guards, or even a random fairy looking to prey on a lost-looking mortal. I see Felipe.

Felipe, whom I thought was a friend.

He shoves a cloth to my face, and no matter how I wrench and struggle, I can’t seem to escape it. It smells earthy, faintly sweet, and then my muscles loosen. Darkness creeps at the edges of my vision, swirls in front of me.

“I’m sorry,” he says in Latin. “I’m sorry for this.”

* * *

I’m cold.

I’m cold, and everything smells like wet stone and dirt.

I drag my eyelids open to see that I’m somewhere dim and enclosed, and at the same time, I become aware of the stone underneath me, of the cold metal binding my wrists and ankles. I’m cuffed and spread-eagled on some kind of slab, and the only light comes from a single blue-burning torch in the corner of the space.

Felipe stands underneath it, his clothes blending into the dark stone behind him, and his sad features disappear and reappear as the torch dances in the strange arrhythmic gusts of this presumably underground space.

“You’re awake,” he says softly. “Good.”

“Where am I?” I rasp. I try to move, but the cuffs and chains are too heavy, and I’m still fucked up from whatever he dosed me with. “Back at the castle?”

He inclines his head. “You will be taken to the tithing place soon. But it is best if you are here until then.”

I close my eyes, the fear colder than the metal anchoring me to the stone. “So it’s all true. She’s going to kill me tonight.”

“It’s a very old tradition,” he says gently. “One that’s stabilized the realms for as long as anyone can remember. She has no choice. Even the Thistle Queen did her duty—it’s what real rulers must do.”

And Morgana would be aware of that, sensitive to that. Struggling, Felipe had said of her at the hunt. Young, Acanthia had called her. The tithe would be a show of strength, proof she has what it takes to rule in this vicious world.

“So that’s it,” I say, so tired now. “I’m going to be human sacrificed. Wonderful.”

And all because I hadn’t wanted to bother Dr. Siska about lights around the excavation site when she was enjoying her evening tipple.

“I encountered a rumor once,” he says quietly, “in a fae record from Devonshire. That the people there had once paid the tithe another way. That a life paid didn’t have to mean a life killed. That you could sacrifice a life without ending it. But it was written like a riddle, and while I’d hoped I would untangle it before the Court of Stags had to pay the tithe again, I never could. And here we are.”

I want to cry. I’m about to be murdered and he’s talking about riddles. “Why did you drag me back?” I whisper, tears burning at my eyelids. “You’re mortal too.”

“Not truly,” he says. “Not anymore. I have no mortal salt left in my blood, Janneth. If I go back, all the long years spent here will turn me into dust the moment I cross over. I can’t ever leave…and so I must make sure I can stay. I must make sure I’m in the queen’s favor, that Faerie stays safe and stable. You are the price for that.”

He steps forward and touches my bare foot with his hand. My slippers are gone and so is my coat, and I’m just in that skimpy red thing, the chiffon skirt falling up to reveal my thigh, my tits spilling out of the tiny bodice. But there’s nothing sexual in Felipe’s touch. It seems more like an apology.

“Forgive me for not being there to watch tonight,” he says. “Trust me, I take no pleasure in any of this.”

And then his touch leaves my foot; his shadow moves. He leaves me alone, chained to a stone and waiting to die.

* * *

It’s sodark down here, and fairy time is so meaningless that I have no idea how much time passes between Felipe leaving and fresh footsteps coming down the corridor. A candelabra appears in the rough stone arch that marks the entrance of my cell, and I close my eyes against the bright glare.

I try to swallow back the panic. I try to tell myself that it’s better to act calm now so maybe they’ll lower their guard and I can escape. I tell myself that if I can’t escape, then I at least want to die with some shred of dignity left.

But it doesn’t matter. They’re here to drag me off to my killing place, and the tears are burning hot tracks down my temples and into my hair, and I can’t breathe, and I’m terrified. I’m so, so, so fucking terrified.

The candelabra lowers, and I hear the whisper of silk on stone. “Janneth,” Morgana says. “Please don’t be frightened.”

She’s alone, but it doesn’t matter. She probably has some special fairy-queen magic that would make it so she could drag me to my death without much effort at all. Hell, all she has to do is kiss me, and it would be that much harder for me to resist following her wherever she wanted me to go. Maybe that would be a blessing. Maybe wrapped in orgasmic ecstasy would be the best way to go.

The queen sets the light on the far edge of the slab and then strokes my hair, fingering the tresses like she’s already forgotten how it feels between her fingertips.

“You are,” she says, and there’s a hitch in her breath when she speaks, “so very beguiling like this.”

“Trapped?” I ask. “About to die?”

She doesn’t reply, but her eyes answer enough for her. They linger over the cuffs on my ankles and wrists, on my nearly exposed breasts, with their tips taut from the cold. On where the skirt parts enough to show my thigh, where it could be parted farther to reveal my naked pussy.

She climbs up onto the slab with me, crawling over my supine form, and the white silk of her gown gapes at the bodice. I can see right down her dress like this. I can see her breasts, the perfect handfuls of them, the rosy nipples as hard as mine. I can see the line of her stomach and the well of her navel. There is a torc of antler bone around her neck, its points resting against her collarbone, and I wonder if it would dig into my skin if she kissed me. If it would leave marks all over me if she kissed her way down my body.

Despite everything, I respond to her. My heart is kicking. My belly is tight. I’ll be wet very soon.

“Oh, Janneth,” she murmurs, her fingers pulling at the chiffon covering my breasts, moving it to the sides so she can look at my nipples. They jut up, tight with cold but also ready for attention, and then, like that’s not enough for her, she sits back and pushes the skirt of my dress apart so she can see my cunt too. She presses her thumbs to my labia and parts me, a satisfied noise leaving her at what she sees.

I’m twisting on the slab now, but to my great shame, it’s not because I want to get away. It’s because I want her to keep touching me, keep looking at me.

Because I want her to keep me, period.

“I could spend years just looking at you,” she says in a murmur, echoing the squirming hopes of my stupid heart. Her gaze rakes from my spread cunt to my bared tits to where my head rolls on the stone. “Years and years. You look so beautiful right now. Let me feel you too, Janneth. I must feel you now.” She says this last part as she slides her fingers deep into my core. I arch off the stone, and she leans forward, bracing her free hand by my head.

“You’re so soft,” she says. “And so sweet. Doesn’t that feel good, pet? Doesn’t that feel exactly like what you need?”

I shouldn’t answer. She doesn’t deserve an answer. But the answer is pulled from lips anyway. “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, it feels good.”

She likes that, I can tell. Something like a smile curves her mouth as she drops her forehead to mine, truly fucking me now with long, delicious strokes, moving up with wet fingers to play with my clitoris. I pant underneath her, everything so tight in my stomach and thighs and chest, and here’s the truth that I have to live with for the rest of my very short life: I never needed fairy fruit to become trash for Morgana. Even stone-cold sober—even knowing she’s about to kill me—her amused little smile is enough to drag me to the edge. Her hand between my legs is enough to steal my breath, to drive all thought and reason from my mind.

Pleasure spikes through me, sharp thrills up my belly and into my chest, and I can’t move, I can’t do anything but arch and whimper and wish she would kiss me.

She doesn’t. Even as she fucks me, even as she gives me hard, slick strokes, she does nothing more than press her forehead to mine. Her mouth is so close, close enough that I could catch it, and I try, I try to find her lips, but every time I do, she moves back. Not much, but enough that I can’t reach her.

I feel her breath against my lips. Her nose bumps into mine.

“Kiss me,” I plead, but she doesn’t, at least not in the way I want. She kisses my cheeks, my nose, my jaw. She gives me wet, biting kisses along my neck and my collarbone. She moves down to pull my nipples into her mouth, all searing velvet and pain-bright teeth, and then she moves so she can lower her head between my thighs.

I was right. I can feel her antler torc dragging and digging into me as she moves.

At the first hot stripe of her tongue, I cry out to the low stone ceiling, and at the second, I’m a wild thing in my chains. Trying to get more, trying to get away from the intensity of her kiss, I’m not sure, but it hardly matters, because I can’t get away, I’m chained and spread for her, a sacrifice before the sacrifice to come.

Her tongue, wicked and clever, works me from side to side, over and over, fast enough to have me groaning, then slow, torturing, wringing whimper after desperate whimper from my lips.

The orgasm is a heavy thing, like another length of silver chain anchoring me to the stone, and it almost hurts as it ripples free, yanking and weighted in its pleasure. Morgana moves back up, a hand once again braced by my head, and while I’m still in the throes of my first climax, she uses the hand still between my legs to pull yet another out of me. Her touch is fast, hard. Inescapable. I don’t even know what noises I’m making. All I know is that I want her to kiss me, kiss me with that mouth still wet from me, and I don’t even want the fairy fruit, because it’s her I want. Just her. No fruit, no crown, nothing save for obsidian eyes and perfect aim and a flair for cruel pleasure—just her. Morgana.

I come again, of course, inevitable as it is, and the pleasure rolls in burning pulses up to my chest and down my thighs, and my scalp is tingling and so are the soles of my feet, and everything is breathless, dizzy, wonderful.

Except she still keeps her mouth away from mine.

“Kiss me,” I beg. “Kiss me before you kill me.”

She doesn’t answer. She keeps her hand pressed against my swollen pussy, and her forehead to mine, and I can feel how heavy and hard her breaths are coming right now, like it’s taking everything she has to stay still, to stay exactly how she is.

A long sigh shudders out of her, and she lifts her hand from between my legs and presses her wet fingers to my mouth. I kiss them, lick them, tasting myself, and then she drops her lips to her hand too. We’re kissing, but with her hand between our lips.

Though she’s so very close, I still see the moment her eyes close. A tear, hot and fast, drops from her lashes onto my cheek and rolls into my hair.

“Go,” she says shakily. “Go, Janneth.”

“Wait, what—”

She’s already moving off me, swiping impatiently at her face as she unlocks the cuffs at my wrists and ankles with a mere press of her thumb. They click open, and once they’re all unlocked, I scramble to the side of the slab and then to the ground, looking at her across the surface of the stone.

“Go,” she repeats. “Take the torch and follow the hallway until you see a door carved with the sign of a rose. It will lead you out into the garden. From there, a trail will take you through to woods to the loch. The tomb will take you home.”

I can’t stop staring at her. The dark hair swept up and pinned with delicate carved bone, the glittering eyes. The high cheeks dusted with a flush that nearly looks gentian in the blue light of the torch.

The lips swollen from kissing me, but not on the mouth.

“You’re saying I can just go,” I say. My voice isn’t inflected in a question or pitched as an assertion. It sounds as numb as I feel. “After all this…you’re just going to let me go.”

“Yes,” she says, lifting her chin. “But you must hurry. It is close to midnight, and the witnesses will be gathering at the tithing place. They will be expecting you.”

I’m still too shocked to move. “But what will happen to Faerie if the tithe isn’t paid? What will happen to you?”

She meets my gaze. “I do not know for sure. But I do know that nothing means anything to me if you are not in the world, Janneth. I love you. Despite how stupid and foolish it makes me. Now go.”

I want to tell her I love her too. I want to tell her that this love makes me stupid and foolish too, because even now the idea of leaving her feels akin to ripping out my own throat, and I want to tell her that all I want, even now, is to stay her pet forever, sitting beside her in fairyland.

I don’t tell her these things.

I take the torch from the wall, glance back at her standing motionless in the room, candlelight making her a statue of gold and shadow, and then I do what she told me to do.

I go.